Jason Kottke, Big ideas: from silly to obvious:

From the tail end of an article on a global guest-worker program, a quote by economist Lant Pritchett on how people perceive game-changing ideas over time.

Pritchett says he has a model of how game-changing ideas are received over time, and it works something like this: “Crazy. Crazy. Crazy. Obvious.”

And then the piece just leaves us hanging on that gem. It appears that Pritchett hasn’t written too much about that particular notion, but I did find a slide in a presentation he did that puts it a slightly different way:

silly, controversial, progressive, then obvious

Sounds about right. (via sam arbesman)