Mollick: electricity took 30 years, the assembly line took 3

What's this about?

Mollick notes he keeps hearing — and has himself told — the story that it took 30 years to get productivity gains from electricity, used as a reason to expect a slow AI payoff. His counter: not every technology works that way. Ford went from inventing the assembly line to full deployment in three years, cutting car building time by 88%.

Why is the electricity story so popular?

Because it is comforting and it is true. Factories bought electric motors and simply bolted them where the steam engine had been, keeping the central-driveshaft layout; the gains only came decades later when someone rebuilt the factory around the fact that each machine could now have its own motor. The lesson — reorganisation, not adoption, produces the gain — is genuinely important. Mollick's point is that it is one data point being used as a law.

What's the community saying?

1. The distinction that matters is who has to change: electricity required rebuilding factories owned by other people, while the assembly line was Ford reorganising Ford.
2. Which makes the useful question for AI not "how long did electricity take" but "how much of the required reorganisation is inside one organisation's control?"
3. Mollick is explicitly criticising his own past framing, which is rarer than it should be.