Marshall McLuhan’s Four Laws of Innovation

1. What does the innovation extend, enhance, or make possible? What new source of values does it create?
2. What does the innovation make obsolete? What does it replace, or free up? When something is obsolesced it doesn’t cease to exist, but it will start to serve a different purpose.
3. What does the innovation retrieve? What older, previously obsolesced opportunity does it bring back?
4. When pushed to the limits of its potential, what does the innovation reverse into? How does the innovation’s original impact get turned on its head? This is the most paradoxical but also the most important consequence of any innovation.