(2022-11-29) Chin Technological Windows

Cedric Chin: Technological Windows. The concept of a ‘technological window’ is the central idea that has informed all of Apple founder Steve Jobs’s pursuits in consumer technology. Jobs articulated the concept in a 1992 talk at the Sloan school of business at MIT

enough technology — usually from fairly diverse places — comes together and makes something that’s a quantum leap forward possible

And it usually takes around — in my experience anyway — around five years to create a commercial product that takes advantage of that technical window opening up.

It takes around five years, or some number of years like that to realise that window opening, and then it seems to take another five years to really exploit it in the marketplace

Four years after Jobs gave this talk, Apple Computer acquired NeXT for its technology

You can get better at recognising when these technological windows are opening, by seeding experiments internally, or by hanging around places where new tech is developed

We’ll take a look at a number of concrete instantiations in the following cases.