I see S curves everywhere. They tell me where I should live, work, invest my time, my money, my efforts. I hope this article will help you see them too. They appear in physics, chemistry, business, biology, animation, professional development, politics, history, memes, social media, epidemics... I made this quick video to show you some of the millions of places where they appear.
S-curve is basically a cumulative curve of the bell curve. So , like in marketing or innovation, first (Bell curve) we have innovators, then early adopters, then early majority - inflection point) , then late majority and laggards. In cumulative terms one gets S-curve. Another interesting story is time of transition from one S-curve to another . Like transition from vacuum lamps to transistors , etc. Or ICE to EV vehicles.
A long time ago - early to mid-50s, I think - Prof. Jay Forrester at MIT came up with the "bullwhip" or "whiplash" effect (later termed as the Forrester effect). This referred to very small perturbations (say, 2%) in customer purchases at checkout of specific products that cycled back through the entire supply chain in ever increasing amounts. What he evidenced was the increasing amplitude of demand-generated effects on supply all the way back through upstream vendors.
He theorized that the initial small dip or increase in sales of a particular item (itself possibly random) was subsequently misinterpreted by people in every preceding stage: first by the shelf replenishing clerk reporting to the store inventory head, who then inflated it some more while placing orders for the store at the local warehouse, that was then again inflated to the regional warehouse... And so on until it reached the manufacturer. The ripple effects took time and when the manufacturer finally increased production or invested in higher capacity, there was over-supply and unsold goods. All because the original blip at the checkout was just that: an inconsequential blip.
Of course, today's supply chain systems are architected for just-in-time using real time data. But the principles of human behaviours remain the same. And, for the purposes of this discussion, if one were to look backwards at the whiplash effect curve and smooth out the waveform, they do resemble the S curve - in reverse, or as mirror image.
I enjoy Tomas' articles but, as an Indian, wish to point to an error in the above article on S curves. He refers to a Chinese emperor in the context of a grain of rice in the first square on a chessboard that doubles with every subsequent square. Sorry - but that's not Chinese, it's an ancient Indian story that goes back a couple millenia at least. Mind you, Chess was created in India - it was referred to as "chaturanga", hence the word "chess" in English. The Chinese creation was Go, not chess and the story is intrinsically Indian - every Indian schoolboy knows this.
Kahneman's and Tversky's Prospect Theory curve has the S shape. They looked at it from the zero point to the right and to the left, but you can also consider how gains change the perception of value going from the bottom left corner towards the upper right corner.
On the fifth day of Christmas my truelove gave to me five gold rings
In 1970 those gold rings would have cost around $30. Today they would cost around $1600.
That price would seem shocking to someone in 1970, but today we think the price sounds about right. This is because of Gradualicity*, also known as the boiling frog effect. When things change very gradually, the human brain accepts each small step and that becomes the new normal. It is only by taking a step back and looking at the big picture that we can appreciate the true magnitude of the change over time and where we are on the curve.
The third and fourth days of Christmas were about balance and attention. It’s hard to get things back into balance if we haven’t even noticed that they are out of balance, and it is hard to notice that things are becoming unbalanced if it happens gradually.
*If people are allowed to use “normalcy” I think I should be allowed gradualicity.
I am modelling national vaccine rollout. I have a view that site availability and nurses per site will both be log decays (also for hesitancy). But now I wonder if they are not closer to reverse S curves. What would you think?
S-curve is basically a cumulative curve of the bell curve. So , like in marketing or innovation, first (Bell curve) we have innovators, then early adopters, then early majority - inflection point) , then late majority and laggards. In cumulative terms one gets S-curve. Another interesting story is time of transition from one S-curve to another . Like transition from vacuum lamps to transistors , etc. Or ICE to EV vehicles.
A long time ago - early to mid-50s, I think - Prof. Jay Forrester at MIT came up with the "bullwhip" or "whiplash" effect (later termed as the Forrester effect). This referred to very small perturbations (say, 2%) in customer purchases at checkout of specific products that cycled back through the entire supply chain in ever increasing amounts. What he evidenced was the increasing amplitude of demand-generated effects on supply all the way back through upstream vendors.
He theorized that the initial small dip or increase in sales of a particular item (itself possibly random) was subsequently misinterpreted by people in every preceding stage: first by the shelf replenishing clerk reporting to the store inventory head, who then inflated it some more while placing orders for the store at the local warehouse, that was then again inflated to the regional warehouse... And so on until it reached the manufacturer. The ripple effects took time and when the manufacturer finally increased production or invested in higher capacity, there was over-supply and unsold goods. All because the original blip at the checkout was just that: an inconsequential blip.
Of course, today's supply chain systems are architected for just-in-time using real time data. But the principles of human behaviours remain the same. And, for the purposes of this discussion, if one were to look backwards at the whiplash effect curve and smooth out the waveform, they do resemble the S curve - in reverse, or as mirror image.
I enjoy Tomas' articles but, as an Indian, wish to point to an error in the above article on S curves. He refers to a Chinese emperor in the context of a grain of rice in the first square on a chessboard that doubles with every subsequent square. Sorry - but that's not Chinese, it's an ancient Indian story that goes back a couple millenia at least. Mind you, Chess was created in India - it was referred to as "chaturanga", hence the word "chess" in English. The Chinese creation was Go, not chess and the story is intrinsically Indian - every Indian schoolboy knows this.
Kahneman's and Tversky's Prospect Theory curve has the S shape. They looked at it from the zero point to the right and to the left, but you can also consider how gains change the perception of value going from the bottom left corner towards the upper right corner.
On the fifth day of Christmas my truelove gave to me five gold rings
In 1970 those gold rings would have cost around $30. Today they would cost around $1600.
That price would seem shocking to someone in 1970, but today we think the price sounds about right. This is because of Gradualicity*, also known as the boiling frog effect. When things change very gradually, the human brain accepts each small step and that becomes the new normal. It is only by taking a step back and looking at the big picture that we can appreciate the true magnitude of the change over time and where we are on the curve.
The third and fourth days of Christmas were about balance and attention. It’s hard to get things back into balance if we haven’t even noticed that they are out of balance, and it is hard to notice that things are becoming unbalanced if it happens gradually.
*If people are allowed to use “normalcy” I think I should be allowed gradualicity.
I am modelling national vaccine rollout. I have a view that site availability and nurses per site will both be log decays (also for hesitancy). But now I wonder if they are not closer to reverse S curves. What would you think?
For others, here's how to use S curves in your models: https://blog.arkieva.com/basics-on-s-curves/