CONCEPT
The Discharge Curve
The adoption pattern of a category-three product: flat for a long time, then nearly vertical — not gradually vertical, but the way a wall is vertical, with a force proportional to the stored pressure behind it.
The discharge curve is the adoption pattern that Say's framework predicts for products meeting accumulated latent demand. Unlike the familiar S-curve of innovation diffusion — which describes adoption through persuasion, with gradual acceleration as awareness builds and social proof compounds — the discharge curve describes release of stored pressure through a suddenly adequate channel. The shape is diagnostic: flat during the pre-adequacy period when partial solutions appear and produce only localized release, then near-vertical the instant the adequate supply arrives. The speed is determined not by product quality, marketing effectiveness, or network effects, but by the depth and duration of the accumulated need.
In The You On AI Field Guide
ChatGPT's trajectory to fifty million users in two months is the empirical signature of a discharge curve. The comparison numbers are diagnostic: the telephone took seventy-five years to reach fifty million users, radio thirty-eight years, television thirteen, the internet four. The conventional explanation — each