Sometimes, people get confused and call S-curves exponential growth. This isn’t necessarily wrong but it can confuse their thinking. They forget that constraints exist and think that there will be exponential growth forever. When slowdowns happen, they think that it’s the end of the growth—instead of considering that it may simply be another constraint and the start of another S-Curve.
This is obvious in hindsight, but I hadn’t put my finger on it.
Intriguingly, after coming back to this comment after only 3 months, my feeling is something like “That seems pretty obvious. It’s weird that that seemed like a new insight to me.”
So I guess you actually taught me something in a way that stuck.
In once sense though it seems a rejection of, what I will call, the S-Curve mentality. That would be the thinking all growth always plateaus (and it seems that is a dominant view in terms of economic growth there—developing economies can grow faster then developed economies so all these fast growers are doomed to the fate of Japan, Europe or the USA). That thinking can lead to acceptance rather than effort to overcome some current limitation/constraint.
I’m glad to have read this. In particular:
This is obvious in hindsight, but I hadn’t put my finger on it.
Thank you!
Intriguingly, after coming back to this comment after only 3 months, my feeling is something like “That seems pretty obvious. It’s weird that that seemed like a new insight to me.”
So I guess you actually taught me something in a way that stuck.
Thanks again.
Plus one on that point.
In once sense though it seems a rejection of, what I will call, the S-Curve mentality. That would be the thinking all growth always plateaus (and it seems that is a dominant view in terms of economic growth there—developing economies can grow faster then developed economies so all these fast growers are doomed to the fate of Japan, Europe or the USA). That thinking can lead to acceptance rather than effort to overcome some current limitation/constraint.