Your point about the difference between a prototype and practical, useful model is of course a matter of degree. A good illustration of this is Apple: various inventions of theirs—the Apple Mac, iPod, smartphone, iPad—had little innovation as such. Desktop computers, GUIs, mice; digital music players; mobile phones, personal digital assistants, touch screens; tablet computers—these all already existed. But in each case Apple’s breakthrough was to take them from being commercial but mediocre, to very good implementations. And only when that happened did mass adoption occur, which is a crucial step in the impact of the invention. At that point many people assumed Apple had invented a whole new type of device; whereas in fact that had merely passed a key threshold—a step-change in usefulness (often in Apple’s case relating to user interface).
So I reckon there are three key stages: prototype; mediocre implementation with a limited market (maybe there’s a snappy term for that); good implementation with a mass market. I assume these stages occur with many inventions.
And presumably the reason an undramatic improvement in implementation can produce a dramatic change in takeup is when the technology passes a crucial threshold, viz. the standard of existing technologies. E.g. when computers got better in every way than a typewriter, why would you buy a typewriter? Price being the only reason, but maybe this is only the key consideration during a transition period. I remember the transition from typewriters to computers in the 1980s. I suspect the reason computers weren’t used for routine word processing before then was not just the price, but that computers & printers were too hard to use, unreliable, and bulky. I.e. typewriters really were more practical for most tasks.
Your point about the difference between a prototype and practical, useful model is of course a matter of degree. A good illustration of this is Apple: various inventions of theirs—the Apple Mac, iPod, smartphone, iPad—had little innovation as such. Desktop computers, GUIs, mice; digital music players; mobile phones, personal digital assistants, touch screens; tablet computers—these all already existed. But in each case Apple’s breakthrough was to take them from being commercial but mediocre, to very good implementations. And only when that happened did mass adoption occur, which is a crucial step in the impact of the invention. At that point many people assumed Apple had invented a whole new type of device; whereas in fact that had merely passed a key threshold—a step-change in usefulness (often in Apple’s case relating to user interface).
So I reckon there are three key stages: prototype; mediocre implementation with a limited market (maybe there’s a snappy term for that); good implementation with a mass market. I assume these stages occur with many inventions.
And presumably the reason an undramatic improvement in implementation can produce a dramatic change in takeup is when the technology passes a crucial threshold, viz. the standard of existing technologies. E.g. when computers got better in every way than a typewriter, why would you buy a typewriter? Price being the only reason, but maybe this is only the key consideration during a transition period. I remember the transition from typewriters to computers in the 1980s. I suspect the reason computers weren’t used for routine word processing before then was not just the price, but that computers & printers were too hard to use, unreliable, and bulky. I.e. typewriters really were more practical for most tasks.