It has taken me longer than I would have liked to realize that “the future can take a long time”. This graph is taken from Ben Evan’s 2023 presentation on tech trends.
Sergey Nazarov, the co-founder of Chainlink Labs, recently said something that rhymes with this on the ChainLink God podcast.
Because technology, culture, and our imaginations of what these magical tools can do move at lightning speeds we sometimes need to take a step back and realize that there is a serious gap between what we know this development can do long term and what it actually can/does today.
I am not sure there is a single answer on why this happens but I assume it’s partly because the R&D of the technology/platform is not complete when the first teams/users get their hands on it, the craft takes longer to hone than expected, and of course, consumer behavior shifts are notoriously difficult to induce.
This leads me to: ‘the myth of the first mover advantage’. If you have a large CAPEX business then yes, you better get to market first. However, in technology, first movers usually don’t win the market for the coming decade. Think about Facebook vs. Myspace, Apple vs. Blackberry, and even Chrome vs. Netscape…
Lastly, I will leave you with what Bill Gates famously said:
Most people overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in ten years.
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Jason James
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