Paul Saffo

Director and Roy Armana Fellow at the Institute for the Future

Paul’s talk centered around the S-Curve, which describes how a company’s progression towards success is not uniform but accelerates rather dramatically once it reaches a certain critical point (for the lucky ones, that is).

His first point was that many people underestimate the initial horizontal section, which is often closer to 20 years than the 20 weeks that may be wished for by the aspiring entrepreneur.

Next he talked about a number of technologies that saw a very quick rise, but then an equally quick fall – from hula-hoops to tulips in the 1600s. The lesson to be learnt here is to always keep in mind what happens when your product catches on, or else you might end up being yet another fad.

Finally, he pointed out that there is also a negative side to infectious action, when things spread without us being able to stop them. He mentioned that a lot of companies spend time establishing a standard, but this can be dangerous if the standard ends up being a bad one. Another example was the unstoppable spread of UFO conspiracy theories, spurred by an overly clever air-force report intended to cover-up for air-balloon experiments… in Roswell, New Mexico!

Favorite quote:

Never mistake a clear view for a short distance.