Consider a fashion in music, clothes, tech, research topics, or most anything. You could use this fashion at five possible times:
- Well before it is fashionable.
- When it is first fashionable.
- Before popularity peaks.
- After popularity peaks.
- Long after it is fashionable.
These five usage times can signal five positive features:
- Insight into what will be in fashion.
- Power to make people follow a your fashion concept.
- Connections to people who learn of fashion early.
- Cooperativeness in trying to match others.
- Strong behavior habits.
Now people who value insight highly often assume that earlier usage of a fashion is always a more positive signal. But most people see using something well before it is fashionable to be a bad sign – yes it shows your insight, but it also shows your lack of power and connections.
This is even true in academia, where people claim to value insight highly; really, even academics value power and connections more than insight. Don’t assume you will be rewarded for working on a research concept well before it is fashionable.
Added 24Jan: To clarify, I mean that even if you do have genuine insight about what will be fashionable, but not power or connections, then on average, considering both your rewards when you work on a yet-to-be-fashionable topic and later when it becomes fashionable, you’d have been better rewarded if you worked on something else.