On Friday night, I had pizza and beer with a couple of friends. One of them told me that he spent an afternoon trying to get ChatGPT to code up a simple interface. He gave it a detailed spec for a file upload widget and it failed miserably. But after some trial and error, he figured out its limitations and learned how to form effective prompts. By the time he took a break he had something pretty close to workable. The gap between junior dev and senior dev just got a mile wide.
When I was a kid, adults would tell me that I needed to go to college or the military in order to get a decent job. When I graduated high school, this was amended to a technical trade in the military. By the time I finished my four years in the Marine Corps, the college degree had been amended to a master’s degree. After a couple of years of college, that too was amended to specific kinds of bachelors or masters degrees.
This is all progress. As society progresses, it becomes harder and harder for people to contribute value because technology provides leverage.
In business, we call circumstances that will enable big leaps forward “opportunities.”
Opportunity can and does fall into people’s laps. Zoom’s use and value rocketed when Covid hit.
But how can you find opportunity? How can you identify when it’s occurring? How can you create it?
Opportunity occurs when things change. And things are always changing. So look for opportunity where change is occurring and create opportunities by implementing change. If something doesn’t really change things, it’s probably not an opportunity.
Business opportunities are like buses; there’s always another one coming. – Richard Branson
Featured image is Apollo 6 heading into orbit. Branson’s company, Virgin Galactic, is launching their first commercial space flight at the end of this month. Tickets cost around $500,000. I.e. buses for rich people. Used under public domain.