On 4/24/2021 9:49 PM, Jeff Liebermann wrote:
On Sat, 24 Apr 2021 15:31:05 -0400, Frank Krygowski
wrote:

On 4/24/2021 2:25 PM, Jeff Liebermann wrote:

The bicycling industry is far from immune to chronic overdoses of
creativity. We have "concept designs" which are futuristic bicycles
that are often barely rideable, difficult to manufacture, impossible
to ship, and usually end up costing too much. Never mind
repairability as they typically are not ridden long enough to need...

So, why bother with concept bicycles? While none of the concept
designs are ready to sell and ride, they all have ideas that can be
borrowed and grafted onto mainstream bicycles. New ideas also need to
be tested.

I suspect people bother with "bold, innovative concept" bicycles because
they just got out of some Industrial Design degree program and want to
show they can think "out of the box" better than the next guy with an
Industrial Design degree. I doubt more than 1% of those designs or their
features are ever seriously considered for production.

It's probably much less than 1%. It's like email spam. The rate of
successful sales is probably 1 in 100,000 spam messages. But, when
the cost of sending 100,000 spam messages is nearly zero, that one
sale makes the effort worthwhile. Over the years, I've learned that
innovation comes in two flavors. One is intentional innovation, also
known as development. One starts with a problem and a collection of
known limitations. One then pounds on the problems with all the tools
available to engineers, in a manner similar to from existing designs,
and eventually produce a tiny incremental product improvement. The
other flavor comes from out of self field, doesn't solve any known
problems and creates a new market. Often, the first attempt is a
hopeless disaster, obviously incapable of doing anything useful, and
denounced by all the experts as impractical, useless, unsellable, etc.
However, if the those in charge of funding can recognize the promise
and are willing to gamble that the experts are wrong, then the idea
will eventually be developed, tested, certified safe, and sold to the
public.

Hint: If all the experts say something won't work, won't sell or
won't be worth the time and money, take another look. That's usually
an indication of a good idea:
http://www.learnbydestroying.com/jeffl/crud/Premature-Judgement.txt

I like the fact that nuclear fusion is (what was it?) 15 years away. And
has been forever.


--
- Frank Krygowski