Innovation and the future

Predicting the future of
innovation is difficult.
The following slides will
illustrate this…

”Everything that can be invented
already has been”
// Charles H Duell, head
of U.S.Patent Office, 1899

”The development has been so remarkable
that we do not expect any
further improvements in the future.”
// German car manufacturer, 1914

”The telephone is an amazing
innovation, but who will ever
use it?”
// Rutherford B Hayes,
American president 1875

”This ’telephone’ has too many
shortcomings to be seriously
considered as a means of
communications. The device is
inherently of no value to us.”
//Western Union, 1876

“In the early 1980s AT&T asked McKinsey to
estimate how many cellular phones would
be in use in the world at the turn of the
century. The consultancy … concluded
that the total market would be about
900,000. At the time this persuaded AT&T
to pull out of the market.”
— The Economist, 1999

”There is a world market for
about five computers”
// Tomas Watson, founder and
chairman of IBM, 1943

”It was gigantic and did not look like a
camera”
// Comment on Hasselblad’s first digital
camera prototype developed in 1996

All those people who’ve said that we’ve
reached the end of development have
one thing in common…

…They have all been wrong.
The optimist has been right.

Christian Sandström
www.christiansandstrom.org

Image attributions
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