The future is with us, its just not evenly distributed
Over the holidays I read Steven Poole's Rethink alongside Michael Lewis' classic The New New Thing. Both books called to me from the bookstore since as many of you know I am an advocate of recycling old ideas in new contexts. I call this activity "Reinvention Capitalism".
What Steven articulates beautifully is the situations when Rethinking/Recycling works best. In a nutshell these are:
- an old idea whose time has finally come often due to better technology enabling it (like battery powered cars), the lack of an enlightenment (atomic theory or heliocentrism) or commercial attitudes/regulations changing (like e-cigarettes)
- an old idea repurposed for new application (the basis for the success of Viagra, Ritalin, Play Doh, Post It Notes, Insurance telematics and even Henry Ford's production line)
- an old idea whose fundamental insights read well into brand new problems that modern technology fails to master (like the use of leeches and maggots in modern medicine or cavalry in mountain warfare)
Steven's ideas resonated with me, since I have often found that the lateral application of older or non-industry thinking freshens up strategy formulation allowing approaches to surface that would otherwise never be developed. But he also made an important counter point - and that is that there are some genuinely new ideas that were never thought of before. That is to say he does not subscribe to the wisdom of the ancients.
Good examples are the discovery of Gravity or formulation of General Relativity. In the former context he explains Newtons famous (mis) quote about "standing on the shoulders of giants' as a combination of false modesty and a cultural need to nod to the ancients.
The book meanders into some pretty off piste discussions later on regarding eugenics and recreational drugs for example, but the main point that sticks with you is that which gives many inventors night sweats. If you have a great idea, someone, somewhere probably had it before you.
If you were in the technology world that person was probably Jim Clark.
Michael Lewis' book chronicles the epic tale of the phenomenon that brought the world NetScape (starting the Tech boom), Silicon Graphics (inventing special effects), MyCFO (disrupting the accounting profession) and Healtheon (disrupting the bureaucracy of healthcare).
Jim Clark is the ultimate reinvention capitalist and when not bulldozing his way to becoming a multi-billionaire basically rewrote the rules of venture capital as a sideline. But despite his success (and a series of hilarious vignettes on the worlds first computer controlled circumnavigating boat) Jim hit many of the speed bumps common to Rethink.
Silicon Graphics ultimately went bankrupt (although its patent and technology portfolio remains valuable today), NetScape was acquired by AOL, MyCFO was just too early and was absorbed by Harris Bank and Healtheon merged with WebMD as its business model struggled in the face of implacable resistance from Microsoft's competing product. You could hardly call Jim Clark a failure, but his brilliance failed to build anything as substantial as Apple, Microsoft or Facebook.
Ironically many of Jim Clarks ideas and technologies are more relevant now then when he created them. The disruption of both the accounting and healthcare bureaucracy that he envisaged twenty years ago is now mainstream thinking and well underway. VR/AR technologies could not have happened without Silicon Graphics and NetScape inspired a generation of developers to build the virtual world.
The leading edge of technology evolution in Silicon Valley has taken a while to disseminate globally but the speed of adoption is increasing and narrowing the gaps between conception, adoption and recycling.
Another way of looking at this is provided by Science Fiction writer William Gibson, whose idiosyncratic take on the gap between invention, adoption and reinvention gets to to the essence of the Reinvention Capital arbitrage.
"The future is already here - its just not evenly distributed"
For those who bridge the gap between the future and the present, there is a great deal of money to be made.
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8yTruly innovative inventions are often way ahead of their economic moment and the 20 year patent term just isn't long enough in many instances to see a return. Modern pharmaceutical development barely fits this business model, which is a problem for us all.
Making the intangible tangible! - IPM Consultant and Patent Attorney -Tangible IP
8yI like this article Chris. Massively resonates with my way of thinking. One things for sure. Judging by the number of patent applications that lack novelty there is a mountain of Reinvention going on! I have one word to throw into the mix. Timing. In the early days of the internet I saw many "ideas before their time" sparked in the minds of really smart and brave individuals by exposure to the totally new ecosystem called the Internet. Were these failures? All those that came later and succeeded "stood on the shoulders of the brave". I'm a great believer in Reinvention and an important variant. “Reinvention synergy”. When ideas “old and old” or “old and new” collide. I had a serendipity event today that is now happily sitting with an excited client. So little time and so much Reinvention opportunity!