Thinking More Effectively about Deliberate Innovation

Successful innovation often requires the application of many different areas of expertise by a variety of organizations and other players. Some innovation proceeds as a variety of ideas and possibilities bouncing through society and the marketplace until someone finds the last piece and an innovation is born. Other innovations are put in place by entrepreneurial heroes working like Ford or Edison. While most people think of them as successful solo inventors they actually did quite a bit to adjust the other parts of the system. Thomas Edison realized that he could not just manage the invention of the light bulb, he had to get generation and transmission equipment designed, had to develop accurate measurement instruments to enable billing, and had to convince investors to capitalize his establishment of electric companies to get it started. Henry Ford is known not only for his design of the Model T, but his efforts to improve metallurgy and adapt mass production methods, and his innovation in paying his workers enough to let them buy his product, driving other employers to do the same, further increasing his market. Each of them spent a lot of time interacting with many different people to fix each of the elements of their innovation.