What is the s-curve?

The s-curve represents a dynamic that happens in three phases:

1. Emergence - something is new, growth is slow
2. Growth - time and refinement mean rapid growth
3. Maturity - competition and saturation lead to a tail off in growth

This happens in many different scenarios, looking through an innovation lens:

1. New innovations might be expensive at first, only a core user base are willing to pay the premium to get the value (e.g. early smartphones)
2. Improvements lead to better product-market-fit and acceptance by the market
3. The growth phase woke up competitors, and the number of people who don’t have this innovation and would benefit from it is narrowing

This illustrates that the path from zero users to the saturation of the market is not linear, and in the maturity phase the return on activities is much smaller than in the growth phase - fighting amongst competitors in a saturated market in a zero sum game.