Predicting the future is hard!

“We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next ten. Don't let yourself be lulled into inaction.”

The work that lead to the development of Lithium-Ion battery technology began in the 1970s with Whittingham’s work, which was subsequently developed by Goodenough and Yoshino. The first commercial Li-Ion battery was developed by Sony in 1991, with Li-Ion replacing NiCad technology in the mid- to late-1990s and today it’s likely that the majority of people reading about the award of the prize saw it on a Li-Ion powered mobile device. As Gates predicted, there was no overnight revolution, but rather the impact of the technology took decades.

What’s going to be the impact of the technology being introduced today? It’s
common to hear how adoption of new technology is accelerating and assume that this means the time from development to adoption will increase. The truth is more likely that ten years or so is still a reasonable timeframe.

DPA’s home page highlights some new technologies: artificial retinas, an autonomous air taxi and fly-like robots designed by AI. All these technologies have taken, or will take, a long time to move from concept to adoption.

The article about artificial retinas starts by pointing out that this research has already been underway for more than a decade and concludes that we are still some way away from being able to deploy the technology. Fly-like robots are still a long way away and Vertical Aerospace is building on the quadcoptor, a technology that will celebrate its
centenary next year, and the company has yet to build a product that can carry people.

So maybe Bill Gates was wrong: perhaps 10 years is just too short a timeframe, and that major change takes decades, but what does this mean to all of us working in the technology industry?

I think engineers understand the need for continual incremental progress: it was explained to me during my electronics degree that all an engineer should do is the equivalent of adding a piece to a jigsaw puzzle: most engineering innovations are based predominantly on others’ work with the contribution of the designer being a new way to combine components or a variation on existing designs that creates something better than previous systems.

Marketers haven’t quite understood that transformation change is a series of
compounding incremental improvements. Product managers are probably the least realistic; having spent months or years working on the development of a new product, they can overestimate its impact. At one company I worked at, the marketing team were so frustrated with every product being ranked as an “A” on a scale of A to C that they change the ratings product managers gave to new products in the press release brief to “change the world”, “transform the company” or “revolutionise my department”.

Unfortunately, this is why we end up with the over-hyped descriptions of new products. My friends who still work in engineering tell me that hyperbole is a real turn-off when reading about new products. Despite this, we still see many products that are the first of their kind and that will
disrupt one industry or another. While some companies can describe the benefits of their new products clearly and dispassionately, there are still companies that prefer hype to clarity. Ultimately, I suspect clarity, however, is much more effective.

I think the long journey technology takes from concept to adoption is best summed up by Nobel laurate, John Goodenough. As an inventor who has lived long enough to see his innovation have its full impact on the word, he was able to say, “Live to 97 (years old) and you can do anything.” That sounds like a great philosophy for life to me!

Mike Maynard is the Managing Director of Napier, a B2B PR and Marketing agency, who still misses his early career as an electronics engineer. He loves talking with engineers and tech marketers, so connect with him on LinkedIn, or give him a call.