When ski helmets first appeared, nobody wore one. If you saw someone wearing a helmet, you might think they had a cracked skull. A few famous people broke their skulls on trees. Now nearly everybody wears a helmet. If you see someone without one, you might think they need to have their head examined.
The adoption of new ideas always follows this curve.
The Pattern
Initially, nobody does it. Then a few early adopters appear. Adoption accelerates. Late adopters follow. Eventually, the old way disappears — or reaches a tenuous balance.
We see it everywhere:
- Landlines to cell phones. No one has landlines anymore.
- Early humans to Homo Sapiens. There are no more Neanderthals.
- Housing, running water, electricity, the Internet. There was a time before everything in our lives. Something appears and changes everything.
Status quo is an illusion. Everything changes.
A Tenuous Balance of Cultural Market Share
The same curve applies to ideas, religions, and ways of seeing the world. Before Jesus, no Christianity. Before Mohammad, no Islam. These systems spread according to the same function — early and late adopters.
But religions never reach 100% of the population. They reach a tenuous balance of cultural market share.
Applied to Business
Small businesses adopt better financial tools the same way. For most of the last 500 years, the three traditional statements were the only map. Now there’s a better one. There are early adopters, and there will be late adopters.
See the poems Not-a-Bible and That Click.
From Zen and the Art of [nothing] by John Zdanowski & Jeff Abrams, Chapters 9–10.