[hawleyal]

Designers often describe the terms convention and intuition as contributing to good user experience. Convention is the "institutional knowledge" described in the article. Intuition is how easy something is to use without prior experience or convention. For instance, a car steering wheel is not intuitive but is rather conventional. If you make a car without a steering wheel, it may be better, but it won't be as popular.

Regardless, I don't think the article accurately represents other forces in adoption and popularity outside of convention and intuition. There are many things such as chance, social trends, commercial backing, et al.

[Outdoorsman]

Ctrl F quickly revealed that you're the first poster to mention "convention" ("institutional knowledge" decoded) and emphasize its importance...

By definition, half the human population is below average in intelligence (half above)...average people typically go with the flow...the above average often question the flow...the gifted are constantly aware of the flow, but are often complacent if they're not in a position to force-feed change...

Resistance to change is a powerful force, especially when your business (owner), or job (employee) may be at stake in the form of risk-taking that will lead to uncertain outcomes...