People have theories about innovation. Increasingly, they think it's important to innovate. Fine. I'm all for it. Given a choice between "innovation" (whatever that is) and the alternative, which I assume is something like "sitting and rotting," I'll take some of the former, thanks very much.
Whatever people end up saying "innovation" is (which kinda doesn't matter, because before long it will fade away, eclipsed by the next fashionable thing), it's clear to me that there is a huge difference between innovation that is based on using computers (which evolve quickly) and all other kinds of innovation.
For purposes of this post, I'll define innovation simply: innovation is doing something differently than you did before.
Physical Innovation
Physical innovation is hard. It doesn't happen very often. The reason is simple: over time, everyone pretty much figures out the best way to do things, and figuring out something new is hard and rare. A typical example of this is the gradual shift from wrought iron to steel.
Here is the famous iron pillar at Qtub Minar in Delhi, as it was when I visited it a few years ago.
This pillar was created no less than 1,000 years ago, and perhaps longer than 1,500 years. Wrought iron was created in many parts of the world, from China:
to Europe.
Steel is closely related, but different in important ways. The very earliest steel is about 4,000 years old. A form of steel, Wootz steel, was made in India more than 2,000 years ago. This steel was shipped to the Middle East, where it became the raw material for Damascus steel swords. But none of it was a practical innovation over wrought iron until the introduction of the Bessemer Process in the 1850's.
Then and only then could we have wonderful modern things like steel cables, structural steel for buildings and bridges and many other things.
Physical innovation, like the replacement of wrought iron by modern steel, is tough and long, punctuated by invention while still requiring endless baby-step innovations.
Process innovation
Process innovation is a whole different animal. Process is what the concerned human beings agree it should be, even if a bunch of machines are involved. The only limit is concepts. Opportunities for process innovation are all around us. In all too many cases, it seems more appropriate to call a process innovation something more like "stop doing it the obviously stupid way."
Here's an example. Not long ago, a delayed flight I was waiting for at JFK airport was finally cancelled at 1am. A whole lot of people went to the terminal entrance and got in the roped-off line for cabs. I waited about 20 minutes to get to the front of the line, and there were loads of people still waiting after me. "It's real late," I thought, "I guess most of the cabbies were sensible and are home sleeping in bed." Nope! There was a looooong line of cabs waiting to pick up the loooooong line of exhausted rejected passengers.
What was the problem? Process, of course. There was a single person who had to find out where you were going and give you the right piece of official paper before you could get into a cab.
And instead of walking up the line of waiting people, the "dispatcher" insisted on performing his duty as you were getting into the cab, which serialized the whole process.
Process "innovation" is, more often than not, simply "stupidity elimination."
Conceptual innovation
Conceptual innovation is a pretty big deal. It is limited only by the powers of the human mind. One of my favorite examples is one I encountered around the time I graduated from high school, George Danzig's Simplex algorithm for solving a linear programming (as in math programming, not software programming) problem. It's cool; it's been called one of the top ten algorithms of last century.
Computer Innovation
I know there's lots of physical innovation involved in creating the unprecedented, awesome speed with which computers evolve. There has been nothing comparable to it in human history. It also know it's accompanied by and partly enabled by lots of true conceptual innovation and some process innovation. But let's take all that as a given. What do we have?
We have a set of tools that can control, automate and communicate faster than anything in history, and that improve at a hard-to-comprehend rate. As soon as we get something working with one generation of the things -- BOOOM! -- everything concerned has just gotten better by 2X or more in speed, cost and size.
Steel took over from wrought iron when the process of making it got faster and cheaper, and when the results were superior. It took decades. Well, that happens every year or two with computers -- the question is, how are you going to take advantage of the improvement?
That's computer innovation. What's possible now that wasn't a year ago? What can I do now to create a product or service that, on next year's devices and networks, will make sense? The people who jump on this and make it happen are the innovators.
The themes are clear: we move from slow transmission of small amounts of data to big, expensive devices (think teletype) to near-instant transmission of huge amounts of data to small, affordable devices (think smart phones). This happened in small steps. Each step was a massive technology and business disruption. Fortunes were made and lost at each step. Fortunes will continue to be made (and lost) as some people see the possibilities and take advantage of them, while most learn the current state of computing and networking, and -- amazingly -- act as though it won't change. That's actually what the vast majority of people and companies do!!
Computer innovation is different than the other kinds -- not better, just different. If you understand the rules and act accordingly, you can accomplish amazing things. It almost feels like cheating to call it "innovation," but technically it is, so let's go with it.
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