Dr. Neil's Notes
Software > Development > Being Early
How to Spot a Technology That Will Actually Stick
Introduction
Not every early technology becomes the future. The history of technology is full of ideas that arrived, attracted enthusiasts, and then quietly disappeared. Being early is only useful if the thing you are early to eventually arrives. The ability to distinguish between novelty and inevitability is one of the most valuable skills in technology, and one of the hardest to develop.
After decades of being early to some things that arrived, and some that did not, a few patterns have emerged that seem to separate the technologies worth investing in from the ones that are not.
Look for Converging Forces
The technologies that eventually matter rarely succeed on the strength of a single innovation. They succeed when multiple independent forces converge to make them both possible and necessary at the same moment.
The smartphone was the convergence of mobile networks becoming fast enough, hardware becoming small and powerful enough, and a generation of people already accustomed to the internet wanting to take it with them. No single one of those developments was sufficient on its own. Together, they made the smartphone not just possible but inevitable.
When you can identify multiple independent trends pointing in the same direction, and those trends are on different timescales with different drivers, that convergence is a signal worth paying attention to.
Watch for Behaviour Change, Not Just Technical Progress
A technology that requires significant behaviour change from a large number of people faces a much harder path than one that reduces friction in something people already want to do.
Online retail succeeded not because it required people to do something entirely new, but because it made something they already did, buying things, easier in specific circumstances. The behaviour change was real but gradual, and it was in the direction of less effort, not more.
Contrast this with technologies that ask people to adopt an entirely new habit, learn a new vocabulary, or abandon deeply ingrained patterns. These face longer and more uncertain adoption curves, regardless of the technical merit of the underlying idea.
The question worth asking of any early technology is: what existing behaviour does this align with, and how much does it ask people to change?
Consider the Infrastructure Dependencies
Every technology sits on top of infrastructure it did not build. The smartphone needed mobile networks. Online retail needed payment systems and logistics. Intelligent agents needed compute, data, and a user base already comfortable with software mediating their decisions.
When the underlying infrastructure is not yet in place, even the best idea will struggle. When the infrastructure is arriving or recently arrived, that is often the signal that the timing is right.
Looking at what infrastructure a technology requires, and honestly assessing how far along that infrastructure is, is a more reliable guide to timing than almost anything else.
The Honest Test
The most reliable test, though not the easiest one, is to ask: if this technology works exactly as promised, does it solve a problem that a significant number of people have right now?
Not a problem they might have in some imagined future. Not a problem they would have if they changed their habits significantly. A problem they have today, that they would recognise immediately as a problem if you described it back to them.
Technologies that pass this test tend to find their users. Technologies that require users to first understand why they have a problem, and then understand why this technology solves it, face a longer and harder journey.
The best early bets combine genuine usefulness with good timing on the infrastructure. Finding both in the same place, at the same time, is rare. When you do find it, it is worth paying attention.
Part of the Being Early series.