Wonders of Market Innovation: Text-to-Speech Technology Reaches an Inflection Point

This is just one of the numerous examples of the miracles borne out of the marketplace mainly through technological innovation.

This from Ashlee Vance of the New York Times, (bold emphasis mine)

``Moore’s Law is a funny thing. Computing gear ticks along, getting faster and often cheaper at a steady rate. But, every now and then, we hit an inflection point where things change in a drastic fashion. Such is the case with the iPhone from Apple and with netbooks -– products that nailed the right recipe of horsepower, size and cost at the right time.

``In an article published Tuesday, I took a look at how iPhones and netbooks have disrupted not only the consumer electronics market but also health care. People with speech-impairing conditions like A.L.S., autism, Down syndrome and strokes have started to discover that general-purpose devices, equipped with downloadable text-to-speech software, can in many cases help them communicate better and more cheaply than the proprietary speech devices covered by Medicare and private health insurance.

Read the rest here
The S-Curve as shown above depicts of the technology breakthrough cycle or where "an inflection point where things change in a drastic fashion" as applied to the text-to-speech technology.

As explained by AVG Aerospace, ``The S-Curve figure illustrates both the evolution of a given technology, and the breakthrough event when a new, superior technology becomes viable. For a given technology, the evolution is as follows: Initial efforts result in little advancement and then the technology becomes successful. This success point, at the lower knee of the curve, is where the technology has finally demonstrated its utility. After this point significant progress and improvements are made as several embodiments are produced and the technology becomes widely established. Eventually, however, the physical limits of the technology are reached, and continued effort results in little additional advancement. This evolution (effort expended versus performance gains) takes the form of an S-Curve. To go beyond the limits of the top of a predecessor's S-Curve, a new alternative must be created. This new alternative will have its own S-curve and will eventually require yet another new approach to surpass its performance limits. The breakthrough event, is when the new method demonstrates its viability to exceed past the limits of its predecessor." (emphasis added)