There have been some interesting ideas in what the science fiction world classifies as the 'hard science' category offered for review in the last couple of weeks. These are intruiging - seeing what people claim can be done with innovative physics - and frustrating - since the proponents can't or won't say enough about their idea to make it possible to do a proper assessment.

The end result is that one says "that's a plausible claim, especially given the background of the team", or not, basing the plausibility on independent knowledge of other products or other research. Usually what people are really asking, though, is whether it is possible to build a business from the idea.

From long experience with getting commercial enterprises to adopt new technology, the rough rule is that the results they derive from making a change have to be 10X better than the current solution to make it worth disrupting business as usual. This rule is particularly applicable to performance gains and process or component changes. One big exception to the rule is in the rare case where the new thing defends the business from attack, or ransom demands. From the point of view of the company with the new idea, the ideal situation is one where a really big business absolutely depends on their technology, and will take steps to either acquire the technology for itself or have one of its trusted business partners do so, in order to gain continuity of access to the idea.

References
Hard Science Fiction list

Cunning Systems evaluates product and service ideas in computing and communications. If you would like to discuss an idea, contact us at info@cunningsystems.com