I was recently trying to explain to my 13-year old nieces what it was like to watch television when I was their age — and younger.
They couldn’t seem to wrap their heads around the idea that if you wanted to watch a show, you had to be in front of the television at the time of the show, or set a VCR to record it.
That’s dumb, one said.
Why couldn’t they just have streaming? asked the other.
The concepts of dial-up modems, bandwidth that could hardly support plain text, and spotty cell phone service were beyond their grasp. Going to a store to pick out a movie to rent is a relic from a time they never experienced. Doing research in a library? Ancient.
All they know is a fully-connected world, where cell service is so good in most places that you can stream content on your phone even without wifi, where almost anything you would want to watch or listen to is available somewhere online.
Having been born into this world, they take for granted the conveniences that I couldn’t even imagine as possibilities when I was their age.
Every generation has some version of this.
On one side of a change, it can be hard to even imagine the possibility of it. For people born into a world where that previously-unimagined possibility is a reality, it’s hard to imagine why it didn’t exist earlier.
One of the insights that comes from living through the transition is that we can see how the process unfolds, and how long transformation really takes.
Resistance to Innovation
In 2002, as a third year associate in a big law firm, I worked on issues related to Movielink, a video-on-demand service that was a collaboration among many of the major studios.
Movielink was a pioneer of the streaming era: it was the first company in the world to offer legally downloadable movies from the major movie studios.
It was also ahead of its time. It was only available through Windows-based computers and some set-top boxes, and the technology infrastructure wasn’t yet robust enough to support the streaming movies.
The Movielink website shut down in 2008. (Fun fact: Blockbuster bought the company in 2007; their failure to capitalize on it is an entirely different story).
A few years later, another law firm recruited me for a role they envisioned of handling content licensing for streaming platforms.
When I tried to explain to people what I would be doing, most people didn’t get it. Although the idea of digital music files had been gaining traction, we were still not streaming music. It was hard for people to wrap their heads around the idea of streaming video content.
Even the concept of this provoked resistance:
Why would someone want to stream a movie in their home if they could watch it in a movie theater?
If you met someone today who told you they negotiated content licenses for streaming platforms, you would likely understand what that means. And it’s hard to imagine anyone questioning the value of that service today.
The Pace of Change
We often think of innovation as an instant result: something wasn’t there, then you have an idea, and you create a new thing.
It may work like that sometimes, with smaller things. It doesn’t take 50 years — or even 25 years — to develop a new organizing hack for your closet.
But the innovations that change industries or cultures take much longer. The process of bringing a vision into the mainstream unfolds at an incrementally slow pace that feels almost imperceptible as you live through it. It’s only with the benefit of time and perspective that we can see the transformation.
The Dynamics of Innovation
Innovation on these fronts isn’t only about developing the technology; it’s equally about getting people on board with the change.
Expanding bandwidth and movie options wasn’t enough for streaming video to hit the mainstream; people had to buy into the experience of watching movies this way.
The image of the innovator as someone with vision and courage to lead is only half the story.
Innovators must also have the patience, persistence, and perseverance to stay the course through a long process of incremental progress.
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