"We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next ten."
— Bill Gates
We Always Overestimate The Change That
We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next ten.
About this quote
This observation appears in Chapter 1 of The Road Ahead (1995), Gates's early meditation on the coming digital revolution. He used it to caution against short-term thinking: people tend to overreact to technological change in the immediate term while failing to grasp how completely it will reshape society over a decade or more. The formulation proved prescient given the actual pace of the internet's transformation of commerce, communication, and culture.
Source
The Road Ahead, Chapter 1 (1995)
