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Spotting Technology Breakthroughs

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How to Spot the Next Technology Breakthrough
Andrew Shipilov, INSEAD & Francesco Burelli , Arkwright Consulting AG    12 Mar 2024
 
My Summary, Highlights and Annotations

In the summer of 2022, few people knew what Generative AI (GenAI) meant. Yet the launch of ChatGPT in November made everyone aware of this technology’s immense opportunities. Between the summer and fall of 2022, Gen AI passed an inflection point. High uncertainty about its performance gave way to increased confidence that the technology would affect businesses in a significant way.

From Uncertainty to Inflection Point to Confidence & Maturity
 
The evolution of new technologies follows an S-curve.
In the beginning, there is a long incubation period during which technological development and use are confined to basic science. This period is characterized by high uncertainty about the technology’s performance and there is virtually no confidence in the emergence of concrete business use cases. 
 
Eventually, there is an inflection point beyond which the performance and use cases of new technologies increase exponentially. At that time, uncertainty about their performance decreases rapidly while the confidence in their applications increases.  Inflection points occur where old models and methods threaten to stifle innovation, change and growth, and require that new ways of working must be adopted.

Three simultaneous factors are required to reach the inflection point:

• Public attention: The public must be aware of the technology and what it can do. 
• Investment: Funds must be spent on boosting the technology’s performance.
• Complements: These comprise products or services that combine with the technology to make it more valuable and augment its performance. That is, there is a necessity, a mandate, to build a broad content ecosystem around the new technology.

System dynamics theory teaches that in complex systems, individual elements may mutually reinforce each other via feedback loops. In the case of technological transition, more attention may lead to more investment. More investment may then lead to even more attention, which will also make people look for new complements. These feedback loops can then push the technology forward, beyond the inflection point.