Guessing is not a strategy: How to build decision velocity with AI and real-time data
June 10, 2026 | Live Webinar
Getting Wired (Part 1)
Bob Weinstein is a journalist who covers technology, project management, the workplace and career development.
Technology has advanced far faster than many futurists anticipated. Forty years ago, inventors and technologists considered something called the “gestation period” when designing and developing electronics and technology products. It was bottom-line thinking, because it gave them a very rough idea how long it would take and how much money would be needed to turn out a successful product.
Today, gestation period is hardly ever used. In fact, it’s doubtful many IT decision-makers even know that the medical term describing the period in which an embryo develops was applied to the invention process--design and development to consumer acceptance.
What better example of the technological gestation process than the evolution of television, which can be traced to 1906, the year Lee de Forest invented the Audion vacuum tube which amplified signals and led to the development of the cathode ray tube, and the first working mechanical TV system. But it wasn’t until 1939 that RCA conducted experimental broadcasts from the EmpireStateBuilding, and 1946 when Peter Goldmark at CBS demonstrated his color television system to the FCC that the TV industry seriously got underway.
Gestation period thinking has been replaced by “lifecycle” thinking, which has ascended to a critical consideration in assessing technology’s short- and long-term value, according to David Smith, vice …
Please log in or sign up below to read the rest of the article.
ADVERTISEMENTS
|
"Most people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so." - Bertrand Russell |