Every technology domain has a measurable rate of improvement.
We call it the K-value: the annual rate at which a domain's performance per cost improves. We estimate it from the innovation record and check it against domains where the performance history is known.
We measure at any resolution: quantum computing as a whole, or a single architecture such as superconducting transmon qubits. A rate is only as meaningful as the definition under it.
Long-run performance data rarely exists, so we estimate the rate from where a domain's patents sit in the citation network, then check it against domains whose performance history is known. How many patents a domain has carries almost no signal. Where they sit does.
Rate plus today's performance gives you a trajectory. The trajectory tells you when a challenger is likely to cross the threshold your decision turns on, with the uncertainty stated and the conditions that would reopen the answer.
The method is public. Check it.
Streaming overtook video by mail in 2002. Adoption turned a year earlier.
Sending a video through the post held a flat rate for three decades while streaming it improved steadily. The two crossed in 2002. The knee in the adoption curve falls in 2001 — within a year of the performance crossover, which is what the hypothesis predicts.
Three calls, logged before the outcome.
Tell us the technology. We'll send you the rate.
You know a technology better than we do. Name it, add your own estimate of its annual improvement rate if you have one, and we'll send you ours alongside it.