I don't disagree with the thesis of the article for inventions that were destined to be successful but I think it exhibits a strong sense of surviorship bias in predicting anything contemporary to be in the same league. I think transformative inventions like airplanes or index funds can by definition only be defined in retrospect and the odds that anything contemporary can be predicted to turn out the same way are slim. I wonder what a good order of magnitude would be for failed inventions vs successful ones, maybe 10000:1?