Most organisations do not fail because they lack ideas. They fail because they put ideas in the wrong category. A bridge technology gets dismissed as a compromise. A revival candidate gets mistaken for an obsolete asset. A platform gets treated like a product. A product that should end survives because it has internal champions. This article looks at eight real cases, including Kodak, Xerox PARC, ASML, Java, Google Reader, Stadia, RISC-V, Arm and IBM PC, to show how companies decide what to build, spin out, archive, open, license, sell or let die.
bridge economy
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The future rarely arrives fully formed. Before the moonshot becomes real, something quieter usually ships first: a teleoperated robot, an AI-assisted design tool, a diagnostic kiosk, or a narrow infrastructure layer that solves today’s problem while preparing the ground for tomorrow’s breakthrough. This article introduces the bridge economy: the overlooked layer of transitional technologies that sit between current constraints and ultimate technological ambitions.