We are victims of change. Huge change. Change that some tried to predict but that most of the rest of us did not see coming. Change that fits at least some of the characteristics of a Black Swan.

What is startling is that the engineer who invented the digital camera worked for the giant of photography, Kodak. Kodak owned the patent for what the engineer invented. Yet, Kodak proceeded to bury the technology rather than commercialize it. Had it instead adopted the technology on a timely basis, today it could be the Apple of digital imaging. The New York TImes' Lens blog offers a great summary of the invention of the digital camera and Kodak's failure to embrace it. The attitude at Kodak was that no one needed digital photos. Film and photos printed on paper, using silver halide technology, had ruled for 100 years and Kodak ruled film and paper.photography. How wrong was that conclusion! Evidence was ignored as digital photography caught hold. Biases reined at Kodak.

Regret is a powerful emotion. We don't want to feel regret and seek to avoid it. We not only can feel regret after making a choice, regret that we did not choose what might have been a better option, but we are capable of forecasting our future regret and of taking action now to avoid future regret for not acting. Of course, pursuing an option because we anticipate regret if we don't act does not assure that the choice we make is a "good" risk. Properly assessing the risk and potential return of an option and and whether we act on the option are separable activities. So if regret can get us off dead center and lead us to act, it does not remedy how our mental biases, shortcuts and errors hinder clear-eyed risk assessment.