The 77% threshold | Seth’s Weblog
When the gasoline automotive was first launched, it couldn’t compete with horses. In spite of everything, we’d had hundreds of years to optimize our techniques round horseback, and this new know-how was nonetheless nascent. Roads have been uncommon, gasoline stations have been scarce and the automobiles themselves have been unreliable.
The identical factor occurred once more when electrical automobiles made a comeback 100 years later. At first, they’d restricted vary, restricted area, low acceleration and charging was a trouble.
When a brand new know-how arrives, it’s virtually at all times at a systemic drawback. If we wait till the brand new factor is healthier than the previous factor, we’re taking an enormous danger.
That’s as a result of we’ve got opponents who will spend the time to study the brand new tech, and extra importantly, construct techniques round it. They may acquire prospects you could have bother getting again. They’ve a head begin that may final a era.
Herbie Hancock began experimenting with digital devices a decade earlier than lots of his friends. That enabled him to create not one however two of essentially the most profitable jazz singles of all time.
If the native landscaping contractor sneers at electrical weed whackers and leaf blowers as a result of they’re not fairly as cost-effective within the quick run, they’ll most likely lose some prospects, and received’t develop what they should know when the know-how and techniques catch up. And the brand new techniques will catch up.
The identical goes for media firms which can be defending a mannequin of high-priced content material that’s ad-supported, refusing to think about that it may not final. How for much longer will Vogue matter?
When there’s an iterative cycle of latest know-how, the techniques can’t assist however enhance, and the tech is prone to as effectively.
When a brand new tech or system is 50% as efficient because the previous one, it’s our job to study it and perceive it.
And when it hits 77%, we ought to think about creating a brand new division, a brand new product line or a brand new strategy that adopts it.
By the point it catches up, we’re both a part of it or we’re too late.
