Looking for the next bottleneck

Have you ever wondered why some things seem to get faster, cheaper, and better over time, while others seem to stay the same or even get worse? Why can we stream movies and video chat with people across the world, but still have to wait for hours at the doctor's office or pay a fortune for college tuition? The answer is optimization, or the process of finding the best way to do something given some kind of limitation or constraint.

We often think of optimization as something that engineers and scientists do, but in reality, we all do it every day. We optimize our time, money, energy, and attention to achieve our goals and solve our problems. We look for shortcuts, hacks, and tips to make things easier, faster, and cheaper. We try to avoid waste, inefficiency, and frustration. We seek to maximize our value, satisfaction, and happiness.

But optimization is not a one-time thing. It is a continuous and dynamic process that responds to changing conditions and opportunities. Complex systems, like the ones we live in and interact with, always have something that is the next bottleneck or scale constraint. A bottleneck is a point or factor that limits the performance or capacity of a system. A scale constraint is a condition that makes it hard or impossible to increase the size or scope of a system. For example, in education, the bottleneck is teachers. There are only so many teachers available, and they can only teach so many students at a time. In medicine, the bottleneck is practitioners. There are only so many doctors, nurses, and therapists available, and they can only treat so many patients at a time.

The history of the tech industry is the history of disruption of these bottlenecks periodically. Disruption is when a new technology, product, or service breaks or bypasses a bottleneck or scale constraint, and creates a new way of doing things that is faster, cheaper, and better than the old way. For example, the emergence of the internet disrupted the bottleneck of distance. Before the internet, distance was a major constraint for communication, information, and commerce. It was slow, expensive, and unreliable to send messages, access data, or buy and sell goods and services across long distances. The internet removed or reduced this constraint, and enabled new business ideas and tools, like email, social media, e-commerce, and mobile.

How can we look for and take advantage of moments when a bottleneck is disrupted or otherwise changed? One way is to ask ourselves: what is the next bottleneck or scale constraint in our system? What is the thing that is holding us back or limiting our potential? What is the thing that is causing us the most pain or frustration? What is the thing that we wish we could do more, better, or faster, but we can't because of some limitation or obstacle? Then, we can look for new technologies, products, or services that can help us overcome or bypass that bottleneck or scale constraint. We can also look for new markets, customers, or users that can benefit from our solution or offer. We can also look for new ways to combine, integrate, or leverage existing technologies, products, or services to create new value or efficiency.

As engineers and entrepreneurs, we should look for those scale bottlenecks and be sensitive to new tech that changes them. We should be curious, creative, and adaptive. We should be willing to experiment, learn, and iterate. We should be ready to embrace change, challenge, and opportunity. We should be optimistic, ambitious, and visionary. We should be optimizers, disruptors, and innovators.