Every December the newspapers fill up with lists: the best films of the year, the top ten gadgets you didn’t need, the ten ways everything changed forever and somehow stayed the same. By January, we’ve usually forgotten most of them.
But one list from last year stuck with me — and not because it was especially well written. It made a simple point that often gets lost in the endless hype about “technology revolutions”: humanity has always innovated, but not all innovations matter equally. Some bring light. Some bring heat. A very small number change everything.
The difference between activity and impact
In the world of research, start-ups, and commercialisation, it’s easy to confuse activity with impact. Universities file thousands of patents a year. Technology transfer offices negotiate licensing deals. Innovators pitch, accelerate and incubate. Governments announce funding rounds and “strategic priorities”.
But when you strip away the noise, the question that really counts is the same one our Victorian predecessors asked: does this invention actually do something useful?
True commercialisation isn’t about how many ideas get created — it’s about how many become businesses that employ people, solve problems and shape markets. Most technologies generate heat: some excitement, a few headlines, maybe a prototype or two. But only a handful generate light — the ones that genuinely improve how we live, work or understand the world.
Victorian lessons for a modern innovation economy
The Victorians were ruthless commercialisers. They didn’t celebrate inventions for their own sake — only for what they enabled. A steam engine was interesting, but its value came from the industries, logistics systems and new economies it made possible.
That mindset is worth revisiting. We often treat technology as if it has intrinsic value simply because it’s new or clever. But an innovation isn’t complete until someone is willing to pay for it — not because it’s futuristic, but because it solves a real problem in a way nothing else does.
Modern innovation policy focuses a lot on research excellence, regional strengths, ecosystems, clusters and networks. All useful. But progress still depends on the harder, messier work that happens after the discovery: finding paying customers, building supply chains, getting pricing right, making something that doesn’t break, raising capital without losing control, scaling production, and navigating the endless bureaucracy that sits between a prototype and a product.
Light, heat, and the innovation reality check
When a new technology appears, the first thing you get is heat: enthusiasm, excitement, wild projections, TED Talk slides full of exponential curves. The light — the genuine value — only arrives when the technology survives contact with the real world.
That’s why so many “revolutions” quietly fade away. They generate heat but they never reach the stage where customers care, investors commit, and markets form. Innovation becomes progress only when a technology works outside a lab and delivers enough value that someone chooses it over the alternative.
What we need more of in 2017 (and beyond)
As we head into another year of forecasts, predictions and promises, it’s worth remembering that the technologies that change the world rarely look like revolutions at first. They begin as small, unfinished, often unimpressive ideas in the hands of stubborn people who keep going when others lose interest.
If we want more light and less heat in technology commercialisation, we need:
- More people willing to build things rather than talk about them.
- More investors who understand the messy bits between lab and market.
- More universities willing to let ideas go so they can grow.
- More founders who see value creation as a long-term craft, not a short-term hype cycle.
Technology has always been capable of producing abundance, opportunity and prosperity. But only if we stay focused on what matters: solving real problems, building real businesses and creating real value. Everything else is just heat.
Here’s to a year of more light.