The term I always loved for this phenomenon is "steam engine time" (as in "it steam-engines when it…
The term I always loved for this phenomenon is "steam engine time" (as in "it steam-engines when it comes steam-engine time"), but unfortunately, I can't recall exactly where that well-known quote comes from (and to those who are unaware of the quote, the phrase is totally opaque).
Being part of the zeitgeist -- inventing the steam engine during steam-engine time -- is not all that desirable. The zeitgeist is crowded, and generally whoever comes to the space with the most resources gets both the money and the credit for the new invention (regardless of whether they even produced any kind of independent work -- in the case of Apple, it's pretty common for them to buy the rights to existing research or hire someone who has already developed something interesting & then claim to have invented it internally, for PR reasons).
As long as you're a product of your time, you're doomed to invent the inventions of your time. Much better to be ahead of your time -- following another track that your peers will double back on sometime in the future -- because then at least you will be remembered as having produced something interesting, even if (as with Ada Lovelace, George Boole, Thomas Bayes, and Ted Nelson) your ideas do not get properly implemented during your lifetime.
I've written about this a bit: