OUTSIDE VESUVIUS, AWAITING THE ERUPTION
People living in seismically active places often talk about waiting on “the big one.” Maybe uncoincidentally—many major tech hubs exist in the Pacific Ring of Fire (e.g., San Francisco, Seattle, Tokyo)—the technology community is often consumed with the anticipatory dread of seismic shifts in their industry. The singularity, quantum supremacy, and the P(doom) of AGI are all areas where dread has been wrought. And while there are different perspectives on why or how the next “big one” might be coming, many futurists are predicting an imminent eruption of innovation.

Some point to the investments in innovation that major companies have made over the past five years, where significant efforts were focused on infrastructure and capability expansion as opposed to consumer-facing products and services.

Alternatively, economist Carlota Perez points to a slightly longer time horizon, happening in staged surges. She sees the wave of technological advancements that have happened since the Dot Com Bubble as a building up of capabilities that have yet to be deployed in ways that achieve their full potential. Like magma building up heat and pressure against the crust of the Earth until it breaks, Perez sees the past 20+ years as a wave of new capabilities, waiting to erupt into the next major technological revolution.

R/K SELECTION THEORY
In population ecology, a branch of biology, there is a concept called r/K Selection Theory. It suggests that there are two strategies for investing in your offspring, and it’s an apt metaphor for thinking about ways companies can invest in and develop new innovations. The TL;DR:

When resources are plentiful and there is little food competition, the r-type strategy pervades; when food is scarce or resources are limited, the K-type strategy pervades. r-type animals have large litters with short gestation times, young reach physical maturity quickly, they invest little in offspring, and have shorter lifespans—examples include rodents like mice and rats. By contrast, K-type animals have smaller litters, longer gestation periods, young reach physical maturity much more slowly, and as a result parents are required to invest much more in their offspring—humans, elephants, and whales are a few good examples.

R-TYPE STRATEGY IS A SPRINT
The ZIRP era was one dominated by the r-type strategy. Innovation became a rush to flood the market, with some companies literally applying the Gingerbread Man Strategy—you put out as many innovations as possible with the hope that competition can’t catch you. Run, run, as fast as you can, you can’t catch me, I'm the gingerbread man. Unsurprisingly if you extend the other components of the r-type strategy, this was also how a huge number of those investments died. The site Killed By Google has 293 products and services, with the majority from ZIRP (2008-2022), that were deprecated. This litany of killed innovations isn’t unique to Google; there just happens to be a convenient website dedicated to their dead. Instead, it’s indicative of the ways many companies operated in ZIRP.

It should also then be unsurprising that ZIRP and the incumbent dominance of r-type strategies weren’t necessarily creating massively disruptive products. Free money and an orientation towards speed to market meant that new products were largely deploying the previous wave of innovations in novel ways. Essentially, companies were financializing previous technological leaps. TikTok’s rise wasn’t based on massive changes in their foundational technologies—mobile video already existed, social media was already well-established, influencers prevaded. Instead, it was an incremental evolution to the recommendation algorithm, deploying a breaking news approach instead of a social graph one. Similarly, Uber didn’t invent GPS, the mobile web, or e-commerce—it simply brought those technologies together around ride hailing. The list goes on: Airbnb, Spotify, Netflix, etc. etc. etc.

None of this is intended to diminish what any of these companies have been able to accomplish. Much of it is quite incredible, and some of it has improved peoples’ lives for the better. But what changes when the free money dries up?

THE TORTOISE IS RUNNING TO THE BANK
Over the past decade, K-type investments haven’t been cash cows, they’ve been “coming soon” or “operating in stealth mode.” Things like driverless cars, AI, quantum computing, and many more fit into this category. One could argue that OpenAI and Google’s Deepmind are demonstrations of K-type investments—not to mention much of what Alphabet does outside of Google. While OpenAI was formed in 2015, ChatGPT didn’t launch until the very end of 2022.

Similarly, Meta’s pivot to the Metaverse is both a massive financial investment and a commitment to an idea that has yet to be fully realized. However, Meta believes in it so deeply, they’ve even changed the name of the company. More recently, Apple’s launch of the Vision Pro, and the alleged 5,000+ patents associated with its development, represents an orientation toward creating the next disruption (K-type strategy).

And how many videos have you seen over the past decade of people kicking those Boston Dynamics “dogs”? While very few of us have interacted with robots in our daily lives, Boston Dynamics is taking a K-type approach to developing their robotics solutions, and is now valued at over $1B.

There is SpaceX and Blue Origin in space exploration. ITER in nuclear fusion. bluebird bio or Novo Nordisk in healthcare.

The question isn’t whether there is opportunity out in the marketplace—simply put, there is abundant opportunity. The question in the near term will be: Which companies will recognize the opportunity of this new environment and adapt to meet the moment?

The picture painted is one of a child in a room full of toys telling you they’re bored; though, Clayton Christensen’s Innovator's Dilemma might be more apt. Companies afraid or unable to shift towards more K-type strategies in our current moment will be turned into gingerbread people at best, or fully supplanted at worst.

BECOME THE TORTOISE
There is so much more I could write in this already (overly?) long essay. Suffice it to say the money hose has run dry. However, constraints breed creativity, or so we’re told.

What I hope people take away from this piece is that we’re sitting in incredibly fertile ground to leverage that creativity.

What’s more, as Perez highlights, the period before a golden age is marked by inequality and unevenly distributed access. A new age is an opportunity to build a better system, and to solve ills that exist in our current system. So while we can discuss opportunity, there is also responsibility to do it right.

There will always be r-type and K-type strategists in any given time, industry, or ecosystem. But like the explosion of mammalian diversity in the wake of the great asteroid 66 million years ago, we’re in a moment where K-strategists will emerge winners.

If the theory holds, we’re about to enter one of those moments people speak about in golden age terms. A moment where there is an opportunity to architect the future. Embrace your inner tortoise. Or whale. Or human. Or elephant.

Think slow. Act fast.

BEFORE YOU GO...
Have you checked out A Deck of Science and Whimsy? Consider it a tool for this “golden age” we’re entering: 43 cards outlining emerging technologies across six categories (Power, Compute, Interact, Make, Move, and Optimize). Feeling overwhelmed in the face of this tech “eruption”? Facing an internal innovation challenge? Take a card—it just may help you get started.

You can find the full deck in Figma, but reach out if you'd like a physical copy. We have a few to spare.