Voices
standard, many of our most recent
innovations are incremental, not
revolutionary.
Consider the automobile, that
archetypal innovation of a few generations ago. If all motor vehicles
vanish tomorrow, the result would
be catastrophic. If all phones (land
lines and mobiles) suddenly stop
working—the result would be disastrous for communication.
Now, let’s imagine that all social
media disappears. Would the economy collapse? I don’t think so. Or,
if every online store in America
closed, would it be catastrophic?
Probably not.
Leaving aside these anecdotal
examples, it’s noteworthy that
there isn’t an obvious economic
growth spike resulting from the
Internet era.
The San Francisco based venture
capital firm Founders Fund believes
that many recent innovations have
been incremental, and not revolutionary. It attributes this incrementality to the VC community’s failure
to support revolutionary technology companies. Critical as this view
may be, it implies that incrementalism is a reversible choice. Founders
Fund itself is dedicated to investing
in revolutionary technologies.
My hypothesis, however, is that
STEVEN
STRAUSS
HUFFINGTON
08.26.12
we’re at the start of a new megatrend of diminishing marginal innovation. The low-hanging fruits
of revolutionary technologies have
already been picked. Consequently, we’ll need increasing effort to
achieve changes that are only incremental and at most,
transform a sector. If
this megatrend is real,
Now,
consider these potenlet’s imagine
tial consequences:
that all
First, for many
social media
entrepreneurs, indisappears.
crementalism will be
Would the
their defining strategy.
economy
Stretching to develop
collapse?”
revolutionary products will be a losing
proposition. Incrementalism isn’t
unprofitable. LinkedIn, for example,
hasn’t revolutionized society, but
has been very lucrative.
Second, diminishing marginal
innovation applies at the economy
level, not the sector level. We don’t
have flying cars as routine transport, and it’s difficult to see this
occurring. On the other hand, DNA
technology is still in its infancy, and
might have “running room.” We will
continue to see sectors transformed
(e.g., conventional retailing impacted by online retailing). But innovations in the remaining high growth