The innovation “frame”
January 18th, 2008
Cross-posted at The Huffington Post
Professional circumstances have given me a monster backstage pass to see how innovation really works in many countries around the world, as well as in our own. I want to bring this knowledge home to fuel a national conversation on these important issues. And so with these words I am pleased to launch “Innovation Nation” as my offering to the blogosphere.
I begin my first HuffPost with some puzzlement. It is January 18, 2008, the presidential campaign has been in full swing for longer than most of us would like to admit, and the “innovation” issue is still conspicuously MIA from discourse and debate.
We’ve had the Iraq “frame,” and now the recession and change “frames.” But what about the Innovation “frame?” Are we just not getting the importance of innovation? Vannevar Bush, presidential science advisor, said it best in 1947, “A nation that loses its science and technology will lose control of its destiny.” More recently the National Academy of Science referred to the problem as a “gathering storm.” And in my own recent book, Innovation Nation, I state that America is losing its innovation edge with profound implications for our security and prosperity as a nation.
Is anybody listening out there in leader-land?
History will show America’s current innovation melt-down to have been an egregious self-inflicted wound. I would need ten times this space just to recite a list of dismal facts about how poorly our national innovation system is performing. Some headlines: our young scientists are abandoning their careers with increasing frequency, talent is increasingly not coming to our storied shores, our public education and R & D are showing significant erosion, we’re strapped for cash, other countries are leading us in a growing number of scientific fields, and nobody seems to care.
The innovation frame in national politics has been conspicuous by its absence. Instead, we have heard increasingly frequent (and tedious) calls for change. But change is driven by innovation, which is the wellspring of progress. Change has to be about something or it is just novelty. In other words, if change is the answer we seek, what is the question? And, it is a multitude of changes - driven by innovation capability and harnessed to a compelling national idea - that leads to transformation. Otherwise, change is just… change.
Wise corporate leaders have always known that change is galvanized in the presence of a set of big ideas that set the vector and allow countless instances of innovation to drive it. We need to have a sense of where we are going if we are to arrive at a meaningful destination.
I have three hypotheses about why we haven’t heard more about innovation.
1) It’s hard to define. True enough - most people still have a hard enough time distinguishing between creativity and innovation, let alone defining the role of entrepreneurship in innovation. Many policy makers will make the elementary mistake of equating innovation with science and high tech, when it fact it has to do with a broader array of business model and process innovation that can be driven by design and the arts.
2) It’s hard to talk about. If we can’t define it, how can we hope to have a meaningful conversation about it?
3) We don’t have the right national narrative for innovation. This gets to the heart of the matter. Talking about innovation feels a little like talking about preventive medicine: we know it’s important, but it never seems to reach the highest priority level. On the other hand, throw in a little chest pain and it’s time to call 911. That’s why I have called our present situation a Silent Sputnik. Unlike the original Sputnik in 1957 that galvanized our country into action with its first (and sadly last) national innovation drive, our present situation lacks urgency and therefore it’s no surprise that we’re not taking needed action.
Which brings us to the presidential election. Whether the agenda is innovation or change – it must start at the top. There is no company that has succeeded at a large-scale change or innovation effort without involvement and advocacy from the CEO. Well, we are voting for the equivalent of a CEO of this country in November and I think we deserve to hear from the candidates as to how they view innovation in much greater detail. We need answers from them to such questions as:
* What they plan to do about our innovation “problem” in all its many-headed glory: from science policy to education, strategic investment and the formation of new kinds of global alliances.
* How they see the process of developing a meaningful national strategy for innovation.
* How they plan to allocate stewardship and responsibility for executing that strategy.
* What kind of metrics they plan to use and how they will define success.
* What they plan to invest in.
Perhaps most importantly, what is their point of view. How do they connect the dots into a diagnosis of our innovation “problem” is and how do they frame our innovation challenge in light of a larger national narrative?
We urgently need a robust national conversation on these issues. As a nation, we deserve it. And if I have anything to do about it, we will get one.
In posts to come, I’m going to cover such topics as how innovation “works” in other countries such as Finland and China that are racing for a new innovation high ground. I’m going to document what’s going on in this country - both the hopeful signs as well as the dismal facts. And in doing so, I hope to enlist you in helping to build Innovation Nation right here in the United States of America.
January 18th, 2008 at 4:17 pm
Welcome to the Blogosphere, John. I look forward to much interesting discussion on what is truly a critically important issue.
January 22nd, 2008 at 4:01 pm
You can’t build the Innovation Nation without having the tools necessary to Innovate. America’s patent system is a vast library of ideas to be mined for inspiration. However, today’s tools make it too difficult to find and contextualize existing works. Now, using free tools at http://www.sparkip.com, you can quickly research vast numbers of patents and new technologies available for licensing from the worlds premier institutions. This is done by creating categories of ideas that contain conceptually similar patents. Betters tools to improve the efficiency of the Innovation Nation. John, good luck with your blog topic. I look forward to your future entries!
January 29th, 2008 at 8:17 am
Greetings:
I found your “piece” as part of an advertisement attached to gmail as I sent off a draft response to a Wall Street Journal Section on technology in the next 10 years (January 28, 2008). Here are some thoughts:
I have some interest and experience in the matter of innovation and entrepreneurship. I have developed and patented the smallest keyboard for touch typing. It compacts down to a size that would add only 1/5″ of an inch thickness to a pocket size device. Consider the WSJ prediction: “People will be able to do anything on a hand-held that they can now do on a desktop computer. “ (R1). Plainly, people touch type on their desktop computer today, so will want to touch type on their hand-held device of tomorrow. “Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door.” It doesn’t quite work that way.
There are two problems. One is the lack of vision of those in the field. Alan Kay while working for Xerox PARC invented the graphic user interface. It went nowhere at Xerox. George Gerpheide invented the touch pad, used on almost every laptop computer today. He was rejected by every major computer manufacturer. (See ScientificCOMPUTING.com, December 2007 and January, 2008 (e.g. p. 20). Western Union was not interested in the telephone. Talking pictures were rejected by the major movie studios. Beethoven was buried in a pauper’s grave. I have a coffee mug with a picture of a king in medieval garb, pulling a sword out of a rack, obviously getting ready for battle. His aids are pointing to a salesman with an M-60 machine gun. The king, not bothering to look, responds: “No! I can’t be bothered to see any crazy salesman. We’ve got a battle to fight.” Typical reaction.
The second problem is the difficulties of starting a high-tech business away from the few hotbeds of high-tech startups – e.g. Silicon Valley or Boston. Some locales (e.g. Oregon, Chicago) are actively attempting to address the problem. Others are not.
I do not know if your book addresses these issues, and I do not know what are the solutions. However, I agree that there may be a problem looming for our country.
Good luck with your book!
Brunn W. Roysden, Jr.
January 30th, 2008 at 7:09 am
You make an excellent point regarding how little attention we are paying to innovation. Current trends appear to make our schools more lock-step and “right answer” oriented when the opposite is needed. I learned a lot from reading A Whole New Mind by Daniel Pink. Perhaps his six areas would be a starting point for discussing one aspect of the problem, i.e. undervaluing wholistic, intuitive thinking.
Good luck getting the word out. I am grateful you are trying to get this issue addressed!
Carol Steele
February 26th, 2008 at 7:31 am
Dear & Respected Mr. John Kao,
It is of much interest to me to go through this article of yours and the first Chapter of ‘ Innovation Nation ‘.
As an Engineering & Management Consultant from India - now on tour in USA-
I am able to get definitions of various Versions of Innovation as you have
Rightly put in.
The whole world looks up to USA for Innovations .USA has now transformed.
From a Nation of ‘Best of Europeans ‘ to one of ‘Best of the World’.
It has the brain trust and the gold chest to innovate and change the humanity
Your lines are thought provoking.
I have a small request to make to the author.
Through these columns, I solicit your Complementary articles on Innovation as a Guide to the Indian Engineering Community under the present context.
I am glad to tell that I am the Chairman /Editor of a Professional Journal by our Indian Institution of Plant Engineers.It is the Plant Engineering Journal - PEJ.
We will be glad to publish your article in our next PEJ. Our PEJ is a free Journal to our Members in India. Email to subras3d@gmail.com
May 24th, 2008 at 10:33 am
As an innovator, I believe that the core reason why innovation as a process is failing in the US and EU is that the timelines for return on investments have shortened to the point where any meaningful innovation is ‘priced’ out of the market. The success of private equity firms who ’streamline’ businesses have created a demand for huge liquidation events in 2 to 3 year. Given the fact that it takes 5-10 years to do something interesting in chemistry or pharma or physics or engineering simply kills any investment in these long term innovations that could truly change the economic fate of an organization.
The investment market place has migrated to short term tactical activities. Most VCs are not interested in building businesses anymore: they make more money by building incremental technology and selling that to Google and Cisco. It reduces their risk AND it frees their money every 2 to 3 years to try something else. The fact that they don’t have to invest in sales/marketing/distribution/product engineering simply makes their ROI even better.
Even the governmental research budgets have contracted their time lines. Research used to have 5-10 year horizons, but that too is brought back to short term activities. On top of that, particularly in the US, the governmental investment in innovation has actually shrunk and whole teams are laid off from the National Labs.
The relentless march to show growth and increased profitability each quarter has reorganized American business away from innovation. Secondly, financial rewards for scientists and engineers have been dwarfed by the compensation that is given to non-innovators. It is not rocket science that bright young people choose better compensating opportunities over science and engineering jobs. Top researchers are already leaving for India, China, and Singapore, indicating that the pendulum has swung past the point of no return. The capital markets demand positive returns and thus do not advocate taking on new, long term, risk that is needed for real innovation. And since the US government is broke, it too has no muscle to drive the change that is needed to fire up the innovation engine. No supply of new scientists and engineers, a market mentality that focuses on short term margin and profitability, and a government that has no money: this is the current reality in the US that does not bode well for restarting its innovation engine.