Does it ever seem that we are imagination challenged, bound to imitate or follow a popular idea or approach, whether successful or not? (At this point, I could insert a quasi-obligatory reference to lemmings plunging into the sea. For the record, lemmings do not commit mass suicide; that is a persistent urban myth.)
Once an idea gains traction, it often seems everyone adopts a "me too" approach. There is, of course, intellectual safety in following a crowd. After all, if "everyone" is doing it, then ipso facto it must be a good idea. Alas, not necessarily. In Gartner hype cycle parlance, this mimicry can happen early, during the "peak of inflated expectations," or later, riding the "slope of enlightenment," if the idea survives the dreaded "trough of disillusionment."
My AI friends still talk ruefully about the long and difficult AI winter that followed early, unrealistic expectations (e.g., human language translation in the 1960s). Funding became scarce and the community shrank. Today, of course, we are basking in the AI spring, when many early hopes and predictions are being realized in dramatic fashion, powered by new machine learning ideas, large volumes of data, and powerful computing systems. Despite AI's enormous success, we have not yet realized the dream of strong AI, though I retain fond hopes. And yes, I am an optimist; I do not share the fears expressed by some about strong AI. However, I digress – back to viral memes.
Uber, the ride sharing service, has spawned seemingly endless variants, all described in pitch decks as Uber for X – a new instance of the sharing economy. As Wired noted last year, Uber for X has been the headline of more than 400 news articles. If you are thinking that the Uber for homework opportunity (there are several startups) might not be the next, well Uber, you are almost certainly right. There is, as former Federal Reserve chair, Alan Greenspan, called it, some irrational exuberance.
Following the success of AirBnB, a new category of startups, somewhat whimsically called MaaS (Mom as a Service), has exploded. (Let me just state right now, I apologize to moms everywhere. You were right; we should have cleaned up our rooms.) These MaaS companies provide services such as cooking, cleaning, laundry, and food; among the best-known food examples are Grubhub (prepared food delivery) and Blue Apron (cooking ingredients delivery). As one who is culinary-challenged, I hope this segment fares well.
Because humans are involved, this faddish behavior is largely domain invariant. As such, it extends to research and scholarship as well. In the best cases, a triggering discovery stimulates the cognizant research community to shift directions and build a rich and robust intellectual infrastructure around a novel idea. The discovery of the CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing technique is a wonderful example; research groups worldwide quickly pivoted to investigate the technique and its applications. In other cases, a technology crosses a threshold (e.g., price or performance) and that quantitative change enables qualitatively new approaches to old problems. Field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), long a niche technology, are now the subject of intense research as AI accelerators.
Whether in startups or research, advantage often accrues to first movers, those who pioneer a new idea and explore its applications. Doing so requires imagination – the ability to step out of the incremental, "me to" mindset and take transformative intellectual (and often financial) risks. That is not easy, both because creative thinking is challenging and because failure is often punished. Now there's an opportunity – IaaS (Imagination as a Service). Let me get to work on that research proposal and pitch deck.
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