Demand comes after exposure, not before

When you refuse to engage with something because you don’t immediately see its usefulness, that prevents you from ever discovering its potential value. You have to take into account the principle of emergent utility.

Where the value is discovered after something is created, not before.

I understand that it’s hard to articulate a need for something you haven’t seen or used yet. But once it’s in front of you, your brain will begin to imagine applications that were not initially obvious. That’s emergent utility. Demand comes after exposure, not before.

Before the airplane existed, there was no clear, immediate or practical use case for that machine. But those two brothers invented it anyway because they had faith. The idea felt right. And they trusted its potential would get unlocked over time.

Here’s a fun fact.

Only months before their first flight, an award winning astronomer, mathematician and professor made the following observation about aviation.

The demonstration that no possible combination of known substances, known forms of machinery, and known forms of force, can be united in a practical machine by which men shall fly long distances through the air, seems to the writer as complete as it is possible for the demonstration of any physical fact to be.

But sure enough, those two bicycle mechanics managed to get a rickety contraption off the ground for the length of a good sneeze. And after the first successful flight, people began to imagine its applications for travel, warfare and commerce.

Eureka! One day we’ll be delivering mail through the air! Giant metal birds will begin carrying hundreds of people at once, all of whom will be eating small bags of peanuts. Who knows? Maybe the military will begin dropping explosives from above. Sure seems more cost effective than giving muskets to pigeons.

Lesson learned, sometimes you have to create first, and let the world catch up. There’s no guarantee the thing you make will be great.

But it won’t have the chance to take flight if you’re demanding certainty before you act.