10 Questions On Innovation
"I started this Section to link the ODBMS.ORG portal to the greater context of innovation.
I believe this is important. In our industry innovation plays a key role.
But how does innovation occur?
Read in this Section what outstanding innovators have to say about this topic by giving answers to 10 questions On Innovation.
Learning from great innovators is one source of inspiration, but not a guarantee...
Enjoy. -- Roberto V. Zicari (Editor)"
Read these interviews with great innovators:
10 Questions On Innovation to Alan Kay
April 2006 - Alan Kay is one of the earliest pioneers of object-oriented programming, personal computing, and graphical user interfaces. He invented or co-invented object-oriented programming; Smalltalk; the 1968 FLEX Machine, a desktop computer with graphical user interface and object-oriented operating system; the Dynabook, a laptop computer for children; Alto, the first networked PC; and participated in the design of the ARPAnet.
1. Who are your favorite innovators?
Hundreds if not thousands of important innovators have flourished over the 400 years that we've had real science, and antiquity shows that even though it was much harder to innovate in the deep past, there have been deep seminal thinkers operating in most generations. My interest in reading all sorts of things makes it difficult to set down a short list here. (Who doesn't love Archimedes, Eratosthenes, Aristarchus, etc.?)
In our own time and my own field, I was particularly struck by the ideas of Licklider (man-computer symbiosis), Ivan Sutherland (invention of interactive computer graphics and object oriented modeling), Dave Evans (the father of continuous tone 3D graphics), Nygaard and Dahl (Simula), Bob Barton (the B5000 computer), John McCarthy (Lisp), Seymour Papert (Logo and constructivist education), Marvin Minsky, Doug Engelbart, Bob Taylor, etc.
In my own generation I've been tremendously impressed by the work of Butler Lampson, Chuck Thacker, Dan Ingalls, Adele Goldberg, Vint Cerf, Bob Kahn, Nicholas Negroponte, Carl Hewitt, Paul MacCready, and many more from the 60s and 70s communities funded by ARPA and Xerox PARC.
In the generation(s) after me, I have been very impressed with Dave Reed's distributed object system, Bill Atkinson's Hypercard, Mitchel Resnick's starLOGO, Brewster Kahle's file systems, Doug Lenat's CYC research, Takeo Igarashi's UI work, etc.
The Draper Prize of the NAE is aimed not just at engineering feats but at those that really got out there and benefited humanity:
integrated circuit, jet engine, GPS, Internet, Personal Computing, etc.
One of my favorites from the early 19th century is the guy who invented the hydraulic ram pump, a truly elegant simple outstanding machine.
2. What do you consider are the most promising innovations of the last 3 years?
I can't think of any in computing (we are in a very incremental and almost moribund period in our field) but this could simply be "old-fogeyism" on my part. If the content of the $100 Laptop is done well and we can figure out how to help the helpers of the children who will get them, then this should qualify as a grand innovation (perhaps in 2008?).
But if we widen the scope, there are some very promising ideas that grapple with some of the largest human problems.
a. For example, about 70% of the world does not have drinking water of high enough quality. The conversion of low quality water to high quality water requires both new technologies (e.g. membranes for reverse osmosis) and energy (for forcing water backwards through the osmotic membranes, or distillation, etc.). Some very good things are now being done here, including a very inexpensive and efficient tidal-powered high quality water producer, etc.
b. I forget when the modifications to bacteria to produce fuel from garbage were done. The insulin modification was done longer ago, but I think I recall seeing that some good fuel production recombinant modifications were done more recently. I think we could claim that the progress in this general area are such to be a promising innovation.
c. Another innovation that has gotten particularly important over the last 3 years is the joining of a number of fields into a real brain science, that has led to a much better understanding of brain chemistry, process, psychology, and pharmacology.
3. What helped you to become a successful innovator?
No one has benefited more from their community than I have (see: "The Power of the Context" - PDF). Beyond that, my interest in helping children learn how to think (catalyzed by Papert and my dismay with adult behavior) and wide reading got me hooked into the deep implications of computing as the next 500 year "big deal" since the printing press. This made it much easier to not get sucked into the whirlpool of current technical problems and to focus on "what should the technology be doing regardless of what it is doing now?". Also, "artists" are people who have to do art regardless of all else, and fundamental research and engineering is an art form whose best practitioners are kind of compulsive about making things happen. Xerox PARC was a concentration of technological artists with enlightened funding and organization provided by Bob Taylor. It was the perfect atmosphere for people with artistic visions.
4. Did you pay a price to be an innovator? Which one?
Interesting question. Beyond some of the compulsive behaviors (which can get a little too total), I would say "no" with regard to the 60s and most of the 70s. In the last 25 years there have been far fewer funding sources that have the enlightened model of ARPA and Xerox PARC. I don't have any interest in "computing as a job" but only in trying to round off the first phase of the invention of personal computing, especially forchildren. This hasn't really happened yet, and it is disturbing to see the poor subset of personal computing that is vended and generally accepted today.
So the price today is much higher than when mainframe people were calling us crazy for trying to do personal computing. That was nothing. What's harder today is that people think they've got personal computing and they don't really. The analogy here is between the jump from non-literacy to the printing press (which might be fought but the chasm that is to be crossed is clear) vs. the much trickier one of trying to explain to a culture that has the printing press and universities that it is not very well educated and thinks pretty poorly (for example, the US is in this general state -- it has the trappings but not the perspective to see how poorly educated most "educated people" actually are).
5. What are the rewards to be an innovator?
I think this differs with the personalities of the innovators. I
felt most rewarded when an idea really worked out as imagined
(this is a biggie if you have to leave present realities to do
the imagining), and also it is a big deal to me that I was
funded by ARPA and Xerox PARC (in fact I got better funding as a
post-doc in constant dollars and environments than I do today).
That is quite a statement to make, but it's quite true.
A terrific byproduct is that I've been able to meet with many of
my heros, and work with quite a few of them. That has been very exciting.
My main feeling about the much later awards and medals is that
(in our case at least) they miss the actual
community-synergistic process. I think this is generally true
about work that has a lot of engineering and building of stuff as
part of it. As many important things come out of the building as
in the original visions, yet the awards tend to celebrate the
visions more than the larger process.
So actually getting to do the work with others of like mind has
been the big thrill and reward.
6. What are in your opinion the top 3 criteria for successful innovation?
A lot depends on the time scale of requisite change. I've been
more of an inventor than an innovator, in that I think innovation
also has something with getting stuff into the larger world.
Most of my ideas that have gone out into the world have been
taken there by others.
Example of short time scale: the Google folks did not invent the
Internet or search engines. They had a particular idea about
what was
important and concentrated on that, hung in there, and have been
successful. I think most innovation is like that: limited
invention and ability to couple to existing structures. The ideas
that require a general learning curve are more difficult to innovate.
For example, if you look at the grand dreams of the ARPA
community, most required large changes both with technology and
society. At PARC we decided (rightly) that we would have to build
all of our HW and all of our SW to avoid artificial blocks from
current practice. The first order theory is: this is crazy! But
the second order theory says: if you can do it, then you must do
it! A few years before, when we were all in ARPA research (and
one of the joint projects was to do the ARPAnet), the IMP
"routers" were made
to order in one of the projects because no vendor equipment would
do.
One way to answer the question is to note that the personality
types and motivations of the inventors and innovators I've known
have been rather different. A lot of different types can be
successful. However, the ability to compulsively focus on a goal
(short or long term) seems to be quite common across types. The
more artistic and grand the goals, the more deep self criticism
(without degenerating into the immobilization of depression) is
required. This is not easy, because it has to be combined with an
almost boundless confidence (but one that is not stupid about
current goodness of idea). Since most ideas (even by talented
people who have lots of ideas)are mediocre down to bad, the
combination of criticism and optimism is a tricky important dance.
You've got to have lots of ideas, you've got to get rid of most
of them, you've got to think that the visions are doable.
7. What would you recommend to young people who wish to pursue innovation?
Again, the best strategies depend on personality and motivational
types. My type is "lone wolf" but I realized in grad school that
what I wanted to do could not be done by myself. This led to
quite a bit of conflict before I was able to start to adjust to
the idea that I would have to set up a research group of folks
whose talents were complementary to mine and somehow try to guide
it. I wasn't terribly good at this, but we managed to get some
things done.
So the simple advice here is to
(a) try to understand both one's strengths and weaknesses. The
best plans require strategies for both.
(b) It's pretty hard to get by without gaining a fair amount of
knowledge. Some innovators concentrate in their field (or a
sub-field), and others draw on many fields for inspirations and
analogies. Many technologists today are quite ignorant of
history (even in their own field), and this leads to some really
horrible blind attempts to reinvent.
Awareness of history and anthropology in the large can relate
technologists to the larger human condition and the actual
end-users of their ideas.
The needs that can be gleaned from history, etc., can also be a great
source for ideas.
(c) Avoid taking your identity from your "product" or "process"
or "possessions" or "peers" -- instead try to identify with your
"potential". I.e. don't become a "brand". This has always been a
bit of a problem in computing, but seems to be much bigger today
(and getting still bigger) for individuals, groups, companies,
and countries. Potential allows looking ahead and changing in a
way that the other "p's" don't.
(d) As Jim Watson likes to say: if you are the smartest person in
the room then you are in the wrong room. The genius of Bob Taylor
at PARC was to get very good people in a designed environment so
that no one was the smartest person in the room. This was very powerful.
(e) Learn how to hang in there.
8. In your opinion how can we create a culture that supports and sustains innovation?
Well, we had one until a few decades ago (and if you put more
weight on incrementalism, we still have one). Awareness, scope, and
multiple perspectives are all things that real education is
supposed to magnify. The lack of real education (and really
educated people) especially in the US is a disaster on many
fronts. Once a culture gets to the point where it can't tell
whether it is educated or not, it is in real trouble. One of the
main goals of education early on is to give a sense of what there
is to be known, and the thresholds required. One way to look at
the US is that a little over 1% of US adults are scientists,
engineers, mathematicians and physicians. That plus the
industrial revolution to magnify the results of this small group
gives the US the illusion of being a modern civilization.
But if you take the industrial revolution away, it starts to look
more like a 3rd world country.
A simpler way of looking at this is that any culture that
requires war and threat of war to spend on research is missing
the self-awareness to climb into the next stage of civilization.
9. What do you think stops/slows down innovation?
People who would rather be in control of mediocre to moribund
processes rather than feel out of control with possibly great
processes. This has been the big change in funding over the last
30 years.
10.Do you think becoming an innovator can be taught?
Well, with reference to my debts to my own community, I would say
"yes, up to a certain extent". To return to my soapbox on
education, real education requires the following to happen to a
mind: to create "a new field/idea/technology/path (either
radically or incrementally)
which had a profound (positive) impact on a particular subject
area/field" (which is pretty much your definition of innovation).
In other words, we have to do invention/innovation in our own
heads to get educated and to learn how to think, and this is not
easy for anyone, and it is quite difficult for many, but doable.
Another way to look at these questions from a wider point of view is that
the ultimate aim of education is really to learn how minds work, especially
human minds, and most especially our mind.
10 Questions On Innovation to Vinton G. Cerf
February 2006 - Vinton G. Cerf is vice president and chief Internet evangelist for Google. Widely known as one of the "Fathers of the Internet," Cerf is the co-designer of the TCP/IP protocols and the architecture of the Internet. In December 1997, President Clinton presented the U.S. National Medal of Technology to Cerf and his partner, Robert E. Kahn, for founding and developing the Internet.
1. Who are your favorite innovators?
There are inventions whose inventors I don't know so the latter question has some relevance. Dean Kamen is one of my favorite innovators because he's a fearless engineer. Similarly Burt Rutan and Paul McReady are equally able to think of solutions out of the ordinary. Tim Berners-Lee for the WWW. Fred Smith for inventing FEDEX. Steve Jobs for his stunning ability to gauge the market for new devices/services. There are many more.
2. What do you consider are the most promising innovations of the last 3 years?
Carbon Nanotubes that have such a variety of potential applications.
Broadband communication over power lines (experiencing a renewal of interest with new economics;
Netflix - re-inventing DVD rental business.
3. What helped you to become a successful innovator?
Long term support for research by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency; widespread participation in the design, implementation, deployment and operation of the Internet by thousands of companies and individuals; a philosophy of openness; and not constraining the Internet's evolution by patenting its technology.
4. Did you pay a price to be an innovator? Which one?
My famiy paid a price - I wasn't around much and still travel a great deal.
5. What are the rewards to be an innovator?
When your ideas take root and benefit from the support of many people, when businesses are built around them and when the world's population appears to get benefit from them, how can you not feel very amply rewarded for your part it the creation?
6. What are in your opinion the top 3 criteria for successful innovation?
A) don't be afraid to re-visit old ideas - times, technology, tastes, economics change and may make an unworkable idea into a winner.
B) Listen to experts but don't be constrained by them
C) Perseverence counts.
7. What would you recommend to young people who wish to pursue innovation?
Find something you are good at and stick with it. Successful innovators are not afraid of hard work and long hours and perseverance in the face of adversity and even ridicule.
8. In your opinion how can we create a culture that supports and sustains innovation?
Celebrate innovation; show our young children that innovators are not just those that make a lot of money - they are also the ones who bring fresh, new ideas to the table. Encourage exploration.
9. What do you think stops/slows down innovation?
Rigid training methods that stifle innovation; failure to recognize alternative paths to creativity; positive feedback for out of the box thinking.
10.Do you think becoming an innovator can be taught?
I think conditions can be created to allow innovators to flourish but I am not sure this is something that can be taught.
10 Questions On Innovation to Philippe Kahn
February 2006 - Philippe Kahn is an extremely successful serial entrepreneur who founded four leading companies: Fullpower Technologies, Inc., LightSurf, Starfish Technologies, Inc. and Borland.
1. Who are your favorite innovators?
Usually all the great minds of the past, people such as Galileo, Marconi, Einstein and Moses, Jesus Christ and Buddha
2. What do you consider are the most promising innovations of the last 3 years?
The convergence of Life Sciences and wireless technologies
3. What helped you to become a successful innovator?
When I came to Silicon Valley, I didn't have a work permit, so I had to create my own opportunities. Innovation was the simplest way!
4. Did you pay a price to be an innovator? Which one?
Usually innovators are like pioneers in the old Far West: You can tell by the arrows in their backs. However, the rewards are much greater than the inconveniences.
5. What are the rewards to be an innovator?
Immeasurable, Priceless: You get to do what no other has done, it's like being the first person to climb Everest, every time.
6. What are in your opinion the top 3 criteria for successful innovation?
Vision, leadership, perseverance.
7. What would you recommend to young people who wish to pursue innovation?
Vision, leadership, perseverance.
8. In your opinion how can we create a culture that supports and sustains innovation?
Give a little bit of a spotlight to innovation, 1/100th of what pop-culture gets will be a huge boost!
9. What do you think stops/slows down innovation?
Consumerism. Innovation is creative.
10.Do you think becoming an innovator can be taught?
To a certain extent, via role models.
