This reminds me of the "second mover advantage". Time after time, it seems that the first company that comes up with a new idea and/or does the most to educate people about it will not be the same one to benefit most from it. Either bigger companies crush them (sometimes followed by showing up first at the resulting fire sale) or other companies of any size lap them by taking advantage of the related second-system effect. Since transistors have already been mentioned, both Shockley/Fairchild and Fairchild/Intel could be considered examples. Others could cite Edison copying ideas from any of Tesla, Swan, or Volta. The Wright Brothers could be put on either side of the equation, at different times.
Also, this:
> One difficulty is it’s hard to distinguish “ahead of their time beacon shining” from “lucky idiot”
The world is full of lucky idiots who are continually attaching themselves to one "contrarian" idea after another, in hopes that they can claim primacy after somebody else does the hard work of developing or popularizing it. No shortage of them here, for example. It's a gamble, betting that others will ignore or forget the more numerous (and sometimes even harmful) misses accumulated in the process. The world could do with a lot less of that, TBH. There are already more credible theories than people with the knowledge and patience to explore them properly.
Also, this:
> One difficulty is it’s hard to distinguish “ahead of their time beacon shining” from “lucky idiot”
The world is full of lucky idiots who are continually attaching themselves to one "contrarian" idea after another, in hopes that they can claim primacy after somebody else does the hard work of developing or popularizing it. No shortage of them here, for example. It's a gamble, betting that others will ignore or forget the more numerous (and sometimes even harmful) misses accumulated in the process. The world could do with a lot less of that, TBH. There are already more credible theories than people with the knowledge and patience to explore them properly.