Yup, not just the entertainment business. It takes a different kind of vision to predict things which are orthogonal to past performance. In so many areas whe

Yup, not just the entertainment business. It takes a different kind of vision to predict things which are orthogonal to past performance. In so many areas where corporate control has been consolidated, there is more complete dominance of bureaucratic hierarchies that just happen to more systematically exclude those rare innovators and creatives who could occasionally punch through to earth-shaking effect. The allowance for true innovation is almost extinct. The difference is it's nearly universal now. People like Thos. Edison and Nikola Tesla wouldn't have a chance today, they already had it difficult in their time where the downward pressure was already palpable, and each came very close to not having a worldwide imact, just like everyone else. Keep in mind their productivity was actually decimated by going against the current like this, so their known milestones & breakthroughs are only the tip of the iceberg compared to what "could have been" in a more supportive cultural environment. And that was then. Even in places which pride themselves in non-traditional corporate behavior, the same anti-creative characteristics have become generally acceptable by comparative example, all up and down the entire chain of command. Especially among the money people, increased greed is the antithesis of increased innovation. If the only thing you want to do with money is make more of the same, that's legitimate especially if you're in debt or something, but that's not how you make more of new other things which could turn out to be more valuable than money. People in general have gradually settled for so much less innovation, in exchange for the very little financial improvement that might result without such a distraction. And creatives who would have had a (already slim) chance in previous decades are having none of it. Woz dropped out when it started getting so bad you couldn't deny it. Plus "star-making machinery" itself became so much more prominent and more like an insiders lottery. The establishment of a mechanism which can "make anyone a star" ended up being needed just to get recognition for the occasional jaw-dropping talent. But once that mechanism is in place, there's almost no talent needed after that.