Ideas that have found their time!

Some ideas come along at the right moment in time.  It isn’t as important at this point to comment on why the timing was right as it is to understand what happens when a great idea, backed by leaders with gravitas meet a market prepared for adoption.  While many have followed this same path, I will talk about some key examples.

The Model – T:  Henry Ford is credited with a significant development in the industrial revolution.  But in addition to developing mass production techniques for complex assembly creating efficient fabrication, including assembly line production instead of individual hand crafting.[1]  By this simple development Ford was to open travel to the common middle-class American.  He also developed the perfect model for product improvement.  The Ford Motor Company suppy base was energized by huge economic opportunity by a huge swell in demand for the Model T.  This invigorated innovation to provide improved production methods for the suppliers, following his model, but also the invention of better elements of the automobile.  Creating a whole industry that survives to this day.

Netscape: led the way to democratization of the internet.  Providing a simple interface that allowed millions of users to access electronic media, which was a forcing function for an explosion of available tools, libraries, and innovation that has changed the way the world looks at information in a single generation.  Many of the tools that are used in the most recent web browsers were developed for and by Netscape, its predecessors and antecedents.

Microsoft Windows:  The operating system was relatively simple technologically.  The original MS-DOS was developed for IBM’s personal computing business was a simple “disk operating system”.  The biggest development was how Bill Gates chose to employ it.  Similar to Henry Ford his concept was to make computing available to the middle – class individual.  To that end he offered a very affordable system and developer tools so very usable applications could be developed which furthered mass appeal and enabled valued use.

Apple:  While Apple focused on hardware, the technology that created the smart phone was going to depend on application development for high order adoption. Once again it was the supply base, develop community that facilitated this world changing technology to have a use case that would be adopted by a huge market.

What’s next:  I can think of a couple of things that are on the verge of a similar success.  

One is the use of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning. While these are relatively old technologies the difficulty in developing applications has limited it to a tens of thousands of practioners.  The inability for mass adoption is because the investment of resources has been very high, extensive data labeling for example, and the results has a low probability of success.  The key enabler for high order adoption is the development of tools.  Google, Intel and others are creating space, tools and hardware for a much larger group of developers (millions) to participate in this technology, providing an opportunity for mass market appeal.  There will be very high rewards for participants who master this technology, develop use cases along with clients and provide near term low cost results using these tools.

2nd on my list is Autonomous Systems.  Barriers to entry, lack of infrastructure, and oddly enough there are far too many people in this space without being able to develop a clear discriminator for their product.  The barriers to entry are regulatory, particularly in the public sector with limits on “self driving cars and unmanned air vehicles” in public space.  The industry has seen significant movement with changes in local regulations to allow ground vehicles and on the federal stage with enabling regulation for operations in the National Air Space.  People like Parimal Kopardekar at NASA Ames and Marke “Hoot” Gibson having done significant work to provide a path in this segment. While the infrastructure for autonomous systems has a long way to go it has a short time to get there.  The technology is either development or is being developed for communications links, collision avoidance and Artificial Intelligence tools. Companies with deep pockets and a rich research, development, test and evaluation capability are investing heavily, moving things forward at a very high pace.  Aggregation will certainly occur as the best product developers with merge or be acquired to build a reasonably sized supply base with the wherewithal to match the System Developers speed.

I am looking forward to the next couple of years as we watch these two technologies develop.

1.    Price, R. G. (2004-01-29). "Division of Labor, Assembly Line Thought – The Paradox of Democratic Capitalism". RationalRevolution.net. Retrieved 2015-03-28.