TLDR:
- The next big thing 20 years from now that everyone will have, need, and be talking about is yet to exist. From whatever perspective you can find yourself in the shoes of covering it, you’re golden.
Far from it.
Just like the title of Wired Magazine founder Kevin Kelly published in 2014, “You’re not too late.”
We may find ourselves mulling over things such as being born well after the era of online writing began and missing out on it, but how could you have controlled that?
If you think the world is already running out of great ideas, think again; you’re just not paying enough attention.
Though flying cars were speculated by many to be a thing by now, we haven’t even reached the stage where electric vehicles are mainstream yet in comparison to traditional petrol vehicles.
And for all we know after that, we’ll begin transitioning into a time where flying cars are eventually a thing, commercialized and mass-produced.
AI as we know it today would be completely different in a future time period.
But that’s beside the point.
The next big thing 20 years from now that everyone will have, need, and be talking about, doesn’t exist yet.
It could be under production right now as you’re reading this or such a revolutionary thought is yet to cross the mind of someone walking on this earth, something that’ll be bigger than anything we have today.
And be it being the face of that next big thing or covering its production by writing about it, right now, if you seek through the right channels, you have the chance to be ahead of the curve that knew about it before the rest of the world and had some role to play from any given perspective.
So how do you stumble upon it?
It’s simple: be very observant of your surroundings and take notes of what caught your eye (whether it's in real life or a certain niche you’re curious about or think has the potential to be the next big thing for instance), look to address pain points, and you might just find that next big idea.
But irrespective of how long it may take you, recognize that you’re never too late. The human population is just too vast to have just suddenly run dry of great ideas.