Technical arbitrage

There are huge opportunities to take technology that is well-known and undervalued in one context and apply it in another where it is unknown but valuable. You could call this technical arbitrage, analogous to financial arbitrage, taking advantage of the price difference of something in two markets.

As with financial arbitrage, the hard part is spotting opportunities, not necessarily acting on them. If you want to be a hero with regular expressions, as in the xkcd cartoon below, the key isn't knowing regular expressions well. The key is knowing about regular expressions in a context where no one else does.

To spot a technical arbitrage opportunity, you need to know what that technology can and cannot (easily) do. You also need to recognize situations where the technology can help. You don't need to be able to stand up to a quiz show style oral exam.

Related post: You can be a hero with a simple idea