You are criticising someone for having an opinion. 15 years is sufficient time to get _something_ to a prototype that has investors clamouring, if not the first production runs.
By comparison, William Shockley filed his patent in June 1948, and Texas Instruments started making transistors for portable radios in 1954. Different technologies move at different rates. Perhaps graphene needs the modern-day equivalent of a Fairchild Semiconductor.
Also, the difficulty of "figuring out affordable, high quality, bulk production methods" of a technology has little to do with the serendipity of its discovery.
The first patent on a transistor was assigned in 1933 to a man named Julius Lilienfeld, who invented (conceptualized) the MESFET. He didn't get the same press coverage as Shockley, and also failed to commercialize. Shockley's 1948 patent was relatively late.
Perhaps we just haven't had a "Shockley moment" in graphene yet. It would be nice if these other people stopped getting so much press, though.
The fundamental difference between Lilienfeld and Shockley is that Lilienfeld didn't or wasn't able to even build a prototype. [0]
"Sadly, Lilienfeld does not appear to have ever built a working prototype of his device; indeed, there’s no evidence that he ever even tried. He also never published any of his work other than as patent applications, so the world would remain ignorant of his insights for another two decades, when Bell Labs started working on what would become the transistor. "
While Lilienfeld had probably given some inspiration or ideas to Shockley, it took actual implementation before it could be turned into product reality. So no, it wasn't 20 years between invention and application. Rather it took 20 years before someone actually put that theory into practical use. And once it was turned into practical use, industry commercialization followed rapidly. It didn't take 20 years after the Bell Labs' implementation for first applications to work.
So it's worth asking what is different here. If people are building prototypes and small scale implementations, what is truly getting in the way of commercialization?
Graphene was discovered. The transistor was invented. There was no question that it would be used to replace tubes/valves in devices such as radios. It was designed for those applications. For solving those problems.
Usually it’s more like 25-50 years. Sometimes it can be longer.
Figuring out how to bulk manufacture something is often just as hard as the initial discovery. There are a ton of technologies that are in the literature but can’t be purchased because they are too hard to manufacture.
By comparison, William Shockley filed his patent in June 1948, and Texas Instruments started making transistors for portable radios in 1954. Different technologies move at different rates. Perhaps graphene needs the modern-day equivalent of a Fairchild Semiconductor.
Also, the difficulty of "figuring out affordable, high quality, bulk production methods" of a technology has little to do with the serendipity of its discovery.