All the easy inventions are done
All the easy inventions are done. It was easier back then because the most obvious ideas were still there to be discovered. Now it is way harder.
If you really think so, you need to think again. Since I'm still in the investment business, lets look at an all-pervasive and *obvious* idea today - the index fund. Vanguard is the world's largest index fund manager. It has a 29% market share of all US fund assets. And it pulled in a billion dollars *per day* for ten years starting in 2010. That's a billion dollars every single day.
And yet, when Jack Bogle first launched the index fund...
"...it was a total flop in the marketplace when it was launched. The company had hoped the index fund would attract $250 million in seed capital, but it only fetched $11.3 million... Basically no one wanted it. According to Bogle, the underwriters at one point suggested that they just give everyone the money back and forget about the whole thing... And that was pretty much the first decade." (writes Eric Balchunas in The Bogle Effect)
That's ten years that it took to get to its first billion dollars in assets. A number that it now pulls in every day. Wasn't as easy when it was first put together.
Or take another one. Mean-variance optimization and the efficient frontier portfolio is such a commonplace idea today. Any finance major is probably expected to write a program to generate such a portfolio, or maybe build a spreadsheet. Yet, when Markowitz first put the idea together back in 1961, a single portfolio construction for 100 securities took 33 minutes on the best commercially available IBM computer at the time. The cost? $300 in today's terms.
The point is that innovation has always been tough, and getting people to accept your innovative ideas even tougher. It has also always been expensive and time-consuming. The companies or individuals that chose to expend that effort were the ones who invented the now obvious ideas.
So yes, the frontier in most fields today is further out. But the resources available today are also way more advanced and way cheaper than they used to be. Imagine what $300 of OpenAI credits can do for you today. The canvas is bigger. The tools are better. And the world is more receptive. What's holding you back?