James Drogan

I and many, many others have blogged (enter "innovation" into this site's search box), written papers, and otherwise discussed the relevance of innovation to the advancement of society.

For the most part I think that much of the time innovation has been more-or-less equated to invention.  My view is a bit more expansive than that, but I don't think I've ever made that clear.

At any rate, Steve Lohr's article, "Do We Overrate Basic Research?" in today's New York Times reminds me innovation does not necessarily equate to invention.

Two quick side points here.

1. The printed version of the article is title "Fear Not Where The Ideas Come From."  I wonder about the editorial decision associated with the name change?  And which title came first?
2. Invention does not equal innovation.  See, as an example, recent patents granted IBM.
   

Anyway, Lohr talks about Prof. Amar Bhide of the Columbia Business School and his book, "The Ventursome Economy."  The thrust is article seems to me to be that innovation can be small as well as large, and that it can arise from individuals deeply embedded in in what may be considered to be rather mundane organizations as well as from companies generally considered to be innovative.  Bhide calls out "midlevel innovation."

"What gets short shrift, Mr. Bhidé said, is “midlevel innovation.” The category, by his definition, is a broad one, ranging from a venture capitalist tweaking a business model to trim costs by a few percent to a technician fine-tuning his company’s business software to save a couple of data-entry steps in the accounting department.

These midlevel innovations, Mr. Bhidé said, do not show up in patent counts, and individually they are small steps indeed. But they add up, especially because there is so much of that kind of unsung innovation across the American economy."

I regularly bring to the attention of my students Rudyard Kipling's Six Best Friends; who, what, where, when, how, and why.  My assertion is that if one can take an issue and answer the six questions, then one is likely to have a pretty good grasp of what is going on.

I bring these up because my sense is that innovation can and does occur in all of these six areas.  Sometime ago, for example, it was modish to assert that "know-how" was as equally important as "know-what."

Here's the last sentence of the article.

"'And our supply of high-level science and ideas in most fields far exceeds our capacity to use it.'"

This brings to mind a slide from Notes from the IT Frontline - 1965-2003 - From Punched Card to PDAs.

Your attention is called to the last two items on each list.

I'm in league with Bhide.  We need to get to the application of innovation in order to produce real impact.