FEI (Financial Executive Institute) Boston held its yearend meeting as a social event at the JFK Museum on the bay.  As you walk in, a revolutionary era outfitted individual plays a colonial era song. Inside are all the modern trappings to display modern historical items.

This made me think about how the old and the new blend at this site and in business. Attending a renewable energy conference recently I was surprised to learn that several people talked about the 100 year history of electric cars.  Thinking that electric vehicles were definitely more recent, I was intrigued enough to Google history of electric car, and the URL I got was http://inventors.about.com/library/weekly/aacarselectrica.htm .

Between 1832 and 1839 (the exact year is uncertain), Robert Anderson of Scotland invented the first crude electric carriage. A small-scale electric car was designed by Professor Stratingh of Groningen, Holland, and built by his assistant Christopher Becker in 1835. Practical and more successful electric road vehicles were invented by both American Thomas Davenport and Scotsmen Robert Davidson around 1842. Both inventors were the first to use non-rechargeable electric cells. Frenchmen Gaston Plante invented a better storage battery in 1865 and his fellow countrymen Camille Faure improved the storage battery in 1881. This improved-capacity storage battery paved the way for electric vehicles to flourish. 

So much for underestimating the extent to which ideas and processes are built upon, and seemingly burst into public view at some late date, when the time is right.

If our current rapt interest in electric cars actually started in the 1830s, what aspect of your business has IP that has languished, or what old success can be dusted off, updated and used extremely profitably?