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.
People who promote the virtues of a new technology typically fail to consider that the old technology that is currently in use continues to be improved, often substantially.