ArjunGaur @ArjunGaur: "When You Change the World..."

United Kingdom

When You Change the World and No One Notices 1. Flight Do you know what’s happening in the picture below? One of rather important events in human history. www.thoughtco.com/thmb/7BpRkNLjK1cUHcTXPMvT_wpQvQQ=/768x0/filters:no_upscale():max_bytes(150000):strip_icc()/Wrightflyer-56b007793df78cf772cb3292.jpg But here’s the most amazing part of the story - Hardly anyone paid attention at the time. Wilbur and Orville Wright conquered flight on 17 Dec 1903. Few inventions were as transformational over the next century. It took four days to travel from New York to Los Angeles in 1900, by train. By the 1930s it could be done in 17 hours, by air. By 1950, six hours. Unlike, say, mapping the genome, a lay person could instantly grasp the marvel of human flight. A guy sat in a box and turned into a bird. But days, months, even years after the Wright’s first flight, hardly anyone noticed. 2. Gap The Wrights’ story shows something more common than we realise - There’s often a big gap between changing the world and convincing people that you changed the world. Jeff Bezos once said - Invention requires a long-term willingness to be misunderstood. You do something that you genuinely believe in, that you have conviction about, but for a long period of time, well-meaning people may criticise that effort … if you really have conviction that they’re not right, you need to have that long-term willingness to be misunderstood. It’s a key part of invention. It’s such an important message. Things that are instantly adored are usually just slight variations over existing products. We love them because they’re familiar. The most innovative products – the ones that truly change the world – are almost never understood at first, even by really smart people. 3. History Repeats Itself It happened with the telephone. Alexander Graham Bell tried to sell his invention to Western Union, which quickly replied - This `telephone’ has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a practical form of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us. What use could this company make of an electrical toy? It happened with the car. Twenty years before Henry Ford convinced the world he was onto something, Congress published a memo, warning - Horseless carriages propelled by gasoline might attain speeds of 14 or even 20 miles per hour. The menace to our people of vehicles of this type hurtling through our streets and along our roads and poisoning the atmosphere would call for prompt legislative action. The cost of producing gasoline is far beyond the financial capacity of private industry… In addition the development of this new power may displace the use of horses, which would wreck our agriculture. It happened with the index fund – easily the most important financial innovation of the last half-century. John Bogle launched the first index fund in 1975. No one paid much attention to for next two decades. It started to gain popularity, an inch at a time, in the 1990s. Then, three decades after inception, the idea spread like wildfire. 4. Conclusion Diversify like an index fund - Rather than betting big on one business, how about splitting it among many like $META (Meta Platforms Inc) $NVO (Novo-Nordisk A/S SPONS ADR) $DNB.OL (DNB Bank ASA) $HM-B.ST (Hennes & Mauritz AB, H & M ser. B) and $TMO (Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc) I welcome you all to look at my portfolio and add me to your watchlist >> I look forward to growing with all of you : )

5 Mentioned

META

Meta Platforms Inc

NVO

Novo-Nordisk A/S SPONS ADR

DNB.OL

DNB Bank ASA

HM-B.ST

Hennes & Mauritz AB, H & M ser. B

TMO

Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc