In my words: How New Cool Tools are built
In my words: How New Cool Tools are built
It seems to me that most technological progress results from our quest to build and use increasingly complex or useful tools. If you take humankind’s innate tool-making ability and amplify it over a few millennia of exponential growth, our tools evolve from rough-hewn arrowheads —> canned food —> refrigerators that analyze their contents and suggest Michelin-star recipes using only leftover condiments.
Technologic innovation is the same as innovation in the wood shop, kitchen, or any kind of maker space. Instead of different quilt patterns or recipes, technology innovators use code and hardware. Most of the innovation comes from arranging existing components in novel ways to create new “tools.” The new tools can then be used going forward.
I call this the New Cool Tool —> Now Normal cycle. I think it applies to innovation in all fields, and I think it generally goes like this:
We create a crude tool 🛠️ with the best knowledge and materials we have to meet our basic requirements at the time. We experience a brief pause of wonder and appreciation for this New Cool Tool.
We refine the tool’s initial design, creating variations of it to address specialized use cases.
We improve the efficiency of this tool’s manufacturing and distribution so the tool becomes widely available for a reasonable cost. The tool is now a Now Normal tool.
The Now Normal tool is ubiquitous, and the amount of effort that went into creating the tool is forgotten or mostly taken for granted.
The ease of obtaining and using a Now Normal tool enables a wide range of people to create a new generation of New Cool Tools to meet their specific needs. A small number of these are breakthroughs and will endure.
Go back to #1, repeat.
Tool pyramid: New Cool Tools stand on the shoulders of generations of Now Normal tools.
You know for certain that a tool is Now Normal when you see it consistently as a project requirement. Cloud hosting is a good example of this: It is ubiquitous, it is expected, it is mainstream. It also was barely a thing 20 years ago.
For every tool that travels the innovation spectrum from New Cool Tool —> Now Normal, many others are forgotten and end up cast into the Recycling Bin, where they linger until forgotten or wait to be retrieved for future use.
I have come to appreciate how similar the New Cool Tool —> Now Normal process is across disciplines. The most admirable innovators across disciplines seem to:
Use the tools (materials and processes) they are most familiar with, but in novel combinations to solve specific problems.
Be genuinely curious about their target problem, but flexible enough to shift focus if something promising catches their attention.
Move through the cycle of ideation, hypothesizing, prototyping, testing, and refining quickly.
Share their work for feedback, either publicly or from trusted peers.
What tools have you seen successfully cross the threshold from New Cool Tool —> Now Normal? What are some tools that didnt, but you hoped would have? I’d love to hear your thoughts and comments!