reversing camber very obvious? sure, but why did so many companies suddenly have reverse camber in a 1-2 season span?
That can be attributed to consumers. More often than not, people are resistant to change especially if they are already comfortable with current offerings. It takes time to build up reputations in these types of situations. In the reverse camber world, there has been a recent influx of new snowboarders in the past couple of years. More and more riders were on reverse camber boards. Word got around... and the tech worked!
That's why you saw what seemed to be a sudden and drastic change in favor of rocker boards. In the ski world, Shane McConkey was the spokesperson for rockered skis. He is arguably one of the reasons rockers became popular with snowboarders as well.
It's sort of like what's going on with Burton's ICS boards. The first few boards with it were pretty much avoided like the plague. Now I'm slowly starting to see people come around to it as more and more riders demo it more than once.
Year 1: "Eww, ICS is just another evil Burton business ploy"
Year 2: "Oh, more Burton boards are starting to have it"
Year 3: "Just tried it out, actually not that bad. Not my cup of tea still, but not as bad as I thought"
Who knows... in a couple of more years we might be seeing a lot more ICS supporters. Mind you, the rocker thing is a much bigger scale than the ICS thing I used as an example.
The camber profile issue is natural in that it wasn't a group of R&D people sitting down and going "What can we do to change the game? What can we do that is so different and unique? What can we design that will be unique?"
It was more probably like, "Okay, what different types of shapes can we try out with rocker technology? Where should we place the camber? Underfoot? Outside of the feet? Between the feet?"
See the difference here? Of course this is just a theory of mine. Maybe NeverSummer did sit down and think that they were inventing something unique and revolutionary. I just personally don't think that was the case.