# Assertions 1. We (humanity) could create more quantum leaps than we currently have. 2. We currently trust interlocking startups, corporations, academic institutions, philanthropies, and governments (the current institutions) to shepherd new ideas from conception to massive adoption. 3. The current institutions each have structures that create constraints that influence what they do well and poorly. 4. Venture capital has (logically) shifted from its origins towards financing lower-risk, lower-capital, faster-return software. 5. Venture capital and the structure of high growth startups are coupled. 6. Venture capital and startups act as the gateway for new commercialized innovations 7. Venture capital is not the optimal institution for financing high-risk ideas. 8. Current culture assumes “the government” should be responsible for funding research 9. Current culture assumes national labs and universities should be responsible for executing research 10. Startups are great for commercializing and distributing a technology at TRL 6+ but are not ideal for executing on research (even engineering research.) 11. Venture capital is great for funding and commercializing technology at TRL 6+ but their role is not to fund research. 12. Modern venture capital is not good for innovations in atoms (as opposed to bits.) 13. The current culture is overweighted on bottom-up innovation 1. There are not enough pathways for ideas to be implemented and given a chance to become impactful discrete changes 14. New institutional models (like venture capital+startups in the 70’s, national research programs in the 40’s, and corporations in the 1880’s) can enable previously impossible technologies. 15. New financing models (like car loans, join-stock companies, and LLCs) can enable previously impossible technologies. 16. Institutional models and financing models are often coupled 17. It is hard to create a new institutional model 18. New ideas can only happen in a single person’s head 19. Many atom-based technologies require manufacturing and distribution capabilities that take decades to build up 20. Many people want to build awesome sci-fi shit but don’t have the outlet to do that 21. [[The relationship of government, academia, and technology fundamentally changed in 1980 with the Bayh-Dole act]] 22. Trends in the world shifted in the early 1970’s 23. Defense and government spending is capability-driven while business spending is efficiency-driven. 24. Culturally we are obsessed with efficiency and optimization. 25. New ways of doing things are not more efficient or optimal at first (airplanes, transistors v vacuum tubes, cars v horses) 26. [[Institutions shape how individuals interact]] 27. [[Program and project management is important and valuable]] 28. [[Researchers are more important than the research]] * [[Assertions about the nature of quantum leaps]] * [[Hypotheses generated by world assertions and quantum leap assertions]] #### Questions * Are quantum leaps predictably successful? <!-- #list #project --> [Web URL for this note](http://notes.benjaminreinhardt.com/Assertions) [Comment on this note](http://via.hypothes.is/http://notes.benjaminreinhardt.com/Assertions)