I Read 4 Books On Innovation
Here’s What I Learnt
Innovation is a catchy word. At its core, innovation means “doing something new,” but this definition only scratches the surface. So, I delved into some books to get more familiar.
Innovation is Gradual
Innovation is nearly always a gradual process. ‘Aha’ moments are rare and even when they are celebrated, the background work and hours invested are not shown.
Archimedes did not leap out of his bath, shouting ‘Eureka’; he probably invented the story later to amuse people.
Discovery of Double Helix structure was just one episode in a long series of related discoveries.
Even the Wight brothers were not successful in the first attempt. Through a crash, they found a problem in right wing. First successful flight came after several years of hard experiments.
Computers! There is no day when you can claim: computers exist now but not the day before.
Same is the case with self-driving cars. Machine learning had been researched in context of self-driving cars since 1980 s. Then there were early prototypes of self-driving cars; incremental advancements lead us to fascinating self-driving cars we see today.
How can we not discuss rockets. From ancient Chinese fireworks to modern-day space exploration, every advancement came through relentless experimentation.
Konstantin Tsiolkovsky and Wernher von Braun laid the foundations, while the Cold War space race increased the pace. Today, companies like SpaceX continue to refine rocket technology.
Innovation involves experiments
Innovation thrives on experimentation, resilience and tolerance of error.
Thomas Edison perfected the light bulb not by inspiration but by experimentation; he and the team tested 6000 different materials for filament.
Marconi’s work in the field of radio communication was product of persistent trial and error. Inspired by scientists like James Clerk Maxwell, Marconi wanted to transmit wireless signals over longer distances.
Facing challenges of interference and signal clarity, Marconi continuously experimented with antenna designs, transmitter configurations, and frequencies. Eventually, laying the groundwork for modern wireless communication.
Not every sector is fortunate enough to benefit from trial and error.
Nuclear industry is among the few. The nuclear industry is depicted as declining, with older plants shutting down faster than new ones emerge.
This stagnation isn’t due to a lack of innovative ideas but from lack of trial and error. It is costly — along with safety concerns — to experiment with nuclear power.
Another is pharmaceutical industry. The returns on R&D investment continue to get low because of strict and rigid policies set by government, which create a pressure to make innovation a process that is anything but messy.
According to a statistic from the book ‘The Innovator’s Spirit,’ in 2018, the world’s 12 largest pharmaceutical companies observed a significant decrease in return: earning just 1.9%, compared to a 10.1% return 9 years ago.
Innovations don’t always begin where we think they will
Neither founders of Yahoo, nor Google set out in search of search engines.
The founders of Instagram were trying to make gaming app.
The founders of Twitter were trying to invent a way for people to find podcasts.
Mark Zuckerberg originally created Facebook ( called Facemash) not to build a global company, but as a humorous project for Harvard students to vote on the best-looking person from photos.
This caused controversy and was banned by the college, however was so popular that it crashed the university’s servers.
Stephanie Kwolek developed Kevlar (a high-strength material) accidentally.
The post it notes was also born serendipitously: the company was trying to find a strong and permanent glue.
Roy Plunkett invented Teflon entirely by accident. He was actually trying to improve refrigerant but the material came out as useless. However, it proved to be heat resistant, chemically inert and strangely…... non-stick.
One of the world’s first antibiotics was discovered by Alexander Fleming when he noticed mold growing on a petri dish containing bacteria, which he had left unattended while on vacation.
Alec Jeffreys, while intending to find methods to detect gene mutations, developed DNA fingerprinting technique.
For years Charles Goodyear, a chemist, struggled to make natural rubber usable.
The problem? It easily melted. Goodyear once experimented by adding sulfur to the rubber. Then, he accidentally dropped some of this treated rubber on a hot stove.
This minor mistake turned out to be a major breakthrough: the heat, combined with the sulfur, created a durable rubber.
Édouard Bénédictus, a multi-talented artist, accidentally broke a glass beaker that didn’t shatter due to the presence of cellulose nitrate. Realizing its potential, he developed safety glass.
Sometimes throwing the away map and using only a compass yield extraordinary result.
Patents Hinder Innovation
The author of ‘How innovation works’, Matt Ridley argues that intellectual property rights actually hinder innovation in several ways.
Patent disputes stagnate innovators in legal battles, wasting precious time and resources.
The Wright brothers spent a big portion of their careers locked in legal battles over their airplane patents with other inventors like Glenn Curtiss.
James Watt (steam engine), Samuel Morse (telegraph), and Guglielmo Marconi (radio) also faced legal challenges over their patents.
Excessively restrictive patents also create barriers to entry, making it harder for smaller players to contribute to innovation. The fear of infringing on someone else’s patent discourages collaboration and sharing of ideas.
There’s little to no proof that patents are necessary for innovation.
Studies show that despite stricter patent protection, innovation have not improved much, and money spent on patent litigation far outweighs the profits generated from them.
Innovation happens sooner or later anyway
Light bulb was invented independently by 21 people in the world.
Calculus was developed independently by Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz, each formulating the concepts around the same time.
Alexander Graham Bell and Elisha Gray simultaneously designed devices to transmit speech electronically and filed patents on the same day.
Without Einstein, Hedrick Lorentz or Poincare would have gotten to special relativity anyway.
Same is the case with steam engines and discovery of DNA.
Best practices are not best for innovation
Best practices lead to results others already have realised.
Galileo Galilei was not content with the story that the sun revolved around the Earth. The geocentric model did not match his observations of star and planets.
Although things took bad turn for him, Galileo inspired scientists like Einstein and Stephen Hawking to look beyond standard practices.
Marie Curie’s achievements were often credited to her husband. While peers worked in laboratories, Curie was compelled to run experiments in a dilapidated warehouse.
Her theory proposed that radioactivity was caused by atoms falling apart. At that time, atom was thought to be indivisible. She had to overcome the scientific establishment to bring her innovation to life.
By setting aside perceived boundary conditions, Curie dared to look beyond best practices and use clues given by radioactivity to reach new conclusions.
Charles and Ray Eames, a husband-and-wife design team, sought to revolutionise furniture design using bent plywood in the 1940s.
Despite initial rejections from manufacturers — who deemed the idea impractical — they built a machine in their kitchen to mold and glue plywood layers.
Their innovative designs became popular with the public and bent plywood became a fashionable material in furniture design.
Jaguar hired aircraft designer, Malcolm Sayer, who applied aeronautical testing techniques to car design.
His unconventional approach split the car into half bonnet and half body, rather than the traditional thirds. The E-Type Jaguar, showcased in 1961, was hailed by Enzo Ferrari as the most beautiful car ever and was included in the Museum of Modern Art’s collection.
Sayer’s innovative methods revolutionized car design by integrating aircraft principles.
Innovation is not just about new ideas; it is about transforming those ideas into tangible solutions that address real-world problems. Fortunately or unfortunately, the path is rarely linear.
