I’m invariably asked a question to which I have a pretty poor answer: how can my research on the causes of innovation — and the unprecedented and dramatic acceleration of innovation in Britain in sixteenth to nineteenth centuries in particular — be applied to today? What are the policy implications, exactly?
All the inventors I know started as kids taking things (technology/machines) apart and had parents that either turned a blind eye to the destruction or encouraged the exploration - even if the parents weren't technical or driven to understand how stuff works. Bringing that to fruition in a successful profession would definitely be helped by interaction with those that knew the ropes of design, funding, obtaining patents, business...Modern fads in education are doing their level best to quash the drive to think why, how and to take stuff apart to see how it works.
Would you say that the skills, experience and character that one might find on those motivated to invent complements or contradicts those skills and personal qualities that one might find in a successful entrepreneur?
Perhaps. Many inventors do become entrepreneurs, after all. But it's hard to say. Talking about experience and character comes with that risk of descending into platitudes.
Would a successful inventor therefore be found amongst those who possess not only the skills and motivation to invent but also those required to build a successful business from the result?
Not necessarily. After all, many inventors work within organisations. I'd call them successful too, if their innovations get implemented. But it is striking how often inventors also take on entrepreneurial roles - or at least find partners who have the acumen to do it for them. Think of Boulton & Watt - both inventors, but Boulton brought the business skills to the table. There are many such examples I can think of (though with less well known individuals).
Well, there's an interesting side question. If the proposals of an innovator do ultimately get implemented by the organisation for whom they work, does that actually translate in a successful career? It's often those that exploit the innovation that are recognised for their efforts, not necessarily those that create them.
Yes, that's a very interesting question. And is possibly a problem, too. There's a book I've been meaning to read (one of these years), about mid-20thC inventors in America, which shows that actually there were loads of individual inventors, many of them flitting from company to company or even doing work on commission. But that we don't know about any of them at all because companies and their brands took all the credit. That doesn't help spread the improving mentality, if you think it's just something the professional boffins do in a well-stocked R&D big business lab. Rather than something people were (and often still are!) able to do in the garage or the garden shed.
Well, I am actually responsible for innovation and new concept development in a large corporation, and in my experience, the competencies that are rewarded are not necessarily those associated with creativity and inventive thinking. The career structure tends to favour those of project management and risk reduction. This reward structure does not marry well with a desire to discover disruptive innovations.
Yes, this is the model I see often. Those of an inventive bent are either fortunate enough to also possess those entrepreneurial skills, or partner with someone who does. But what of those who achieve neither?
What is the relation between innovation and invention? I suggest that they are different, and that only some innovation is the result of an invention. This, from Wikipedia:
'Innovation is related to, but not the same as, invention:[4] innovation is more apt to involve the practical implementation of an invention (i.e. new / improved ability) to make a meaningful impact in a market or society,[5] and not all innovations require a new invention.[6]'
[4] Bhasin, Kim (2 April 2012). "This Is The Difference Between 'Invention' And 'Innovation'". Business Insider.
[5] "What's the Difference Between Invention and Innovation?", Forbes, 10 September 2015.
[6] Schumpeter, Joseph Alois (1939). Business Cycles. 1. p. 84. Innovation is possible without anything we should identify as invention, and invention does not necessarily induce innovation.
As it happens, I have some views on this! The tl;dr is that I think the distinction is unhelpful, and doesn't reflect how most people use the terms. From the archives of my pre-substack blogs: https://www.antonhowes.com/blog/invention-vs-innovation
Doesn't that piece argue for a distinction between innovation and invention, but just a different distinction to the one used by economists?
'Innovation, as a term, can be put to better uses, bringing with it connotations that are not quite covered by just invention. . . . innovation therefore provides a useful catch-all term for improvements that are both tangible [inventions] and intangible.'
I work in education, where too often people conflate the introduction of new devices such as blackboards, film, radio, television, computers, and the internet with the introduction of innovation in teaching-learning.
Indeed, one of the great frustrations of tech bros is that the introduction of computers and later the internet has not yet led to innovation in teaching-learning, and in particular, has not cured Baumol's cost disease.
Oh my word, this is rife throughout engineering. The idea that if we throw technology at a topic, benefit will always arise. The mantra that we use in my group when someone enthusiastically presents to us new technology is 'what problem are you solving?'
A feature that I find often missed in the discussion of invention, is the process itself. Much is made of the personal qualities required to invent, or the scientific, engineering or entrepreneurial skills required to realise an objective, but not the formal framework that will support one's efforts to have a really good idea in the first place. I don't often see the inventive frameworks explicitly taught. My own enthusiasm for a formal inventive process seems almost niche in the large engineering organisation for whom I work. Perhaps people don't engage with invention because they have never been taught how.
Ah, yes, indeed. Once the problem is revealed, my engineering training allows me to resolve it. But here lies the rub. Half of the inventive framework I now favour deals with defining what the problem actually is. It's amazing how often in the past I would attempt to solve a problem that I had not properly defined. And once I have that properly understood much of the remaining framework leads me to that prior art that offers a strategy to resolve the problem. Hence I husband my mental efforts to only those parts of the problem that are truly novel. This sort of efficiency is key, otherwise, I not only have to solve every problem anew, but I also yield a much smaller volume of possible solution strategies. I rather wish I had been taught all this 20 years ago.
A true inventor like myself can see it in their mind, not all parts put when the parts all come together then you know you are an inventor,..Then ask your self can I invent something else, and if you do you are an inventor.
Another movie for your list: "Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story". However improbable it may seem, it turns out that she was an important inventor, not just a Hollywood actress. Her Wikipedia page summarizes her work, but the movie is worth watching.
I remember when "Popular Science" magazine was being read with interest by schoolchildren, and they were encouraged to do so by teachers, parents, etc. No doubt there still is young people curious about progress, but it does seem to me that a culture of doom and gloom and misanthropy is producing relatively more Greta Thunbergs and relatively fewer Elon Musks. I am one of those who think this negativity is a disgrace to the human spirit, and potentially a self-fulfilling prophecy in the wrong direction. I agree with the conclusion of Matt Ridley's "The Rational Optimist", that the only thing we need to really worry about, is self-fulfilling negativity. Much that is the subject of pessimism should be regarded as challenges that we are more than capable of handling. If the youth were being saturated with this mindset instead of revolutionary "burn down the system" zeal, it would help.
This is a wonderful and largely overlooked perspective on invention. So much public policy seems to focus on macroeconomic variables -- capital cost, taxation. So little seems to attend to the microeconomic details -- alone or in a group? If a group, what size group? How homogeneous? With what goals?
I don't have the scope of your perspective, but from my own experience and limited knowledge, I do perceive that exceptional invention requires a critical mass of inventors with some degree of physical colocation. Humans are innately competitive, but inventing is a game that is hard to score. Yet if you put enough inventors together in the same place, they will figure out who is coming up with original and interesting ideas, and then try to best them.
There is still an element of this in the startups competing in Silicon Valley. But the partition of IP rights among them interferes with the sort of direct collaborations that occurred at Bell Labs or IBM ARC in their heydays. Stanford and Berkeley have partially, but not completely, provided a substitute public forum.
I think it's a rather critical feature of the topic. When innovation is discussed the conversation may either be talking about the technical creative or that business building entrepreneur, but often doesn't explicitly define which one is being addressed. Hence they become synonymous, despite potentially requiring quite different skills, experience and personal qualities.
With regard to competitive innovation, I made some content that describes why it is to the advantage of innovation to avoid innovating alone. You can find it here... https://youtu.be/3QCL5uvTCFk
And finally, yes, anxiety over IP rights seems to drive inventors round the bend. Recently, I was a member of a Facebook group dedicated to invention for only a single day before the local gatekeepers drove me to distraction, and off the site altogether, with their anxiety over the topic.
I recently finished A Man for All Markets by Ed Thorp. Thorp is an accomplished inventor, and his life story provides some important hints about where our inventors might be in the U.S. today. As a boy, he spent his time studying chemistry and physics, pulling mostly harmless pranks and blowing things up. As a grad student and post doc he developed a new system for counting cards and (with Claude Shannon) a wearable computer for winning roulette. But by the time he was a Prof., the temptation of financial innovation and its potentially more lucrative rewards had drawn him into building a hedge fund.
I believe the same story has played out tens, and maybe hundreds of thousands of times with would-be inventors of mechanical, chemical, medical, computer, and other technology over the past 50 years in the U.S. After communism was defeated, there was no longer a sense of urgency or deep purpose in building better spy planes or rockets. Capitalism had won; why not join the capitalists?
If that's correct, then at least part of what is missing is an inspiring vision of the future,.of what we might achieve if we all worked together, each building something new.
The English in some cases seemed propelled by (a mis) reading of Darwin into a version of what we in the U.S. called "manifest destiny" through much of industrialization. Of course it's impossible to know how much that influenced individual choices. But from reading Strachey's Eminent Victorians at least, one has a sense that the same sort of zeitgeist that existed in cold war era R&D labs in the US might have been there in English colonial aspirations.
All the inventors I know started as kids taking things (technology/machines) apart and had parents that either turned a blind eye to the destruction or encouraged the exploration - even if the parents weren't technical or driven to understand how stuff works. Bringing that to fruition in a successful profession would definitely be helped by interaction with those that knew the ropes of design, funding, obtaining patents, business...Modern fads in education are doing their level best to quash the drive to think why, how and to take stuff apart to see how it works.
Would you say that the skills, experience and character that one might find on those motivated to invent complements or contradicts those skills and personal qualities that one might find in a successful entrepreneur?
Perhaps. Many inventors do become entrepreneurs, after all. But it's hard to say. Talking about experience and character comes with that risk of descending into platitudes.
Would a successful inventor therefore be found amongst those who possess not only the skills and motivation to invent but also those required to build a successful business from the result?
Not necessarily. After all, many inventors work within organisations. I'd call them successful too, if their innovations get implemented. But it is striking how often inventors also take on entrepreneurial roles - or at least find partners who have the acumen to do it for them. Think of Boulton & Watt - both inventors, but Boulton brought the business skills to the table. There are many such examples I can think of (though with less well known individuals).
Well, there's an interesting side question. If the proposals of an innovator do ultimately get implemented by the organisation for whom they work, does that actually translate in a successful career? It's often those that exploit the innovation that are recognised for their efforts, not necessarily those that create them.
Yes, that's a very interesting question. And is possibly a problem, too. There's a book I've been meaning to read (one of these years), about mid-20thC inventors in America, which shows that actually there were loads of individual inventors, many of them flitting from company to company or even doing work on commission. But that we don't know about any of them at all because companies and their brands took all the credit. That doesn't help spread the improving mentality, if you think it's just something the professional boffins do in a well-stocked R&D big business lab. Rather than something people were (and often still are!) able to do in the garage or the garden shed.
Well, I am actually responsible for innovation and new concept development in a large corporation, and in my experience, the competencies that are rewarded are not necessarily those associated with creativity and inventive thinking. The career structure tends to favour those of project management and risk reduction. This reward structure does not marry well with a desire to discover disruptive innovations.
Yes, this is the model I see often. Those of an inventive bent are either fortunate enough to also possess those entrepreneurial skills, or partner with someone who does. But what of those who achieve neither?
This is part of why I liked Ford v Ferrari as a story if inventing. Shelby was the perfect partner for the inventor Miles.
What is the relation between innovation and invention? I suggest that they are different, and that only some innovation is the result of an invention. This, from Wikipedia:
'Innovation is related to, but not the same as, invention:[4] innovation is more apt to involve the practical implementation of an invention (i.e. new / improved ability) to make a meaningful impact in a market or society,[5] and not all innovations require a new invention.[6]'
[4] Bhasin, Kim (2 April 2012). "This Is The Difference Between 'Invention' And 'Innovation'". Business Insider.
[5] "What's the Difference Between Invention and Innovation?", Forbes, 10 September 2015.
[6] Schumpeter, Joseph Alois (1939). Business Cycles. 1. p. 84. Innovation is possible without anything we should identify as invention, and invention does not necessarily induce innovation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Innovation
As it happens, I have some views on this! The tl;dr is that I think the distinction is unhelpful, and doesn't reflect how most people use the terms. From the archives of my pre-substack blogs: https://www.antonhowes.com/blog/invention-vs-innovation
Doesn't that piece argue for a distinction between innovation and invention, but just a different distinction to the one used by economists?
'Innovation, as a term, can be put to better uses, bringing with it connotations that are not quite covered by just invention. . . . innovation therefore provides a useful catch-all term for improvements that are both tangible [inventions] and intangible.'
In a sense, yes. Though invention just becomes a subset of innovation. So in most cases they become interchangeable.
I work in education, where too often people conflate the introduction of new devices such as blackboards, film, radio, television, computers, and the internet with the introduction of innovation in teaching-learning.
Indeed, one of the great frustrations of tech bros is that the introduction of computers and later the internet has not yet led to innovation in teaching-learning, and in particular, has not cured Baumol's cost disease.
Oh my word, this is rife throughout engineering. The idea that if we throw technology at a topic, benefit will always arise. The mantra that we use in my group when someone enthusiastically presents to us new technology is 'what problem are you solving?'
A feature that I find often missed in the discussion of invention, is the process itself. Much is made of the personal qualities required to invent, or the scientific, engineering or entrepreneurial skills required to realise an objective, but not the formal framework that will support one's efforts to have a really good idea in the first place. I don't often see the inventive frameworks explicitly taught. My own enthusiasm for a formal inventive process seems almost niche in the large engineering organisation for whom I work. Perhaps people don't engage with invention because they have never been taught how.
I don't think you are taught how, not for me I saw a problem and design and fixed it, I can see how too in my mind.
Ah, yes, indeed. Once the problem is revealed, my engineering training allows me to resolve it. But here lies the rub. Half of the inventive framework I now favour deals with defining what the problem actually is. It's amazing how often in the past I would attempt to solve a problem that I had not properly defined. And once I have that properly understood much of the remaining framework leads me to that prior art that offers a strategy to resolve the problem. Hence I husband my mental efforts to only those parts of the problem that are truly novel. This sort of efficiency is key, otherwise, I not only have to solve every problem anew, but I also yield a much smaller volume of possible solution strategies. I rather wish I had been taught all this 20 years ago.
Chain Reaction 1996
Excellent. Added, thanks.
A true inventor like myself can see it in their mind, not all parts put when the parts all come together then you know you are an inventor,..Then ask your self can I invent something else, and if you do you are an inventor.
Another movie for your list: "Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story". However improbable it may seem, it turns out that she was an important inventor, not just a Hollywood actress. Her Wikipedia page summarizes her work, but the movie is worth watching.
Fantastic suggestion, thank you
I remember when "Popular Science" magazine was being read with interest by schoolchildren, and they were encouraged to do so by teachers, parents, etc. No doubt there still is young people curious about progress, but it does seem to me that a culture of doom and gloom and misanthropy is producing relatively more Greta Thunbergs and relatively fewer Elon Musks. I am one of those who think this negativity is a disgrace to the human spirit, and potentially a self-fulfilling prophecy in the wrong direction. I agree with the conclusion of Matt Ridley's "The Rational Optimist", that the only thing we need to really worry about, is self-fulfilling negativity. Much that is the subject of pessimism should be regarded as challenges that we are more than capable of handling. If the youth were being saturated with this mindset instead of revolutionary "burn down the system" zeal, it would help.
This is a wonderful and largely overlooked perspective on invention. So much public policy seems to focus on macroeconomic variables -- capital cost, taxation. So little seems to attend to the microeconomic details -- alone or in a group? If a group, what size group? How homogeneous? With what goals?
I don't have the scope of your perspective, but from my own experience and limited knowledge, I do perceive that exceptional invention requires a critical mass of inventors with some degree of physical colocation. Humans are innately competitive, but inventing is a game that is hard to score. Yet if you put enough inventors together in the same place, they will figure out who is coming up with original and interesting ideas, and then try to best them.
There is still an element of this in the startups competing in Silicon Valley. But the partition of IP rights among them interferes with the sort of direct collaborations that occurred at Bell Labs or IBM ARC in their heydays. Stanford and Berkeley have partially, but not completely, provided a substitute public forum.
I think it's a rather critical feature of the topic. When innovation is discussed the conversation may either be talking about the technical creative or that business building entrepreneur, but often doesn't explicitly define which one is being addressed. Hence they become synonymous, despite potentially requiring quite different skills, experience and personal qualities.
With regard to competitive innovation, I made some content that describes why it is to the advantage of innovation to avoid innovating alone. You can find it here... https://youtu.be/3QCL5uvTCFk
And finally, yes, anxiety over IP rights seems to drive inventors round the bend. Recently, I was a member of a Facebook group dedicated to invention for only a single day before the local gatekeepers drove me to distraction, and off the site altogether, with their anxiety over the topic.
I recently finished A Man for All Markets by Ed Thorp. Thorp is an accomplished inventor, and his life story provides some important hints about where our inventors might be in the U.S. today. As a boy, he spent his time studying chemistry and physics, pulling mostly harmless pranks and blowing things up. As a grad student and post doc he developed a new system for counting cards and (with Claude Shannon) a wearable computer for winning roulette. But by the time he was a Prof., the temptation of financial innovation and its potentially more lucrative rewards had drawn him into building a hedge fund.
I believe the same story has played out tens, and maybe hundreds of thousands of times with would-be inventors of mechanical, chemical, medical, computer, and other technology over the past 50 years in the U.S. After communism was defeated, there was no longer a sense of urgency or deep purpose in building better spy planes or rockets. Capitalism had won; why not join the capitalists?
If that's correct, then at least part of what is missing is an inspiring vision of the future,.of what we might achieve if we all worked together, each building something new.
The English in some cases seemed propelled by (a mis) reading of Darwin into a version of what we in the U.S. called "manifest destiny" through much of industrialization. Of course it's impossible to know how much that influenced individual choices. But from reading Strachey's Eminent Victorians at least, one has a sense that the same sort of zeitgeist that existed in cold war era R&D labs in the US might have been there in English colonial aspirations.