When trying to identify new technologies that promise to transform the marketplace, market researchers survey the managers of those companies that are developing new technologies. Such managers have an enormous stake in succeeding
they invariably overstate the potential of their new technologies. Surprisingly, however, market researchers typically do not survey a new technology' s potential buyers, even though it is the buyers-not the producers-who will ultimately determine a technology' s commercial success.
The potential buyers for not-yet-available technologies can seldom be reliably identified.