Planck's Principle

You're seeing it when incumbent executives dismiss a new technology their own engineers are excited about. The resistance is generational, not analytical.

You're seeing it when a strategic shift only takes hold after the original leadership rotates out. The idea was sound; the blockers were people, not logic.

You're seeing it when a technology wins not by converting sceptics but by outlasting them — new buyers, new decision-makers, new defaults.

Stop burning resources persuading industry incumbents who will never adopt. Target the next generation of buyers, hire people native to the new paradigm, and design internal rotation so your own organisation doesn't ossify around yesterday's assumptions.

Feynman witnessed Planck's principle firsthand in quantum electrodynamics. Older physicists resisted the new formalism not because the math was wrong but because it violated their trained intuitions. Feynman didn't waste time converting them — he taught the next generation, wrote accessible explanations, and let the work speak through results. For founders, the lesson is about resource allocation in the face of paradigm resistance. Entrenched incumbents — whether industry executives, regulators, or your own senior team — often resist not because your evidence is weak but because acceptance threatens their identity and sunk investments. The efficient move is to route around them: sell to the next generation of buyers, hire people native to the new paradigm, and let adoption compound while resistance retires. Persuasion has limits; generational turnover does not.