There is plenty of frustration to be had on both side of the canyon that separates the people who develop new technologies and the project managers who are looking for solutions to their urgent issues. Technologist: Why aren’t you interested in all these beautiful new inventions I have spent so much time on? Project Manager: Why haven’t you produced anything that I can use? The phenomenon has been around for long enough that it was given the evocative name of “technological valley of death.” At lot of very smart people have tried to figure out how to cross that valley, but just maybe this is all a big misunderstanding. Let me try to explain. 

The most commonly suggested solution to the issue is that both sides should become more like each other. Technology development should be targeted to the issues at hand and projects should set aside more money to mature technologies into products. This assumes that smooth extrapolation from both sides would eventually meet in the middle to bridge the valley. But I believe that this fundamentally mischaracterizes what is going on. Technologists need the freedom to explore, even if it isn’t clear what issue a discovery might address. Projects need proven solutions that are ready to plug into a system. Extrapolation from the application side may have given us smaller steam engines, but would have not come up with the internal combustion engine. Conversely, early ICE’s were not competitive with neither the strength of a large steam engine nor the ease and reliability of getting around on horseback. In the end, neither steam engines nor horseback riding remained the option of choice for transportation.

A secondary reason for the dilemma is the fact that technology development and its presumed outcome, technology infusion, are usually only vaguely defined. To some, technological innovation is a new fuel injector reducing fuel consumption. To others, innovation is replacing a mechanical instrument cluster with a heads-up display. To a very few, technology means building autonomous vehicle services that eliminate the need for personal vehicle ownership. Whether any of these breakthroughs is beneficial or desirable depends entirely on who you are. As a rider I appreciate the perceived privacy of a driverless car service. If I was making my living as a driver, I would not see this innovation worth celebrating. 

In its purest form, the valley of death is a filter, a wall, a potential barrier that separates two fundamentally different areas of discovery. This barrier protects both sides. It allows projects to limit disruptive challenges to their established solutions and it guarantees some freedom of discovery for the technologists. Some technologies are shepherded through the valley by careful and sustained efforts, often by governments, because of their expected advantages they bring to the first mover. Nuclear weapons and the space race come to mind. Others break through due to market forces and industry investments. Email, online shopping and car services come to mind. I don’t know yet where the emergence of AI agents lies on this spectrum. 

My advice to both sides is to try to learn to love this wall of separation and stop banging your heads against it. For projects looking for solutions, crossing the wall may be less promising than exploring a broader patch along your side of the wall. Are there solutions that are used in different industries, or for different applications that are already available at scale that you may be able to adopt? Amazon, for example did not invent book selling. It did not invent online ordering either. But Amazon did bring together a wide range of available solutions to prioritize the customer experience through breadth of offering and speed of delivery. The Mars helicopter was able to draw on the technologies developed for cell phones and other consumer electronics. If you are a technologist, your main focus may not have to be on perfecting your initial product but on ensuring your first product can be manufactured at scale and at a price point that is desirable to your customer. There is a huge difference between building a prototype and delivering thousands of units. Make sure you are ready for that. And if you are someone who is happy to figure out something for the joy of discovery, I hope you understand that this can be one of the purest forms of rewards.