The Siege Curve: How Disruptive Technologies Are Really Adopted

For disruptive technologies, the hard middle of adoption is not a trough of disillusionment. It is a siege. A working technology is pressed from outside by lawsuits, new laws and public backlash, and strained from inside by skills shortages, bottlenecks at scale, infrastructure that lags demand and investors demanding revenue, all at once. This paper sets out the Siege Curve™: five stages, four observable gates and four lines (consumer usage, business adoption, capital and the number of viable firms). It explains why consumers adopt while institutions wait, why capital floods in and then reprices, why most early firms fail and why the pioneer rarely wins. It also explains how the survivors end up writing the rules and raising a drawbridge behind them. The model is illustrated with sound film, home video, DVD, streaming, electricity and ride-hailing. It is then applied to generative AI as of October 2026, with three dated predictions by which it can be judged. Working paper, version 1.1, 2 November 2026. Comments welcome. AI disclosure: the author used Claude (Anthropic) to assist with research, drafting and editing. The model and its arguments are the author’s own, and he takes full responsibility for the content.