"There’s a useful high-tech concept called the Technology Readiness Level that helps explain why Uber pounced when it did. NASA came up with this scale to gauge

"There’s a useful high-tech concept called the Technology Readiness Level that helps explain why Uber pounced when it did. NASA came up with this scale to gauge the maturity of a given field of applied science. At Level 1, an area of scientific inquiry is so new that nobody understands its basic principles. At Level 9, the related technology is so mature it’s ready to be used in commercial products." There's a often a big difference between the people who like to work on level 1 verse level 9 stuff. "How do I scale this to be used by 10,000 people?" isn't even an interesting/relevant question to a researcher pursuing level 1 areas of science, but it's one of the most important questions for an engineer of a technology at level 9.