Just 20 years ago, our world was a very different place.

Laptops and the modern Internet were both a few years old, but neither had reached mainstream acceptance.

There were no digital cameras… no digital music players… no smartphones… no tablets… We didn’t have Facebook or texting. And if we got lost, there was no OnStar or Siri or Google Maps to save us.

Over the next 10 years, barriers will be broken… whole new industries will be created… fortunes will be made.

Advances in technology will bring such fundamental changes to our lives, they’ll dwarf all the progress we’ve seen since the great tech revolution that began in the late 1990s. Everything will change. The ways in which we work, shop, sleep, eat, travel, bank, communicate, entertain ourselves, conduct warfare, manufacture, design, distribute, create, transact, and maintain our own health will all be different.

Although we’ve seen radical changes in technology during the last two decades – streaming video, cellphones, the Internet, miniaturization, etc. – these improvements are only incremental.

In fact, they are just the foundation for technology-based changes that will be exponential.

We’re on the cusp of a new revolution. And those who act now will be the first to realize the extraordinary wealth these changes will bring

.Exponential Innovation

The problem with identifying an exponential change is that its early stages look the same as an ordinary linear change.

As shown in the graphic in Figure 1, exponential changes grow quite slowly in their early stages. But when they reach a certain tipping point – the sharp “elbow” you see in the graph – they take off like a rocket.

As an investor, you want to be in position just before the elbow.

Think about a company like Apple (AAPL). It enjoyed explosive growth – and explosive returns on its share price – during the early years of the computer revolution. After that, the company – and its stock – held steady for quite a while.