TECH & INNOVATION: Compound opportunity

Editor’s note: Besides tracking technological advancements and innovations, our author is a Juilliard-trained musical composer. He has created a musical piece titled “Compound Opportunity” for you to enjoy while reading this column.https://berkshireedge-images.

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26.25.mp3In calmer times, believing life would eventually return to normal made sense.

If someone had a streak of extraordinary good fortune, people expected things would balance out over time. If a particular year was unusually difficult, there was a natural assumption that better times would follow. There is even a term for this quiet belief: regression to the mean.

This concept suggested that, although individual events may be unpredictable, the overall trajectory of life remains stable, and this stability gently draws us back to our center.But today, that assumption no longer holds. The world’s center is not standing still.

It is moving faster and faster. We are living in an era when the pace of change is not only rapid but accelerating. The ground beneath our feet shifts so quickly that by the time we orient ourselves, the landscape has already changed again.

Yet, despite how disorienting that may sound, this is not just a time of disruption; this is a time of opportunity. A rare opening has arrived when the old systems no longer fully apply, but the new ones have not yet been codified. The future is up for grabs and will be shaped by those willing to create, not merely react.

Many people will indeed be displaced. Many careers, industries, and institutions that once seemed stable are now being reshaped beyond recognition. But it is also true that this displacement itself creates massive openings—urgent needs for new services, businesses, forms of community, education, healthcare, governance, and connection.

The disruption will not simply destroy. It will demand rebuilding. And those who recognize this will realize that compounded uncertainty produces compounded opportunity.

We have seen this dynamic play out before. When smartphones displaced landlines, cameras, GPS devices, and music players, they did not just dismantle industries; they created an entirely new one: the app economy. An ecosystem that barely existed before 2007 is now worth over $600 billion globally and has created countless new companies, careers, and innovations.

Similarly, the sudden shift to remote work during the pandemic uprooted millions from traditional office environments, but also accelerated the growth of entirely new sectors built around virtual collaboration, digital communication, and flexible work services. Tools like Zoom, Slack, Notion, and new categories like virtual event platforms and remote work consultancies were born precisely because the old certainties disappeared. In both cases, it was precisely the compounded uncertainty that unlocked massive compounded opportunity.

The question is not whether the old world will shift. It already has. The real question is: Who will step forward to create the services, companies, frameworks, and human contexts that the new world will require?Someone has to stride into the future.

Howard Lieberman created this image with ChatGPT.Compounded uncertainty is different from ordinary unpredictability. It is not simply that the future is unknown—that has always been true.

Rather, the future is being reshaped at an accelerating rate, driven by forces that are themselves speeding up. Each wave of change triggers the next, and the cycle tightens until it becomes a continuous, unpredictable churn. Uncertainty no longer just happens in isolated bursts; it builds on itself, layer after layer, compounding in ways that are harder and harder to track.

Moore’s Law is a perfect example of how this dynamic began to reshape the modern world. When Gordon Moore, co-founder of Intel Corporation, first observed that the number of transistors on a chip doubled roughly every two years, few realized what this steady doubling would unleash. Exponential growth is deceptively slow at first, but over time, it changes everything.

The increase in computing power transformed industries, economies, and daily life. Entire careers, technologies, and ways of thinking that once seemed permanent were swept aside. And for the most part, people adapted because the doubling, while powerful, was still on a relatively understandable trajectory.

But today, artificial intelligence is introducing a new kind of acceleration that outpaces Moore’s Law. The rate at which AI capabilities are improving is fast and explosive. Large language models, autonomous systems, and generative tools are improving not at a steady doubling every two years but at a pace so rapid that models are often obsolete within months.

We need to build new structures from the pieces of the old. Howard Lieberman created this image with ChatGPT.The jumps in capability are not only larger but also happening faster, and the implications reach into every aspect of human life.

This means the compounded uncertainty we are experiencing today is not an aberration. It is the new environment. Moore’s Law prepared us for a world shaped by technology-driven acceleration.

But the arrival of AI means we are now moving into a world where acceleration accelerates. And this brings us back to the real opportunity hidden within the turbulence. Previously, life, work, and success rules were largely inherited.

You learned and followed them; if you did them well enough, you usually found your place. Today, the old rules erode faster than anyone can write them down.Things will flow in many directions.

Howard Lieberman created this image with ChatGPT.This may feel disorienting, but it also means that the next generation of rules, systems, and pathways has not yet been written. And that writing is now in the hands of those willing to invent, not merely adapt.

In the face of compounded uncertainty, resilience is important—but it is no longer enough. Resilience implies bouncing back after disruption. But in a world where disruption is constant and accelerating, simply bouncing back leaves you always one step behind.

The future will not belong to those who merely withstand change. It will belong to those who become active agents within it—those who adapt, create, and innovate faster than the shifting environment around them. People who do not cling to old assumptions but create new realities will shape the future.

It will reward those who do not just follow the old rules but invent the new ones.This is not a time to play it safe, hoping that conditions will stabilize and return to a recognizable normal. That normal is gone.

What lies ahead is different, but it is full of possibility. Compounded uncertainty is not just a threat; it is an invitation. It is an open field for those willing to step forward as builders of the next era.

The opportunities are enormous, but they are reserved for those with the mindset of creators, not followers.Following the old trends, the old normal, the old expectations, will increasingly lead to dead ends. Meanwhile, those who are willing to innovate, to question, to invent, to imagine will have the chance to shape the future rather than be shaped by it.

Moore’s Law taught us that exponential growth would change the game. AI teaches us that the game evolves faster than any single player can control. The only winning move is not to defend the past, but to help create what comes next.

Compounded uncertainty is not a curse. It is the raw material from which tomorrow will be built. And the builders, the ones bold enough to shape rather than be shaped, will define the world to come.

Because in the end, compounded uncertainty creates compounded opportunity..