In 1990 I was approached by a headhunter for a role with a blue chip looking to rollout barcode technology. At the time its adoption rate was extremely low despite some 30 years of development. However it went on to become the defacto standard internationally.
When I first heard about near field communication (NFC) I had a similar reaction to that of barcodes. It had the potential to become a global standard but unlike barcodes it was not centralised but fully distributed and personalisable. This interested me and I spent 2005 looking at the technology and seeking to understand how it might be used and adopted.