At the Heart of Progress: An Exhibition

The Ackland Art Museum at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill has a wonderful exhibition entitled “At the Heart of Progress: Coal, Iron, and Steam Since 1750”. The exhibit if built around a collection of engravings and prints from the John P. Eckblad Collection. Eckland has been collecting images of industrial art for over 30 years. The exhibit does a remarkably good job of showing how artists and illustrators have captured both the positive and negative aspects of the Industrial Revolution. The exhibition has a well-written and beautifully illustrated catalog for a cost of $15. If you can’t get to Chapel Hill, you can obtain the catalog from the museum. The catalog does a great job of providing insightful commentary on the forces in play from the early Industrial Revolution through the 20th Century. Take this passage for example:

Coal, iron, and steam power came together in a complicated triangular relationship. As ironworks increased demand for coal, coal mines were dug ever deeper, and the dangers of flooding made pumping apparatus a necessity... Iron demanded coal, coal demanded steam, steam demanded more and better iron, but this circle of progress was soon sending out branches. Coke, the key to iron-smelting with coal, was produced by baking coal in ovens to increase its carbon content by vaporizing other components. The by-product, coal-gas, was soon found to have its own uses as a fuel and a source of light.

The images in the collection follow the advancement of industry into the 20th Century and focus not just on the technology but also on the human side of the drama: the plight of the workers and the conflicting forces between employment and the danger and degradation of the work.

Eckblad seems to be, at heart, a technology optimist. In an introductory statement, he encapsulates the relevance of this historic look back on today’s events:

Today, with our economy and environment under siege, it’s useful to remember that crisis begets invention. When we seem closest to capitulation, the seeds of our next reality have already been sown. And, we need not wonder for long how our new realities will look and feel. Once again, artists will be there to both document and interpret.

Technology, like art, is just another dimension of the human drive to create. That art should interpret technology is only a natural part of our desire to understand the forces that we release with our innate creativity.

The Heights

Technology changes and yet some things stay the same. Take the location of towers as an example. Usually, towers are located on the highest point in the area to afford the longest unobstructed line of sight possible. It doesn’t matter whether the purpose of the tower is visual observation like you find in old fire towers or electronic communication for the ever-increasing wireless networks. A clear view is important. It is a matter of simple economics. The fewest number of towers to do the job is the cheapest way to go.

Most of the old forest fire towers are now abandoned. We have better ways to do the job. We can even spot forest fires from space satellite imagery. But still, towers and heights seem to attract us. The towers that haven’t been torn down are fenced in and the bottom ladders have been removed to keep people off of them. But there are always people who disregard the barriers and find a way to climb the old towers anyway. We are drawn to high places. Some of this is the spirit that makes people climb mountains: the challenge of the climb. But we are wired to value the view. Maybe it is primal, a survival skill. The longest view lets us see any approaching danger. Whatever the reason, we still put a premium on the view.

The modern version of the mountain top, the premium view, is the top-floor corner office in the high-rise office tower. This is usually reserved for the senior person in the organizational pecking order. People work like dogs to get into the corner office and they relish the view when they get there. Views are symbolic of status and power. I once had a corner office (only on the second floor) but it looked out on a beautiful pond. I mourned the day I had to move out of that office. I hardly had a person come see me who didn’t comment on the view. It gave me a certain amount of organizational status irrespective of my actual position.

Property with a view commands a premium. Whether it is a mountain top of ocean-side, we will pay real money for the long, unobstructed view. If an area is being developed, the shore and the hillside always bring the highest price. People go to extraordinary lengths to build their homes in precarious places just for the view. You can hardly go a year without seeing a California hillside home either burn in a brush fire or slide down the mountain in a rainstorm. And then the owners immediately rebuild in the same location.

We are creatures with limited capabilities and we value ways to extend our inborn assets. Whether it is a view for our sight, communication networks for our hearing, or transportation systems for our legs, we are have a natural affinity for that which extends us. Technology extends us. Our insatiable desire to transcend our limitations drives technology. I wonder sometimes whether technology tickles the same part of the brain that lets us enjoy a sunset on the ocean shore? Are we neurologically wired to seek the innovative for the same reason we seek the sunset? Maybe we’ll find that answer at a future sunrise.

The Next Innovative Hardware Industry?

In my last blog, I was musing about the electric car. The early history of an industry intrigues me. The automobile industry seems very much like the early history of personal computers: lots of tinkerers working in their garages (in both cases) to bring out machines that were initially more like toys than mainstream products. Early automobiles were thought to be the playthings of the rich, not practical transportation. And early personal computers were the toys of the geeks, not day-to-day information appliances.

What is similar between these two industries is that anyone who was a little savvy in the technology could experiment and build a new machine. The earliest pioneers didn’t need a lot of capital to get started. Much of the technology could be hand-crafted right in the garage or purchased as components from other sources. In the case of the automobile, the first focus for the individual innovator was usually on the engine. Ford hand-built a working gasoline engine before he attempted to build his Quadracycle. He could buy wheels and tires from bicycle shops and seats from buggy makers. Early personal computer makers could buy the integrated circuit components from suppliers. They couldn’t buy the assembler language software code that turned their digital circuits into useful devices. The code was homegrown and in many ways “the engine” of their devices.

Economists like to describe the automobile and the personal computer as industries that had low barriers to entry. The field was wide open to anyone with an inventive spirit. Patents were few. Large, entrenched players were non-existent. The buggy makers and railroads were no more competition for the automobile than IBM and mainframe manufacturers were competitors to the personal computer makers. What results in early industries like this is an exploding number of entrants. Hundreds of would-be innovators jump in when they see the early interest beginning to develop around the pioneer businesses. Of course, this can’t last. Darwinian selection starts to weed out the weak, the players without a competitive advantage. After a decade or two, consolidation reduces the competitors to a few companies who are now competing on price, scale and efficiency.

These sorts of industries are the complete opposite of capital-intensive industries like railroads, electric utility companies, or even cable television companies. These are all networks and by their very nature networks take lots of investment simply to get to the stage where they provide any value at all. It doesn’t do any good to have a train without tracks or a home cable box without the copper or fiber cable. These industries have a very different kind of birth. Their parents are capitalists and investors more than inventors and tinkerers. Thomas Edison invented the first electric distribution system but it was limited as a business by the geography it could power. It took Samuel Insull, a protégé of Edison’s, and a shrewd businessman to create the first modern electric utility, Commonwealth Edison in Chicago.

In this current economic crisis the government is proposing to put a large sum of money into repairing and replacing our infrastructure. Having been in the Twin Cities when the I-35 Bridge collapsed, I can confirm how much investing in our infrastructure is needed. Besides fixing the highways and bridges, there is also a lot of money set aside for high-speed rail. This is also very much needed. Anyone who has enjoyed the rail networks of Europe or Japan can easily see the lamentable condition of American passenger rail. But, I would argue, we also need to set funds aside to identify and fund the hundreds of startups that could flourish around the next automobile or personal computer industry. These bring out the innovations that spill over to create thousands of jobs and even local manufacturing.


The internet and the dot coms have certainly followed the garage model. Thousands of software programmers have created everything from Google to the software in our cellphones. These have been terrific businesses and more are needed. But while these have done much for innovation, they have not had a manufacturing component. Maybe this is where Green comes in. The industries I dream about could be in solar panels, wind energy, and other forms of Green technology. Biotech and Nanotech will certainly continue to have their strong place in advancing cutting-edge businesses but these businesses are both capital intensive as well as patent intensive. No, what I am thinking of are industries that are within the reach of the person in the garage, the person with a passion to create who doesn’t have access to millions of dollars of financial backing. I would be willing to bet that there is yet another nascent automobile or personal computer industry out there just waiting to be born. As a country, we need it now more than ever.

[Images: Apple IIe Personal Computer and Wind Turbine from Wikipedia.]

Electric Cars: Deja Vu All Over Again

I recently came across this excerpt:

Gasoline prices are rising rapidly. Nevertheless, more and more internal combustion vehicles are being sold and there are fears of a gas shortage. Experts predict that prices will continue to rise since proven reserves of petroleum are limited. Electric vehicle enthusiasts urge more emphasis on electric cars and trucks, since these will become more competitive as gas prices rise. They also point out the nonpolluting aspects of their technology. Business and government are being urged to push the electric vehicle, while conferences and associations are formed to coordinate this work. The electric enthusiasts are impatient that more is not being done to support electric vehicles, but they are convinced that such support must grow in the future. The year is 1912.

I found that quote in the opening paragraph of an article written in 1980 by Richard H. Schallenburg for the electrical engineering journal, IEEE Transactions on Education. Almost a century has passed but the story remains virtually the same. What intrigues me about the story of electric vehicles is why, after a hundred years, they remain a tiny minority of the cars and trucks on the road? How tiny? In 2008 (which was a disaster for the automotive industry), 13.2 million cars and light trucks were sold in the United States. Of these, 281,846 were hybrids (source: Electric Drive Transportation Association). Of the hybrids, 56 percent were Toyota Priuses. That means that hybrids make up just over two percent of sales last year. One might make the case that a decade earlier hybrid cars were non-existent so selling 281 thousand of them last year looks pretty good. And it is. But the internal combustion engine remains the (black) gold standard as it has for a hundred years.

The automobile has always been a machine that appealed to more than functionality. The automobile was never simply an alternative to the horse or the electric trolley. The automobile represented freedom, adventure, the harnessing of power. In the very early days of the automobile when it was not clear whether steam, electric, or internal combustion engines would be the power source for vehicles, cars started to be marketed for city driving where roads were better and distances shorter. Electrics made a lot of sense in this market. But the electrics were relatively slow compared to gasoline engines, the batteries were heavy and unreliable, and the infrastructure to recharge the cars was not readily available. Despite the limitations, automakers tried to find the niches to which the quiet, clean power of the electrics would appeal most. Rudi Volti in a Fall 1990 Invention and Technology magazine article wrote:

As with steam cars, the technical limitations are usually blamed, but the electric’s failure has also to do with the nature of the car’s customers and manufacturers. In fact, because of the users that it attracted, the electric’s very virtues became part of its undoing. Its reliability, silence, cleanliness, and ease of operation endeared it particularly to women drivers, who were also less likely than men to be put off by its limitations. A 1915 magazine article extolled the electric’s appeal to a woman: “She knows that it fulfills all of the demands of her daily routine of calling, shopping, and pleasure seeking. She knows that she likes to run it because there is a certain charm in its simplicity of operation and control—a sort of mild fascination. She knows, too, that she can step into its beautifully cushioned and brocaded interior, enjoy every minute of her ride and arrive at her destination as fresh and spotless as when she started.”

Despite the advertised advantages of electrics, the lower cost, economy, and higher speed of gasoline engines allowed cars to be driven longer distances over rough terrains unsuitable to the electrics. And the infrastructure was being rapidly built by the oil companies to make gasoline readily available almost everywhere. Cars became differentiated on speed, cost, and power. The automobile became not only a conveyance but a part of the very infrastructure of American life: the interstate highway, the suburbs... and the resultant traffic jams, pollution, and highway mayhem.

The current collapse of the automobile market is creating terrible stress on people all over the country. But perhaps out of this dark period we may finally move forward into an era where the newer technologies will be sustained. In 1912, the hope for electric vehicles was the specter of increasingly expensive gasoline. There may yet be another miracle which keeps oil prices low but we are running out of rabbits to pull out of our hats. The current world economic crisis seems like as good a time as any to finally move to a new generation of automotive technology.

[Image from Wikipedia showing Thomas Edison in 1913 in front of an electric car.]

The Idea For the Steamboat

John Fitch is not a name that immediately springs to mind if asked to name a great American Inventor. In fact, he could reasonably claim to have invented the steamboat decades ahead of Robert Fulton. If you visit the U.S. Capitol you will find a painting of John Fitch decorating one of the arches of that building. In fairness, Fulton never claimed to have invented the steamboat. But he and his partner, Robert Livingston, made it the first economically successful steamboat company by operating the North River steamboat (later called the Claremont) on the Hudson River between New York and Albany.

John Fitch was the complete opposite of Fulton in almost every way. Fulton was a learned man, a successful artist turned entrepreneur. Fitch was poorly educated, a sometime-clockmaker, button maker, and surveyor. But they shared a vision of how a successful steamboat could forever change commerce by allowing water navigation that was freed from the constraints of either currents or winds.

I am interested in Fitch because I am interested in how inventors and innovators think. How do they come up with their ideas? Is there anything in common between these influential creators that we can apply to today’s problems? Are these people somehow gifted with insights beyond the abilities of the rest of us? If we understood how the “Aha’s!” occurred, maybe we could learn how to be more creative or maybe even teach creativity.

John Fitch was born in 1743 and grew up in Connecticut, the fifth child of six in a poor, religiously-strict family. He went to school until he was ten after which his father pulled him out to work on his farm. He was a very bright child and devoured whatever books he could get his hands on. He taught himself advanced math and geography from books he read outside of school. Fitch was apprenticed at a young age to learn clock-making and he fulfilled his apprenticeship despite the fact that the clock maker only used John to work his farm fields and never taught him any of the skills of the clock-making trade. Fitch taught himself about clocks later by taking clocks apart to clean and repair them. He was taught a little about brass founding which he later used in a small successful business making and peddling buttons.

Fitch comes across in the histories as a cantankerous man who bickered his way through life. He was married just a year when he left his wife and newborn child because he couldn’t get along with his spouse. During the Revolutionary War, he tried to serve in various New Jersey militia units and was voted out of various officer positions by other people who took a dislike to him. He turned to surveying the lands west of the Appalachians after the war and was captured by Indians who sold Fitch and his companions as hostages to the British in Detroit. Along the way during the long enforced march to Detroit, he fought he fought with his fellow captives and later on with his captors. Eventually, he was released back in New York and returned to Pennsylvania where he had lived before his western adventures began.

None of this would suggest what came next. According to his own autobiography, Fitch and a friend were walking home after church one Sunday in the spring of 1785. Fitch was on foot because he had rented out his horse to help pay for the feed to keep the animal. Fitch was now in his forties and getting arthritic. His knee was hurting and they stopped for a moment to let him rest when a horse-drawn carriage whisked past them. According to Fitch, not having his horse he was suddenly struck with the idea of creating a horseless carriage. Not only that, and this is the part that I find hard to believe, he thought the power for this machine should come from steam. Why does this amaze me? Fitch had never even heard of a steam engine, let alone seen one. When he later described his idea to the minister, Fitch was chagrinned (his words) to have the minister show him a picture of a Newcomen steam engine in a book. At the time, there were only three steam engines in the whole of the United States and all of these engines were the large, stationary engines that were used to pump water.

Fitch went furiously about trying to work out the details of his horseless carriage idea for a few weeks. The details of what he came up with are missing but he apparently quickly came to the realization that the horseless carriage had bigger problems in terms of poor roads and other impediments to its success. Fitch did have direct experience with taking rafting boats down the Ohio River. These boats only made a one-way journey as it was just too difficult to row them back up the river against the current. They were broken up for timbers when they reached their destination. Fitch knew that a boat that could travel up-river easily would be of tremendous commercial value. Fitch also realized that it was not enough to come up with the idea. He had to have a way to protect it. He sought patent protection for the idea from state legislatures before there was a national patent law. He was locked in a furious battle with another independent inventor, James Rumsey, who also claimed to have invented the steamboat. For a fascinating account of all of this I would suggest you read Andrea Suttcliffe’s excellent book entitled Steam.


So how did it turn out? Badly. Fitch went on to actually create a working steamboat that operated for a year out of Philadelphia on the Delaware River but it was a financial loser and Fitch eventually gave up. He moved to Kentucky, turned to alcohol, and, legend has it, killed himself in despair in 1798. Not a happy ending to our story. Rumsey, by the way, also came to naught, dying in England of a stroke after an attempt to build a steamboat there.

So what to make of this story about Fitch? I find it amazing that Fitch could have conceived of a steam-powered horseless carriage when he had never in his life to that point seen or heard of a steam engine. That would be the equivalent of me thinking of using, I don’t know, an ion transmission de-rectifier (ficitious...I think?) to produce ethanol when I had never seen or heard of one. I think the story that Fitch told is an apocryphal one that he later invented for his own glory. Somewhere along the line, Fitch knew something about steam and harnessing it for power. He had heard of the concept or seen the power of steam in some other context. His trade work might have given him the insight. He was a brass founder and the melting and cooling of metal certainly involved water and quenching which produces steam. Being skeptical of his self-reported flash of insight may not be fair. He might truly have had just such a vision in which case, Fitch really was a genius. Fitch spent the rest of his life trying to realize his idea and he almost made it. The Delaware River was much slower flowing than the Hudson and there were decent enough roads by the river so that travelers had a viable alternative to his relatively slow steamboat.

Back to my original questions. Can we learn anything about creativity from Fitch? First, he was very bright and inquisitive. He described himself as a child as “crazy about learning”. He was tenacious. He was constantly looking for some way to make a buck. He could visualize a different future and he could also foresee the need for protection for his ideas. And his flash of insight first came as an answer to his own personal need. Fitch was too early. The technology wasn’t there yet, the patent laws weren’t yet in place. If Fitch had been born twenty years later, school children for generations might have learned that John Fitch, not Robert Fulton, invented the steamboat. So the last lesson is that ideas have their time and place. But hats off to John Fitch, American Inventor.

The Fire of Genius

The patent system... added the fuel of interest to the fire of genius, in the discovery and production of new and useful things.
Abraham Lincoln, Second Lecture on Discoveries and Inventions (Feb. 11, 1859)

This year, the focus of President’s Day falls especially brightly on Abraham Lincoln as we celebrate the 200th anniversary of his birth on February 12, 1809. By one reckoning, over 16,000 books have been written about him. Lincoln was indeed a great man and arguably our greatest president.

Great presidents are often defined by the challenges of their times. Theodore Roosevelt, himself a great president, was quoted as saying of Lincoln:

If there is not the war, you don't get the great general; if there is not a great occasion, you don't get a great statesman; if Lincoln had lived in a time of peace, no one would have known his name.

That may not do justice to Lincoln for clearly there is more than circumstances that define a great president. I think one of the defining characteristics is a deep intellectual curiosity coupled to an inclination towards practical action. Washington was a trained surveyor, a military leader, and a statesman. Jefferson was a true intellectual who read widely in virtually every field of knowledge. He loved novelty and invention and he was a man who was deeply engaged in the events of his day. Theodore Roosevelt was a writer and historian before he was President, but he also was a military commander, a cowboy, and an adventurer. Franklin Roosevelt invented many advances in the treatment of polio when he formed the Warm Springs Clinic in the 1920’s.

But back to Lincoln. He is the only President to hold a patent (Patent No. 6469 for the invention of a means to lift steamboats over shallow river snags). Lincoln was always curious about new technology. He studied virtually every new machine he came in contact with and was the first President to use the power of instant communications (the telegraph) to direct a military campaign. During the Civil War, he haunted the local telegraph office and eventually had a telegraph installed in the White House. U.S. News and World Report has an interesting article about Lincoln in the current issue that says that if Lincoln were alive today he would fight just as hard as Obama did to keep his Blackberry. The point is not that Lincoln or any other great president was a geek but rather that each had a wide and deep curiosity and intellect and embraced the new and the novel. They recognized the value of the “fire of genius”. That is surely part of what made them great. The advance of technology depends on our leaders as much as it does on great inventors and innovators.

J. Robert Oppenheimer: Great Leaders Are Made, Not Born

Recently, I watched a riveting documentary on the life of J. Robert Oppenheimer on Public Television's American Experience. The program covered the span of Oppenheimer's life but focused in particular on what the film-maker termed the Security Clearance Trial in 1954. Oppenheimer's reputation and sense of self-worth were destroyed by the verdict of that trial (really more a hearing than a true trial). But the program made clear that the verdict had been decided in advance by Oppenheimer's enemies. In particular, Lewis Strauss, a powerful industrialist and head of the Atomic Energy Commission who wanted to silence Oppenheimer for taking positions that Strauss opposed. Strauss believed in power, the power over men and the power over nations. He wanted a nuclear arsenal so vast that the Soviets would never dare use their own nuclear weapons. As a result of the resulting arms race, the U.S. went from possessing a few hundred atomic weapons in the 1950's to over 70,000 thermo-nuclear weapons at the peak of the arms race in the 1980's. Oppenheimer was arguing for limitations on these weapons which clearly had the power to destroy humanity.

While Oppenheimer was the victim of the vendetta to destroy his reputation, the film makes it clear that he was at best a difficult person to live with. Brilliant and introverted, he used his intellect to brow-beat his students and other physicists who didn't measure up to his standards. Both before World War II and after the war, he was arrogant and aloof, a person who was never comfortable with himself and covered up that lack of self-esteem through his arrogance.

But during World War II, Oppenheimer, who had never managed anything, not even an academic department, was given the job of leading the scientific team of the Manhattan Project. He absolutely excelled in this herculean management task. How was that possible? How could someone who could barely get along with people, who was disliked and who distanced himself from others change almost completely into a team player, a cheerleader, a man who could add good suggestions to solving almost any problem, a man who even the academic prima donnas (excepting Edward Teller) could work for?

The film doesn't answer that question but it gives some hints at the answer. Oppenheimer knew that the Manhattan Project and his role in it were going to change the course of history. His idealism called forth his best qualities to lead a team to produce an atomic bomb before the Germans did so. He was the intellectual equal of the brilliant people whom he managed - and they knew it.

Some time ago, I read an interesting book by Warren Bennis and Patricia Ward Biederman entitled Organizing Genius: The Secrets of Creative Collaboration. Bennis and Biederman identified what they called Great Groups, teams of people that came together and accomplished extraordinary things. The original Apple Computer team was one example. So was the Skunkworks at Lockheed Aircraft. Another of their examples was the Manhattan Project. Here are the distilled take-home lessons from the book:

1. Greatness starts with superb people.
2. Great Groups and great leaders create each other.
3. Every Great Group has a strong leader.
4. The leaders of Great Groups love talent and know where to find it.
5. Great Groups are full of talented people who can work together.
6. Great Groups think they are on a mission of such importance it is almost a mission from God.
7. Every Great Group is an island – but an island with a bridge to the mainland.
8. Great Groups see themselves as winning underdogs. They believe they are up against either a real or imagined establishment.
9. Great Groups always have an enemy. The enemy may be imaginary but it builds a sense of cohesion within the group.
10. People in Great Groups have blinders on.
11. Great Groups are optimistic, not realistic.
12. In Great Groups the right person has the right job.
13. The leaders of Great Groups give them what they need and free them from the rest.
14. Great Groups accomplish what they set out to do.

Perhaps the biggest lesson that Bennis and Biederman outlined was that great work is its own reward. The authors also highlight the fact that by their very nature Great Groups are time limited. When the job is done, the group has no choice but to fragment and the people move on.

What does this have to do with the film on Oppenheimer? I think it reinforces some of the messages from the book. Oppenheimer was a superb intellect. His own capacity as a great leader was created even as he himself created the Project.

The real leader of the Manhatten Project was General Leslie Groves. He especially embodied principle number 13: he gave Oppenheimer and his team what they needed and got everything else out of the way for them.

Maybe the bottom line on this for me is that you can never really be certain what someone is capable of doing. The circumstances, the other members of the team, the mission of the group all interact to produce sometimes surprising and, more rarely, astounding results. I take some comfort from this. Maybe in the right circumstances, the rest of us can also rise to greatness.

Quotation for the Day

Don't worry about people stealing an idea. If it's original, you will have to ram it down their throats.

Howard Aiken, U.S. Computer Scientist (1900 -1973)

[As quoted from The Quotations Page]

Antikythera Mechanism Update

About 18 months ago, I wrote a blog entry describing when I first learned about the Antikythera Mechanism, a two thousand year old astronomical computer. You can read the original post here but the short version is that this device was discovered in an ancient shipwreck site more than a hundred years ago. People have always been fascinated by the complex gearing of this long-lost antiquity. Research has now shown that it is a very sophisticated and complex small scale planetarium able to predict the motion of the sun, moon, the five known planets, the eclipses of the sun and moon, and even the dates of the Olympic games.

For the past several years, a new research team has been using some of the most recent lab analytical tools to examine the mechanism (which is in Athens). Both digital computed tomography and surface reflectance measurements have allowed previously unknown details of the device to be seen for the first time.

There is a very interesting post about the mechanism at the Network World website. The news brief also connects you to a YouTube video showing a modern reconstruction of the Antikythera mechanism based on the latest research findings. It is truly a mind-boggling accomplishment for the mechanical technology of any age but most especially dating from an age when such technology was completely unheard of and thought not to exist.

Much of the new research has been published in Nature which has produced a very nice Flash video describing the new results on the mechanism.

It is indeed humbling. I highly recommend checking it out.

Common Causes of Innovation

I was reading a Business Week interview with Marissa Mayer, VP of Google, about how her company is doing during the economic downturn. The article covered a lot of ground but one thing that caught my eye was the discussion of the 20 Percent Innovation culture where people within Google can spend up to 20 percent of their time on projects of their own choosing. The idea behind this is to give people some protection from the dictates of management, dictates which can often stifle the next innovation.

Mayer was asked if some of the Google culture could be replicated in other companies? Her reply was that each company is unique and the systems need to fit the company. But she went on to say:

But there clearly are things that can be replicated, like having small teams, awarding a lot of ownership to those teams so you stretch and grow those people. Or really focusing on and demanding that innovation come from everyone and everywhere throughout the organization. One of the worst things you can do in a company is to have an R&D segment or an innovation group. Once you have some people whose job it is to innovate, everyone else stops innovating.

I worked at 3M for thirty years. The company was famous for "The 15 Percent Rule" which basically was the precursor of Google's 20 Percent Time. The thought process was exactly the same: give people some space (i.e., time) to tinker with their ideas that was outside the jurisdiction of management. This was sort of a Get Out of Jail Free card that an R&D person could pull out at any time if the supervisor wanted to shut down this "non-productive" activity. And it worked. Many of the really great product ideas at 3M grew out of the 15 Percent Rule.

It's worth looking a little deeper behind these examples from Google and 3M. What do these cultural norms imply? First, it points to some very savvy senior management who understand that really innovative ideas often come from the brains of people who have been given some intellectual freedom. This culture of innovation is usually established by the very same senior managers who often founded the company or at least sweated to see that the organization survived through those crazy early years. They know that they didn't have the perfect business plan or that often the business that eventually succeeded was not the business they set out to develop. Innovation has to be nurtured by a sensitive gardener. Savvy, growth-oriented managers know this and allow for it.

The second thing worth noting about this norm of cultural innovation is that even the greatest idea is just an idea unless it can be developed into something that can demonstrate its merit. The person with the idea often only has part of what is necessary to move the idea along. But the idea person has colleagues who also have 15 or 20 percent of their time to work on ideas of their own choosing. The idea they choose to work on doesn't have to be their own. They might have just the right expertise or equipment to move the idea ahead another step. Networks of innovators start to grow. People have every reason to talk to anyone they think can help. And that fosters yet other new ideas. This networking juices everybody up. Well, everybody but the manager focused on efficiency and the ego that says that the only good ideas are his ideas.

So that is yet another aspect of an innovation culture: egos are kept in check. "Alpha" managers may force efficiency and performance out of their organizations but they will never get innovation. Innovation cannot flourish in a high-ego culture or a culture of fear. Even for the person with the original idea, by the time the idea has been developed a little further it is owned by an ad hoc team of people who all feel they are the proud parents of something beautiful.

Cultures of innovation are born most often at the same time innovative companies are born. They are tough to bolt on later. They are also fragile. There is a relentless pressure to not "waste" resources on "unproductive" ideas. And to be clear, most of the ideas coming out of the 15 or 20 percent time don't go anywhere. But the ones that do... these can change the very future of the company. It is always a balance between innovation and efficiency. Always.

The Roots of the Industrial Revolution

I came across a very interesting television program that was produced for the BBC as part of the Millennium celebration. The series was entitled "The Day the World Took Off". It is a look at the roots of the Industrial Revolution in England and the events over a long history which enabled that revolution to happen. The episodes are available on YouTube and the first can be seen below:



You can watch the other episodes by looking at the links in the sidebar at the right on the YouTube page.

It is still a much debated question as to why the Industrial Revolution began where it did, when it did. Why the Midlands of England? Why the late 1700's and early 1800's? Why was the textile trade the first truly mass production industry? We like to think we understand the events of history and perhaps the historians really do. I am fascinated by the questions as well. But the answer(s) may be rooted in complexity, simultaneity, and even random chance. Still, the series is worth the time to at least ponder one set of ideas about this extraordinary point in time.

Which Comes First, Innovation or Profit?

The New York Times ran a story this morning entitled "At G.M. Innovation Sacrificed to Profit". The story contained a long litany of missed innovation opportunities within GM that were not limited to fuel-efficient cars. GM had started a minivan project a decade ahead of Chrysler but the project was killed by the GM finance people. Same story with Saturn. Same story with the EV1.

Micheline Maynard, the NYT journalist wrote in her article today:

For the last half-century, virtually all of G.M.’s chief executives, including Mr. Wagoner, have come from its financial side, which has judged most initiatives based on whether they will be profitable.

Innovation or profit, which comes first? The answer, obviously, is innovation. But real innovation is by definition something new and different. And innovation comes with a whole variety of unique challenges. The minivan was not a technological innovation but a marketing innovation. The technology to build a minivan was no different than that needed to build the cars and trucks of the day. The bet, and it was a huge bet for Chrysler, was that people would ditch their station wagons for the boxy little utility vehicles. Chrysler won the bet, handsomely. Hybrid technology is a doubly challenging innovation. First, the technology itself needed to be developed. And then there was the ever-present marketing innovation challenge. Toyota made the bet. GM didn't. Now it looks like Toyota is a run by much smarter people than the U.S. automakers.

(Disclosure required here: I own a Prius and I love it. I have also owned a Chrysler minivan for the last 20 years.)

But I don't think it is quite so simple as laying the blame on the current US automaker management as though they couldn't see the value in innovation. This has much more to do with the stages of the corporate life cycle than it does with out-of-touch executives. Little companies want to become big companies. They usually have to invest a fair amount of money in the beginning to get started on the growth curve. All the US automakers did that in the early part of the 20th Century. Their investors sweated bullets wondering if they would ever see a return on their investments. Over time, of course, the investments started paying dividends (literally) and investor pain turned to investor pleasure. When profits go on long enough they start to feel like an entitlement. The company can do no wrong, it is simply a mechanism for printing money. The result is an arrogance in management that now feels like it can dictate to the market. Remember the "What's good for General Motors is good for the country" quote by a former GM CEO? The reason that the company exists at all is lost in the giddiness of profits.

There are always multiple stakeholders that have needs that must be met if a company is to be successful: the customer, the shareholder, and the employees. When the raison d'etre for a company becomes only to "increase shareholder value" (which I have actually heard directly from executives in my own corporate experience), the company is probably going to start ignoring the very customers that keep it in existence. Don't get me wrong, this is not about chasing after every little demand that the marketing department might hear from their customers. Most of these are incremental changes anyway. The real changes and the big bets come from sea changes that look like they are coming but you can't be sure (but if they do, you better have put some big bets down years earlier to be prepared) or they come from needs that customers don't even know they have (who knew that Post-it Notes would become ubiquitous?).

Great long-term executive management at large successful corporations is a rare commodity. The whole system is biased in favor of near-term profits over long term viability. Most of us are notoriously bad at deferring near-term pleasure for being better off later. I would take my hat off to management that can resist the temptation to maximize quarterly profit and instead think on a five-year or longer time scale. Wall Street would want their heads on a platter. The ability to do the right thing for the long term, even if if means a little less today, is the secret of success. That kind of attitude is what supports the investments necessary for innovation to prosper. That is what the U.S. automakers (and most of the rest of U.S. business) have forgotten.

So what comes first, innovation or profit? Maybe what really comes first is a clear, sustainable vision. And just as importantly, it is a vision which has the ability to change as the world itself changes. No wonder it is so hard to find truly great executive management.

Technology and Terror

I read a story today in the Washington Post that described how the terrorists in Mumbai used technology every step of the way to carry out their plans. From GPS units for navigation, Blackberries loaded with Google Earth maps and images, and satellite phones, these suicide terrorists were well-trained and well-versed in the use of technology. But should any of us be surprised by this? After all, these were young men in their twenties, most likely, well educated young men. The technologies they used are available to anyone simply by going to a Best Buy or any other electronics store. This is not the stuff of James Bond but the stuff of any modern business or college campus.

On the other side of this horrible conflict, most of the real-time reporting came from cellphone video cameras uploaded to YouTube, Twitter accounts that gave a blow-by-blow account of events as they were unfolding. Technology was there for both sides to use (although reports suggest that the Indian forces were a generation behind in the tools they should have had). The standoff was brought in living color, in real-time, into homes around the worlds. The Post story described how Indian families could not tear themselves away from their televisions during the siege. Kids were mesmerized and terrified by the images they could see unfolding in front of them.

So what are we to make of technology in this new age of terror? First, it seems to me that in all ages, people who perpetuate terrorist acts have always used the latest technologies that they could access. Technology is what it is. It is part of the fabric of our societies. But ignore how it can misused at your peril. One thing we keep re-learning is that people whom we like to think of as living huddled in some cave in a remote mountainside in Pakistan are not technology illiterates. Quite the opposite. These people at the fringes are masters at exploiting the technologies available to everyone in the mainstream. They don't have to have a big R&D budget to develop the tools they need. The tools are commercially available at your friendly electronics store.

The second observation I would make is that people whose jobs are to monitor and protect us from such attacks should be savvy not to what is coming out of a DARPA-funded government lab but what is being introduced at the Las Vegas Consumer Electronics Show. As soon as a new technology appears, people will think of creative new ways to use it, for good and for evil.

Finally, we live in a world that is connected and wired as never before. I am old enough to remember sitting in front of the TV during the coverage of the assassination of John F. Kennedy. That was the first time that the news was reported as it happened. Now, it is as close as your cellphone, Blackberry, or iPhone. We live in a world where the real-time news feeds give us little time to react to what we see in front of us. Yet, it is thoughtful reflection...and then action...that will help us avoid the next Mumbai.

Post Script: If you want to see a little more of how technology changes the way we live with current events, look at the extremely detailed account of the Mumbai attacks that is continuously being updated in Wikipedia.