Hollis,

You and I are kindred spirits on this issue as you know. When I started my first company back in 1998 called P-Wave Inc. I had a grand vision that the Internet and Television would intersect and that this was the great "new frontier" that I would be helping to lead and introduce all the world to the potential for doing online events and training and sharing of information that would transform society.

Unfortunately the codecs and bandwidth available on the Internet at the time (remember 56K modems?) only supported a postage stamp sized video with pixelated quality.  Most people could not envision this intersection of devises happening. As a result I had to scale back my vision or adapt to survive

As the years went by and my vision and business morphed to fit the environment and needs of customers, I was still always trying to introduce something innovative and new that had the potential to change the world for the better. Creating something that is innovative and seeing early adopters try it and experience positive results is very gratifying. But it is hard work and fraught with risk for all the reasons you state above and requires a combination of persistence, good timing and some luck.  Unfortunately I have yet to feel the satisfaction of "Crossing the Chasm" to that stage where the majority of people wanted the innovation. To me that feels kind of like the Holy Grail and is something I would like to experience in my lifetime. It may be a serial behavior as my history shows and the latest offering with the Labcore software shows. Must be in our blood as I know you have a similar history.

I look at my own behaviors in terms of adopting change and innovation and I consider myself someone who is fairly quick to try something new but like you I do not have the time to fish around for the next big thing because I am just trying to swim and push my own thing forward. But it only take a recommendation from someone who has tried something and liked it that will get me to take the bait and try a new product.  It would be interesting to see a psychological profile of early adopters and innovators to see if they are the same or different in their makeup.