The Long Nose of Innovation

Bill Buxton’s Long Nose of Innovation model suggests that for any “wow” moment of new technology—using the mouse on a personal computer, touchscreens, haptics or self-driving cars—there has typically been a long period of low-amplitude invention, refinement and augmentation, often for 20 years or more. Technologies such as the computer mouse need polishing, adjustment, optimization and often the development of an entire ecosystem to hit the big time.

The Long Nose of Innovation helps us understand the process and impact of innovation.

One intriguing consequence of the theory is that the technologies that will have a substantial impact in the coming five years are likely 15 years old already.

The next time you’re wowed by technology, consider the decades of small incremental improvements that have been made before it reached you.

Bill Buxton shares an article he wrote in BusinessWeek about the Long Nose of Innovation on his website (pdf). The theory is a near mirror image of Chris Anderson’s theory of The Long Tail, where sales of a small number of a very large selection, particularly in the digital realm with minimal storage costs, can turn the “top hits” and “blockbuster” models of business on its head. More about the long tail in Chris Anderson’s The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More (Hyperion, 2006).

This sketch, lovingly polished from the original, features in my book Big Ideas Little Pictures