Ghandi said "Be the change you would like to see happen." Because my business is so wound up in technology, I am always talking to people who assume that changing human behavior, which is *really* what introducing new technology is about, can be accomplished quickly. In fact, if there is one reason technology companies don't succeed, it's because they assume the market for their new products will grow much more quickly than it does.
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I went to a conference on Disruptive Innovation and did a special edition of "The Outside World," Stealthmode's e-zine for the entrepreneurial value chain, about what this means for your business. Sign up now at http://www.acteva.com/go/outsideworld and you will get this edition with your annual subscription.

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Next to me at the dinner table last night (fundraiser for the Arizona Science Center at which the speakers discussed fuel cell technology) was a very good-looking man. Never one to ignore one of *those*, I engaged him in conversation. I found out that he had sold his company two years before, and come to live in Arizona full time.

He had invented, patented, and developed the lint roller, the little plastic roller with the tape on it that we all use before we leave the house if we have pets.

The lint roller, he explained to me, replaced a previous technology, the whisk broom (do you remember them?) It is now in use throughout the world. He invented it when he was just out of electrical engineering school, and decided to form a company to take it to market when he was pretty young.

How long did he own the company? Forty-four years. How old was he? Eighty-one. He never dreamed it would take him that long to replace the simple whisk broom with the simpler lint roller. Not that it wasn't fun along the way, but it turned out to be a life's work.

Unfortunately, he didn't fall in love with me at first site, and he went home before the end of the incredibly serious panel discussion featuring the head of the American Hydrogen Association, an energy engineer, a woman from BP Amoco, a man from Daimler Chrysler, and the host of NPR's Science Friday, Ira Flatow. (How could the planners of this event think that after two glasses of wine, chicken saltimbocca and chocolate cake, anyone would be up for this?)

Forced to give my attention back to the podium, I caught Ira Flatow making one interesting point: the fuel cell, which relies on hydrogen, a cheap source of energy, has been around since 1839. Nope, not 1939. 1839. The lint roller moved into consumer preferences about four times as fast as a fuel cell.

And, my new friend told me, the lint roller didn't really catch on until the proliferation of pets in the United States. (How many of you have more than one pet? How long ago did that happen?)

The fuel cell has some compelling value propositions: it saves natural resources, it cuts down on pollution, it produces inexpensive energy, it could end our dependence on foreign oil.

The lint roller cleans my sweater.

Yes, the Internet has come into our lives faster than the lint roller or the fuel cell. Yes, the pace of change is increasing. Yes, cell phones have been adopted relatively quickly (I had one of the first, in 1980).

But people are not as interested in changing as you think. This week, I met a very cool serial entrepreneur who spent most of our first meeting railing against how "you techies" assume that everyone knows how to use email and the Internet, and how "you techies" (in this case meaning early adopters I suppose, since my degrees are in literature)think everyone cares. A loveable Luddite, he spends his free time working on hot rods.

But he spent our second meeting telling me that *his* product, were I to help him develop it, would be used by EVERYBODY immediately.

But you, Mr. Entrepreneur, (women entrepreneurs are usually more patient, so this is addressed to men) are not going to put a new device into the market in three years, or even five. If you are fortunate, you can get it developed in that time, and you can assemble the team to take it to market.

But if it's going to make a lasting change in people's habits, it will probably take forty-four years.

Namaste,

Francine