GetFocus

People regularly ask me why, if we can see which technologies are going to win, I'm not on a yacht outside Monaco. We could, and we've shown that we can. Before COVID, Thijs and I were in talks with a large Dutch investment firm to invest part of their portfolio based on our insights. Then the markets crashed, the talks were over, and we realized that's not what motivates us anyway. In VC, a commonly heard phrase is "spray and pray". You invest in a bunch of things and hope the one that sticks pays for all the mistakes. In R&D you have that on steroids. People don't know where it's going, so they invest in everything and anything, it's all very expensive, and we can show that the vast majority of it makes no sense, and that meanwhile many opportunities get missed. So that's what Thijs and I went after instead. Still no yacht.

Gartner’s hype cycle tells you a technology is hyped. Which you already knew from the hype. What R&D teams need to know is whether it’s getting better, how fast, and against what. Thijs put the consultant problem well: hire one twice and you get two methods, two definitions of the technology, two data sets. And by the time the report lands, it’s already out of date. Experts stay essential. They just need the same measurement every time, running continuously, so they spend their time deciding instead of researching.

History is full of really popular, really stupid ideas. Most people in our industry will tell you that what's worth monitoring is trends. So they look at how many patents, how many papers, how much investment, what gets presented at conferences. Those are four different ways to measure the same thing: popularity. An industry consensus about where things are headed doesn't make it true. So we go one layer deeper and measure how quickly a technology is actually improving on performance and cost. That turns out to be measurable in patent citation data.

In 1998 white LED was getting 29% better per dollar a year. Fluorescent lamps: 13%. Filament bulbs: 10%. White LED has led at every reading since.

Which light would win homes, shops and offices? By 1998 the patent data already knew. Solvay, here is your lamp phosphor history, replayed.

1998: the signal. 2011: the US 60-watt prize goes to an LED bulb. 2014: Philips splits off lighting. What would 16 years' notice be worth?