We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run.
Roy Amara1
Today more than ever it is hard to make predictions, and yet some things will most likely look obvious in hindsight. Let's focus on which ingredients raise the odds of seeing a future opportunity and starting to work on it early.
Knowledge
Enough knowledge of a domain is a fundamental part of it. The lucky case is running into subjects and topics that grab you, that you find interesting, so that you manage to get to the bottom of things. If possible, reach the edges and see where everyone gets stuck. But for some topics and subjects even basic knowledge lets you see opportunities before others do.
Paying attention
Wip
Working out where to look for signals
Wip
Having the right skills
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Footnotes
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Roy Amara (1925-2007), American engineer and researcher, for twenty years president of the Institute for the Future in Palo Alto, the futures-research institute that grew out of the RAND Corporation. The sentence is known as Amara's law. ↩