One of the biggest leaps I made in trying to understand innovation was:
A. Realizing that new technologies and ideas evolve from misunderstood to understood, and only in the process become truly world changing.
B. Realizing that many (most?) new technologies and ideas rely on old ideas and technologies being understood to the extent that they are commodities or utilites.
Note that A is actually dependent on the speed of communication, so our current intuitions about how fast A happens are orders of magnitude off base.
Two of my favorite mental models to help make sense of how this works:
One of the biggest leaps I made in trying to understand innovation was:
A. Realizing that new technologies and ideas evolve from misunderstood to understood, and only in the process become truly world changing.
B. Realizing that many (most?) new technologies and ideas rely on old ideas and technologies being understood to the extent that they are commodities or utilites.
Note that A is actually dependent on the speed of communication, so our current intuitions about how fast A happens are orders of magnitude off base.
Two of my favorite mental models to help make sense of how this works:
The Carlotta Perez Framework
Wardley Mapping