T307_1

Invention and innovation: an introduction

About this free course

This free course provides a sample of level 3 study in Design http://www.open.ac.uk/courses/find/design.

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Contents

- Introduction

- Learning outcomes

- 1 Part 1 Investigating the innovation process

- 2 Part 1: 1 Living with innovation

- 2.1 Everyday life

- 2.2 The inventive drive

- 3 Part 1: 2 Exploring innovation

- 3.1 Your experience of innovation

- 4 Part 1: 3 Inventing the telephone and living with the innovation

- 4.1 An explanation

- 4.2 When and where was the telephone invented?

- 4.3 Who invented the telephone?

- 4.4 What was innovative about the telephone?

- 4.5 Was the telephone invented in response to a need or because of developments in technology?

- 4.6 Was the telephone an immediate success?

- 4.7 Has telephone design changed over time?

- 4.8 Has the telephone led to any related or spin-off products?

- 4.9 A consumer's experience of innovation

- 4.10 What has been learnt from the history of the telephone?

- 5 Part 1: 4 Key concepts

- 5.1 Introduction to key concepts

- 5.2 Inventors and inventions

- 5.3 Designs

- 5.4 Product champion

- 5.5 Entrepreneur

- 5.6 Improver

- 5.7 Innovation

- 5.8 Dominant design

- 5.9 Robust design and lean design

- 5.10 Radical innovation and incremental innovation

- 5.11 Sustaining innovation and disruptive innovation

- 5.12 Process innovation

- 5.13 Diffusion and suppression

- 5.14 Compact fluorescents and new developments

- 5.15 Intellectual property and patents

- 6 Part 1: 5 Dead certs and dead ends

- 6.1 Evolutionary development

- 6.2 Are cylinder ships a dead-end invention?

- 7 Part 1: 6 Self-assessment questions

- 8 Part 1: 7 Key points of Part 1

- 9 Part 2: Invention

- 10 Part 2: 1 How invention starts

- 10.1 What motivates individuals to invent?

- 10.2 Scientific or technical curiosity

- 10.3 Constructive discontent

- 10.4 Desire to make money

- 10.5 Desire to help others

- 10.6 What drives invention in organisations?

- 10.7 Business strategy

- 10.8 Need to improve product or process

- 10.9 Opportunity offered by a new material, technology or manufacturing process

- 11 Part 2: 2 How the process of invention works

- 11.1 Five steps to invention

- 11.2 Step 1 – identification of the problem

- 11.3 Step 2 – exploration

- 11.4 Step 3 – incubation

- 11.5 Step 4 – act of insight

- 12 Part 2: 3 Technology push and market pull

- 13 Part 2: 4 Preparing for innovation

- 14 Part 2: 5 Self-assessment questions

- 15 Part 2: 6 Key points of Part 2

- 16 Part 3: Innovation

- 17 Part 3: 1 Overcoming obstacles to innovation

- 17.1 Getting the technology to work

- 17.2 Getting finance and organisational backing

- 17.3 Choosing appropriate materials and manufacturing process

- 17.4 Standards and their role in innovation

- 18 Part 3: 2 Diffusion of innovations

- 18.1 Introduction to diffusion

- 18.2 Characteristics of the innovation

- 18.3 Characteristics of consumers and the market

- 18.4 MP3's diffusion depended on innovations in related areas

- 18.5 Government regulations and legislation

- 19 Part 3: 3 Sustaining and disruptive innovation

- 20 Part 3: 4 Phases and waves of innovation

- Part 3: 5 Self-assessment questions

- 22 Part 3: 6 Key points of Part 3

- Conclusion

- Keep on learning

- References

- Acknowledgements

Introduction

You can experience this free course as it was originally designed on OpenLearn, the home of free learning from The Open University: http://www.open.edu/openlearn/science-maths-technology/engineering-and-technology/design-and-innovation/invention-and-innovation-introduction/content-section-0.

This unit aims to provide an understanding of invention, design, innovation and diffusion as ongoing processes with a range of factors affecting success at each stage. You will gain an understanding of the factors that motivate individuals and organisations to invent, and the creative process by which individuals come up with ideas for new inventions and designs, and you will gain an understanding of the obstacles that have to be overcome to bring an invention to market and the factors that influence the successful diffusion of an innovation into widespread use.

In Part 1 I invite you to look around at the technological products in your home or at work and consider their development history and their impact on the lives of you and your family. I then define the key concepts associated with the process of invention, design, innovation and diffusion.

Part 2 considers what motivates individuals and organisations to invent in the first place and how individuals come up with ideas for new designs and inventions.

Part 3 examines how technical, financial and organisational obstacles have to be overcome in order to bring an invention to the market. Once on the market a number of factors influence how well an innovation will sell.

This OpenLearn course provides a sample of level 3 study in Design

Learning outcomes

After studying this course, you should be able to:

- explain invention, design, innovation and diffusion as ongoing processes with a range of factors affecting success at each stage

- explain how particular products you use have a history of invention and improvement, and appreciate the role that you and your family, as consumers, have played in this history

- define key concepts such as invention, design, innovation, diffusion, product champion, entrepreneur, sustaining and disruptive innovation

- explain the role of intellectual property in invention and innovation and list the various ways that inventors can protect their ideas

- identify the range of reasons that motivate individuals and organisations to invent.

1 Part 1 Investigating the innovation process

You can experience this free course as it was originally designed on OpenLearn, the home of free learning from The Open University: http://www.open.edu/openlearn/science-maths-technology/engineering-and-technology/design-and-innovation/invention-and-innovation-introduction/content-section-0.

In Part 1 I invite you to look around at the technological products in your home or at work and consider their development history and their impact on the lives of you and your family. I then define the key concepts associated with the process of invention, design, innovation and diffusion.

2 Part 1: 1 Living with innovation

You can experience this free course as it was originally designed on OpenLearn, the home of free learning from The Open University: http://www.open.edu/openlearn/science-maths-technology/engineering-and-technology/design-and-innovation/invention-and-innovation-introduction/content-section-0.

2.1 Everyday life

Picture an everyday scene. You're in a high street coffee shop. All around you people are drinking coffee. Some people are chatting with friends, others are using their mobile phone. A few individuals seem to be working – consulting their laptop computers, scribbling notes. In a corner of the coffee shop an internet cafe has been set up. At one table a couple of teenagers are laughing at a message in a chat room, while at another table an old chap searches the Web for something.

Now imagine this scene through the eyes of a technologist from 100 years ago. This is someone who has thought carefully about how technology and society might develop during the twentieth century. Putting aside his disappointment at not seeing any flying cars or people wearing silver spacesuits, some aspects of the scene will be familiar. People are still drinking coffee and talking as they did in 1906, although the range of coffees, the variety of accents and languages, and the mix of races and sexes might be surprising.

Surprising too may be the realisation that some of the people here are working in a leisure setting. The technologist had probably imagined that by now the working week would last only a few hours.

Most surprising perhaps will be the technological tools most people seem to be using. The technologist is aware of the telephone, which was invented about 30 years earlier. If he's sufficiently affluent he may have used one – about 7 per cent of households in London had a telephone by the early years of the twentieth century. But most of these twenty-first century people seem to have wireless pocket-size personal communicators they can use to send messages or speak to anyone anywhere in the world.

Some are using a handheld machine that contains thousands of pieces of information that can be accessed instantly, and can do calculations in a fraction of a second that would have taken a team of operators with mechanical calculators hours or even days. And these machines, like the only slightly larger versions in the corner, can be connected to a global brain from which the people can call up almost any information, news, idea, opinion or gossip that exists anywhere on the planet.

How much of this scene would have been predictable 100 years ago? And how many anticipated developments of technology, like flying cars, haven't come about? Well, don't be too hard on the technologist. Some of these technologies weren't even predicted as recently as 25 years ago. As many people have said before, hindsight is the only exact science.

Most of the changes in technology, compared to 100 years ago, are due to the continual inventive activity of a large number of people. At the most basic level many of us at some time or other have felt annoyed at the way some product works or doesn't work. Most of us don't do anything other than maybe form a vague idea about how a product or process might be improved. In some people, however, this inventive drive is so strong that they act on it.

2.2 The inventive drive

What events and ideas spurred people to come up with thousands of inventions in the last 100 years?

Ron Hickman was a do-it-yourself enthusiast who damaged a chair being used to support a piece of wood he was sawing. Instead of merely being annoyed at the accident he set about designing and building a prototype of a combined workbench and sawhorse to prevent further damage to his furniture. This became the Workmate (Figure 1), which to date has sold well over 50 million units.

James Dyson was unhappy with the reduced suction power of his domestic vacuum cleaner as the bag filled with dust. So he took the industrial cyclone technology used to extract harmful particles by centrifugal force from factory paint shops and sawmills, scaled it down and applied it to improve the performance of domestic cleaners. His bagless cyclone cleaner has had worldwide success(Figure 2).

If you can't be sure people will want to buy a new product in large enough numbers, then it's a financial gamble to try to commercialise an invention. However there are big money rewards for any individual or company brave enough to take risks. The cumulative effect of this combined inventive and commercial drive has led to the sorts of changes observed by the visitor from 1906.

At the start of the twenty-first century technological innovation seems to be accelerating. This has resulted in an amazing variety of new products, processes and technical systems developed to meet ever more sophisticated sets of requirements. In the Westernised world at least, innovation is widely believed to be vital for ensuring the economic prosperity not only of individuals and commercial organisations, but also of nations.

Source: DIY Picture Library

Figure 1 Black & Decker Workmate workbench, originally designed by Ron Hickman

Source: courtesy of Dyson Ltd

Figure 2 Dyson DC07 upright cyclone cleaner

In 2003 the prime minister of the UK Tony Blair said,

The creativity and inventiveness of our people is our country's greatest asset and has always underpinned the UK's economic success. But in an increasingly global world, our ability to invent, design and manufacture the goods and services that people want is more vital to our future prosperity than ever.

Innovation, the exploitation of new ideas, is absolutely essential to safeguard and deliver high-quality jobs, successful businesses, better products and services for our consumers, and new, more environmentally friendly processes.

(Department of Trade and Industry, 2003, p. 3)

Progress itself is often defined in terms of the ability of individuals and organisations to invent new products and processes, devise improvements to existing products, and make a success of selling such innovations on the market. Products developed over the last 100 years such as the telephone (originating in the 1870s), motor vehicles (1880s), television (1920s), computers (1940s) have transformed the world and the way people organise their lives.

Equally important, inventive skills have been applied to developing new materials and manufacturing processes, enabling new and improved products to be made more efficiently with lower labour and manufacturing costs and with less overall environmental impact. The invention of faster and more efficient processes has enabled the quality of innovative products to be steadily improved over the lifetime of a product – at the same time the price to customers has been reduced, therefore increasing availability and profits.

Source: John Frost Historical Newspaper Service

Figure 3 Announcement of the revolutionary new writing implement, the Biro, in 1946

This process of steady improvement can continue for a long time, at least until the market is saturated or a newer innovation comes along that has a competitive advantage – cheaper, easier to use, more reliable or does the job better. Most mature, everyday products are now relatively cheaper than when they were introduced and certainly perform more reliably.

For example the ballpoint pen was invented by Laszlo Biro in 1938. The first Biro pen to go on sale in the UK in 1946 cost 55 shillings (£2.75), which was more than half the average weekly wage at the time(Figure 3). It required refills and service to be carried out by the retailer. However, in 1953, Marcel Bich developed a process for manufacture and assembly of ballpoint pens that dramatically increased the volume of production and reduced the cost of each pen. Nowadays you can buy a perfectly adequate, reliable ballpoint pen for a few pence. At the time of writing (2005) the BIC Cristal (Figure 4), direct descendant of the original Biro, cost less than 20 pence and more than 5 billion BIC ballpoints are being sold each year (around 14 million each day).

Figure 4 BIC Cristal ballpoint pen, 2005

The timescale for the widespread take-up (known as diffusion) of many innovations is shortening. For example it took radio 37 years to reach an audience of 50 million listeners, TV about 15 years to reach the same number of viewers and the World Wide Web just over 3 years to reach 50 million users.

Over the period since the invention of radio the UK and US populations increased by 1.5 and 3 times respectively, so population increase alone doesn't explain a tenfold increase in the take-up rate of innovative products. The industrial and social infrastructure has become increasingly effective at producing and selling new products. The increasing speed of diffusion of many innovations suggests we are experiencing revolutionary change.

However, there is actually much continuity in the way in which innovation occurs and society adapts to it. Much has changed over the last 100 years but many of the institutions and much of the commercial structure of our society would be broadly recognisable to the visitor from the past. In reality, change caused by innovation is more evolutionary and less transforming.

3 Part 1: 2 Exploring innovation

You can experience this free course as it was originally designed on OpenLearn, the home of free learning from The Open University: http://www.open.edu/openlearn/science-maths-technology/engineering-and-technology/design-and-innovation/invention-and-innovation-introduction/content-section-0.

3.1 Your experience of innovation

Before I look in more detail at what's involved in the processes of invention and innovation, I want you to consider your own experience of innovation as an end user.

Now attempt Exercise 1. Consider the impact of one innovation on you and your family and, using the internet, look briefly at the development history behind that innovation. You'll need to make notes summarising what you discover, so make sure you have some means of recording the information and your comments.

Activity 1: Exploring innovation

Look around at technological products at home or at work. Pick a product that interests you.

1 Using an internet search engine such as Google (recommended), AlltheWeb, Ask Jeeves, or MetaCrawler (which searches other search engines) carry out a quick internet search for the history of your product's development.

A good start would be to find a timeline, which will show you the key stages in the development of the technology and the various individuals and companies likely to have been involved. Then you can investigate particular aspects of the timeline to reveal a more detailed picture.

If you spend around 1 hour on the search, you're likely to come up with a surprising amount of information. See how many of the following questions you can answer.

- (a) When and where was the product invented?

- (b) Who invented it?

- (c) What was innovative about it?

- (d) Was it invented in response to a need or because of developments in technology?

- (e) Was it an immediate success?

- (f) Has its design changed over time?

- (g) Has it led to any related or spin-off products?

2 Map your own or your family's experience of this product onto its development history by answering the following questions.

- (a) When did you or your family first get the product?

- (b) How long were you aware of the product before buying it?

- (c) Was it a new gadget or the latest version of a well-established product?

- (d) Did you delay buying it because of its price, the cost of using it or doubts about its reliability?

- (e) Have you since replaced it with an improved or updated version?

View discussion - Activity 1: Exploring innovation

4 Part 1: 3 Inventing the telephone and living with the innovation

You can experience this free course as it was originally designed on OpenLearn, the home of free learning from The Open University: http://www.open.edu/openlearn/science-maths-technology/engineering-and-technology/design-and-innovation/invention-and-innovation-introduction/content-section-0.

4.1 An explanation

I will now elaborate on my answer from Exercise 1. I'm doing this because my internet search revealed more than I've written in the above answer, and to show that the invention of the telephone and its use by consumers is not as plain and simple as you may think. You were not expected to provide the kind of detail below and my search took much more than 1 hour.

4.2 When and where was the telephone invented?

I'd read in the past that the telephone was invented in 1876 by Alexander Graham Bell. However when I looked more closely at the history it turns out that the idea had been ‘in the air’ for almost half a century.

The distance communication technology of the time, the telegraph, was based on sending pulses of electricity along a wire to control an electromagnet at the receiving end. The sender completed an electric circuit by pressing a key and the receiver's electromagnet controlled a pen that made marks on a moving paper tape. Samuel Morse devised a code whereby the letters of the alphabet could be represented by different combinations of dots and dashes. Later, telegraph operators learned to interpret the Morse code from the sound made by the electromagnet and the paper tape became redundant.

In 1854 Charles Bourseul suggested that speaking close to a diaphragm would cause it to vibrate and that these vibrations could be used to make or break an electrical circuit, as in the telegraph. The process could then be reversed by a receiving diaphragm turning the signal back into speech. Bourseul didn't pursue this idea himself but it was taken up by other inventors. A self-taught German physicist and schoolteacher, Philipp Reis, demonstrated a form of telephone based on these ideas in 1861. Although it could transmit music and certain other sounds along a wire his ‘telephon’ could not transmit intelligible speech. Moreover Reis suffered from ill health and lack of resources so did not patent or develop his prototype.

In Italy, Innocenzo Manzetti had been working on an automaton since 1849. His attempts to make his robot speak led him to develop a prototype telephone that was demonstrated to the Italian press in 1865. It is said that his humble nature and lack of finance meant he didn't try to commercialise his prototype.

In 1871 an Italian immigrant to the USA, Antonio Meucci, filed a caveat for his ‘teletrofono’ invention based on a communication link he had rigged up between his basement lab and his second-floor bedroom to keep in touch with his ailing wife. (A caveat is a warning to others that he was in the process of inventing a device and has a general description of the invention not yet perfected.) Once again though, like Reis, Meucci suffered from illness and lack of resources. Not only could he not afford to convert his caveat into a full patent application, he couldn't afford the annual renewal fee and allowed his caveat to expire. In 2001 in a resolution acknowledging Meucci's contribution to the invention of the telephone, the US Congress said, ‘if Meucci had been able to pay the $10 fee to maintain the caveat after 1874, no patent could have been issued to Bell’.

Bell was an elocution teacher of deaf pupils who was working on a device to translate sound into visible patterns that would allow deaf people to ‘see’ speech. While working on this device he realised the potential for improving the telegraph if a wave of undulating current could be transmitted along the wires instead of the existing intermittent pulses. This would allow a larger number of signals to be transmitted on the same telegraph circuit – each signal using a different musical note. This would make the system more efficient and reduce the need to erect many more new lines to cope with the growth in traffic.

Bell was among a number of inventors racing to be the first to produce a working prototype of what became known as the musical or harmonic telegraph. On 3 June 1875, while working on a prototype of the harmonic telegraph, Bell heard the sound of his assistant Watson plucking a metal reed on the sending device. After further experimentation Bell filed an application for a patent – said to be the single most valuable patent in history – on 14 February 1876 for an ‘improvement to telegraphy’ in which the transmission of ‘noises or sounds’ was merely one of the ‘other uses to which these instruments may be put’. There was no mention of speech. Amazingly, however, only a few hours later another inventor, Elisha Gray, filed a caveat at the US Patent Office for a similar device. In other words, to say the telephone was invented in 1876 doesn't tell the whole story – invention is an ongoing process not a one-off event.

4.3 Who invented the telephone?

The popular image of Bell inventing the telephone, while it has some truth, is by no means the whole story. The two most significant players in the invention of a practical working telephone were Bell and Elisha Gray.

Gray was the co-owner and chief scientist of a company that manufactured telegraphic equipment. Bell's patent description had sound transmission as a minor purpose. But Gray's caveat declared that the main purpose of his device was ‘to transmit the tones of the human voice through a telegraphic circuit and reproduce them at the receiving end of the line, so that actual conversations can be carried on by persons at long distances apart’. Although Bell had built a prototype, it wasn't a working telephone system, and while his early devices worked as receivers they never worked well as transmitters. In fact Gray's idea was sounder in concept than Bell's (including using liquid in the transmitter, an idea that Bell later adopted, some say copied), and Gray's intentions were clearer, but he hadn't built a working prototype either. The US patent system of the time didn't require inventors to produce a working prototype.

Gray chose to register his detailed specification as an incomplete invention, while Bell registered his partial specification as a complete invention. On the one hand, it could be said that Bell was displaying the self-confidence needed by any inventor. However, it was discovered in a Congressional inquiry 10 years later that an official from the Patent Office had informed Bell's lawyers of the content of Gray's caveat rather than just of its existence. Therefore when, a few weeks later, Bell was called to explain the similarities of his patent to one he had been granted a year earlier for a harmonic telegraph, it is suggested that he was able to use inside information to persuade the examiner that his was a new device – the telephone. A patent was granted to Bell in March 1876.

When doubts finally emerged about the propriety of Bell's original patent, the US government brought a case in 1887 to annul the Bell patent on the grounds of ‘fraud and misrepresentation’. However, the claims could not be substantiated, most of the rival claimants had died or been bought off and the Bell patent was due to expire in 1893. To quote Congress, ‘the case was discontinued as moot without ever reaching the underlying issue of the true inventor of the telephone entitled to the patent’.

To be fair, Gray never claimed to be the sole inventor of the telephone but seemed to believe it was a case of ‘simultaneous invention’. However, with both men intent on exploiting the invention commercially it was inevitable that there would be a patent dispute. Gray lined up with Western Union, which funded his research, and which had obtained control of Thomas Edison's patent for a carbon transmitter. The giant telegraph company had set up a subsidiary, the American Speaking Telephone Company, to exploit the emerging technology that was being greeted enthusiastically by some of their best telegraph customers, the New York stockbrokers. Bell had a growing organisation on his side to exploit his invention – the Bell Telephone Company had become National Bell.

When Western Union started to use a system incorporating Edison's transmitter but Bell's receiver, National Bell resorted to the courts to stop it. At the same time Bell had Emile Berliner (later the inventor of the gramophone) working to produce a rival transmitter to go with Bell's superior receiver – and to bypass Edison's patent.

In 1879 an agreement was finally reached that saw Western Union agree to drop its counter-suits and sign over its own telephone patents. Apparently Western Union thought the telephone would only ever be a rival to the telegraph over short distances. In exchange National Bell agreed to drop its cases, buy out its rival's subscribers and equipment and pay Western Union a 20 per cent commission on each telephone rental for the remaining 15 years of the patents (this eventually totalled $7m). In addition Gray was paid $100 000 and Western Electric (Gray's company) was contracted as Bell's sole equipment supplier – an arrangement that lasted for almost 100 years.

Although there were many more patent cases brought both by and against Bell, Gray's had been the most significant. From this point on it was Bell's name and company that were associated with the invention and development of the telephone.

So the identification of a particular individual as the inventor of a new technology is not necessarily straightforward. Boldness and determination, allied with sufficient resources and a good support team – especially good patent lawyers – seem to be just as important as technical ingenuity. There also seems to be an element of history being written by the winners.

4.4 What was innovative about the telephone?

The most obvious innovative aspect was that speech was being transmitted, so in principle anyone could use a telephone for communication. The use of the telegraph required skilled operatives. A message had to be translated into the dots and dashes of Morse code and transmitted using a single keypad making and breaking the connection in an electrical circuit. At the other end of the wire another Morse operator translated the received clicks into the words of the message. With the telephone no specialised skills or training were needed to use it and the efficiency of communication was not limited by the speed and translating ability of the Morse operators. As a means of communicating across distance the telephone was easier to use and more efficient. Quite a competitive advantage.

However, for early versions of the telephone much of this advantage was merely potential. It needed improvements in performance and a considerable growth in the telephone network before significant numbers of people were prepared to switch from the telegraph. Subsequent innovations, such as the manual exchange, pay phones, the automatic exchange, metering, trunk dialling and the more recent introduction of digital systems, have all contributed to the spread of the telephone as a technological product.

4.5 Was the telephone invented in response to a need or because of developments in technology?

As with many truly innovative technologies it's difficult to claim that people were demanding its invention. Most people were satisfied with the existing means of communicating across distances. It took a great deal of imagination to foresee that the ability to speak to others at a distance would eventually replace the telegraph in business and the letter in personal communications. People weren't expressing a need to be able to communicate more rapidly but once the means became available to do so they steadily took advantage of the new technology. Then positive feedback took over and the better the technology became the more people got used to its benefits and the greater their need became for more innovation.

Developments in technology can create a need that provides a ready market for improved versions of the technology. And so it goes on.

4.6 Was the telephone an immediate success?

By the end of 1876 Bell had managed to build an experimental device that could carry a conversation across 2 miles of wire. The following year the first operational telephone line was erected over the 5 miles between Charles Williams’ factory in Boston and his home in Somerville. It was done there because Bell had conducted some of his experimental work in Williams’ electrical workshops a couple of years earlier. These first telephones were still fairly crude devices and arranged in pairs to connect two particular sites – there was no network. The sound they produced was weak and indistinct, and deteriorated with distance.

There was immediate scepticism expressed about the telephone from the telegraph companies and others. It wasn't so much that the telegraph companies saw the telephone as a threat, at least not in the early days. It was more that they had their own well-established technology, employed most of the people with any expertise in this area and saw no need to change.

Furthermore not everyone can appreciate the potential of a very new technology. Even Bell might not have realised the significance of the invention to start with. Later in the same year, after he was granted his patent, he and his financial backer offered to sell the patent to the Telegraph Company, which was the forerunner of Western Union. The offer was turned down, allegedly with the new invention being dismissed as ‘hardly more than a toy’.

New technologies can encounter resistance from people with a stake in established technologies. For a new technology to succeed it must be clear what advantage it has to offer over existing technology, and it has to capture enough users to make itself economically viable. For a decade or more after its invention there was still some uncertainty about the best use for the telephone. A London company offered multiple headsets for connecting telephone subscribers and their friends and family to theatres, concerts and church services. In Paris and Budapest an all-day telephone news service was offered – this actually continued for 30 or 40 years. But any potential for high-quality sound from the telephone had been sacrificed in the interest of maximising the number of conversations that could be carried along a single wire. In other words it was designed for one-to-one conversation and that became its main function.

The first significant users of the telegraph had been the stock market and newspapers who contributed to its widespread diffusion. These two groups were also among the early users of the telephone and Bell's marketing was almost exclusively aimed at commercial users. Even in the USA the telephone was mostly a business tool for the first 50 years of its development. It wasn't until after the Second World War that a majority of US households had a private telephone.

So the telephone was by no means an immediate success but rather experienced a steady growth, starting with a small number of specialised users and gradually diffusing into more general and widespread use.

4.7 Has telephone design changed over time?

As you can see from Figure 5 the design of the telephone has changed considerably over its lifetime, reflecting the improvements in technology, materials, components and manufacturing processes. Figures 1(a) to (f) show some of the early progress. Figure 5(a) is a replica of Bell's ‘liquid transmitter’ of 1876 and Figure 5(b) is a Bell telephone and terminal panel from 1877 showing the adaptation for two-way conversation. Edison's wall telephone (Figure 5c) was developed by 1880 and the classic ‘candlestick’ table top phone (Figure 5d) by 1900. As the technology improved both transmitter and receiver were incorporated into a single handset (Figure 5e), and once automatic exchanges had been invented room had to be found for a dial (Figure 5f, the Strowger automatic dial telephone, 1905). The appearance of synthetic plastics, starting with Bakelite in the 1920s, permitted new shapes (Figure 5g, Bakelite handset), and later developments led to colour being used in telephones for the first time (Figure 5h, plastic handset from the 1960s; Figure 5i, Trimphone, 1970s). Dials were gradually superseded by push buttons (Figure 5j, Keyphone, 1972). Finally digitalisation and miniaturisation have challenged designers to fit an increasing number of functions into ever-smaller handsets. Figure 6(k) shows Motorola's MicroTAC personal cellular phone, which was the smallest and lightest on the market in 1989, and Figure 5(l) is Samsung's A800 ‘hinged’ mobile phone of 2004.

Figure 5 Since its invention the design of the telephone has evolved (Sources: (a) to (g) Science & Society Picture Library; (h) Science Photo Library; (i) Sam Hallas; (k) Northwood Images)

4.8 Has the telephone led to any related or spin-off products?

There have been a number of branches of the telegraph and the telephone family tree where research and experiment into one technology have contributed to the development of another.

An early example was Edison inventing the phonograph. He'd been working on a telegraph repeater to record telegraph signals using a stylus to vibrate onto and indent a sheet of paper. The idea was that when the indented paper passed across the stylus again the indentations would cause identical vibrations and the telegraph message would be repeated exactly. Edison was also experimenting to improve the telephone.

When feeling the vibrations caused when sound passed through the diaphragm in a telephone mouthpiece, Edison realised that the repeater idea could be applied to the human voice being transmitted by the telephone. His first working prototype of the phonograph was hand-cranked and used tinfoil as the recording medium. Though there was something almost miraculous about hearing the human voice reproduced by this simple mechanical device there was no obvious use for it, particularly when the quality of recording was so poor. One of Edison's first ideas was to use it to record telephone conversations for posterity. After the initial excitement Edison abandoned the phonograph to work on the electric light.

Ten years later, under pressure from Bell who was developing an improved version of the phonograph, Edison finally produced a commercial phonograph using an electric motor and hard wax-coated cylinders that delivered much better sound quality. Around the same time Emile Berliner was inventing a means of recording onto a flat wax-coated zinc disk. Even this was initially regarded and marketed as a toy, but eventually the gramophone formed the basis of a huge industry for selling recorded music.

Another of the branches led to radio and then mobile telephony. The work of Bell, Edison and others on improving the telegraph and transmitting sound along wires led eventually to wireless transmission – Marconi was transmitting Morse code messages from ship to shore in 1897 and eventually across the Atlantic in 1901. The first commercial transatlantic radio voice service began in 1927. The first radiotelephone service for vehicles was introduced in the US in 1946.

In 1947 microwave radio transmissions started to be used for long-distance telephony and by the early 1960s telecommunications satellites were being used for round-the-world contact. The first portable cellular phone appeared in 1979. Today's mobile phones might seem like a different product from Bell's early prototypes but there's a continuous line of scientific discoveries and developments in technology and materials connecting the two (Figure 6).

Figure 6 A family tree showing the development of telephone technology. It shows a progression but does not try to show every kind of product developed

4.9 A consumer's experience of innovation

First phone in 1968

As I mentioned earlier my parents first acquired a domestic telephone in 1968 – more than 90 years after its invention.

Before then other ways of communicating seemed good enough. In the early 1950s in our street of around 100 houses only one family had a private telephone. My family used public call boxes occasionally but we didn't know many people with their own phone so not many calls needed to be made. When we needed to communicate with people at a distance we sent a letter. In emergencies or for urgent communications we sent or received telegrams – but these were usually reserved for bad news.

Product awareness

My parents and I had been aware of the telephone all our lives but it seemed like a luxury item and was lower in our priorities than, say, a car (that we bought in 1956) or a television (1958). Even by 1970 only around 30 per cent of households in the UK had a home telephone – this had risen to 95 per cent by the year 2000.

New but familiar

There didn't seem to be anything particularly novel about our first telephone. On the surface the design had not changed significantly for 40 years, consisting of a dial on the front and a large handset sitting on a cradle on top. The most obvious changes were in the materials used – moulded plastic had replaced Bakelite and metal. These material changes in our 1968 telephone had been introduced in 1959 with the launch of the 700-series telephone (Figure 7). This was much lighter than previous designs with lightweight components and a plastic body.

Figure 7 700-series plastic-bodied telephone, launched in 1959 (Source: courtesy of Telephones UK)

Also, for the first time, telephones were available in a range of six colours (ours was green), marking the demise of black as the standard telephone colour. The now familiar curled cord connecting the handset to the body also made its first appearance with this design change.

In those days the apparatus and the line were both rented from the Post Office but for the first time it was possible to exercise some consumer choice. The first choice was over the colour. Even as late as 1968, limitations in the capacity of telephone exchanges meant the norm was to have a party line shared with at least one other household. The other choice available was to have a dedicated line, although that was more expensive to have installed. We were relatively unusual in having our own dedicated line.

Product price, reliability and reasons for buying

We acquired a telephone when we did for a mixture of reasons. When my mother got a job our family had more disposable income to spend on consumer goods. Costs of owning a phone had fallen in relative terms as use of the telephone spread, bringing its running costs within our price range. More of our family and friends were getting telephones so it began to make more sense for us to get one so we could keep in touch. Reliability didn't seem to be a problem. Another significant factor was that my mother worked for social services and her employer wanted to be able to contact her quickly as part of her job. So the requirement for instant communication was spreading into the culture of certain types of occupation.

Once ownership of phones reached a certain proportion of the population its take-up seemed to gather momentum. And once people began to experience the ease and convenience offered by having a telephone in their own home it became part of their expectations of modern living. For increasing numbers of people, owning a phone became a necessity rather than a luxury.

Telephones since 1968

The ending of the Post Office monopoly in 1981 and the introduction of competition, firstly to the apparatus supply market and then to the provision of phone services, led to an increase in competing products and a spread of the technology. That first handset my parents rented lasted us for 10 years.

Since competition was introduced and cheap handsets became available to buy, most of us seem to replace our handsets much more frequently. This has been stimulated by an increasing variety of innovative features offered over the years – push-buttons, built-in answer phones, handsets combined with a radio, novelty handsets, cordless phones with several handsets, and so on. In contrast to my parents’ house of the 1960s, my own family has two telephone lines, two computers connected to the internet, and we have three handsets in various parts of the house. In addition every member of the family has their own mobile phone, a product of a merger between the telephone and radio timelines. But that's another story.

4.10 What has been learnt from the history of the telephone?

Here are some points about invention and innovation that seem to have emerged from considering the case of the telephone.

- Invention is an ongoing process not a one-off event.

- It's not always possible to identify one individual as the inventor of a new technological product – even in well-known cases.

- Boldness and determination, allied with sufficient resources and a good support team – especially good patent lawyers – seem to be just as important as technical ingenuity.

- It can take a great deal of imagination to foresee how a new technology might be used, particularly for potential financial backers not directly involved with the development of the technology.

- An innovation needs a competitive advantage over existing technologies or products in order to succeed.

- The success of an innovation depends on regular improvements to its performance, reliability and design. This is usually achieved by building on a series of innovations in supporting technology, improvements in manufacturing processes, component performance, new materials use and so on.

- The affordability of innovative products is important – this is related to the cost of its manufacture and the relative affluence of buyers.

- There's a relationship between new technology and needs – new technologies can create new markets that provide an incentive to make further improvements to the technology.

- A group of early, sometimes specialised users of an innovation can play an important part in giving momentum to its sales.

- As the use of an innovation spreads it changes from being a novelty or luxury to a necessity for increasing numbers of people.

- There are fashions in innovative products, shaped by marketing and advertising, which can stimulate demand for a particular product.

- Governments can affect the context for innovation in particular areas of technology.

- There are factors that can suppress or delay the spread of an innovation, particularly in the early years of its development: patent disputes over ownership; resistance from people with a stake in established technologies; protective inertia in business and institutional structures resisting radical change.

- Research and experimentation into one technology can contribute to the development of another spin-off technology.

5 Part 1: 4 Key concepts

You can experience this free course as it was originally designed on OpenLearn, the home of free learning from The Open University: http://www.open.edu/openlearn/science-maths-technology/engineering-and-technology/design-and-innovation/invention-and-innovation-introduction/content-section-0.

5.1 Introduction to key concepts

Before I go any further I will establish the meaning of some of the key concepts that you will encounter throughout this unit.

The key concepts elaborated in this unit are:

- inventor

- invention

- design

- product champion

- entrepreneur

- improver

- innovation

- dominant design

- robust design

- lean design

- radical innovation

- incremental innovation

- sustaining innovation

- disruptive innovation

- process innovation

- diffusion and suppression

- intellectual property and patents.

Although innovation is the term applied to one particular stage, it is also common to talk about the whole process from invention to diffusion as the innovation process.

To illustrate these concepts I will use the example of a significant invention with which you are familiar and that has come to symbolise the inspired moment at the heart of invention – the electric light. This example also illustrates the range of factors behind the success of one of the most famous inventors of all time, Thomas Edison. The irony, as you will discover, is that there was no clear ‘Eureka!’ moment in this invention. It was the product of sheer hard work and demonstrated Edison's famous saying in a newspaper interview, ‘Genius is 1 per cent inspiration and 99 per cent perspiration’.

5.2 Inventors and inventions

An inventor is an individual or group able to generate an idea for a new or improved device, product or process. The idea must then be transformed into concrete information in the form of a description, sketch or model.

An invention is an idea, concept or design for a new or improved device, product or process that is available as concrete information in the form of a description, sketch or model.

So an inventor may have many ideas for new products or improvements to existing processes, say, but these do not constitute an invention until the ideas have been transformed into something real, such as drawings or a prototype with the potential for practical application. As you will see later on, the conditions for granting a patent to protect an invention from being copied are that the invention must be new, must not be obvious to someone who knows about the subject and must be capable of industrial application.

Given that the process of invention takes place over time it is often not possible to be precise about the exact moment that an inventive idea becomes an invention. For example in 1878 the prolific US inventor, Thomas Edison, began work on inventing an incandescent lamp powered by electricity. He was enthused by a new kind of generator that had been developed to power a small arc-light system and realised the commercial possibilities of being the first to provide a large-scale electric lighting system. He had a vision of lighting up an entire city district with such a generator.

However the arc-light (bright light produced by a continuous electric arc leaping between two electrodes) suffered from two problems: burnout of the tips of its electrodes meant regular replacement, and the problem of controlling the gap between the electrodes when they were constantly being burned up by the arc. Edison saw the need for inventing an electric lamp that would be effective and long lasting. He thought that the solution might lie in the incandescent lamp – that is, a lamp in which light is produced by using electricity to heat some substance to a high temperature, causing it to glow.

Others had been trying for years to achieve this goal, and in fact the first patent on an incandescent lamp was taken out in Britain in 1841. The situation of many people working towards solving the same technological problem is common and often results in simultaneous invention – as you saw with the invention of the telephone. The most notable of these other inventors was Joseph Swan, an Englishman who had produced a design that featured a carbonised paper filament that glowed inside a glass when electricity was passed through it (Figure 8). The air was evacuated from the inside of the bulb so that oxygen would not cause the filament to burn up. However no one, including Swan, had managed to produce a filament that would glow for a useful length of time before being destroyed.

Figure 8 On the left is Swan's experimental carbon pencil lamp, 1878–9. On the right is the first prototype of Edison's incandescent lamp, 1879. (Source: Science & Society Picture Library)

Edison's challenge was to find a suitable material for the filament that would permit a bright glow without burning up too quickly. He had ideas about how it might be done but it took a year of searching for and experimenting with thousands of different filament materials. He also searched for a method of achieving the necessary vacuum inside the light bulb. Eventually he produced a working prototype of his carbon filament lamp in October 1879. This consisted of a thread of carbonised cotton bent into the shape of a horseshoe and mounted inside a glass bulb (Figure 8, right) that had the air sucked out of it(Figure 9). When connected to an electric current the new ‘electric candle’ burned for almost 2 days.

Figure 9 Light bulb evacuation pumps

This apparatus was a combination of several existing technologies – Geissler and Sprengel's mercury pumps and McLeod's vacuum gauge. After only a few weeks of improvements in late 1879, Edison's team could evacuate a bulb to a millionth of an atmosphere in 20 minutes.

This first reliable working prototype could be said to be the invention. However before the electric light could be offered for sale to customers there was still a great deal of work to be done by Edison and his team of workers at his Menlo Park laboratory in north-east USA (Figure 10).

Figure 10 Edison's Menlo Park laboratory with experimental light bulb apparatus on the left, in front of a table of batteries

Activity 2

Can you think of an inventor other than those named previously in this unit?

View answer - Activity 2

Activity 3

Can you think of a recent invention other than those mentioned previously in this unit?

View answer - Activity 3

5.3 Designs

A design comprises drawings, instructions or models that contain all the information for the manufacture of a product or the introduction of a process or system.

So Edison's early prototypes were different designs that physically embodied the new ideas on which his invention was based. But developing an invention in a laboratory or workshop is one thing, manufacturing an innovation to sell to others is a different matter.

Edison quickly realised that he needed to develop a complete electric lighting system, not just the electric lamp. Further, Edison had to ensure that his electric light and its related subsystems could be reproduced on the large scale that would be required to achieve commercial success. This involved producing designs of every component of his electric lighting system, in other words specific plans, drawings and instructions to enable the manufacture of products, processes or systems related to his invention (Figure 11). So design has a vital role to play in the commercial manufacture of new inventions, to specify and communicate what is to be made.

Figure 11 Design for screw socket, September 1880 (Source: Edison National Historic Site)

Edison's long-time associates, Edward H. Johnson and John Ott, were principally responsible for designing fixtures in the autumn of 1880. Their work resulted in the screw socket and base very much like those widely used today.

Edison and his team continued to develop and improve the lamp itself and the related devices necessary for reliable, large-scale lighting systems. They worked on techniques for creating better vacuums inside glass bulbs, improvements to the design of generators and distribution systems, and so on.

5.4 Product champion

Throughout the development of this innovation Edison endeavoured, by means of persuasive argument and demonstrations of progress, to convince those people who were in a position to help further the success of the electric light that it had great potential. These people included financiers who could provide capital for more research and development, industrialists who might install it in their factories, and politicians who might agree to the large-scale city installation of a lighting system.

This is a key role in the development of any invention; it needs a product champion. This will be an individual or group committed to promoting the development of a certain product, process or system.

Usually such championing takes place in an institutional context where the champion is trying to persuade the organisation that it is worth investing in a particular new product, or is prepared to defend an innovative product from attack once the process of development is under way. Sometimes, however, this takes place outside an organisation, where a sympathetic supporter will promote the qualities of an invention to those who might be willing to finance its development. If no outside support is forthcoming, or if even more support is needed to give momentum to the innovation process, the original inventor will need to take on the additional role of champion, as did Edison.

5.5 Entrepreneur

From this it is clear that money is a key requirement for transforming an invention into an innovation. Money pays for the people and equipment needed to refine the invention into a practical working prototype, and money pays for manufacturing it.

A key role in providing this vital monetary support is played by the entrepreneur. This is a persuasive individual or group providing the resources and organisation necessary to turn the invention into an innovation.

Entrepreneurs are likely to be involved at an early stage of an innovation's development, either taking the risk of investing their own money or raising money for a project from others. Most people with money to invest will be inclined to wait until it is clearer whether an innovation is going to be successful before investing. Part of the task of the entrepreneur is to persuade them to take a risk. It is often the case that at the early stage of the innovation process an individual inventor or entrepreneur is unable to persuade people to risk investing in a new and untried invention. In the absence of the necessary financial support an inventor can either give up or take on the entrepreneurial role themselves.

Edison was one such inventor-entrepreneur. He used earnings from the commercial success of his earlier inventions – mainly related to improvements to the telegraph – together with some outside investment to build his Menlo Park workshops in 1876 (Figure 12). Edison and his team of technicians and mechanics at Menlo Park produced 400 patented inventions over the next 6 years including the microphone, the phonograph and the vacuum tube, which was later used in wireless telegraphy. This innovative laboratory therefore provided Edison with a firm technical base from which to develop the electric light, and freedom from the monetary pressures that bring down many inventors if they are unable to secure a quick return on investment in their invention. However, Edison was not typical of inventor-entrepreneurs. His reputation for commercially successful inventions was so high that within a few weeks of announcing his intention to develop electric lighting, financiers were queuing up to invest in the Edison Electric Light Company – a situation the majority of inventors can only dream about.

Even Edison, though, could not combine perfectly the creative skills of invention and innovation with the business and managerial skills of the entrepreneur. It is said, ‘he so totally mismanaged the businesses he started that he had to be removed from every one of them to save it’ (Drucker, 1985).

Figure 12 Menlo Park laboratory staff, 1880. Edison is seated third from the left, second row from the top, holding a straw hat (Source: Edison National Historic Site)

5.6 Improver

At different stages of the process of invention, design and innovation there's a role that can be played by improvers. The improver is an individual or group whose concern is to do things better by making improvements to existing products or processes.

Such people can help transform an inventor's first prototype and early design into a commercial product. Edison's team at Menlo Park included a number of engineers, chemists and mathematicians who contributed to the improvement of the electric light, as well as other inventions.

Another contribution of improvers is at a slightly later stage in the innovation process when they can make incremental improvements to other people's inventions. For example, in 1877 Edison developed a carbon transmitter that helped improve Bell's recently invented telephone.

5.7 Innovation

The point at which the electric light first became available on the market was the moment the invention became an innovation. So an innovation is a new or improved product, process or system that has reached the point of first commercial introduction.

Even this moment of achieving innovation is sometimes difficult to pinpoint in a particular case. The first full-scale use of the electric lamp outside of the laboratory was in May 1880 when Edison installed 115 of them on the new steamship Columbia at the suggestion of its owner, Henry Villard, who had become an enthusiast for the electric light after seeing a demonstration at Menlo Park (Figure 13). The electric system was more suitable than open-flame lighting in the confined spaces of a ship. It was so effective that it was 15 years before it was replaced with more modern equipment. However it could be argued that this was not the moment of innovation as there was an element of personal favour rather than it being a purely commercial transaction.

Figure 13 The first installation of the Edison system outside of Menlo Park was aboard the steamship, Columbia in 1880, shown here in a Scientific American engraving (Source: Smithsonian Institute)

It gave Edison an opportunity to put his light into operation under carefully managed conditions, as well as offering the chance for a public demonstration

One of the first commercial installations of Edison's complete electric light system (generators, distributing circuits and the bulbs) was for the lithography factory of Hinds, Ketcham & Company, New York, in early 1881. Electric lighting allowed the factory to operate at night without difficulty in distinguishing colours.

The first full-scale public demonstration of Edison's urban lighting system was along the Holborn Viaduct in London (Figures 14 and 15). The first generator started up in January 1882 and the Holborn installation was a testing ground for a number of key elements of his more famous installation at Pearl Street Station in New York, which began service later that year.

Figure 14 Plan for lighting the Holborn Viaduct, London (Source: Smithsonian Institute)

Figure 15 Edison's Jumbo dynamo. Site unknown but probably the Holborn Viaduct station, London, 1882 (Source: Edison National Historic Site)

The Holborn Viaduct project was intended as a temporary demonstration, not a permanent commercial station. By choosing the viaduct, Edison's London agents were able to install the system quickly and with minimal cost because the electrical conduits could be hung underneath without excavations or the need for permits. The viaduct was a testing ground for several key elements of Edison's system.

5.8 Dominant design

In most examples of evolving technological innovation there is a period when rival designs are competing to outperform each other, both in what they do and how well they appeal to the consumer. Certain features of a product or process come to be recognised as meeting key needs and they are incorporated in subsequent improved versions of the design. Other features might meet too narrow a set of needs to be economical and are dropped.

Gradually what emerges is a dominant design, which is the product whose form and function have evolved to become the accepted market standard.

The dominant design defines the expected appearance of a particular innovation and how it is meant to work. A dominant design is not necessarily the one with the best performance but its performance will be good enough so that, together with its other desirable features, it will meet the needs of many different types of user (Figure 16).

Figure 16 The Ediswan carbon-filament lamp, 1884 became a dominant design (Source: Science & Society Picture Library)

Activity 4

Can you think of a dominant design other than those named previously in this unit?

View answer - Activity 4

5.9 Robust design and lean design

In the case of the incandescent lamp the first dominant design had emerged by 1884, only 4 years after the first lamps had gone on public display around Menlo Park. It consisted of a screw-in metal base, a carbonised bamboo filament with platinum electrical wiring attached to a glass stem, all of which was sealed into a pear-shaped glass bulb that had been evacuated. This design was so successful that competitors did not try to devise a different design but merely copied Edison's; the company spent the next 7 years repeatedly suing rivals for infringement of the patents until its dominance was clearly established.

Further, a new product is more likely to be commercially successful if it is a robust design and suitable for different uses. A new product is likely to be less successful it if is a lean design, too highly optimised and only suitable for specific uses. So Edison's lamp was a robust design because it could fit into existing gas lamp brackets, and this increased its chances of catching on because it could make use of some of the existing infrastructure in homes and offices.

5.10 Radical innovation and incremental innovation

The electric light might be said to be an example of a radical innovation – a new product, process or system resulting from a technological breakthrough, or an application of a technology having a far-reaching impact.

Radical innovations can have a widespread and sometimes revolutionary impact on our lives and are said by some to account for technological progress. However, as you saw with the example of the telephone, most radical innovations are actually an accumulation of much smaller improvements, often carried out by many different individuals and organisations over time. The notion of the electric light might seem like a radical idea but it was actually the product of an attempt to provide a form of lighting that improved on existing methods. Apart from candles and oil lamps, these were mainly the gas light (increasingly used in urban homes but with an associated fire hazard and impact on air quality) and existing electric arc-lighting (too dazzling for domestic use and suffering from control and maintenance problems).

Furthermore the provision of an effective system of electric lighting depended upon the steady incremental improvement in a range of associated technologies – glass blowing, vacuum pumping, electricity distribution, and so on.

Therefore the application of the label radical innovation depends on the context and the time scale. Radical innovations are often incremental in terms of their scientific and technological development but radical in their application and ultimate impact on society. Also the early, often unreliable, examples of an innovation might not seem to be a significant improvement on existing technology until improvements in performance encourage more people to buy the innovation, which increases its impact.

Activity 5

Can you think of another example of a radical innovation?

View answer - Activity 5

So an apparently radical innovation actually involves much incremental innovation – technical modifications to an existing product, process or system and sometimes known as evolutionary innovation. The analogy with biological evolution is not precise, however, because technological evolution involves conscious and deliberate choice.

Activity 6

Can you think of an incremental innovation?

View answer - Activity 6

5.11 Sustaining innovation and disruptive innovation

As it's sometimes difficult to say whether a particular innovation is radical or incremental, a useful distinction made recently is between sustaining innovations and those that are disruptive. You'll read more about these ideas in Part 3.

Briefly, a sustaining innovation is a new or improved product that meets the needs of most current customers and serves to sustain leading firms in their market position. So in this context improvements to gas lighting, say, would be sustaining innovations.

By contrast, a disruptive innovation is a new or improved product or technology that challenges existing companies to ignore or embrace technical change.

Often new companies emerge to exploit a disruptive innovation. Such innovations can seem unpromising in the early stages of their development. However if they go on to become successful they can form new markets in which established companies lose their market leadership. Edison's electric light led to the creation of a whole new system for the generation and supply of electricity and its conversion into lighting. This in turn required a whole infrastructure of companies to supply raw materials and components for what became a new industry. It had a disruptive effect on the existing market for lighting.

5.12 Process innovation

Once a product innovation is well established creative energies tend to turn towards incremental improvements and process innovation, which is an improvement in the organisation and/or method of manufacture that often leads to reduced supply costs.

These two factors typically result in a better-performing product yet one that can be manufactured in less time, possibly using fewer components and possibly using machinery operated by less skilled, less costly workers. For example incremental improvements in the type of filaments used, tungsten gradually replacing carbon, led to a threefold increase in the efficiency of the electric light. And process innovations made the manufacturing more efficient – for example hand blowing of bulbs was replaced by a semi-automated machine in 1894.

All of these process innovations can lead to a dramatic fall in the production costs, and therefore the sales price, of an innovation in the early years of its use. For example, after 15 years of production, the number of steps involved in producing an electric lamp had been reduced from 200 to 20 and the labour time from nearly an hour to 20 seconds. Not surprisingly the price of a carbon filament electric lamp over this period fell to less than 20 per cent of its original price.

5.13 Diffusion and suppression

As an innovation becomes accepted by an increasing number of individual and organisational users it goes through the process of diffusion, which is the process of adoption of an innovation over time from limited use to widespread use in the market.

From its original installation within the grounds of Edison's Menlo Park laboratory in late 1879, his system of electric lighting was installed in increasing numbers of individual factory and textile mill installations, and urban street lighting. This included the fulfilment of one of his visions when his electric light system started operating in the Pearl Street district of lower Manhattan in 1882 (Figure 17). His system gradually eclipsed its rivals and diffused into widespread use in commercial, civic and domestic situations.

Figure 17 Interior of the Pearl Street generating station, 1882 (Source: Smithsonian Institute)

As you saw earlier with the example of the telephone there are also factors that can lead to suppression or delayed adoption of an innovation in the early years of its availability when it may compete with a dominate design.

First of all there may be patent disputes over the ownership of the invention. These can delay widespread sales until it becomes clear who has the right to market the innovation. Then for the duration of the patent other inventors are discouraged from devising improvements when they can't benefit from them.

There are also those individuals and companies currently providing technology and products that might be threatened by a newcomer, like telegraph companies faced with the telephone. They can sometimes use their power and influence to make it difficult for the new product to succeed – from influencing government legislation to outright sabotage. Then there's also a certain degree of protective inertia in business and institutional structures that tends to resist change in order to allow innovation to be absorbed in a steady evolutionary way rather than a more disruptive revolution.

Once an innovation has achieved widespread diffusion so that most of its market has been captured and the dominant design has had incremental improvement until it is relatively stable or mature, then one of two things usually happens. Either the mature innovation continues to sell with only minor modifications, unchallenged by any serious competition, or a radical new invention is devised that sets off another cycle of the innovation process to challenge what already exists.

5.14 Compact fluorescents and new developments

In the case of the electric light there were a series of incremental product innovations (metal filaments, gas filled bulbs, frosted bulbs) as well as process innovations (some of which were mentioned above), which steadily improved performance and reduced price until, by the 1930s, the incandescent light was mature and diffused in many nations.

Then in the mid-1930s a new invention appeared that was to challenge the incandescent lamp – the fluorescent lamp. This was the culmination of around 70 years’ research into fluorescence (the conversion of one kind of light into another). In the modern fluorescent light a heated electrode emits electrons into a tube of mercury vapour causing the vapour to emit ultraviolet light, which is invisible to the human eye. This causes the phosphor coating on the inside of the tube to emit visible white light. Another cycle of innovation was under way when the new lamp was first introduced commercially in 1938.

Gradually the fluorescent light began to encroach on the market captured by the incandescent lamp, first in the workplace and then increasingly in the home, especially after the introduction of compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs) onto the domestic market in the 1980s (Figure 18). Compact fluorescents last 10 times as long as incandescents and use 20 per cent of the electricity. By 2004, with the unit cost falling, CFLs had broken through the 10 per cent barrier achieving the status of having a substantial market share (10–20 per cent) rather than being a niche market (over 1 per cent). Some projections expect them to achieve a 15 per cent share by 2010. This would still not be sufficient for CFLs to achieve the ultimate status of becoming the industry norm or the dominant brand.

Figure 18 Domestic compact fluorescent lamp, 2005

Box 1 Race for the future of lighting

The problem with filament bulbs like those made by Edison and his successors is that they generate more heat than light – only about 10 per cent of the electricity becomes light – and turning them on and off shortens their life. The next generation of electric light is under development at the moment, based on more recent scientific discoveries and more advanced technological applications. But will it be one technology that wins or will several find their own niches in the lighting market? Along with fluorescent lighting there are currently (2005) at least two other competing technologies.

Electrodeless induction lamps

In the early 1990s an invention was revealed that might be the subject of the next cycle of lighting innovation – electrodeless induction lamps. The device, from a small Californian firm, Intersource Technologies, used a magnetic coil to generate radio waves that excited gases in the lamp, causing the phosphorous-coated interior surface of the glass cover to glow. The company estimated that the operational life of the lamp would be 15 000 to 20 000 operating hours, compared with 750 to 1000 hours for a conventional incandescent lamp. Without a filament or electrode, lamp failure is most likely to be due to the gradual degradation of the gas. Repair would then require the replacement of the glass cover only, rather than the expensive base and electronic components, making the system even cheaper to run.

Further electrodeless lamps were subsequently developed by Philips (QL system, Figure 19), General Electric (Genura) and Fusion Lighting (Solar 1000 sulfur lamp).

Figure 19 Philips QL 85-watt electrodeless induction lamp system (Source: Philips Lighting BV)

Although all of these lamps have proved significantly longer lasting than incandescent and compact fluorescent lamps (for example Philips claims 100 000 hours for the QL), there are several factors that explain why we aren't all using them in our homes at the moment. They are all being tested in different environments and technical improvements made in response to the users’ feedback – in other words the technology is still being developed and hasn't reached a stable enough state for mass manufacture. Current small-scale manufacture also means that the unit cost of existing versions of these lamps is high. In fact Philips’ QL and Fusion's lamp are complete systems rather than replacement bulbs and are expensive on first installation. High purchase prices mean the product isn't taken up by consumers on a large enough scale to ensure its commercial success and to enable manufacturers to reduce prices.

So this technology is stuck in the vicious circle common to many innovations. Some of the companies developing these new lamps are hoping for assistance from government legislation on energy efficiency. Pierre Villere, chairman of Intersource, hopes the US government's Energy Policy Act will provide the incentive needed to interest buyers. Villere thinks, ‘We will see … the same thing happen in high-efficiency lighting that we saw in terms of safety and emission control in the automobile industry’ (quoted in Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, 1998).

White LEDs

Light-emitting diodes (LEDs) are devices that generate light when electrons pass between two kinds of semiconducting material. Normally the diodes emit a single colour depending on the amount of energy an electron is losing during its transition. You will be familiar with LEDs used in the displays of digital clocks, watches, and electrical appliances. They're also used in remote controls (emitting infrared light) and increasingly in car brake lights, traffic lights and giant TV screens. They convert about 90 per cent of their energy input into light and are very hard-wearing.

The challenge has been to find a way of getting LEDs to make white light for general-purpose use. One approach, first adopted by the Nichia Corporation of Japan in 1996, has been to coat the inside of the light bulb with a phosphorescent coating that gives off white light when hit by the LED's particular wavelength. But the phosphor wears over time – present (2005) estimates are for a 100 000-hour life. Another solution is to try to mix the appropriate primary colours but it's more difficult to make blue light than red and getting the balance right is difficult. However solutions have been found and the devices are being improved. White LEDs are being used in some specialised products such as torches and cave lamps.

As with the electrodeless lamps above, the technical performance of white LEDs is steadily improving and their cost is coming down as the price of semiconductor devices has fallen. However they are still much more expensive than incandescent and fluorescent lights, although arguably cheaper over the lifetime of a typical bulb. In 2003 the UK gadgets company EFX launched a range of white LED downlighters to replace halogen lighting for domestic and commercial use. EFX is using the slogan ‘Global lighting to halt global warming’.

By the time you read this the situation will have moved on and its outcome may be clearer. Or maybe a completely different technical solution will have emerged – that's the nature of the innovation process.

5.15 Intellectual property and patents

At any stage of the innovation process, from invention to diffusion, a bright idea with market potential can be a target for unscrupulous copying. Or, as you've seen with simultaneous invention, people might be working on similar ideas in parallel and the origins of inventive ideas might be difficult to identify with precision. So it is sensible for inventors to establish their claim to a particular invention and to protect it against unauthorised exploitation by others.

There are different forms of legal protection to guard against the copying of intellectual property. The concept of intellectual property allows people to own and control the results of their creativity and ingenuity in the same way they own physical property. The most well known of these is the patent, which is an intellectual property right relating to inventions. It gives a right to stop others from exploiting the invention without permission.

Patents are a means by which inventors are granted, by the state, exclusive rights to make, use or sell a new invention for a limited period (16–20 years in most countries) in exchange for agreeing to make public the details of their invention. The word patent comes from the Latin litterae patentes, meaning open letters, as in an official document that was open to inspection by all. The patent secures for the inventor a temporary monopoly protected by law and the state secures an addition to the body of technological knowledge that encourages further invention, technological progress and wealth creation.

A patent application is required to contain a description of the invention and the reasoning that led to it in sufficient detail to enable it to be reproduced by a third party. It often contains background information on previous related technology (known as prior art). Therefore patents provide an enormous amount of technical information that is used by many individuals and companies (Figure 20).

Figure 20 Extracts from the patent for the novel features of the Workmate portable workbench (Source: Patent Specification 1267032 ‘A Workbench’)

Once granted a patent gives an invention the legal status of personal property that can be sold or bequeathed to heirs of the inventor. In addition the owner of a patent may authorise others to make, use or sell the invention in exchange for royalties or other compensation.

According to the UK Patent Office, to be granted a patent an inventor's product or process must satisfy four criteria.

1. It must be new – the idea must never have been disclosed publicly in any way, anywhere, prior to the claim being filed.

2. It must involve an inventive step – the idea must not be obvious to someone with a good knowledge and experience of the subject.

3. It must be capable of industrial application – it must take the physical form of a substance, product or apparatus, or of an industrial type of process.

4. It must not be excluded – an invention is not patentable if it is of a type listed as specifically excluded, although such lists vary in different countries.

In 2005 the UK exclusions were:

- a discovery

- a scientific theory or mathematical method

- an aesthetic creation – literary, dramatic or artistic work

- a scheme or method for performing a mental act, playing a game or doing business – unless it has physical features such as special apparatus

- the presentation of information, or a computer program

- a new animal or plant variety, a method of treatment of the human or animal body by surgery or therapy, or a method of diagnosis.

While in the UK you cannot patent computer programs, new plant varieties or human DNA, patenting is allowed on some of those categories of invention in the USA. Europe and the UK are coming under increasing pressure to adopt US practice.

There are other forms of protection for intellectual property. The design features that distinguish one product from another can be protected by means of registered designs. Sketches and drawings for a new product can be protected by design right, which is an extension to copyright that protects an artistic or literary creation. Words or symbols that are used to distinguish goods or services from rivals in a similar field can be protected by trade and service marks.

Edison was a great believer in the patent system and over his lifetime was granted more than 1000 patents. However there is a dilemma for individuals and companies considering patenting. Once granted, copies of the patent application are publicly available.

It has been known for unscrupulous companies to manufacture an invention without permission from the patent holder. Sometimes this occurs after an inventor has shown a company an invention in an attempt to persuade them to invest in it. Sometimes copying occurs after launch when a rival company might reverse engineer a promising innovation and produce its own version. Individual inventors are particularly susceptible to this kind of treatment as patenting is expensive, especially if worldwide protection is needed, and the only means of defending patent rights, if they have been infringed, is through the courts.

While large companies might be in a position to take such legal action few individuals can afford it. Rare examples include Edison and Bell, and more recently Ron Hickman and James Dyson. Ron Hickman, the inventor of the Workmate portable workbench, spent more than £1 million in fighting infringements of his patents as part of his agreement with Black & Decker, to whom he had licensed production of his invention. And in 2000, James Dyson sued Hoover whose Triple Vortex bagless cleaner was held to infringe Dyson's 1980 patent for his cyclone cleaner.

In order to avoid the problem of infringement some companies choose not to patent but rather to keep their invention secret from competitors. This way they hope to benefit from being ‘first to market’ with a new product and capture a large market share before their competitors come up with a rival product. (There's more on this and other corporate innovation strategies in Part 3.) Because of reverse engineering it's harder to keep product inventions secret compared with new processes. You'll see in a later example that the company 3M chose not to patent the new machines it invented to manufacture its Post-it adhesive note pads though it did patent the pads themselves.

6 Part 1: 5 Dead certs and dead ends

You can experience this free course as it was originally designed on OpenLearn, the home of free learning from The Open University: http://www.open.edu/openlearn/science-maths-technology/engineering-and-technology/design-and-innovation/invention-and-innovation-introduction/content-section-0.

6.1 Evolutionary development

Most of us have some experience of the evolutionary development and the success of new technology. The Walkman personal stereo cassette player has evolved into the Discman CD player and more recently into digital music players. The computer has developed from its beginnings as government and university research machines in the 1940s (the first electronic computer filled an entire room and had a memory of 16 kilobytes) to palm-sized personal digital assistants each one of which has more computing power than that used in the Apollo moon landings. The mobile phone has become one of the fastest spreading innovations in history, going from less than 5 per cent ownership in the UK in 1990 to more than 70 per cent by 2003.

But these successes are only the tip of the innovation iceberg. For every product, successful or not, which reaches the market there are many more that never get that far. It has been estimated that no more than 2 per cent of inventions go on to become innovations. And for every successful innovative product there are many that do not achieve commercial success and are eventually (or quickly) withdrawn.

Activity 7

Can you think of examples?

View answer - Activity 7

Yet the urge to invent remains strong and the commercial rewards of success can be spectacular. There are almost 5 million patents currently in force worldwide. More than 1 million new patent applications are made each year – almost 500 000 of these each year by the Japanese alone. In addition there are many more inventions worldwide that are not patented.

In Part 2 I'll look at what motivates people to invent and at how they do it.

6.2 Are cylinder ships a dead-end invention?

In 1924 Anton Flettner, a German physicist, tested a prototype of one of his inventions, a rotor ship. An expert in hydrodynamics and aerodynamics, Flettner had already experimented with metal sails, which he found increased sailing ship efficiency by 50 per cent. Next he moved on to an ingenious application of the Magnus effect – the idea that a sphere or cylinder spinning in an airstream develops a force at right angles to the moving air. This theory was developed to account for inaccuracies in the flight of cannonballs but the effect is more recognisable today as being responsible for the swerving of golf, tennis and soccer balls when hit with a slice.

Flettner discovered that when the wind blew at right-angles onto rotating cylinders a vacuum was created ahead of the cylinder and an area of high pressure behind, resulting in forward propulsion. Experiments showed that a rotating cylinder could extract up to 15 times as much energy from the wind as the same area of sail.

In an attempt to demonstrate the promise of such a technology Flettner converted a 680-tonne ship, the Buckau (Figure 21a), replacing her masts and rigging with two hollow cylindrical towers made of sheet iron. The cylinders were 20 metres high and 3 metres in diameter, and were rotated at 120 rpm by small electric motors at their base, driven in turn by a small diesel engine. In addition to being able to extract more energy from the wind the cylinders were lighter than rigging and sails and had a lower centre of gravity, making the ship more stable and manoeuvrable. A further advantage over conventional sailing ships was that the Buckau was less susceptible to sudden squalls and therefore could sail through strong winds where an ordinary sailing vessel would have to take down its sails. As a result it could be faster and fewer crew members were needed to control the rotors compared with sails.

Results of the trials with the Buckau suggested that substitution of rotors for sails in vessels up to 3000 tonnes was a practical possibility. The Hamburg-Amerika line ordered 10 rotor ships but only one, the Barbara, was built. In 1926 Flettner, having renamed his ship the Baden-Baden (Figure 21b), successfully crossed the Atlantic in an attempt to publicise and gain support for his invention.

Figure 21(a) Anton Flettner's rotor ship, the Buckau. This prototype proved the principle of propulsion from the effect of wind hitting two rotating hollow towers (Source: Corbis/Hulton Deutsch Collection)

Figure 21(b) The Baden-Baden arriving in New York from Hamburg in 1926. The ship caused a sensation in the USA (Source: Hulton Archive)

Flettner had suggested that rotors could be added to all steam or marine diesel-powered vessels to reduce expenditure on coal and oil. However at the time there was an abundance of cheap fuel that reduced the strength of this advantage. In addition the ships developed serious mechanical problems because of the constant vibration of the rotors and they still relied on wind for this type of propulsion. So at the time rotors did not offer a significant advantage over existing technologies, they merely offered added complexity and unreliability. Less than 20 years after their invention the last of these potentially revolutionary new ships had been broken up for scrap.

During the oil crises of the 1970s the idea was briefly revised and more recently found expression in the Cousteau Society's expedition ship, Alcyone (Figure 22). Built in 1985 the Alcyone uses two fixed cylinders with movable shutters and fans to achieve the same ‘lift’ produced by Flettner's more cumbersome rotors. When combined with modern computer control that switches between the Turbosail and the ship's engines according to the state of the wind, this system allows for a 35 per cent saving in fossil-fuel use.

So this invention might not be the technological dead-end it appeared to be with the demise of Flettner's ships. Indeed as fossil fuels become more scarce and expensive there's every chance that cylinder technology might be taken up again on a larger scale.

Figure 22 The Cousteau Society's expedition ship, Alcyone, built in 1985 (Source: Science Photo Library). The Alcyone uses Turbosail technology. A fan draws air into each of its two 10-metre-tall cylindrical masts. This creates forward lift that surpasses that attained by a normal sail, and reduces the ship's fuel consumption by a third

7 Part 1: 6 Self-assessment questions

You can experience this free course as it was originally designed on OpenLearn, the home of free learning from The Open University: http://www.open.edu/openlearn/science-maths-technology/engineering-and-technology/design-and-innovation/invention-and-innovation-introduction/content-section-0.

SAQ 1

Given the definitions you have learnt in Part 1, would you classify the following as an invention or an innovation?

- (a) BIC ballpoint pen

- (b) Flettner's rotor ship

- (c) Edison's tinfoil phonograph

- (d) Edison's bamboo-filament light bulb.

View answer - SAQ 1

SAQ 2

Would you classify the following as examples of radical innovation or incremental innovation?

- (a) Edison's phonograph

- (b) compact fluorescent lamps

- (c) Edison's electric light

- (d) Bell's telephone.

View answer - SAQ 2

SAQ 3

What are the four criteria that must be satisfied for an inventor to be granted a patent on an invention?

View answer - SAQ 3

8 Part 1: 7 Key points of Part 1

You can experience this free course as it was originally designed on OpenLearn, the home of free learning from The Open University: http://www.open.edu/openlearn/science-maths-technology/engineering-and-technology/design-and-innovation/invention-and-innovation-introduction/content-section-0.

- Invention and innovation are ongoing processes not one-off events. Products have a history of invention, design and improvement, which can be over a surprisingly long period.

- It can be difficult to identify a product's original inventor. Often different people are working on developing a technology simultaneously.

- It can take imagination to foresee how a new technology might be used, particularly for potential financial backers.

- To succeed an innovation needs a competitive advantage over existing technologies or products.

- Research and experiment into one technology can contribute to the development of another spin-off technology.

- Innovative products can take time to become widely used. However in recent years the timescales for diffusion have shortened.

- The success of an innovation depends on regular improvements to its performance, reliability and design coupled with price reduction. This is usually achieved by further innovations in supporting technology, manufacturing processes, component performance, new materials, and so on.

- A group of early, sometimes specialised users of an innovation can play an important part in giving momentum to its sales.

- Affordability of innovative products is linked to the cost of manufacture and the relative affluence of buyers.

- There are also fashions in innovative products – shaped by marketing and advertising – which can stimulate demand. Cultural factors can also have an influence on innovation and consumption.

- As an innovation spreads it may change from being a novelty or luxury to a necessity for people.

- Governments can affect the environment for innovation in particular areas of technology, which can lead to lower prices and the faster introduction of an innovation. Accordingly political and regulatory factors can play a part in the innovation process.

- To be granted the protection of a patent an invention must be new, involve an inventive step, be capable of industrial application and not excluded.

- There are factors that can suppress or delay the spread of an innovation – patent disputes over ownership; resistance from people with a vested interest in established technologies; protective inertia in business and institutional structures resisting radical change.

9 Part 2: Invention

You can experience this free course as it was originally designed on OpenLearn, the home of free learning from The Open University: http://www.open.edu/openlearn/science-maths-technology/engineering-and-technology/design-and-innovation/invention-and-innovation-introduction/content-section-0.

Having taken a broad look at the whole innovation process from invention to diffusion, I'll go back and look more closely at what motivates individuals and organisations to invent. Then I'll consider how people generate ideas for inventions and the designs based on the inventions.

10 Part 2: 1 How invention starts

You can experience this free course as it was originally designed on OpenLearn, the home of free learning from The Open University: http://www.open.edu/openlearn/science-maths-technology/engineering-and-technology/design-and-innovation/invention-and-innovation-introduction/content-section-0.

10.1 What motivates individuals to invent?

It seems clear from the number of new patents applied for each year, and the many inventions that are not patented, that the level of inventive activity around the world is high. It's possible to identify a number of starting points for invention and new product development. For the purposes of this analysis I'll consider first what motivates individuals to invent and then what drives invention in organisations.

While economic incentives are behind the development and commercialisation of most innovations, most inventions are the product of inventors’ individual interests and motivations, creative thought processes and personal make-up.

Individuals invent usually because they have:

- scientific or technical curiosity

- constructive discontent

- desire to make money

- desire to help others.

10.2 Scientific or technical curiosity

Some inventors understand a scientific phenomenon and set about inventing a technological device to exploit the phenomenon.

The invention of the laser grew from the interest of two researchers in studying the structure and characteristics of a variety of molecules. During the Second World War, Charles H. Townes worked on developing radar navigation bombing systems. After the war he had the idea of modifying the radar techniques and using microwaves to study molecular structure. Subsequently he and Arthur L. Schawlow collaborated at Bell Labs in the USA on using the shorter wavelengths of infrared and optical light to develop an even more powerful tool – the laser (short for light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation). They were granted a patent in 1960. However they had no thoughts about any applications of their invention other than its use in their scientific research. Schawlow recalled:

We thought it might have some communications and scientific uses, but we had no application in mind. If we had, it might have hampered us and not worked out as well.

(Bell Labs, 1998)

It was left to others to devise ways of exploiting this invention in a commercial product. Although initially perceived by some as a weapon (a death ray), one of the first practical applications was in medicine for eye surgery. Lasers have gone on to have widespread use in industry for cutting and welding, in commerce for bar code readers, at home for entertainment (CD players, DVD players), in data storage and retrieval in computers, and so on (Figure 23). The world market for laser technology is now over $100 billion a year.

Figure 23 Originally developed for scientific research into the structure of molecules, the laser now has a huge range of applications. (a) Laser surgery to correct short-sightedness Source: Science Photo Library. (b) Laser heart surgery Source: Science Photo Library. (c) Industrial carbon dioxide laser cutting metal Source: Science Photo Library. (d) Bar-code reader at supermarket checkout Source: Science Photo Library. (e) A laser beam is creating a digital track of information on a master disc. The master disc is then used to mass-produce CDs. The information will be read off a CD in a domestic player by using a similar laser beam (Source: Science Photo Library)

Inventions can arise from the technical curiosity of creative individuals rather than to meet a clear need. There are many examples, particularly in the past but still occasionally nowadays, of so-called talented tinkerers. Read Box 2 for an account of what talented tinkering can produce.

Box 2 Talented tinkering and the hovercraft

Christopher Cockerell was an electrical engineer who left the Marconi company to become a boat builder in Norfolk. He developed an interest in increasing boat speed by reducing friction between the hull and the water. He had the idea of supporting a craft on a low-pressure cushion of air contained within a high-pressure curtain of air (Figure 24). He built a mock-up to test his idea using a cat food tin inside a coffee tin connected to a vacuum cleaner reversed to blow, all mounted above a set of kitchen scales to measure the pressure exerted (Figure 25). It was three times the pressure of the blower without the tins and confirmed his theory. There had been previous attempts to build a vehicle that floated on air but Cockerell was the first to devise a way of containing the air cushion. Next he constructed a radio-controlled balsa wood model of his hovercraft to prove the hover principle would work in practice (Figure 26).

Figure 24 Cockerell's peripheral jet hovercraft principle

Figure 25 Mock-up from empty tins, a vacuum cleaner and kitchen scales used to test the hover principle (Source: Hovercraft Museum Trust)

Figure 26 Christopher Cockerell with the first proper hovercraft model made in 1955 from balsa wood (Source: Hovercraft Consultants Ltd)

Cockerell applied for a patent in 1955. The Patent Office didn't know whether to classify it as a boat or a plane. The Ministry of Supply was similarly confused when Cockerell demonstrated his model but it immediately classified the invention as secret. It was only after Cockerell discovered the Swiss were working on a similar device that the ministry agreed it could be declassified and commercialised.

Having persuaded the National Research Development Corporation to back the hovercraft, the first full-size manned prototype SR-N1 was built by Saunders Roe in 1959 and crossed the English Channel in July of that year (Figure 27). It soon became apparent that the peripheral jet on the SR-N1 didn't provide enough lift to make it a practical form of transport. Cockerell devised and patented a flexible skirt to retain the air cushion. A series of experimental hovercraft designs for both civil and military applications followed the SR-N1. In 1962 the first passenger-carrying scheduled service started up across the estuary of the river Dee in north Wales and cross-channel services began in 1966 (Figure 28).

Figure 27 World's first full-size hovercraft. The prototype SR-N1 was used for research and development (Source: Science & Society Picture Library)

Figure 28 Commercial cross-channel hovercraft landing at Dieppe (Source: Science Photo Library)

Although there are still commercial and military hovercraft in operation (Figure 29), high development costs, technical problems and cheaper competing technologies have meant they did not go on to become widely used. Rather they are used in specific situations where their ability to cross varied surfaces inaccessible to conventional vehicles gives them an advantage.

Figure 29 US naval hovercraft are still in use (Source: Textron Systems)

Cockerell resigned from Hovercraft Development Ltd after a dispute and the UK government persuaded him to sell his patent for £150 000 in 1971. He continued to work as an inventor, including designing a system of rafts to generate electricity from waves, but never really profited from his inventions. He had devised 36 inventions worth millions of pounds for Marconi and was paid £10 for each one. The money he received for his hovercraft patent didn't cover his development costs. Unsurprisingly he remained bitter at what is characterised as the UK's repeated failure to capitalise on the inventive ideas of creative individuals.

10.3 Constructive discontent

Inventive ideas often arise because existing technology or design proves to be unsatisfactory in some way – perhaps too costly, too inefficient or too dangerous. Using a product or process for a while can reveal inadequacies in its performance and is often vital preparation for producing ideas for improvements. You may have become dissatisfied either with an existing product or process or with the fact that something doesn't exist to meet a need you've identified. But creative individuals go further than this unfocused dissatisfaction and actually try to do something about it.

James Dyson became dissatisfied with the wheel of a conventional wheelbarrow sinking into sand and soft soil so in 1974 he re-invented the wheel. His Ballbarrow is designed with a ball-shaped wheel to ride over soft ground without sinking and to absorb the shock when used on rough ground (Figure 30). It also has feet that don't sink in the mud and a plastic bin that doesn't rust – both drawbacks of previous wheelbarrows he'd used.

Figure 30 Dyson's Ballbarrow. The ball-shaped wheel improves the ride over rough or soft ground (Source: courtesy of Dyson Ltd)

Box 4 Constructive discontent and the invention of photocopying

In the early 1930s, US patent lawyer Chester Carlson began to be dissatisfied with existing methods of copying patents that he required for his work. He was determined to find a better means than the existing photographic methods, which were slow and inefficient.

After an extensive search through patents and other literature he identified some promising ideas. He began experimenting and in 1938 produced the first print using a process that eventually was to become the basis of the modern photocopier (Figure 31).

Figure 31 Chester Carlson, the inventor of xerography, with his first xerographic apparatus (Source: Rank Xerox UK Ltd)

Static electricity was the key to his invention. Carlson started with a sulfur-coated plate, though later this was developed into a selenium drum, which was given an overall negative electrical charge. An image of a document was then projected or reflected onto the charged surface. The charge was removed where the light struck the surface, leaving only the dark part of the image, such as text characters, negatively charged. Positively charged particles of dry powder were then applied that stuck to the negatively charged portions of the plate or drum. The powder was then transferred to paper and fused on to it by heating, leaving a permanent image.

In his 1939 patent Carlson called this process electrophotography (Figure 32). But he soon came to call it xerography – from the Greek xeros, meaning dry, and graphein, meaning to write.

Figure 32 Extract from Chester Carlson's 1939 patent application on electrophotography, which established the essential principles of photocopying (Source: van Dulken, 2002)

His invention was a radical departure from existing technology, however, and it took many years both to develop and improve the invention and to persuade a company to invest in it. In 1944 the Battelle Memorial Institute, a non-profit-making organisation, agreed to finance the invention and after a few years of development signed an agreement with a small photographic materials company, the Haloid Corporation, to market the invention.

The first electrostatic copier, the Haloid 1385, came onto the market in the late 1940s. It was manually operated and took several minutes to make each copy. Not surprisingly it was not successful at first because it did not offer an advantage over existing methods of copying, which by this time were a combination of carbon paper for a small number of copies and electromechanical stencil duplicators for a larger volume. Finally, after another decade of effort at improving the technology, the first automatic, plain-paper photocopier, the Xerox 914, was launched onto the market in 1959 – Haloid had changed its name to Xerox. This was an automatic machine that operated at the push of a button and could produce seven copies a minute. It was the foundation for a huge multibillion dollar business in which Xerox, thanks to its patents, had a monopoly until the late 1980s.

When the patent protection expired, rivals, mainly Japanese, began to enter this lucrative market in competition with Xerox. The original fairly straightforward need has been cultivated by what the ever-improving technology has made possible – monochrome copiers producing a hundred copies a minute and capable of collating, stapling, enlarging and reducing. The colour photocopier was brought out in 1973 and the laser colour copier in 1986.

Now it is impossible to imagine a modern office without photocopying facilities. Xerox also took advantage of the increasing use of computing in the office to diversify into computer printers, scanners, fax machines and multifunction machines. Many people predicted that the spread of computers would lead to the paperless office. However recent estimates suggest people are making 500 billion photocopies each year, and 15 trillion (15 000 000 000 000) copies on photocopiers, computer printers and multifunction machines combined in the USA alone (Lyman, 2003).

10.3.1 Cats eyes and road conditions

Sometimes the discontent comes from the fact that there isn't a product to satisfy a particular need. Percy Shaw was a road mender who was aware of the dangers of driving along unlit, often fog-bound, roads. One night in 1933 he was driving his car near his home in the north of England when his headlights were reflected in the eyes of a cat. This inspired him to invent the cat's-eye reflector that, when embedded at intervals in the centre of the road, reflected a vehicle's headlights and made it easier to pick out and follow the course of the road (Figure 33).

Figure 37 Extract from the patent for cat's-eyes – an example of a highly successful patent for a simple but ingenious idea. ‘FIG.6.’ shows how a rubber insert (part ‘F’) cleans the lenses when they are depressed by a passing vehicle (Source: van Dulken, 2002)

With hindsight the need and the solution seem self-evident – like many ingenious ideas. But Shaw's act of insight was to recognise the need and work out a means by which it could be met.

Seventy years after Shaw's invention a new generation of cat's-eyes have been developed and have been tested in sites around the UK and several other countries. Called intelligent road studs, they have a built-in microprocessor and sensors that can detect different weather conditions as well as the speed of passing traffic (Figure 34). They are powered by a solar cell feeding a rechargeable battery.

Figure 34 (a) These intelligent road studs not only reflect but can also actively project light of different colours. (b) Intelligent road studs being tested on a public road (Source: courtesy of Reflecto Ltd)

In addition to passively reflecting light up to 80 metres, the studs can actively project light of different colours that is detectable at up to 1000 metres. When a stud detects fog it can emit a flashing white light. When it detects a significant drop in temperature it can emit blue light to indicate the possibility of ice. In a hazardous situation studs can leave a trail of orange lights behind passing vehicles to warn against following too closely. Studs can even communicate with each other so that, for instance, a vehicle detected on the wrong side of the road can trigger red warning lights in studs on the other side of a blind hill or corner.

10.4 Desire to make money

While most inventors might dream of growing rich from their inventions few invent for that reason alone. There are some exceptions though.

Take the case of the safety razor. One person, a travelling salesman named King Camp Gillette, was primarily responsible for the original invention and prototype. Unlike many lone inventors Gillette was not inventing something arising from a hobby or a field of technology with which he was already familiar. He was deliberately searching for a winner. He'd been advised by William Painter, the inventor of the disposable crown cork bottle cap, to try to invent a disposable product for which the consumer would develop a continuing need, guaranteeing a steady market for the innovation.

In 1895 while shaving with his cut-throat razor Gillette realised that the edge of the razor was the key to shaving. He had the bright idea of dividing the components into a handle and holder for a disposable blade. The blade could then be thrown away when blunt, avoiding the need for regular sharpening. However his limited practical skills could take the invention no further than the prototype stage. To make further progress Gillette obtained the help of William Nickerson, the inventor of the pushbutton elevator control mechanism. Nickerson worked on refining the razor and on improving the process of sharpening the steel blades.

Gillette's safety razor finally went on sale in 1903. With only the very edge of the blade exposed to the skin it was far safer than the old cutthroat razor. Furthermore, beards were becoming less popular so Gillette anticipated large sales. At first he was disappointed – in the first year he sold only 51 safety razors and 168 blades. In the following year though, sales took off – 90 000 razors and 12.5 million blades.

The Gillette company, based around the safety razor, went from strength to strength. It's a familiar and successful company 100 years on (Figure 35). Though still largely based around razors it has diversified slightly into so-called grooming products, toothbrushes and oral care, and into batteries. The concept of disposability still applies to many of its products. In 2002 it was the largest razor manufacturer in the world and its net sales were $8.45 billion.

Figure 35 Recent Gillette safety razors with disposable blades

10.5 Desire to help others

This is a less common motivation but it shows not everyone is driven by money.

In 1991 the inventor Trevor Baylis saw a BBC documentary about the spread of HIV/AIDS in Africa. What was needed was a way of broadcasting the safe-sex message to people in areas without electricity and where batteries for a radio could cost a month's wages. Solar power wouldn't necessarily help as most people who could get to a radio listened in the evening after work. While absorbing this information he imagined himself as a colonial administrator in the Sudan, sipping gin and listening to an old-fashioned wind-up gramophone.

Then Baylis had the inspired thought that if a simple clockwork spring could power a gramophone then it could be applied to a spring-driven radio. Months of experimentation eventually produced a prototype of a hand-cranked clockwork mechanism that drove a tiny generator that powered a radio for 14 minutes on a 30-second wind. After a 4-year period of fund-raising, market research, design and development, the first Freeplay radio was launched in 1995.

For a number of years the radio was made by disabled workers in a factory in South Africa. Subsequently the manufacture of Freeplay products was transferred to China. However the spirit behind Trevor Baylis's invention has found an outlet in the Freeplay Foundation that, since 2000, has complemented the work of various agencies by distributing self-powered radios free as part of a range of humanitarian initiatives.

10.6 What drives invention in organisations?

Much invention and nearly all innovation nowadays take place inside organisations – from small start-up companies to well-established multinationals. This is mainly because increasingly invention and innovation require access to technology and resources beyond the scope of most individuals. But it is also because competitiveness and survival depend on the continual improvement of a company's products and processes. This provides a strong incentive for companies to invest in both the incremental improvement of existing products and the invention of new products.

Invention in organisations is usually driven by one or more of these:

- business strategy

- need to improve product or process

- opportunity offered by a new material, technology or manufacturing process

- government policy, legislation and regulations.

10.7 Business strategy

Invention can be driven by a company's business strategy. In descending order of inventiveness the main strategies are first to market, follow the leader, and opportunist.

10.7.1 First to market

Some companies have an offensive strategy in which they aim to be first to market with a new product. Such companies can be a major source of new products. This is risky as it requires a large investment in developing the product and cultivating the market before any return can be expected from sales. However it can be the most rewarding strategy, especially if the market can be sustained by continual incremental improvements to the product and the market share defended against competitors.

In the 1970s and 1980s Clive Sinclair's company Sinclair Research was first to market in the UK with a series of inventive products including pocket calculators, digital watches and home computers. For example the Sinclair ZX80 microcomputer, launched in 1980, was the first computer made to appeal to the mass market. Developed as a build-it-yourself programmable computer, it was designed to connect to a television set and to a cassette recorder for loading programs. It was small and lightweight, weighing just 340 grams and was accessible to a wide sector of the population, being priced at just £99. All these characteristics made the Sinclair ZX80 the forerunner of a whole generation of personal computers. Its successor, the ZX81, had a better programming language called BASIC, fewer components, a simpler design and was £30 cheaper.

In 1982 the ZX Spectrum added colour, became the company's most significant commercial success and enabled Sinclair Research to achieve market dominance in the UK in the early 1980s. However the company was eventually out-performed by a number of companies that had followed it into the microcomputer market that Sinclair Research had helped to establish.

10.7.2 Follow the leader

Some companies have a defensive strategy and aim to follow the leader. Such companies hope to profit from the mistakes of the first-to-market company by devising incremental design and performance improvements and cost reductions compared with the original product. In addition they hope to exploit the new market that has started to grow, so timing is important. In the area of consumer electronics, for example, most of the inventions (radio, television, audio and video tape recording) were first brought to the market by European and US companies. But it was the major Japanese companies (such as Sony, JVC, Toshiba) that captured a large share of the mass market through reducing the cost of these devices and improving their performance.

The best of these companies were able to use the resources gained from being successful followers to then adopt a more offensive strategy and invent new products, such as Sony with the Walkman. Sony was first to market with this innovative product, which quickly became an important contributor to the company's profits. A number of companies followed Sony into this market with variations on the Walkman. However Sony had sufficient a head start to the extent that almost 25 years later it still had the largest market share in most areas of personal audio.

Interestingly the area it isn't performing in as well yet is the newest, the market for digital music players. Here it wasn't first to market and currently (2005) this market is dominated by a mixture of smaller companies and a few big companies that developed players before Sony.

10.7.3 Opportunist

Some companies have an opportunist strategy and aim to identify new market opportunities, needs and demands. Rather than developing new products though, the inventiveness of such companies lies in finding new outlets for existing products. UK examples include Sock Shop and Tie Rack from the 1980s, and more recently the small companies that have made a profit selling a variety of ring tones for mobile phones.

10.8 Need to improve product or process

Even though an invention will have been thoroughly tested before launch it's not possible for a company to test its performance in every situation in which it will be used. Real users are likely to discover how the product might not perform well or how it doesn't meet their needs. Once a company learns about these deficiencies it can address them through redesign. There are a number of incentives to do this: improve the product's performance in order to increase its appeal to larger numbers of buyers; further reduce materials and manufacturing costs to the company to increase profit; reduce the purchase price to promote sales.

This invention driver accounts for much incremental invention. You've already seen an example of this process in the development of the telephone – new components, new features, and spin-off inventions are all the result of attempts to improve existing technology.

An extreme example of this process was Sinclair Research, mentioned earlier. In the early 1970s it launched a range of electronic calculators that were designed to be small and light enough to fit in the pocket. For example the Cambridge calculator was sold both as a kit and fully built. Although at £29.95 it was expensive when first introduced, a year later the price had fallen to below £15. The Cambridge calculator was small, even by modern standards, weighing only 100 grams. However it suffered from a design flaw; after a certain amount of use the calculator was impossible to turn off due to oxidation of cheap components used in the switch contacts. Some critics say that Sinclair Research's innovative products were often launched prematurely and early buyers used as developmental testers. Feedback from these buyers was then used to make improvements to the products. While this undoubtedly led to improved products, arguably it damaged the company's reputation as a supplier of reliable products and it was eventually edged out of the market by companies with more conventional business strategies.

I've already mentioned another, more conventional, example of incremental improvement. This was when Marcel Bich invented an improved manufacturing and assembly process to enable the BIC ballpoint pen to be manufactured on a large scale and for a significantly lower unit cost.

10.9 Opportunity offered by a new material, technology or manufacturing process

More often when new materials or technologies appear they are used to improve the performance of existing products. But in an increasing number of cases their appearance can make it possible to create new products.

10.9.1 New materials

The discovery of new materials, exploration of their properties and the invention of new industrial processes is a huge field of study in its own right. The potential rewards for a company discovering a successful application of a new material are great.

An example of this is shape memory alloys (SMAs). SMAs are mixtures of metals that, after being stress treated, can be deformed significantly but then triggered to return to their original shape. Some display unusual elastic properties and immediately spring back into shape, others recover their shape when heated. Originally made from an equal combination of nickel and titanium – still the most common SMA – further experiments have led to many more SMAs combining two or more different metals. These remarkable memory properties have been applied to an increasing number of new or improved products. One of the most visible applications is in superelastic spectacles that can regain their shape after you've sat on them.

There are currently dozens of other applications, particularly in the area of medical instruments. A stent is a tiny wire mesh tube used to reinforce weak arteries or to widen arteries narrowed by coronary heart disease (Figure 36). These are delivered to the heart in a catheter on the end of a wire usually inserted into an artery in the groin. Once in place they are expanded to their full size by inflating a balloon positioned inside the stent. However stents can now be made from SMAs and are stressed into a smaller diameter. When delivered by the catheter the stent expands to its intended size due to the heat of the body.

Figure 36 SMA stent that expands to its intended size when subjected to body temperature. These are predicted to replace stainless steel stents expanded with a balloon (Source: Nitinol Devices & Components Inc)

10.9.2 New technology

The appearance of a new technology often results in the possibility of developing a whole range of new products. The invention of the transistor in the USA by Bardeen, Brattain and Shockley in 1947 led to a vast market of improved consumer electronics goods such as portable radios, hi-fi and television. Later on, the related inventions of the integrated circuit in 1959 (by Jack St Clair Kilby at Texas Instruments) and the microprocessor in 1971 (by Marcian E. Hoff at Intel) allowed the development of personal computers.

Increasing miniaturisation and the improved computing capacity of microprocessors has permitted the addition of electronic components to many new products and processes. Examples are all around: palm-size mobile phones, programmable timing devices in electrical equipment, TV and video remote controllers. This trend is heading towards the invention of a growing range of new intelligent products that can store information about themselves and communicate with their environment (see Box 4).

Box 4 Radio frequency identification tags

RFID tags can be attached to individual products and can contain detailed information about that product such as its constituents, price, date of manufacture and so on. There's a confident prediction that by 2012 RFID tags will have replaced barcodes. This is given credence by the fact that in June 2003 the Wal-mart retail company announced that it would require all its suppliers to put RFID tags on all products by 2005. Tesco also announced that it would introduce RFID into its entire supply chain by 2007.

There are three main components of an RFID tag system:

- A tag comprises electronic circuitry and an antenna (Figure 37). The tag acts as a data store and a wireless transponder that sends information about that product in response to interrogation from a reader.

- A reader transmits and receives signals.

- A computer system processes the information it receives from the reader.

Figure 37 (a) Strip of RFID tags. (b) Two tags ready to be attached to products (Source: Omron Electronics Ltd)

RFID tags are more robust than barcodes because they can suffer some damage and still be read. Another advantage is they don't require direct line-of-sight contact with readers – in fact some tags can be read from distances of several tens of metres and through obstructions. As well as passive RFID tags, there are also active tags with their own power supply that allows product data to be modified and increases the transmission distance significantly.

RFID tags were first used in stock control and ordering, and in inventory checking. Products can be tracked as they move from factory to storeroom to shelf, reducing losses of stock in the supply chain and increasing the accuracy of restocking. In some systems, so-called smart shelves read the RFID signals from individual products and when stock runs low the ordering system is triggered to order more stock from the supplier. The idea is that at some point every product in the world will be tagged in this way so it can always be identified and traced. In 2003 Gillette ordered 500 million RFID tags from manufacturers Alien Technology Corp to be added to its products.

As well as stock control, RFID technology is being used in an increasing number of applications. By the time you read this it could well have become a mainstream technology, but at the time of writing it is still emerging. Recent (2005) applications include proximity card security systems in buildings, identification by a microchip inserted under the skin of domestic pets, and even tags used on nightclubbers. Pilot projects have been taking place to put RFID tags into vehicle licence plates, bank notes and hospital patients. A school in the US has already started to use RFID tags to monitor the movement of pupils. Not surprisingly some of these applications have raised concerns about the implications of this technology for individual privacy.

There are concerns that RFID could be used to tell,

… anyone who has the right kind of scanning device – from burglars to the government – what you have bought, where from, how much it costs, and anything else that might be added to an item's database entry, such as who bought it.

(Shabi, 2003)

10.9.3 New manufacturing process

One of the reasons that a new device, like an RFID tag, has a chance of becoming mainstream technology is that a new manufacturing process has been invented that allows production on an industrial scale and at a relatively low cost.

Fluidic self-assembly (FSA) is a new manufacturing process that has been patented by Alien Technology Corp in the USA. In the FSA process tiny integrated circuits – trademarked as NanoBlocks – are suspended in liquid and flow over a substrate surface that has correspondingly shaped ‘holes’ on it and into which the tiny circuits settle (Figure 38). The shape of the circuits and of the holes is arranged so that the circuits fall easily into place and are self-aligning. The NanoBlocks are then electrically connected to create the final integrated system. FSA allows tiny RFID circuits to be cost-effectively handled and packaged into electronic product code tags in huge volumes.

Figure 38(a) NanoBlocks falling into substrate holes in the FSA process

View description - Figure 38(a) NanoBlocks falling into substrate holes in the FSA process

Figure 38(b) Fluidic self-assembly (FSA) process

View description - Figure 38(b) Fluidic self-assembly (FSA) process

In addition to RFID tags this process is being used in the manufacture of flat-screen displays for use in high-definition television and computer screens. In addition to the advantages of reliability and high-speed volume manufacture (millions of NanoBlocks can be placed to within one micrometre of accuracy in minutes), the process can be used with a range of different surface materials and contours – for example permitting the manufacture of screen displays on flexible plastic film (Figure 39).

Figure 39 Screen developed by Cambridge Display Technology based on its ground-breaking development of light-emitting polymers (LEPs), which allow TV or computer displays to be created on flexible plastic sheet (Source: Science Photo Library)

10.10 Government policy, legislation and regulations

To a certain extent it's possible for governments to stimulate invention by providing incentives for manufacturers to develop new products and for consumers to buy and use them. One example of this process is in the field of vehicles powered by alternative fuels.

In the USA the Energy Policy Act of 1992 (EPAct) was passed to reduce US dependence on imported petroleum. The EPAct required federal and governmental departments with fleets over a certain size to acquire a percentage of alternative fuel vehicles (AFVs) capable of operating on non-petroleum fuels. Eligible alternative fuel vehicles included electric, hybrid-electric, liquefied natural gas, compressed natural gas (CNG), liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), hydrogen, fuel cell, and methanol. Biodiesel vehicles were added to this list in 2003.

Subsequent acts introduced and then extended tax credits on the purchase price of such vehicles, on the tax paid on the cost of installing alternative fuelling stations and on the cost of each gallon-equivalent sold. Furthermore acts like the Alternative Fuel Vehicle Acceleration Act of 2001 established a grant programme to fund demonstrations of AFVs and their commercial applications. Like the EPAct, the funds were directed at federal and governmental departments with the intention that they work in collaboration with manufacturers to encourage further development of this technology.

There are a number of visible outcomes of such schemes. Some conventional vehicles have been adapted by manufacturers to run on alternative fuels – in the US there are now many school buses powered by alternative fuels (Figure 40).

Figure 40 Ford E-450 Cutaway school bus, powered by LPG (Source: Ford Motor Company Limited)

Automobile manufacturers are increasingly researching and prototyping alternative fuel vehicles in anticipation of the introduction of tighter antipollution regulations. One of a range of such projects is the race to offer fuel-cell technology, used for decades in spacecraft. Like batteries, fuel cells make electricity from chemical reactions. If hydrogen is the fuel, the waste products are simply water and heat. In 2003 DaimlerChrysler started supplying fuel-cell-powered buses to a number of European cities (Figure 41). Its website announced:

With the current generation of Mercedes-Benz Citaro city buses, fuel-cell technology is now leaving the research stage and taking a crucial step ahead in the direction of economic efficiency and serviceability.

(DaimlerChrysler, 2003)

In my terms, the company had moved from invention to innovation.

Activity 8

Other than the examples given, can you think of inventions that resulted from a desire to help others?

View answer - Activity 8

Activity 9

Other than the examples given, can you think of inventions that took the opportunity offered by a new material, technology or manufacturing process?

View answer - Activity 9

Source: EvoBus (UK) Ltd

Figure 41 Mercedes-Benz Citaro city bus starting trials in London in 2004 to test how well fuel-cell technology performs in an urban setting. The buses have no local emissions and their fuel, hydrogen, will be produced largely from renewable energy sources in the longer term.

Activity 10

Other than the examples given, can you think of inventions that came about because of government policy, legislation or regulations?

View answer - Activity 10

11 Part 2: 2 How the process of invention works

You can experience this free course as it was originally designed on OpenLearn, the home of free learning from The Open University: http://www.open.edu/openlearn/science-maths-technology/engineering-and-technology/design-and-innovation/invention-and-innovation-introduction/content-section-0.

11.1 Five steps to invention

I've looked at what motivates people and organisations to invent. I'll look more closely now at what's actually involved in inventing something.

Wherever invention occurs, whether with a lone inventor or in a creative team within an organisation, there seem to be common factors involved. There have been many attempts over the past 100 years to explain the creative process that occurs while people are attempting to solve problems. I'm going to combine ideas from two such models of the steps involved in creative problem solving or invention. The first source is from the economic historian Abbott P. Usher's book A History of Mechanical Inventions (1954) and the second is from Brian Lawson's book How Designers Think (1990). Combining the models of Usher and Lawson produces five key steps.

Step 1 – identification of the problem

Recognising an unsolved problem or one with an unsatisfactory current solution and determining to solve it.

Step 2 – exploration

Collecting information to help understand the problem better and produce initial solutions.

Step 3 – incubation

Periods of relaxation allow subconscious thought.

Step 4 – act of insight

A solution suddenly appears by a mental act that goes beyond the act of skill normally expected of a trained professional in that field.

Step 5 – critical revision

The solution is fully explored, tested and revised into a workable solution, possibly involving further acts of insight.

I will examine these key steps a little further. I've already covered the first two stages to some extent in looking at where inventions come from. Therefore I'll only deal briefly with steps 1 and 2 and look in more detail at the others.

11.2 Step 1 – identification of the problem

The activity of identifying a problem to be solved or a need to be met is a key step for the start of the innovation process. As you saw earlier there's a range of possible starting points. You've already seen examples where curiosity drives people to look for applications of certain scientific or technical principles such as Cockerell and air-cushion transport. Sometimes people identify an unsolved need, such as Percy Shaw and unlit roads. Sometimes people identify a need with an unsatisfactory current solution, such as James Dyson and his dissatisfaction with conventional wheelbarrows.

Another such starting point for invention is identifying possible new uses for existing products or processes. In such cases a key first step is the imagination to appreciate the technological possibilities and the market opportunities. Nowadays many organisations spend time actively seeking out new uses to which existing products and processes might be put as well as problems that need to be solved with new inventions. In the case of the Post-it note the challenge for the 3M company was to find a use for a new type of adhesive – a glue that wasn't very sticky. In this case the ‘problem’ was one of an existing product in search of a market need rather than an established need requiring a new technological solution.

11.3 Step 2 – exploration

This is the period when, following the identification of the problem, attempts are made to understand it better and to make a stab at designing a solution. This might be a short process or it could take years and involve a detailed search for information, experimenting with different designs, even redefining the problem as a result of this activity.

Alexander Graham Bell adopted a problem-focused strategy when exploring the problem of designing a working telephone. This strategy is one typically used by scientists and engineers and involves exploring and redefining the problem exhaustively before coming up with a solution. A different approach, often adopted by designers, is to move quickly towards an outline solution based on their own experiences and preferences, which is then tested against the problem and modified as necessary to solve the problem more effectively. This more directed approach, known as a solution-focused strategy, was often used by Thomas Edison.

In the case of Edison's incandescent electric light discussed earlier this process of exploration took more than 12 months. Before he finally achieved his first working prototype Edison systematically experimented with thousands of different materials that might be used for a filament. His first patent was for a bulb with a platinum filament that, although it worked, was a complicated construction compared with the bulbs that were in mass production less than 2 years later. These used a carbonised bamboo filament, itself later replaced by other materials (Figure 42). The point is that this experimentation led to a better understanding of the problem and its possible solution, which resulted in the eventual design being more reliable.

Figure 42 Page from one of Thomas Edison's notebooks showing the results of experiments on a carbonised filament electric lamp (Source: Edison National Historic Site)

11.4 Step 3 – incubation

Incubation is a period when the inventor, having been working on the problem for some time during identification and exploration, is no longer giving it conscious attention. The problem and its solution have been put to one side, on purpose or not, but the subconscious mind is capable of holding on to the problem. During this time, according to Roy (Open University, 2004, p. 34), ‘the relaxed brain [is] repatterning information absorbed during the period of preparation often after receiving a new piece of information that is perceived as relevant’. I think what Roy means about repatterning is that the brain can make links between information – a new piece of information can cause a new link to be made and a new insight achieved. Although it's not often possible to demonstrate incubation taking place, there are numerous examples of inventors doing something unrelated to their invention when a breakthrough insight is triggered.

11.5 Step 4 – act of insight

Suddenly an insight suggests a solution, or the means of achieving a solution, to the inventor. Legendary examples include Newton observing an apple falling from a tree and having his insight into the laws of gravitation or Archimedes leaping from his bath and running naked through the streets shouting ‘Eureka!’ (‘I've found it!’). These vivid images point to the fact that creative ideas can occur when someone is not consciously trying to solve a problem.

These acts of insight are not only dependent upon the state of mind of the inventor, however, but also on the circumstances in which they occur. The image of Archimedes’ moment of insight is familiar. Archimedes realised, allegedly as he lowered himself into his bath, that there was a relationship between his weight and the volume of water displaced.

Archimedes became excited because he realised this could provide him with a solution to a problem set for him by Hiero II, the ruler of Syracuse on the island of Sicily. Hiero had had a new crown made but suspected that his metal workers had stolen some of the gold and substituted it with a gold-silver alloy; so he wanted to know if the crown was pure gold or partly silver. Archimedes, a Syracusian mathematician and specialist in applied mechanics, realised that if the crown was partly silver it would be less dense than pure gold, would be bulkier for its weight and therefore would displace more water when immersed. As a consequence he had discovered a principle that would help him to determine whether the king's crown was pure gold or a mixture of gold and silver.

In his book The Act of Creation, Arthur Koestler (1989) points out that at the critical moment Archimedes was able to make the connection between two previously unconnected trains of thought that his mind was processing (incubating) simultaneously. Nobody before Archimedes had brought together those separate ideas and if those particular circumstances had not pertained – thinking about the crown problem while taking a bath – that particular eureka moment would not have occurred. It might have occurred to someone else on another occasion because the history of invention shows that many minds are often working on the same problem (remember Edison and Swan on the electric light), but it is possible that many such moments have passed unnoticed for want of the necessary conjunction of inventive mind and propitious circumstances.

Koestler comments that rather than the mental achievement being to draw that particular conclusion, the achievement was actually in bringing together the two apparently unconnected ideas – a process he calls bisociation. Bisociation is one example of what is called associative thinking, which can lead to inventive solutions to problems. There are other ways of bringing together associations of ideas, knowledge and techniques from different areas: adaptation, transfer, combination, and analogy.

11.5.1 Adaptation

Adaptation is where a solution to a problem in one field is found by adapting an existing solution or a technical principle from another. For example Karl Dahlman adapted the hovercraft principle embodied in land and sea vehicles for use in the first hover lawn mower, the Flymo, in 1963 (Figure 43). In 2001 the car manufacturer Renault introduced the first mass-produced keyless vehicle (Figure 44). It had adapted smart card technology used in credit cards for use in vehicle security. The first generation version had lock and unlock buttons and was inserted into a slot in the dashboard to authorise starting the engine. For the second generation of these cards, introduced in 2003, the vehicle used proximity sensors to detect the presence of the card on the owner's person and unlocked the car once the user touched the door handle. When inside the car proximity sensors meant the driver only needed to press the starter button to start the engine.

Figure 43 Karl Dahlman pictured with his invention, the Flymo, which made use of the hover principle, 1963 (Source: Flymo Ltd)

Figure 44 Renault's hands-free key card – an example of a solution adapted from another field (Source: Renault (UK) Limited)

11.5.2 Transfer

Transfer is where a technology, manufacturing process or material is transferred to another field to provide the basis for an invention. Earlier we saw how laser technology, originally thought to have few practical uses, was transferred to a variety of different applications including surgery, welding and cutting metal, bar-code readers, and audio CDs.

11.5.3 Combination

Combination is where two or more existing devices are combined to produce something new. For example the Toggle (Figure 45) combines a screwdriver and wire stripper for the outer and inner cores of an electric cable. It was designed by an OU student of an earlier version of the course T307: Innovation: designing for a sustainable future to combine into one the tools needed to wire an electric plug.

Figure 45 The Toggle combines a screwdriver and wire stripper in one tool (a) the screwdriver can be angled; (b) two holes with a blade for stripping thick and thin insulation from cables

11.5.4 Analogy

Analogy draws on similar situations to provide ideas for invention and design. Alexander Graham Bell used the analogy of the human ear when designing telephone apparatus to receive sound. As mentioned above, his first receivers were much better than his transmitters where the analogy with the ear didn't work as well. When devising their flying machine, the Wright brothers used the analogy of soaring birds twisting their wings to restore balance. They designed the wings of their aircraft to be able to warp to achieve the same effect.

The moment of realisation of the answer to a problem, the flash of inventive insight portrayed by the eureka moment, is an important component of the inventive process. Without it there would be no significant improvements to existing technology or its products. But Usher believed that such acts of insight are as important to minor incremental inventions as they are to major radical inventions. And it's worth noting that insight doesn't always occur as a flash; sometimes it's a steady and growing awareness of the solution to a problem.

11.5.5 Chance

Another important source of inventions and scientific discoveries is chance, which is strongly associated with acts of insight. As well as the sort of painstaking work that either precedes an invention or goes into the steady improvement in performance, in the development of most inventions there's a moment when chance plays a part. Often people are looking for one thing but find another – perhaps working on one technology when they stumble on the principles behind another. The skill of the inventor lies initially in recognising the significance of a chance discovery and later of persuading others of its significance.

Chance played a part when the Swiss engineer George de Mestral conceived the idea for Velcro in 1948. After returning from a walk he found seed pods sticking to his socks and to his dog. When he examined the pods under a microscope he saw how tiny hooks had caught in the loops of the wool (Figure 46). He developed a method of reproducing the hooks and loops in woven nylon for use in clothing instead of buttons and zips (Figure 47). He called the product Velcro from a combination of velours (velvet) and crochet (hook), and the product went on to have many other uses including medicine (for joining the chambers of an artificial heart) and the space programme (for securing objects in a weightless environment).

Figure 46 Seed heads of this Goosegrass fruit are covered with prickly hooked bracts (modified leaves). They stick to the fur of passing animals and are carried away to colonise new territories (Source: Science Photo Library)

Figure 47 This electron-microscope picture of Velcro shows how closely the fastener copies the Goosegrass fruit (Source: Science Photo Library)

The tiny nylon hooks on one piece of Velcro catch the loops on the facing piece like seed burrs catch onto fur or wool. A thumbnail-size piece of Velcro contains about 750 hooks, with 12 500 loops on the other side. They can be fastened and unfastened thousands of times without wearing out.

Box 6 Chance and the invention of the microwave cooker

In 1945 Percy Spencer was an engineer working for Raytheon, a company that produced magnetrons, a key component of radar. One day he discovered that a chocolate and peanut bar in his pocket had melted. He realised that it must have been the high-frequency radio emissions from a magnetron that had heated the bar. Spencer then experimented by placing a bag of popcorn close to the magnetron – the popcorn exploded. Subsequent experiments showed that microwaves agitated the water molecules in food and cooked from the inside out, the opposite of conventional cooking.

The 1945 patent shows the original plan to have the food on a conveyor belt passing the cooker, with the speed of the belt controlling the cooking time (Figure 48). This idea didn't last long. Although it was a small company specialising in military electronics, Raytheon made the first commercial microwave cookers (Radarange) in 1947 (Figure 49). They were six feet high and cost the modern equivalent of around £40 000, so unsurprisingly sales were slow at first and were mainly to institutional catering units. It wasn't until the late 1960s, following a takeover, that a domestic worktop model was produced and sales began to pick up.

Figure 48 Microwave cooker drawing from the 1945 patent (Source: van Dulken, 2002)

Figure 49 An early microwave cooker next to five modern cookers (Source: Raytheon Company)

While chance observation can play a key part in achieving major progress, chance alone is not enough. Invention still requires the presence of an imaginative mind sensitised to the features of particular technological problems and busy thinking about solutions in order to capitalise on the chance occurrences. As Louis Pasteur put it, ‘Where observation is concerned, chance favours only the prepared mind’.

Most aspects of invention (including steps 1 and 2 above and 5 below) can be, and usually are, influenced by economic incentives. Acts of insight, however, are bound up with the inventor's character, motivations, thinking style and thought processes – in other words, their individual creativity. No matter what the economic incentive for coming up with an invention, an individual will not be able to achieve the necessary act of insight without possessing the appropriate inventive skills, or acquiring them through training or practice. How often have you come across an inventive new product and thought, that seems obvious, why didn't I think of that? But it takes a special skill to be the first person to make an unlikely connection and to come up with a creative solution to a problem.

Acts of insight might come more readily to people already working with a technology, but because such acts go beyond the skill expected of professionals it is sometimes possible for relative outsiders to come up with important inventions. For example Laszlo Biro was a journalist when he invented the ballpoint pen, John Boyd Dunlop was a veterinary surgeon when he invented the pneumatic tyre, and so on. So it is sometimes possible for users of technology to come up with improvements or replacements to existing technology when those already in the field see no need for change. However, such acts of insight seldom lead to a fully formed invention.

11.6 Step 5 – critical revision

Once a solution has been obtained it is then necessary to explore the extent to which it effectively solves the problem and where necessary revise it. Although more attention has been given to the moment of inspiration during the act of insight than to any other stage of invention, it is this process of critical revision that is usually the longest, most difficult and costly stage.

Genius is 1 per cent inspiration and 99 per cent perspiration.

(Thomas Edison, quoted in a newspaper interview)

As is implied by Thomas Edison's famous saying, the insight needs to be coupled with hard work on the details to enable a bright idea to be transformed into a working prototype (Figure 50).

Figure 50 Edison in his laboratory in Orange, New Jersey, at 5.30 am on 16 June 1888 after having worked continuously for several days improving his phonograph (Source: Edison National Historic Site)

Like the process of exploration this critical revision might take months, as with Edison's light, or years. There were 4 years between James Watt's idea for improving the performance of Newcomen's steam engine by using a separate condenser to keep the cylinder as hot as possible, and his incorporation of this idea in the first full-size engine in 1769. Watt didn't have enough capital to devote his efforts full-time to solving the many technical problems involved in turning his idea into an efficient working machine. In addition he saw some of his ideas stolen and exploited by others. In a moment of despair that is familiar to inventors frustrated by the many obstacles in their path he wrote, ‘Of all things in life there is nothing more foolish than inventing’ (letter to his friend Dr Black, 1769).

Not only is the critical revision step necessary to move from the act of insight to a working invention, it is also a key factor in the process of transforming the invention into a commercially viable innovation. Indeed it was another 6 years before the first Watt steam engine went into commercial use for draining a Midlands coal mine in 1775, 10 years in all after his first act of insight. He was only able to achieve innovation thanks to his partnership with Birmingham manufacturer Matthew Boulton, which provided the capital and the entrepreneurial skills that Watt lacked but that were needed to help develop and sell his invention.

Activity 11

The average British person uses 160 litres of water a day, and often in a wasteful way. What do you identify as the problem, and what exploration might you do next with a view to reducing the water used?

View answer - Activity 11

With practically any example of invention it's possible to see how it moves through these five stages as it is developed. As well as these stages common to inventions, it's also possible to identify certain characteristics common to inventors.

11.7 Characteristics of inventors

In their classic book The Sources of Invention (1969) John Jewkes, David Sawers and Richard Stillerman observe the following about inventors, whether working outside or inside an organisation.

- Inventors tend to be absorbed with their own ideas and to feel strongly about their importance and potential.

- Inventors can be impatient with those who don't share their optimism.

- Inventors are often isolated because they are engrossed with ideas that imply change and that are resisted by others.

- Inventors can be right when others are eventually proved wrong. Accordingly inventors can appear eccentric because they have a minority view that challenges existing ideas.

- Inventors are often devoid of worldly knowledge and, in particular, business knowledge, and therefore need special help in this aspect of innovation.

Some of these characteristics are useful to inventors during the process of invention. The ability to focus on a problem to the exclusion of everything else, the single-mindedness and determination to produce a solution, and the optimism that the solution is viable – all of these can help the inventor overcome the many obstacles to invention.

However some of these very characteristics can become liabilities when applied to the process of innovation. This requires the skills of working with others in a team – the ability to persuade others of the worth of the invention; the patience to accept criticism; the flexibility to compromise and change the design if required, say, by the manufacturing process; the open-mindedness to accept input from others with more expertise in a particular aspect of innovation, such as marketing.

12 Part 2: 3 Technology push and market pull

12.1 Two models

So far you've seen that there are two general drivers of invention. One is the scientific and technological knowledge and skills that can be applied to invent a new product or process. The other is the recognition of a need or a potential market for an invention. But is one more important than the other? I'll consider briefly two simple models that explain how the innovation process starts.

12.2 Technology push

The technology push model is a simple linear model that suggests that the innovation process starts with an idea or a discovery – it is sometimes called ‘idea push’ (Figure 51). Sometimes this is by a creative individual who has the knowledge and imagination to realise its significance and the practical skills to transform the idea or discovery into an invention. An example from earlier is Cockerell and his hovercraft. You also saw, with the invention of the laser, that inventors don't always foresee the ultimate commercial applications of their invention. However more often nowadays the starting point is basic scientific research or applied research and development (R&D) in organisations. This proceeds through design and development into a product that can be manufactured effectively and economically and then sold on the market.

Figure 51 Technology push model

The market is seen as a receptacle for the output of scientific research and invention; therefore an increase in basic and applied R&D should lead to an increase in innovation. In the past government support for innovation in many countries consisted of bolstering science and the R&D supply aspect.

In his book Enabling Innovation Boru Douthwaite (2002) criticised this process and dubbed it the ‘over-the-wall model’. An R&D team assumes it knows enough about the users’ needs to develop a new product without involving them in its specification or design. The team simply develops the product and tosses it ‘over the wall’ to users in the belief that there's a need for it, the technology is complete and ready to use, and users are technically skilled enough to use it without help.

Now there are times when this approach can work. For example Sony's development of the Walkman personal stereo cassette player was not in response to any need identified by market research (Figure 52). One of the cofounders of the company was using a Sony portable stereo tape recorder and standard-size headphones to listen to a cassette. He complained about the weight of this system to the president Akio Morita. Morita ordered his engineers to remove the recording circuit from one of their small cassette recorders (the Pressman) and replace it with a stereo amplifier. In addition he asked for lightweight headphones to be developed. The headphones turned out to be the biggest technical challenge in the project and were the most innovative component – everything else was a new application of existing technology.

Figure 52 Example of successful technology push, the first Sony Walkman (Source: Sony UK Ltd)

Proposed in 1979 and manufactured from 1980, Sony was first to market with this innovative product

There was scepticism within the firm as to the market appeal of a cassette player without a recording facility but Morita – acting as a product champion – pushed through the idea. Almost from its launch the Walkman was successful. As with many innovative products no amount of market research would have identified a specific need because one did not exist. Success came from encouraging a latent need by providing people with an innovative product they hadn't known they wanted.

But such instincts on the part of a manufacturer as to what might make for a successful product are not always right. For example Morita had assumed it was less antisocial to include a second headphone socket so that two people could share their listening experience. He had also included a button-activated microphone so that the two listeners could talk to each other over the music on a ‘hot line’. When this idea didn't catch on and it became clear that the early users really valued this product as a personal device, those extra features were removed.

But though the technology push model might describe the innovation process for some products, it only tells part of the story. There are numerous examples of inventions that are good ideas, scientifically or technologically sound and available to the market, yet fail to become successful innovations. The notion that if an idea is good enough, technology push will help it to overcome all obstacles to its innovation is a romantic one, but unrealistic.

Box 6 Technology push doesn't always work – the Dvorak keyboard

The QWERTY keyboard layout was developed by Christopher Latham Sholes to slow down the typist (Figure 53). The mechanical typewriters of the time often jammed if two adjoining keys were struck rapidly in succession. Sholes rearranged the keys so that the most commonly used letter sequences were spread out, slower to find and would converge from opposite sides of the machine. When typewriter mechanisms became more efficient the original justification for the QWERTY arrangement disappeared.

Figure 53 Prototype of the QWERTY typewriter patented by Christopher Latham Sholes in 1868 that formed the basis of the first commercial typewriter, the Remington No.1 in 1874. At this point in its development a few of the characters have yet to find their final location – this prototype starts ‘QWERTY’ (Source: Smithsonian Institute)

In 1932 Professor August Dvorak of the University of Washington used time-and-motion studies to create a more efficient keyboard layout (Figure 54). The most frequently used letters in English – A, O, E, U, I, D, H, T, N, S – were placed on the central, home row that could then account for around 70 per cent of the typing, compared with 32 per cent of the QWERTY keyboard's home keys. Dvorak also altered the balance of keys controlled by the normally weaker left-hand from 57 per cent with the QWERTY layout to 44 per cent.

However by this time there was significant vested interest in keeping the dominant design, both for manufacturers and users trained on the QWERTY layout. Dvorak's keyboard was not taken up and the QWERTY standard still dominates the market. This makes a nonsense of the saying attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson that,

If a man … make a better mouse trap than his neighbour, though he build his house in the woods, the world will make a beaten path to his door.

Figure 54 Patent drawing of Dvorak's improved non-QWERTY keyboard layout (Source: US Patent 2040248)

So if the market can be resistant to good new technology, what role does the market play in encouraging invention?

12.3 Market pull

The alternative market pull model suggests that the stimulus for innovation comes from the needs of society or a particular section of the market (Figure 55). These might be needs perceived by an entrepreneur or manufacturer like Shaw and his cat's-eyes or they might be clearly articulated by consumers. According to this model a successful approach to innovation would be to research the market thoroughly first, assess what needs exist, how far they are met by existing products and processes and how the needs might be met more effectively by means of a new or improved innovation. The theory then is that once the appropriate technology is developed a receptive market is assured because the innovation process has been tailored to meet a definite need.

Figure 55 Market pull model

Therefore this model adds a stage of exploring market need before the invention stage of the technology push model. This approach might be characterised by the classic saying, ‘necessity is the mother of invention’.

Douthwaite identifies two levels of exploring market need. The first level he calls the consultancy model. In this the R&D team consults users about needs but doesn't involve them in the development process because it thinks its own experience and its ability to ask users the right questions will provide all the information it needs. Douthwaite thinks this process might work for upgrading existing technologies but is poor for developing novel products and systems. For that he suggests the best approach is the codevelopment model.

He suggests more radical inventions require an R&D team to codevelop the product or technology in conjunction with potential users. For instance work done by consumer electronics company Philips in researching users’ needs has involved users in the testing of products at various stages. At the preconcept design stage the user may be asked what sort of products do they want. At the prototype stage the user may be asked how well does this prototype work and does it meet their needs. At the post-purchase stage the user may be asked what incremental improvements to this existing product would they like to see. Even when a product is reaching maturity the user is asked what, if anything, would they like to see taking its place.

Critics of the market pull explanation point out that because an important need exists it is no guarantee that an invention will emerge to meet that need. There are many examples of long-standing needs that have yet to be satisfactorily met despite the efforts of many inventive minds, such as cures for many medical conditions, and safe road transport. Moreover the notion of a coherent market with a clearly identifiable set of needs is simplistic (Figure 56). In reality there is a complex range of sectors within the market for a particular product type. A very familiar example is the car market, with separate sectors for the supermini, family saloons and estates, people carriers, executive cars, sports cars, four-wheel-drive cars, and so on. Some theorists argue that over-concentration on the marketing concept has led companies to become preoccupied with incremental and often trivial innovations at the expense of radical breakthroughs, which are more likely to be achieved through technology push.

Figure 56 Motorcycle airbag in a crash test. Another example of market pull? Not entirely, many motorcyclists are resistant so most motorcycle manufacturers have not seen the need for R&D. (Source: Science Photo Library)

It is true that fulfilling human needs is an important incentive for inventors and innovators. This is especially so for improvements to existing products and innovations aimed at obvious needs, such as safety (car airbags), health (new medicines), productivity (process innovations), food supply (new strains of wheat and rice). So there is some truth in the view that necessity is the mother of invention; but this is only part of the story. Consumers cannot demand products that have not yet been conceived but needs can be created by the emergence of an innovation.

A search for the origins of the gasoline-powered motorcar reveals that it was not necessity that inspired its inventors to complete their task. The automobile was not developed in response to some grave international horse crisis or horse shortage. National leaders, influential thinkers, and editorial writers were not calling for the replacement of the horse, nor were ordinary citizens anxiously hoping that some inventors would soon fill a serious societal and personal need for motor transportation. In fact, during the first decade of existence, 1895–1905, the automobile was a toy, a plaything for those who could afford to buy one.

(Basalla, 1988, p. 198)

Remember the label ‘toy’ was also applied to early versions of Bell's telephone and Berliner's gramophone.

Indeed the need for motor vehicles arose after, not before, their invention. This invention opened up possibilities for transportation that had not previously existed and stimulated a desire to share in the benefits that were offered when it became an innovation. And the very existence of a new innovation can create previously nonexistent needs leading to new inventions. It might just as easily be said that, ‘invention is the mother of necessity’, in this and in many other cases of new technological products.

12.4 Coupling model

There are examples where either technology or the market appears to be more significant in stimulating invention but the majority of innovations involve a creative coupling of technological and market factors. In some respects successful innovation is a case of the survival of the fittest. Failure can come both from not getting the technology right and from misjudging the market. Success is more likely if the focus is not too one-dimensional but rather a balance between technology and market considerations.

But a key challenge with invention and innovation is that both technology and the market are changing constantly. What is technically unachievable today may be possible in a few years time due to scientific advances, sometimes in an unrelated field. Likewise what cannot be sold today may come to be regarded as a necessity by future consumers.

The relationships between advancing science and technology and a changing market are complex. The skill of the companies and the people operating at the interfaces between these areas is to make the connection between technological and market possibilities. It can be a creative process similar to the associative thinking involved in the original invention itself, and is often the province of the entrepreneur.

This coupling between technology and market needs is important at every stage of the innovation process, from the first flash of inspiration, through the entire research, design and development work to the introduction of the new product or process onto the market.

Although the innovation process clearly contains both technology and market elements, any model of the process has to introduce some sense of interaction and growing complexity. It must have feedback loops and a variety of links both between science, technology and the market place, and between innovating firms and the outside world. Rothwell's coupling model starts to suggest this complexity (Figure 57).

Figure 57 Roy Rothwell's coupling model of innovation (*in later papers amended to ‘research, design and development’) (Source: adapted from Rothwell, 1992)

Activity 12

Do you have a personal example of market pull not generating a product – in other words do you need a product that doesn't exist, or a better product than the one that does exist?

13 Part 2: 4 Preparing for innovation

Many inventors have said that having the idea for an invention is the easy part. This is often demonstrated by the frequency of examples of simultaneous invention. At one exhibition of inventions I attended there were three separate portable ladders to escape from fires, two systems for using rainwater to flush toilets, two types of portable vehicle wheel clamp, and two methods of reducing red-eye in flash photography. In most cases of technological innovation only one of the competing technologies goes on to achieve significant success. The challenge lies in the development of an inventive idea into a successful design and innovation – to complete the difficult journey from idea to market.

Once inventors seek to move beyond the stage of the prototype that demonstrates the feasibility of their invention they move into another territory. Manufacturing an invention on a large scale can involve a different set of problems from those involved in devising an invention and producing a prototype.

The prototype might not be sufficiently attractive to look at or easy to use to appeal to buyers. It might not be made of materials suitable for the manipulation required by a volume manufacturing process, or for the degree of safe and reliable performance required by a commercial innovation on sale to the public. Consequently development often involves the search for new materials or for new uses for existing materials, both of which can involve further invention. Further, existing technical methods might be inadequate for economic volume manufacture and a new machine or a new process might need to be invented.

Given the technical complexity and the level of investment required to manufacture most innovative products, it is necessary to be able to predict and control the manufacturing process precisely. Depending on the nature of the product, it may be that during the invention phase a mixture of empirical bench work and scientific investigation was used. Less technologically complex inventions are likely to have involved mostly an empirical, cut-and-try approach, with a scientific approach needed for more complex inventions. Either way when it comes to the precision required for large-scale manufacture there is an increasing need to understand how an invention works, or how a material behaves in a certain way under certain conditions, or how a particular manufacturing method is carried out, in order to be able to control the overall process. For this level of understanding a scientific input is usually invaluable, although craft skill and empirical know-how remain important even for leading-edge innovations.

Finally as well as the increasing precision of the manufacturing technology needed to progress from invention to innovation, development also calls for more careful consideration of the commercial aspects, market needs and sales potential – the likely costs of manufacture, size of market, sales price, selling strategy, profit margin, visual and functional design, and so on.

14 Part 2: 5 Self-assessment questions

You can experience this free course as it was originally designed on OpenLearn, the home of free learning from The Open University: http://www.open.edu/openlearn/science-maths-technology/engineering-and-technology/design-and-innovation/invention-and-innovation-introduction/content-section-0.

SAQ 4

What are the four main factors that motivate individuals to invent?

View answer - SAQ 4

SAQ 5

What are the four main factors that motivate organisations to invent?

View answer - SAQ 5

SAQ 6

From the brief description of Carlson's invention of xerography given earlier, how do the five key steps of the Usher-Lawson model fit that particular example?

View answer - SAQ 6

SAQ 7

To what extent would you describe the following inventions as predominantly arising from technology push or from market pull?

- (a) early motor cars

- (b) car airbags

- (c) the photocopier

- (d) high-yielding varieties of wheat and rice

- (e) the laser.

View answer - SAQ 7

15 Part 2: 6 Key points of Part 2

You can experience this free course as it was originally designed on OpenLearn, the home of free learning from The Open University: http://www.open.edu/openlearn/science-maths-technology/engineering-and-technology/design-and-innovation/invention-and-innovation-introduction/content-section-0.

- Individuals are motivated to invent by one or more factors: curiosity; constructive discontent about a product; a desire to help others; a desire to make money.

- Organisations invent for a number of reasons: business strategy; the need to improve existing products and processes; new materials become available, as do technologies and manufacturing processes; government policy, legislation and regulations.

- The process of invention involves the stages of: identification, exploration, incubation, act of insight, critical revision.

- Inventive ideas often occur due to associative thinking, which brings together ideas, knowledge and techniques from different areas. Inventors also use adaptation, transfer, combination and analogy.

- Chance often plays a significant role in invention.

- Inventors often have the ability to focus on a problem to the exclusion of everything else, and are single-minded and determined, and have an optimism about finding a viable solution.

- Innovation requires teamwork, the ability to persuade others, the patience to accept criticism, the flexibility to compromise and the open-mindedness to accept input from others.

- The technology push model suggests the innovation process starts with an idea or a discovery. The market pull model suggests the stimulus for innovation comes from the needs of the market. The coupling model suggests interaction between innovators and the market.

- Having the idea for an invention is often easy compared with transforming it into a marketable innovation.

16 Part 3: Innovation

You can experience this free course as it was originally designed on OpenLearn, the home of free learning from The Open University: http://www.open.edu/openlearn/science-maths-technology/engineering-and-technology/design-and-innovation/invention-and-innovation-introduction/content-section-0.

As you've seen above, many inventors have discovered that innovation – getting their ideas made and sold – is harder than invention. To bring an invention to the market there are a number of obstacles to overcome – technical, financial and organisational. The invention has to be made using appropriate materials and manufacturing processes depending on the nature of the product and the numbers required. Then, once an innovation is available to potential buyers, there are a number of factors that influence how well it will sell and how rapidly it is likely to diffuse. Factors affecting sales and diffusion include characteristics of the innovation itself, conditions of the market and any relevant regulations.

Finally, although innovations generally offer progress, some complement existing ways of doing things and have a sustaining effect for a technology or an industry. Some innovations though are more disruptive and can lead to significant changes in society.

17 Part 3: 1 Overcoming obstacles to innovation

You can experience this free course as it was originally designed on OpenLearn, the home of free learning from The Open University: http://www.open.edu/openlearn/science-maths-technology/engineering-and-technology/design-and-innovation/invention-and-innovation-introduction/content-section-0.

17.1 Getting the technology to work

A fundamental requirement for successful innovation is that the invention must work. It mustn't violate any scientific laws and it must be capable of being transformed into a working prototype. In addition to getting the technology to work it must be designed to be easy to use and reliable, attractive, safe and environmentally friendly. It must also be designed so it's capable of being manufactured on a scale that makes it economic to produce and to buy.

Sometimes an idea for an invention is ahead of the technology, materials, components or knowledge needed to deliver it. The idea for television was suggested in 1877, almost 50 years before its actual invention. While the basic principles that were to lead to television were understood by the scientific community, these hadn't yet been translated into the practical working components required – cathode ray tubes for example. Furthermore even the idea needed further time to develop. At first it was perceived as a two-way interactive device for talking to others on screen – the ‘telephonoscope’ (Figure 58). Then it was imagined as the transfer over distance of a single image onto paper (‘telephotography’) or screen (‘electric telescope’). Eventually the idea of transmitting moving images gained ground but it was still being thought of as a means of two-way communication (an extension of the telephone) until the first regular one-way television transmissions started in London in 1932.

Figure 58 ‘Edison's Telephonoscope’, Punch cartoon dated 9 December 1879 (Source: Punch Cartoon Library)

Sometimes the early prototypes of an invention just don't work well. As mentioned in Part 1, Thomas Edison invented the phonograph in 1877(Figure 59). A diaphragm transformed sound into vibrations in an attached needle, which in turn traced a pattern on tinfoil stretched around a hand-cranked drum. When the process was reversed the pattern recreated the sound, which returned through the diaphragm.

Figure 59 Edison's earliest model of the phonograph, 1877

While Edison's first ‘talking machines’ caused quite a stir for 6 months and led to considerable speculation as to their potential uses (Figure 60), it soon became clear the invention had been launched prematurely. Edison's list of possible uses for his invention was optimistic (see Box 7), particularly his preference that it should be used as a serious business machine. The tinfoil cylinders of the first phonographs played for little more than a minute and reproduced the human voice in a barely recognisable form.

Figure 60 The poster announces 4 days of demonstrations of the phonograph in Grand Rapids, Michigan, during the summer of 1878 (Source: Gelatt, 1977)

It took almost 20 years of further development before a reliable phonograph started to become widely available for domestic use (Figure 61). Wax recording cylinders replaced the tinfoil, constant-speed electric motors (and later on, cheaper clockwork mechanisms) replaced Edison's initial hand crank, recording techniques and quality steadily improved (early recording artists had to record each cylinder individually), then by the early years of the twentieth century the recording disk had replaced the cylinder.

Figure 61 Berliner gramophone, about 1891. Its turntable was rotated manually, to play 180 mm (7 inch) disks at a designed speed of 70 rpm (Source: Gelatt, 1977)

The story of the unfinished state of the Edison phonograph could be repeated for many famous technological innovations:

- The cameras of the 1840s called for exposure times of 10 to 90 seconds.

- The cumbersome and slow typewriters of the mid-nineteenth century were scarcely an improvement over writing with a pen.

- The first commercial internal-combustion engine, the vertical Otto and Langen engine of 1866, stood 7-foot tall and delivered 3 horsepower.

- The Wright brothers’ first powered airplane stayed aloft only 57 seconds.

- The television receivers of the 1920s displayed small images (1.5 by 2 inches) that were blurred and flickered badly.

- The first electronic computer occupied 1800 square feet of floor space and weighed 30 tons.

At first glance none of these appeared to be likely prospects for the basis of a new industry, yet all did so.

(Basalla, 1988, p. 142)

Box 7 Edison's ideas for uses of his phonograph

A year after inventing the phonograph Edison published an article listing ten ways in which the public might find the invention useful. In his personal order of priority these were:

1. letter writing and all kinds of dictation without the aid of a stenographer;

2. phonographic books, which will speak to blind people without effort on their part;

3. the teaching of elocution;

4. reproduction of music;

5. the ‘family record’ – a registry of sayings, reminiscences, and so on by members of a family in their own voices, and the last words of dying persons;

6. music boxes and toys;

7. clocks that should announce in articulate speech the time for going home or going to meals;

8. the preservation of languages by exact reproduction of the manner of pronouncing;

9. educational purposes, such as preserving the explanations made by a teacher, so that the pupil can refer to them at any moment, and spelling or other lessons placed upon the phonograph for convenience in committing to memory;

10. connection with the telephone, so as to make that instrument an auxiliary in the transmission of permanent and invaluable records, instead of being the recipient of momentary and fleeting communication.

Music reproduction was ranked fourth because Edison thought this was a relatively trivial use of his invention. Even when he started production of phonographs on a commercial basis – after a 10-year diversion into developing and improving the electric light – he concentrated on selling it as a dictation machine, resisting efforts to market it for playing music. Other people saw and exploited the entertainment potential of Edison's invention and carried out improvements to the technology to make it an effective and attractive product. It was not until the mid-1890s, however, that the inventor himself came to accept that the primary use of this invention was for entertainment rather than as a useful piece of office equipment.

Sometimes the take-up of an invention is delayed by the non-availability of suitable materials to enable the invention to perform effectively or by the lack of development of a process technology to enable the efficient and cost-effective manufacture of the invention. For example Frank Whittle's turbojet engine patented in 1930 did not work efficiently until manufacturers developed a new nickel-chrome alloy to enable the turbine blades to withstand the high temperatures and stresses involved. And it could not be manufactured on an industrial scale until improvements had been made in metal processing and manufacture. This was not achieved on any significant scale until after the Second World War, more than 10 years after patenting. By this time Whittle had long since allowed his basic patent to lapse because his employers, the RAF, had little faith in the feasibility or potential of his invention in the early stages of its development.

Sometimes the obstacle is that the most appropriate application for a new technology hasn't yet been found. There are often a number of different uses to which any invention can be put. The first uses are not necessarily those for which an invention will eventually become known. The first steam engines were not for transportation but were used to pump water from mines. The most widespread application of the hovercraft principle is in hovering lawn mowers. Soft paper tissue was developed by Kimberley-Clark as a substitute for cotton wool as a medical dressing during the First World War. As a result of looking for new applications it was marketed as a make-up remover from 1924. It was only when users reported on its qualities for nose blowing that it was relaunched as Kleenex tissue handkerchief (Figure 62).

Figure 62 Originally used for medical dressings during the First World War, then for sanitary towels and then makeup removers, the use of paper tissue as a handkerchief took some time to evolve (Source: John Frost Newspaper Service)

17.2 Getting finance and organisational backing

Like talk, ideas are cheap. Even generating a prototype of an invention can be cheap compared with the resources needed to produce and market an innovation. The independent inventor or designer is likely to have to rely on family and friends for financial backing, particularly in the early stages. Seed capital is sometimes available in the form of innovation grants from government bodies, such as the Department for Trade and Industry in the UK, which offers development funding to individuals and small businesses. Eventually, however, most inventors need to access the sort of funds only a company or a venture capitalist can provide.

Some inventors decide to go into business for themselves because they distrust organisations or because they failed to persuade an organisation to take up their invention. The inventor of the Workmate portable workbench, Ron Hickman, was one such inventor-entrepreneur. Hickman had developed craft skills through 10 years of practical experience as a designer with Lotus cars. As mentioned in Part 1 he was also a do-it-yourself enthusiast who became dissatisfied with existing devices after damaging a chair that was being used to support a piece of wood he was sawing.

He designed and built a prototype of a combined workbench and sawhorse. After he found it to be unexpectedly useful, he developed it further and by 1968 he had the mark 1 Workmate design (Figure 63). Next he tried to persuade relevant organisations in the DIY field of the commercial potential of his idea. However none of them was willing to risk investing in a completely new product for which there was no clear demand, being an unusual hybrid of sawhorse, vice and workbench. In 1968 Stanley Tools estimated potential sales could be measured in ‘dozens rather than in hundreds’ – by 1981 the 10 millionth Workmate had been sold.

Figure 63 Mark 1 Workmate manufactured by Ron Hickman, 1968 (Source: Science & Society Picture Library)

Hickman, however, had confidence in his invention and decided to manufacture the product himself. By 1972 he had sold 25 000 Workmate benches by mail order. Existing manufacturers of DIY products began to take an interest, including Black & Decker, which had been among the companies offered a licence in 1968. In 1972 Black & Decker finally took a licence on the Workmate. Even then the story was not straightforward.

It still required the efforts of a key individual within Black & Decker (Walter Goldsmith, general manager) to champion the product and persuade others that investing in the Workmate was an economically sound idea. He was helped in this by Hickman's success up to that point, which demonstrated the existence of a market for this unique product. Hickman would certainly not have been able to achieve sales of 10 million units over that period had he continued on his own. It was only by handing over control of his innovation to a large organisation for production and further product development that mass-market sales were achieved for the Workmate (Figures 64 and 65).

Figure 64 Workmate 2, manufactured by Black & Decker (Source: DIY Photo Library)

Figure 65 Black & Decker's Wm675 Workmate, 2004 (Source: © Copyright Black and Decker Inc, Workbench, 2004; reproduced with permission)

To be fair, potential investors often have to make judgements about whether to support an invention on the evidence of early prototypes. Perhaps it is not surprising there are many examples of companies that have turned down what became highly successful and profitable inventions. With hindsight it is easy to scoff at such apparent blunders but the decisions were often made for entirely sensible reasons. The invention might have been outside the company's existing product range at a time when their existing products were selling well and profitably. Some organisations resist investing in ‘outside’ inventions but rather prefer to develop their own in-house ideas – this is known as the not-invented-here attitude. The production, marketing and commercialisation of an unproven new idea are likely to be costly and run the risk of failure.

It takes a certain amount of courage to decide that an invention does have potential, particularly on the evidence of a partially developed prototype. Sometimes it takes a small, new company with an informal organisational structure, entrepreneurial values and little to lose to risk bringing a new technology to the market place. I will say more on this when I deal with sustaining and disruptive innovations later in Part 3.

As writer Arthur C. Clarke said,

Every revolutionary idea … seems to evoke three stages of reaction. They may be summed up by the phrases:

1. It's completely impossible – don't waste my time.

2. It's possible, but it's not worth doing.

3. I said it was a good idea all along.

(Clarke, 1968)

17.3 Choosing appropriate materials and manufacturing process

The choice of materials and manufacturing process for a particular new product is an important aspect of the innovation process. It is not necessarily the case that the materials chosen for the early prototypes of an invention are those best suited for the larger-scale manufacture of the innovation. Choice of materials can affect the performance, quality and economic manufacture of most new products, so it's important to choose wisely.

While inventors and designers usually need to seek specialist assistance when it comes to choosing materials, it helps to inform their choices if they have a broad overview of the main types of material and their properties. Designers need to consider a range of materials properties:

- performance – behaviour of the material in the finished product;

- processing – behaviour of the material during manufacture;

- economic – cost and availability of material;

- aesthetic – appearance and texture of processed material.

Increasingly environmental impacts are playing a part in the choice of materials. These impacts include the energy consumed and pollution produced in the extraction and preprocessing of raw materials as well as their final processing into a product; and the effect of chosen materials on the life of the product; the potential for recycling and environmentally sound disposal at the end of the product's life. With all these factors to consider it's not surprising the final choice of materials for a new product is often a compromise, strongly influenced by the costs both of the material itself and of processing it.

Now watch the video The total beauty of sustainable products by clicking the link below.

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In the same way that inventors and designers need knowledge of the range of materials available, they equally need to know the strengths and limitations of a range of manufacturing processes. As with the choice of suitable materials for a product there will often be a number of feasible processes. The following are the different criteria that can be applied to identify an optimum process in a particular case.

- Cost – the capital cost of new equipment, the cost of dedicated tools such as moulds, the labour costs of setting up and operating the process, and the assumed rate of depreciation for tools and equipment.

- Cycle time – how long it takes to process one item (part, component or product).

- Product quality – the standards required in terms of performance properties, surface finish and dimensional tolerances, and maintaining quality over time.

- Flexibility – how easy it is to produce different designs on the same equipment.

- Materials utilisation – the amount of waste material generated during processing.

The relative importance of these criteria will vary depending on the volume to be produced and on whether the products will be identical or the same equipment will be used to manufacture different designs.

The ability to design and make a new product to the optimum quality specifications at the lowest cost and in the shortest time has been the general goal of manufacturers since the start of the industrial revolution. The means by which this goal has been achieved have developed as materials, techniques and the organisation of production have evolved. Not only has the transformation of the manufacturing process enabled many inventions of increasing complexity to reach the market and become successful innovations, the manufacturing process itself has been the subject of much innovation.

In a number of the examples earlier in this unit you've seen that the development of most innovations includes significant reductions in cost, which make the product affordable by larger numbers of customers. (Examples include the BIC ballpoint pen, Edison's electric light and the electronic tagging of products.) Often this cost breakthrough is due to decisions made in the area of materials and manufacture. A new material might be used in the product that makes it easier and cheaper to manufacture (the use of plastic for the bodies of ballpoint pens); a new assembly process might be more efficient with fewer components and fewer stages (recall that the assembly of Edison's electric light was reduced from 200 to 20 steps and the labour time from 1 hour to 20 seconds); a new manufacturing process might become applicable to the production of an innovation (fluidic self-assembly allowing production of RFID tags on an industrial scale).

Further savings might be achieved by regularly reviewing the design and manufacturing process for a product and aiming where possible for simplification and integration. Can the product be redesigned with fewer parts? Can parts be designed to serve more than one function? Can a new or different principle be used? Can parts be redesigned for ease of fabrication? Can fasteners be eliminated or reduced by using tabs or snap-fits? Can a product be designed to use standard components?

The basis of mass production is the complete interchangeability of components and the simplicity of attaching them to each other. With this increasing reliance on interchangeability in a world dependent on mass-produced products, it becomes more important than ever to know that products are being manufactured accurately to common standards and that their performance can be relied on.

Standards are another key component of the innovation process, providing guidance to the manufacturer on the expected quality and performance of a new product or process. And standards reassure the user that the product has been well tested before being launched onto the market. (See Section 3: 1.4.)

17.4 Standards and their role in innovation

Standards were originally related to units of measurement. The first ‘standard’ was the Egyptian royal cubit, which was made of black granite and was said to be equivalent to the length of the Pharoah's forearm and hand. This was also subdivided into finger, palm and hand widths – one ‘small cubit’ was equivalent to six palms. But because the human forearm was the master reference this meant that the cubit varied in different parts of the world. Over thousands of years agreement over units of measurement gradually spread. It was really industrialisation that brought a pressing need for better standards of measurement, both for parts of products and for manufacturing processes.

Essentially the incentive to standardise was economic. Standardised parts and methods of production meant that products could be made more accurately and efficiently, and the user could rely on their quality and performance with greater confidence. Furthermore maintenance and repair could be carried out more easily and cheaply by the replacement of one standardised part with another.

An early set of standards for the manufacture of a product were established in connection with steam boilers. Victorian engineers produced boilers of various shapes and sizes and therefore different performance characteristics. This resulted in uncertainty over how a particular boiler would perform and there were many boiler explosions and some deaths. There was pressure from insurance companies to reduce such risks by persuading engineers to conform to given standards for the manufacture of boilers and insurance cover was made conditional on compliance with manufacturing standards.

In 1901 the institutes for civil engineers, mechanical engineers, naval architects and the iron and steel industries formed a committee with the remit to standardise iron and steel sections for bridges, railways and shipping. One of the first standards was for tram rails, which led to a reduction in the number of different rails manufactured from 75 to 5. During the First World War standards were established that enabled aircraft to be made faster and that resulted in more reliable aircraft. In 1929 the standards committee became the British Engineering Standards Association and was granted a royal charter. Then in 1930 the association became the British Standards Institution (BSI) with a brief to oversee the establishing of national standards for the manufacture of a range of products. During the Second World War the standards for the manufacture of tins saved 40 000 tonnes of steel a year.

In 1947 the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) was founded to establish international standards for a wide range of industrial products.

Nowadays standards are agreed by committees drawn from government departments, research organisations, manufacturers and users. And standards aren't fixed but evolve to reflect changes in technology and society. By 2003 there were more than 14 000 international standards applying to film speeds, paper sizes, the dimensions of credit cards and the symbols on car dashboards. In the same year there were over 20 000 active British standards (1400 new standards were agreed in 2002 alone). As well as products, standards are developed to apply to ways of doing things – for example, the ISO 14000 series of international environmental management standards. Along with the information contained in patents, standards also represent a repository of know-how collected from wide experience of using products and processes. Some products in different countries nowadays are required by law to be tested against particular safety and performance standards before they can be offered for sale to the market. In the UK these include smoke alarms, emergency lighting, baby's dummies, fire extinguishers and fireworks. There are also many voluntary standards agreed upon by industries and trade associations because such standards can lead to more cost-effective production and maintenance, as well as greater customer confidence in the products concerned. For example the British Standard document (BS 1363:1995) for 13-amp fused plugs, socket-outlets, adaptors and connection units consists of four separate documents that specify the design, construction and performance characteristics of each product's components and details on how to test a new product design for compliance with the standard (Figure 66). The BSI Kitemark (itself a trade mark) shows that a product was initially tested and is regularly tested against appropriate standards. It has become a symbol of safety and quality for any product that carries it. Recently much effort has been devoted to agreeing standards for Europe's electrical plugs and sockets, so far without success.

Figure 66 Extracts from British Standard BS 1363:Part 2:1995 (Source: BSI)

Increasingly the acceptance of certain standards, such as for the audio cassette in the 1960s and the compact disc in the 1980s, has helped manufacturers to avoid wasteful duplication. But in the past any agreement on standards has usually come only after a period of intense rivalry between manufacturers striving to have their technology accepted as the standard. Such confrontations have sometimes been so intense that they have been labelled ‘format wars’. A classic example was the struggle between consumer electronics companies Sony and JVC for the video recording standard – Sony promoted the Betamax format and JVC the VHS format. Such battles can be fierce because the economic rewards of having a company's technology established as the international standard are enormous – just as the wasted production, development and marketing costs for the loser might be financially disastrous. Increasingly nowadays, however, much effort is devoted by groups of manufacturers, before expenditure on innovation has gone too far, to agree international standards and save themselves the expense of a format struggle. However innovation history has a habit of repeating itself. In 2003 two major groups of companies were lined up behind different standards for recordable DVDs. Hitachi, Panasonic, and Samsung supported DVD- (DVD minus) while Sony and Philips were behind the DVD+ (DVD plus) format. By the time you read this a common standard may (or may not) have been agreed. You may well be aware of more recent examples of such conflicts.

For more information on British and international standards you could visit the BSI and ISO websites.

Activity 13

What does the standard BS 8888:2004 cover? Do an internet search and find out.

18 Part 3: 2 Diffusion of innovations

You can experience this free course as it was originally designed on OpenLearn, the home of free learning from The Open University: http://www.open.edu/openlearn/science-maths-technology/engineering-and-technology/design-and-innovation/invention-and-innovation-introduction/content-section-0.

18.1 Introduction to diffusion

Having managed to get an innovation manufactured and ready for the market, there are a number of factors that influence how well it will sell and how rapidly it is likely to diffuse:

- characteristics of the innovation itself

- nature of the market

- relevant government regulations.

18.2 Characteristics of the innovation

In one of the standard works in this field, Everett Rogers (2003) identifies five characteristics of an innovation that affect how quickly and to what extent it will sell:

1. relative advantage

2. compatibility

3. complexity

4. observability

5. trialability.

18.2.1 Relative advantage

In order to succeed, an innovation has to be perceived as offering advantages relative to existing comparable products or services. For example, it has more chance of selling if it is cheaper to make and buy, does the job better or does something previously not possible, offers more features, is easier to use, or is reliable and safe. Relative advantage is sometimes called competitive advantage.

A good example is how the steady reduction in size and increase in efficiency of the electric motor encouraged the development of a range of labour-saving domestic appliances with rapid growth in the UK in the 1960s and 70s. Devices such as washing machines, vacuum cleaners and food mixers at first offered an obvious advantage to users in reducing the effort involved in carrying out domestic chores and they diffused widely. Each new generation of machines offered an advantage over the previous generation. So with electric washing machines in the UK by the 1950s many consumers had a basic tub with a revolving blade for washing and a pair of powered rollers fixed to the top of the machine for wringing out the water, which was actually invented 50 years earlier (Figure 67: This was the first British-made compact machine of its type. It electrically heated the water and powered a contoured rotating disc, or pulsator, set into the side of the tub. Its distinctive features included a hand-operated wringer that could be folded down into the machine and a hose to remove the water after washing. The lid that covered the drum to prevent splashing could be attached to the other side of the wringer as a tray to receive the wrung clothes.). Then by the 1960s there were twin-tubs with a washing tub and a separate spin-drying tub (Figure 68). By the 1970s the automatic washing machine (invented 40 years earlier) started to reach the mainstream (Figure 69: This is one of the new type of automatic washing machines that incorporated full wash, rinse and spin cycles and sold well in the late 1960s. The Hoover Keymatic featured a novel means of setting eight different wash programmes.). By the 1990s these were usually microchip-controlled (invented 10–15 years earlier). Once the market was established the advantage of these products turned to offering more features for the same price. So there were, say, more wash programmes or greater temperature control or higher spin speeds for the money. And more recently attention has turned to washing machines that offer more energy efficiency in operation and reduced environmental impacts in manufacture, use and disposal. In order to maintain an advantage it's necessary to continuously improve the product. Look out for the latest improvements when you come to buy your next washing machine.

Figure 67 Hoover washing machine with wringer (model 0307), 1948 (Source: Science & Society Picture Library)

Figure 68 Rolls Duo-matic twin-tub, 1963, with the separate spin-dryer on the right (Source: Science & Society Picture Library)

Figure 69 Hoover Keymatic washing machine, 1963 (Source: Science & Society Picture Library)

18.2.2 Compatibility

An innovation that is compatible with the experiences, values and needs of its potential buyers will be adopted more rapidly than one that isn't compatible. For example mobile phones have spread rapidly because they are compatible with social and cultural trends towards faster communications, increased personal mobility and the desirability of high-tech gadgets. However the car seat belt, patented in 1903, wasn't adopted on any significant scale until the 1970s (Figure 70). It took decades of increasing traffic and growing casualties in road accidents for safety to become a pressing concern, government to pass legislation and the seat belt to become a newly compatible innovation.

Figure 70 Motor magazine in 1960 advertises the car seat belt (Source: John Frost Historical Newspaper Service)

18.2.3 Complexity

If an innovation is perceived as difficult to use it will diffuse more slowly than one that is easy to understand. For example users of early personal computers needed an understanding of a programming language in order to use their machines. For most potential PC users this made the innovation too complex to consider buying. Then a graphical user interface was developed and incorporated by Apple Computer into the Lisa computer in 1983 (Figure 71) and more successfully into the Macintosh computer in 1984. Users could control their computer by using a mouse to point at visible icons on a virtual desktop and software became simpler to use. This approach was taken up by newly emerging PC manufacturers and the rate of diffusion of the personal computer increased. Of course, other factors contributed to the spread of the PC, such as falling cost, improved performance and more powerful software, but reduced complexity for users was a significant factor.

Figure 71 Apple Lisa launched in 1983 with the screen showing the graphical user interface (Source: courtesy of Apple Computer Inc)

18.2.4 Observability

The easier it is for people to see an innovation being used the more likely they are to consider buying it themselves. Examples include types of motor car, mobile phones and computers. Less obviously, products such as solar panels in domestic housing can sometimes be found in clusters on a housing estate (Figure 72). Innovations that are harder to see tend to diffuse more slowly, though there may well be other factors involved.

Figure 72 Making solar energy more observable – solar panels on the roof of terraced houses (Source: Science Photo Library)

18.2.5 Trialability

It helps to be able to try innovations before buying. While this isn't common for most innovations it can reduce any uncertainty the buyer might have about committing to a purchase and can increase the speed of diffusion. Buying a car usually involves a test drive that, although it probably isn't a fair reflection of the range of conditions under which the product will eventually be used, is better than nothing.

18.2.6 Encouraging diffusion

In general, innovations that are perceived as having relative advantages, being more compatible, less complex, observable, and trialable will diffuse more rapidly than other innovations.

18.3 Characteristics of consumers and the market

As well as the characteristics of an innovation affecting the extent of its take-up, the nature of the market and the purchasing behaviour of consumers can influence success. Some people will always try to be among the first to buy a new product – Rogers (2003) calls people in this group innovators (Figure 73). They are typically young, affluent, well-informed, receptive to new ideas and willing to take risks. You probably know people who always seem to buy the latest gadget – it might even apply to you.

Figure 73 Rogers’ diffusion curve showing five groups of consumer in relation to product diffusion

The innovator group and the next group, called early adopters, are often targeted by a company's launch publicity. However these first two groups are more often influenced by information gathered from friends and colleagues and from reviews of new products in the technical press, specialised publications and the internet.

To the frustration of everyone involved with producing innovations, the majority of consumers are more cautious and inclined to wait to see a product established with any performance problems solved. Rogers calls this group the early majority and it is the target of intensive advertising campaigns to increase the rate of a new product's diffusion.

People's reticence is understandable, particularly with rapidly changing high-tech products. Who wants to be stuck with the latest equivalent of an eight-track audio cartridge or a Betamax video recorder?

Even more cautious consumers make up the group called the late majority, which tends to wait for the fall in price typical of mature products. The early and late majority tend to rely on the media and advertising for picking up information about a product.

Finally those in the laggards group buy a product close to the end of its life cycle, often shortly before it is replaced by a new, improved version of itself, or by something quite different. These last two consumer groups can also have economic reasons for delaying purchase.

There is also the question of timing. You saw above that some inventions can emerge before their time when the technology isn't sufficiently developed to deliver a reliable product. In other cases though, the inventive idea itself is okay and early products are satisfactory but it doesn't take off because the need for it is not yet established.

There have been a number of attempts to establish a market for the videophone over the last 50 years, with ever-increasing amounts of resources involved. In 2002 a few companies paid a staggering amount of money to acquire the operating licences for the so-called third generation of mobile telephony including video (£22 billion in the UK alone). Despite an intensive marketing campaign some mobile phone companies had only achieved around a tenth of their targeted market by 2004 and were nowhere near recouping the cost of the operating licence. (See Box 8.) Compared with the videophone, the relatively simple second generation technology of short message service (text messaging) clearly tapped into a need that mobile users had. By May 2002, 24 billion text messages were being sent each month and operators were getting from 10–20 per cent of their profits from text messaging.

Box 8 Diffusion of the videophone

The first experimental two-way videophone system was demonstrated in 1930 and linked the AT&T head office with its research department, which was called Bell Labs. In 1956 Bell Labs demonstrated its Picturephone system, which needed to use up to 125 telephone lines to achieve a reasonable picture. By 1968 Bell had improved the technology so that it would work with a relatively narrow bandwidth and finally the Picturephone video telephone was introduced by Bell Labs as a commercial product in 1971.

The Picturephone was thought by many inside Bell Labs to be an example of a perfect innovation. It had overcome significant technical obstacles yet still met its production schedule and cost objectives. Market research had predicted slow acceptance followed by rapid growth. It was, however, a costly flop. Reasons suggested for its failure include high cost (rental of $125 per month) or that it was black and white at a time when consumers in the US were getting used to colour TV. Fundamentally though it failed because the market was not ready for it – some said it didn't offer enough of a competitive advantage over the telephone to justify its intrusiveness.

Meanwhile further technical developments in the videophone continued, particularly in Japan (Figure 74). By the mid-1990s videophones had been made more efficient by the development of data compression technology and once more were being offered for sale. Also at that time video links between personal computers were starting to become more common, exposing an increasing number of people to the idea of two-way visual communication. A new need was in the process of being cultivated, with huge rewards for the leading producers once a mass market could be established.

Figure 74Different generations of videophone. (a) Japanese TV telephone, the model 500 Viewphone, 1954 Source: Hulton Archive. (b) Post Office video telephone, 1967 Source: courtesy of BT Archives. (c) British Telecom videophone, 2002 Source: courtesy of BT (UK) Ltd. (d) NEC third generation video mobile phone, 2003 Source: NEC 2001–2004, courtesy of NEC (UK) Ltd.

In recent years it seemed the mass market would be established with so-called third generation mobile telephony (Figure 74). This technology included the capacity for high-speed data exchange, mobile internet access and video streaming. The first licences for such services were awarded in 2002 but once again the market has been relatively slow to take up video telephony.

Of course in terms of the innovation process for third generation mobile telephony it's early days to be passing a judgement that the need doesn't exist on a sufficiently large scale or can't be encouraged to grow. Operators have had to cope with the teething troubles of an untried technology standard (imposed by European governments to ensure cross-border compatibility); colour screens and more ambitious operating requirements mean shorter battery lives; and purchase and service rental costs have been high, as they always are with a new technology and a small initial market. A common pattern would be for some of the early operators to withdraw from the market before the technology is improved, the need increases and the product becomes profitable and diffuses.

The diffusion of some innovations is encouraged by an existing infrastructure. The rapid spread of the telegraph was made possible because it was easy to string its wires alongside railway tracks, which provided a ready-made link between towns and cities. The telephone in turn was able to start by making use of the telegraph network, although it had to add many extra elements such as links to individual homes. You saw in Part 1 how the development of the modern business corporation created the need for inventions such as the typewriter and the telephone to improve the speed and efficiency of communications.

Some inventions rely for their diffusion on developments in related technological innovations or systems. A method of audio compression known as MP3 was originally developed as part of the system used for high-definition TV transmission and digital satellite systems. MP3 is a standard (see Section 3: 1.4) that is part of a set published by the Motion Picture Experts Group. By ignoring audio content outside of the range of frequencies normally audible to humans, MPEG compression produces sound quality that is good enough and it results in a file of digital audio that is much smaller than previous sound files.

MP3 players started appearing in the early 1990s as separate audio players but didn't arouse much interest. The need for personal, portable audio was met at the time by cassette players and, increasingly through the 1990s, CD players. It took innovation in other areas to create the conditions that led to a growing interest in MP3 innovations. These areas included the increasing access to personal computers, the growth of the internet, the improvement in storage capacity of digital devices and the development of file-sharing software (see Section 3: 2.4).

18.4 MP3's diffusion depended on innovations in related areas

As well as being small and portable, MP3 devices have a number of additional competitive advantages. Digital compression allows the size of recordings to be significantly smaller without noticeable loss of sound quality so the capacity of portable devices can be much greater. Compatibility with computer systems means that music can be acquired from the internet or from a CD and easily manipulated into a sequence desired by the user.

Although MP3 players had been around for a number of years it wasn't until 1998 when Winamp was offered on the internet as a free music player that the MP3 craze started to take off. This was given a boost in 1999 by the appearance of a website called Napster. Napster offered file-sharing software that allowed individuals to access each other's hard drives and thereby exchange their digital music collections. This so-called peer-to-peer communication created a virtual community of music enthusiasts that grew rapidly.

In the past the copying of music with audio recorders wasn't highly visible and the recording technology could be used legitimately in ways that didn't involve any infringement of copyright. So the recording industry had no effective means of preventing infringement and settled for receiving a royalty from manufacturers of recording devices.

However with Napster using a public forum such as the internet to encourage the ‘theft’ of intellectual property the recording industry acted to have it shut down for encouraging copyright violation. Napster was ordered to cease operating in 2001 by a US court following a lawsuit brought by the Recording Industry Association of America. Napster was subsequently relaunched as a commercial MP3 provider but even before its closure it had become clear that there was a large market for MP3 audio. Users of file-sharing software quickly found alternative sources for swapping music and by 2003 unauthorised downloads of songs across the internet was estimated to be around 2 billion per month.

But the commercial sector had noticed the activities of these MP3 innovators and it wasn't long before a kind of official infrastructure started to appear. Apple launched its iTunes Music Store with 500 000 songs in 2003 in collaboration with the major music companies, mainly to boost the sales of its new iPod player (Figure 75). The availability of legitimate downloadable music helped the iPod to become the most popular electronic gadget bought on both sides of the Atlantic that Christmas. Other companies planned to follow Apple's example in 2004, including Sony, Microsoft, Coca-Cola and Wal-Mart. Like Apple these companies are not just interested in making money from selling music but also hope to use this innovation to sell others such as MP3 players, music editing software and so on. The diffusion of one innovation can help sell another.

Figure 75 Apple's iPod player

18.5 Government regulations and legislation

You saw earlier in Part 2 how governments can stimulate invention by providing incentives for manufacturers to develop new products. The example given was in the field of alternative fuel vehicles in the USA and Europe. As well as influencing the development of innovations, government legislation and regulations can also affect diffusion by creating conditions that encourage consumers to buy and use particular innovations.

In the UK the government has introduced a mixture of incentives to encourage the wider use of less polluting vehicles. Since March 2001 the levels of vehicle excise duty and company car tax for new vehicles has been linked to the carbon dioxide emissions of each model of vehicle rather than to the engine size. In addition, lower taxation levels are applied to alternative fuels such as liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) or compressed natural gas (CNG) compared with petrol and diesel. Low-emission, alternative fuel vehicles are currently (2005) exempt from the central London congestion charge, which has already brought about an increase in drivers and fleet managers opting for LPG or CNG conversions and a slow but steady increase in the use of such vehicles.

Activity 14

Taking personal audio products as an example, where are you on Rogers' diffusion curve? Are you in with the innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority or laggards?

19 Part 3: 3 Sustaining and disruptive innovation

You can experience this free course as it was originally designed on OpenLearn, the home of free learning from The Open University: http://www.open.edu/openlearn/science-maths-technology/engineering-and-technology/design-and-innovation/invention-and-innovation-introduction/content-section-0.

Once an innovation starts diffusing into the marketplace it can have differing degrees of impact. As mentioned in Part 1, although innovations generally offer progress, there are some that complement existing ways of doing things and some that are more dramatic in their impact. In his book called The Innovator's Dilemma Clayton M. Christensen (2003) labels these two types of innovation sustaining and disruptive.

Sustaining innovations are those that improve the performance of established products so they meet the needs of most current customers – perhaps making the products more reliable, faster or cheaper. Such innovations can be incremental or radical in their nature but usually have a sustaining effect for leading firms in a given industry. For example successive innovations in the provision of conventional telephone equipment and services served to sustain the major players – such as British Telecom and Cable & Wireless in the UK – in their market position. However the arrival of mobile telephones proved to be a disruptive innovation in the field of telecommunications and younger companies – such as Motorola, Ericsson, Nokia – exploited this new market.

Disruptive technologies usually introduce a new way of operating in a particular market sector that challenges existing companies to decide whether to ignore or embrace such new developments. You saw above that innovations often under-perform in their early incarnations. Compared with conventional mature products they may seem unpromising to existing companies. However such innovations can have other features that some existing and many new customers value. Christensen (2003, p. xviii) put forward the view that,

Products based on disruptive technologies are typically cheaper, simpler, smaller, and frequently more convenient to use.

Sometimes these disruptive innovations go on to capture new as well as current customers to the extent that they rival or in some cases surpass the market for the existing technology. Examples include photocopying (compared with carbon paper copying), digital photography (compared with chemical film processing), online retailing (compared with face-to-face shopping) and even distance learning (compared with classroom-based learning).

Companies regularly listen to their best customers and tend to develop new products based on the immediate promise of profitability and growth. These companies are often not able to build a case for investing in disruptive technologies until it's too late because:

- Disruptive innovations are simpler and cheaper, promising lower profit margins.

- Disruptive innovations are usually first commercialised in emerging markets that are often perceived as insignificant.

- Leading firms’ most profit-conscious customers are generally tied in to existing successful products and don't want that disrupted.

According to Christensen the ‘innovator's dilemma’ is that outstanding companies can do everything right – such as listen carefully to their customers or invest heavily in new technologies – but still lose their market leadership. They miss ‘the next great wave’ unless they know when to abandon traditional business practices in the face of certain types of market and technology change. For example, IBM dominated the mainframe computer market but missed the emergence of the simpler minicomputer. A company called DEC created the minicomputer market (Figure 76) along with Hewlett-Packard and others but they all missed the desktop personal computer market that was captured by Apple, Commodore, Compaq and IBM's new, independent PC division. For many years Xerox dominated the market for large-volume photocopiers used in copy centres but missed out on the huge market for small tabletop office photocopiers, ending up as only a minor player.

Figure 76 DEC's first minicomputer (1965) was a disruptive innovation for the big mainframe computer companies like IBM (Source: Science & Society Picture Library)

There are times when it's right not to listen to customers, right to invest in developing lower-performance products that promise lower margins, and right to aggressively pursue small, rather than substantial, markets.

(Christensen, 2003, p. xv)

Disruptive technologies tend to lead to new markets with significant advantages for companies who enter the market early. But large established companies need to ensure a level of growth not possible in the early stages of a new, small market – even though often that new market will become large in the future. Often, established companies adopt a strategy of waiting to see if the market will grow sufficiently large to deliver the sales they need. However, then they run the risk of being too far behind early entrants to catch up. Those who have succeeded have tended to devolve the responsibility for commercialising the disruptive technology to a smaller offshoot organisation that can respond more easily to the opportunities for growth in a small market – like with IBM's PC division.

Part of the innovator's dilemma is that with disruptive innovation there are clear advantages to entering the market early but it's largely unknown territory. Companies can't have market data if little or none exists or make financial projections when they don't know likely income or costs. Companies poised to market a disruptive innovation have to keep a close watch on the market and their competitors, be ready to act quickly to change their product if necessary and be prepared to take risks.

Even the desire of established companies to try to improve their products to maintain competitive advantage over their rivals can work against them. For example the rate of improved performance offered by computer manufacturers has grown faster than most computer users’ needs. Accordingly the performance of mainframe computers grew to exceed the data processing requirements of many of their customers, who were able to have their needs met by simpler and cheaper desktop machines linked to devices that stored the data.

When the performance of two or more competing products has improved beyond what the market demands, customers can no longer base their choice upon which is the higher performing product. The basis of product choice often evolves from functionality to reliability, then to convenience, and, ultimately, to price.

(Christensen, 2003. p. xxviii)

Christensen says that companies need to discover how their mainstream customers use their products in order to be able to identify the points at which this basis of competition changes. Then they can act quickly to defend themselves against competitors entering the market with disruptive innovations.

Activity 15

Other than the examples given, can you think of a disruptive technology leading to a new market?

View answer - Activity 15

20 Part 3: 4 Phases and waves of innovation

You can experience this free course as it was originally designed on OpenLearn, the home of free learning from The Open University: http://www.open.edu/openlearn/science-maths-technology/engineering-and-technology/design-and-innovation/invention-and-innovation-introduction/content-section-0.

To wrap up this section I'll take a broad look at the innovation process. It's possible to think of innovation at different levels of generalisation. There are individual stages that innovations go through from invention to diffusion – these are sometimes called phases. At a higher level of generalisation each complete set of phases for a group of related technologies can be seen as a wave. Sometimes such waves appear close together and combine to have a revolutionary impact.

In another classic book, Mastering the Dynamics of Innovation, James Utterback (1994) identifies three overall phases in the innovation process: emerging, growth and maturity. In the case of disruptive innovations the emerging phase is characterised by radical new products and the appearance of completely new industrial sectors. In the past, for example, a new sector emerged around electronics. More recently information and communication technology and biotechnology sectors have also emerged. During this emerging phase many new companies appear, ready and willing to exploit the new products. They tend to be small, science-based and entrepreneurial, and prepared to take risks in a highly uncertain new market. To start with, they compete by producing specialised products tailored to the needs of a small group of customers. There are often frequent product changes as the sector struggles to perfect the new technology.

During the growth phase technological uncertainty is reduced, sector-wide standards appear and dominant designs emerge. This leads to an increase in output usually accompanied by investment in specialised production equipment. The focus for companies also turns to making changes that differentiate their products from those of their competitors. Increasing production costs and failure to compete on product performance and features can cause some firms to drop out of the sector – particularly if they are out-of-step with the sector's standard designs.

In the mature phase the main drivers are volume and cost. The focus is now on process innovation to reduce costs and investment in special-purpose, often automated, equipment makes it costly to remain in the sector. A small number of companies dominate what is now a major market and the pace of change slows.

Utterback observes that the history of a particular industrial sector doesn't necessarily end with the mature phase. Evolution can continue with further waves of technological change. Radical innovations can still appear from inside or outside the industry sector or sometimes from collaboration with other industries. In subsequent waves of innovation the tendency is for markets to become more highly defined with entrenched firms and fixed distribution channels, all of which reduce the chances of further radical innovation or significant reform of the industry. What often happens next is that a disruptive innovation comes along and sets off a whole new wave. I'll look at two of these new waves later.

You've already seen that innovations can involve differing degrees of technological change and seen the impact upon the socio-economic system. At the lowest level incremental innovations involve small-scale improvements, from a company making the manufacturing process more efficient or making changes to an existing product in response to feedback from users, to an inventor coming up with an idea that improves upon existing products. These innovations do not have a dramatic impact on the society that uses them but they do lead to steady improvements in the efficiency of manufacture, and the variety, quality and performance of products.

Radical innovations are more significant new steps that could not have arisen from incremental improvements to existing technology. They do have a more widespread impact in that they often involve a combination of product, process and organisational innovation. In Part 2 you saw how Chester Carlson's invention of xerography ultimately led to the establishment of a new photocopying industry.

Technology system changes occur when technological and organisational innovations combine to affect several sectors of the economy. So the automation of many aspects of production and assembly had a significant impact on a range of industries.

Finally there is a level of change that has a widespread impact on almost every aspect of an economy and even on the way society organises itself. Some theorists call this a change in the techno-economic regime, others a technological revolution. This involves changes in the dominant technologies, production methods and the associated patterns of social organisation that often characterise an era. The first technological revolution was based on innovations in steam power that resulted in industrialisation and people moving home to work in factories. Later revolutions have been based around innovations in electricity, chemistry, electronics, microelectronics, computing, telecommunications, biotechnology and nanotechnology.

I think the pace of change and the complexity of our relationship with technology are increasing. Do you agree or disagree? But what are the implications of this for the twenty-first century?

Part 3: 5 Self-assessment questions

You can experience this free course as it was originally designed on OpenLearn, the home of free learning from The Open University: http://www.open.edu/openlearn/science-maths-technology/engineering-and-technology/design-and-innovation/invention-and-innovation-introduction/content-section-0.

SAQ 8

A dramatic example of the importance of process innovation for a product's success is mentioned in Section 1: 1.1 of this unit. What is it?

View answer - SAQ 8

SAQ 9

Rogers gives five characteristics of an innovation that affect how well it will sell and how quickly it will diffuse. Briefly use these characteristics to explain the rapid diffusion of the mobile phone.

View answer - SAQ 9

SAQ 10

Would you classify the following as examples of sustaining innovation or disruptive innovation?

- (a) cordless domestic phones

- (b) mobile phones

- (c) Edison's electric light

- (d) compact fluorescent lamps.

View answer - SAQ 10

22 Part 3: 6 Key points of Part 3

You can experience this free course as it was originally designed on OpenLearn, the home of free learning from The Open University: http://www.open.edu/openlearn/science-maths-technology/engineering-and-technology/design-and-innovation/invention-and-innovation-introduction/content-section-0.

- To succeed in bringing an invention to the market there are technical, financial and organisational obstacles to overcome.

- Choosing appropriate materials and manufacturing processes for a particular new product is an important aspect of the innovation process. Environmental impacts and sustainability play a part in the choice of materials and processes.

- Rogers’ characteristics of an innovation can affect how well it will sell and how quickly it will diffuse. He named the characteristics relative advantage, compatibility, complexity, observability and trialability.

- Rogers’ characteristics of the consumers can also affect diffusion. He named the consumer groups innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority and laggards.

- Government regulations can also be effective in providing incentives for manufacturers to develop new products and encouraging consumers to buy and use innovations.

- Sustaining innovations offer improvements to the performance of established products and have a sustaining effect for firms. Disruptive innovations involve a new way of operating in a particular market, challenging existing companies to decide whether to ignore or embrace such new developments.

- Utterback identifies three overall phases in the innovation process: emerging, growth and maturity.

Conclusion

You can experience this free course as it was originally designed on OpenLearn, the home of free learning from The Open University: http://www.open.edu/openlearn/science-maths-technology/engineering-and-technology/design-and-innovation/invention-and-innovation-introduction/content-section-0.

This free course provided an introduction to studying Design. It took you through a series of exercises designed to develop your approach to study and learning at a distance, and helped to improve your confidence as an independent learner.

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Acknowledgements

The content acknowledged below is Proprietary (see terms and conditions) and is used under licence.

Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following sources for permission to reproduce material within this unit:

Course image: liz west in Flickr made available under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Licence.

Figures 1 and 64 © DIY Picture Library.

Figure 2 Courtesy of Dyson (UK) Ltd.

Figures 4 and 70 ©John Frost Historical Newspapers.

Figures 4, 5(l), 18, 35, 45, 75 Richard Hearne/ Open University.

Figures 5(a), 5(b), 5(c), 5(d), 5(e), 5(f), 5(g), 5(j), 8, 16, 27, 63, 67, 68, 69, 76 ©The Science Museum / Science & Society Picture Library.

Figure 5(h) Source unknown

Figure 5(i) © Sam Hallas

Figure 5(k) P.M. Northwood/Northwood Images

Figures 9, 10, 59 E. Taylor/Open University

Figure 7 Courtesy of Mike Fletcher – Telephones UK

Figures 11, 12, 15 © US Dept of the Interior, National Park Service, Edison National Historic Site

Figures 13, 14, 17, 53 © The Smithsonian Institute.

Figure 19 © Courtesy of Philips Lighting BV.

Figure 20 Patent Specifications 1267032 ‘Workbench’, © Crown Copyright. Reproduced with the permission of the controller of Her Majesty’s Stationery Office.

Figure 21(a) © Hulton Archive/Getty Images.

Figure 21(b) © Corbis/Hulton Deutsch Collection.

Figure 22 © Alexis Rosenfield/Science Photo Library.

Figure 23 (e) Paul Shambroom/Science Photo Library.

Figure 23 (c) © BSIP Laurent/Science Photo Library.

Figure 23 (b) © Philippe Plailly/Eurelios/Science Photo Library.

Figure 23 (a) © Antonia Reeve/Science Photo Library.

Figure 23 (d) © Rosenfeld Images Ltd/Science Photo Library.

Figure 25 Courtesy of the Hovercraft Museum Trust.

Figure 26 Courtesy of Hovercraft Consultants Ltd.

Figure 28 © Martin Dohrn/Science Photo Library.

Figure 29 © Courtesy of Textron Systems, Marine & Land Operations.

Figure 30 © Dyson (UK) Ltd.

Figure 31 © Rank Xerox (UK) Ltd.

Figures 32 and 33 From: S. van Dulken, ‘Inventing the 20th Century’, The British Library Board, London 2002.

Figures 34(a) and 34(b) Courtesy of Reflecto Ltd.

Figure 36 © Torben Lenau/Nitinol Devices & Components Inc.

Figure 37 © Courtesy of Omron Electronics Ltd.

Figure 39 © David Parker/Science Photo Library.

Figure 40 Courtesy of Ford of Britain.

Figure 41 © Courtesy of EvoBus (UK) Ltd.

Figure 43 © Flymo (UK) Ltd.

Figure 44 Courtesy of Renault (UK) Limited.

Figures 46 and 47 © Eye of Science/Science Photo Library.

Figure 48 Crown copyright, reproduced with permission from the Controller HMSO.

Figure 49 Courtesy of the Raytheon Company.

Figure 50 US Dept of the Interior, National Parks Service, Edison National Historic Site.

Figure 52 © Sony (UK) Ltd.

Figure 54 US Patent 2,040,248, May 12, 1936, Dvorak, A. et al., ‘‘Typewriter Keyboard’’.

Figure 56 © TRL Ltd. / Science Photo Library.

Figure 57 Rothwell, R. (1992) ‘Developments towards the fifth generation model of innovation’, Technology Analysis and Strategy Management, Carfax Publishing Company.

Figure 58 © Punch Cartoon Library.

Figures 70 and 71 © Ronald Gelatt. From R. Gelatt, ‘The Fabulous Phonograph’, 2nd edn, Cassell & Co. Ltd. 1977.

Figure 62 © John Frost Newspaper Service.

Figure 65 © Copyright Black and Decker Inc., 2004; reproduced with permission.

Figure 66 Permission to reproduce extractsfrom BS 1363: 1995 Part 2 is granted byBSI. British Standards can be obtained from BSI Customer Services, 389 Chiswick High Road, London W4 4AL. Tel: +44 (0)20 8996 9001. Email: cservice@bsi-global.com.

Figure 71 Courtesy of Apple Computer Inc.

Figure 72 © Alex Bartel/Science Photo Library.

Figure 74(a) © Hulton Archive.

Figure 74(b) Courtesy of BT Archives.

Figure 74(c) Courtesy of BT (UK) Ltd.

Figure 74(d) © NEC2001–2004. Courtesy of NEC (UK) Ltd.

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Activity 2

Answer

I thought of Owen MacLaren, the retired engineer and grandfather who invented the lightweight, foldable baby buggy in the 1960s.

Back

Activity 3

Answer

The proximity card is fairly new. It gives access to secure buildings when it is held near to an electronic sensor that is connected to an electric door lock.

Back

Activity 4

Answer

Examples I thought of were the office stapler, the briefcase and the wheelbarrow. Different manufacturers’ versions of these products have common design features and similar overall appearance.

Back

Activity 5

Answer

I think the passenger aeroplane and man-made fibres used in clothing were radical innovations when they first appeared. They have had an impact on people's lives, for example the aeroplane brought tourism to remote communities.

Back

Activity 6

Answer

There are kitchen utensils sold under the brand name of Good Grips. They are designed to be easy for disabled people to use. I also thought online ticket booking could be considered to be an incremental innovation, although it also has some features of a disruptive innovation.

Back

Activity 7

Answer

I can think of the Sinclair C5 vehicle, the laser disk, Betamax video cassettes and the 8-track audio cartridge.

Back

SAQ 1

Answer

- (a) BIC ballpoint pen – innovation.

It is an innovation that not only reached the market – initially the military then the civilian market – but also went on to achieve great commercial success and become widely diffused throughout society.

- (b) Flettner's rotor ship – between invention and innovation.

This example is on the boundary between an invention and an innovation. It reached the working prototype stage but arguably not quite the point of first commercial use, with only one ship being commissioned by a third party.

- (c) Edison's tinfoil phonograph – invention.

It was the wax cylinder version that went on to be sold as an innovation.

- (d) Edison's bamboo-filament light bulb – innovation.

It was the dominant design used in the early commercialisation of the light bulb, compared with the carbonised cotton used in the initial invention.

Back

SAQ 2

Answer

- (a) Edison's phonograph – radical.

Radical in that nothing like it had existed before. It caused quite a stir at the time and since has had a widespread impact on the lives of generations of people. The initial invention made use of existing technology but in a radical way. The next 100 years saw steady incremental improvements in the technology.

- (b) Compact fluorescent lamps – incremental.

Incremental in that they didn't involve a major new step in the development of the technology but rather involved technical improvements to an existing product. However these were important improvements as they have gained an increasing share of the domestic lighting market.

- (c) Edison's electric light – radical.

Radical in terms of its eventual impact if less so in terms of its technology. Its ultimate success was dependent on incremental developments in many related areas of technology, for example vacuum pumps.

- (d) Bell's telephone – radical in some ways.

It was certainly radical in terms of its eventual impact on individuals and the organisation of society. But like Edison and the electric light, when you look closely at the development of the technology, you can see how it built incrementally on existing technologies and ideas.

These answers illustrate the blurring of the boundary between the two categories. Often the radical nature of an innovation lies in the original idea to use technology to do something previously unknown or never before achieved. The subsequent transformation of a radical invention into a practical innovation depends on incremental improvements in many aspects of the related technology. The two concepts are inter-related.

Back

SAQ 3

Answer

For an inventor to be granted a patent, an invention:

1. must be new – the idea must never have been disclosed publicly in any way, anywhere, prior to the claim being filed;

2. must involve an inventive step – the idea must not be obvious to someone with a good knowledge and experience of the subject;

3. must be capable of industrial application – the invention can take the physical form of a substance, product, or apparatus; or it must be an industrial type of process;

4. must not be excluded – an invention is not patentable if it is of a type listed as specifically excluded, although such lists vary in different countries.

Back

Activity 8

Answer

Many inventions that help people with disabilities fall into this category.

Back

Activity 9

Answer

New types of soft plastic composites enabled the development of the disposable contact lens.

Back

Activity 10

Answer

New building regulations introduced in 2002 required that all replacement windows had to have a minimum specified energy efficiency (U-value). This stimulated invention in glazing design.

Back

Activity 11

Answer

The problem is water shortages and increasing costs of supplying and buying water. At the consumer's end of this problem I would examine how water is used to see if any solutions suggest themselves. First thoughts include putting a brick in the cistern, using proximity-sensitive taps, and finding ways to store and use rainwater.

Back

SAQ 4

Answer

Individuals are motivated to invent by one or more factors:

- (a) scientific or technical curiosity;

- (b) constructive discontent about the way a technological product performs;

- (c) desire to help others;

- (d) desire to make money.

Back

SAQ 5

Answer

Organisations are motivated to invent by one or more factors:

- (a) as part of a chosen business strategy;

- (b) the need to improve existing products and processes;

- (c) the appearance of new materials, technologies and manufacturing processes;

- (d) government policy, legislation and regulations.

Back

SAQ 6

Answer

- (a) Identification of the problem. Carlson was dissatisfied with existing methods of copying documents by photography and by hand.

- (b) Exploration. Carlson consulted existing patents and other information in a search for a solution to the problem.

- (c) Incubation. The brief account above doesn't give any detail about the precise creative process involved in this invention.

- (d) Act of insight. Carlson's act of insight involved the ‘transfer’ of techniques quite different from conventional photography and not previously used for copying. This is an example that shows that insight doesn't always come in a flash.

- (e) Critical revision. Carlson's first electrostatic copier was the outcome of almost 10 years of developing and refining the technology. This process of critical revision is still going on more than 50 years after the launch of the innovation.

Back

SAQ 7

Answer

- (a) Early motor cars – push.

The invention of the motor car involved technology push with enthusiasts trying to improve the technology and persuade people of the viability of the invention. It was regarded as a toy until improved performance and falling price made it an attractive product and market pull became an important factor encouraging further innovation.

- (b) Car airbags – pull.

Predominantly pull, arising out of the need for greater safety.

- (c) Photocopier – pull and push.

It has been subject to both pull and push. It started with the pull from the need to improve the method of copying documents. Once the technology had been developed it had to be ‘pushed’ onto a market that was uncertain of its need for the innovation.

- (d) High-yielding varieties of wheat and rice – pull and push.

Pull was from the human need to feed people more efficiently and the economic incentive to capture a share of a steady market. Push was from the outcome of scientific research into biotechnology and gene manipulation opening up new possibilities.

- (e) Laser – push.

Predominantly push because it arose out of mathematical theory and scientific research and in the early stages of its development had no obvious application. Only later, as possible uses began to be realised, did pull begin to provide an incentive for further improvements to meet the emerging needs of new applications in medicine, industry and commerce.

These examples suggest the innovation process involves elements of both push and pull at different stages. Sometimes both are at work at the same time when there is a coupling between push and pull.

Back

Activity 15

Answer

The domestic video cassette recorder introduced into the UK in the late 1970s could be considered a disruptive technology. It challenged TV and film companies to create video versions of their products, encouraged a new rental industry to start up and spawned innovations in technology for home entertainment.

Back

SAQ 8

Answer

Section 1: 1.1 notes that the early ballpoint pens were on sale for approximately half the weekly wage of the time. A key contribution to this product made by Baron Bich was to develop a manufacturing process capable of reducing production costs and sales price significantly. The BIC disposable ballpoint pen now costs a few pence.

Back

SAQ 9

Answer

- Relative advantage. The main competitive advantage of the mobile phone is its very mobility. It freed people from having to find a public phone if they needed to make a call when travelling. This proved an attractive feature to business people and also for use in emergencies. As the network spread to near universal coverage (in the UK) the relative advantage increased. For some people cost, compared with landline telephones, is a factor preventing even more rapid diffusion.

- Compatibility. Mobile phones fulfilled people's need for rapid and instant communication, at first for business then increasingly for social purposes. They were also compatible with the image of the use of technical gadgets reflecting the modernity of the user. Resistance to purchase comes from those who don't find this image attractive and find the mobile phone intrusive – they'd rather keep the world at bay.

- Complexity. Mobile phones are relatively easy to understand and use for those who are familiar with and confident users of technological gadgets. This explains the high take up among young users. As the technology has developed some mobiles are getting more complex in terms of their functions, but with the aid of good design they are easy enough to operate. Some people won't buy a mobile because they see them as complex devices.

- Observability. The extent to which mobile phones can be seen being used by others has certainly been a factor in their diffusion. They are observable products, being used in public more often than most innovations. Once again this very observability has probably led to some resistance from potential buyers.

- Trialability. As with many new products, the extent to which mobile phones can be tried out before purchase is limited. Apart from an in-store demonstration, borrowing someone's mobile for a call might be the only opportunity to try the product before purchase. Once tied into a contract users can change to a different mobile handset, but trialability doesn't seem to have been a significant factor in the diffusion of the mobile phone.

Back

SAQ 10

Answer

- (a) Cordless domestic phones – largely sustaining.

Cordless domestic phones offered an improvement to the performance of existing handsets. The ending of BT's monopoly had already led to the appearance of more companies offering a variety of handsets. The arrival of cordless handsets on the market continued this process rather than launching a new wave of innovation.

- (b) Mobile phones – disruptive.

The development of mobile telephones led to a new way of operating in the telecommunications market. Mobile telephony challenged existing companies to decide whether to ignore or embrace such new developments. Many new companies arose to exploit the market at the expense of existing telephone providers.

- (c) Edison's electric light – disruptive.

As well as establishing a completely new industry based around the provision of ‘electric candles’ Edison's invention required the creation of systems for the delivery of electricity to homes and businesses. This in turn enabled an outlet for the invention of a wide range of products designed to make use of this delivered electricity. Entire new industries grew up around this principle, making the electric light a truly disruptive innovation.

- (d) Compact fluorescent lamps – sustaining.

Compact fluorescents offered technical improvements to an existing product. They've created a new market niche rather than opening up an entirely new market.

Back

Activity 1: Exploring innovation

Discussion

Here's my own attempt at this exercise carried out for the telephone.

1 Internet search results

I used Google to carry out a number of searches using various combinations of the words ‘telephone’, ‘history’, ‘timeline’, ‘invention’. I followed up a range of sites, usually finding those associated with a university (‘edu’ for US sites, ‘ac’ in the UK) or a museum yielded the most authoritative information. Also the archives of companies associated with the telephone (BT in the UK; AT&T, Bell and Western Union in the US) contained some useful information. Finally many individual hobbyist sites contained some fascinating detail, although its accuracy needed to be treated with some scepticism and required double-checking with other sources.

When and where was the product invented? The accepted date is 1876, but a form of telephone may have been invented before then. It was first commercialised in the USA, but a number of inventors in different countries had developed prototypes.

Who invented it? The accepted inventor is Alexander Graham Bell but claims have been made on behalf of other inventors.

What was innovative about it? The chief form of quick, distance communication at the time, the telegraph, was one-way, indirect and needed skilled operators to translate and transmit Morse code. The telephone offered instant, two-way speech communication directly between individuals and required no special skills to operate.

Was it invented in response to a need or because of developments in technology? It seems to have started with inventive individuals developing new technology. Then once this new means of communication became available increasing numbers of people wanted to use the telephone and a new need had been created.

Was it an immediate success? The telephone was by no means an immediate success but rather experienced a steady growth, starting with a small number of specialised users.

Has its design changed over time? Yes. Mouth and earpieces were amalgamated into a telephone set but still as separate items. As the technology improved, both transmitter and receiver were incorporated into a single handset and later a dial was added. Plastics permitted new shapes, and recently miniaturisation has allowed an increasing number of functions to fit into ever-smaller handsets.

Has it led to any related or spin-off products? The original telephone has evolved into a number of forms such as the mobile phone and the videophone. There have also been spin-off products based on the technology, such as sound reproduction devices.

2 A consumer's experience

When did you or your family first get the product? My parents first acquired a domestic telephone in 1968.

How long were you aware of the product before buying it? We'd been aware of the telephone all our lives but it seemed like a luxury item.

Was it a new gadget or the latest version of a well-established product?There didn't seem to be anything particularly novel about our first telephone.

On the surface the apparatus design had not changed significantly for 40 years, with a dial on the front and a large handset sitting on a cradle on top.

Did you delay buying it because of its price, the cost of using it or doubts about its reliability? At first a combination of cost and not knowing many people with a phone meant that there didn't seem to be any point in owning one. Reliability didn't seem to be a problem.

Have you since replaced it with an improved or updated version?

Developments in the technology and increased competition following privatisation have resulted in a variety of cheap handsets and innovative features. That first handset my parents rented lasted us for 10 years but now my family replaces telephones frequently, reflecting the most recent innovation.

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Figure 38(a) NanoBlocks falling into substrate holes in the FSA process

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Figure 38(a)
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Figure 38(b) Fluidic self-assembly (FSA) process

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Figure 38(b)
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Beauty Video

Transcript

Edwin Datschefski

This is the legacy that designers have left us with: a huge mish-mash of different types of materials and objects. We've got PVC, we've got metal, we've got concrete, we've got engine oil, we got vinyl from the backs of car seats. You couldn't make this up. It's a weird concoction and somewhere a designer hasn't specified what happens at the end of the life.

Narrator

There are millions of different products on the world market. But few, if any, have been designed to be truly sustainable.

Edwin Datschefski

What do we mean by sustainability? It's about people, planet and profits. People means we've got to have good communities and we've got to have good conditions for the workforce. It's about the planet, it's about environment and we've got to have environmental sustainability. And it's also about profits. None of this is any good if we go out of business. And designers have a big role to play.

Narrator

Edwin advocates the concept of Total Beauty, where products are designed to minimise negative environmental and social impacts. The concept is based on a set of five key principles.

Edwin Datschefski

The five principles to make a product sustainable are that:

it should be cyclic, that's using recycled materials or using grown materials;

it should be solar — all the energy should be using renewable energy;

it should be safe, non-toxic;

it should be super-efficient, using the least amount of materials and energy; and

it should be social — that's good for people, for consumers and for workers.

Narrator

Sustainability is becoming part of the design vocabulary, but all too often designers interpret it in a very narrow way.

Edwin Datschefski

When designers come to me and they say ‘I have designed a sustainable product', what they've usually done is, they say, they've made it out of recyclable material. OK, recyclable material is good stuff these days, you can have polyester that's made of recycled plastic bottles, just like these ones here. Or you can have recycled high-density polyethylene. But using a material just by itself, isn't necessarily all you need to do. You need to think about durability and the end-of-use, just in the same way as you would for any other product.

Narrator

Of Edwin's five principles, cyclic is perhaps the simplest to put into action. There are many recyclable materials to choose from, but the way in which materials are processed and put together can prevent a material being recycled. TV sets and video recorders are good examples of the problem.

Edwin Datschefski

The biggest problems can really be divided into two parts. You've got the casing of the products and you've got the interior. The casing is metal, plastic. Interior is things like chips, power supplies, transformers and so on.

The manufacturing process for these two elements is where a lot of the impacts arise. The casing's relatively straightforward but it's big. Metal, plastic; energy use in that, pollution in that, and the manufacture of that and the distribution. The interior is a bit harder to handle. Although it's less by mass, the chemicals and the processing that goes on to make things like chips and circuit boards is highly polluting.

So, everyone always imagines that electronic items are nice because they're not very big but environmentally it all adds up to a considerable amount of environmental damage. You can recycle the metal, you can recycle the plastic, but are you going to get the tiny bit of tantalum that's in this chip? I don't think people are able to recycle at that level yet. That's where we've got to go in the future.

Narrator

It's much harder to satisfy the solar principle — designing products which consume only renewable energy.

Edwin Datschefski

Many people say for example, well how can you have a solar chair, it doesn't consume any energy. But there's energy used to make the material, to extract the raw material, to process it, to distribute it. So, in fact you see that chair uses quite a lot of energy. Now all that energy source has to be solar, and that I mean essentially renewable energy.

Safe is about all the releases to the environment of that product all the way through its life. Are they non-toxic, are they safe? Most of the types of conventional waste disposal have their own hazards. Incineration causes pollution from the smoke coming out of the chimney. Landfill causes problems in terms of taking up space and potential leaking of hazardous materials into groundwater and so on. So recycling is clearly important, along with its variants which are re-use and re-manufacture.

Narrator

Cyclic, solar and safe are main guiding principles for designers trying to reduce the impact of their products on the planet. Designing products which are more efficient, using less materials or energy, can bring advantages for the environment too, and benefit both producers and consumers.

Edwin Datschefski

All products have been improving in efficiency in many different ways: in terms of lighter materials, in terms of getting the job done with smaller amount of water, energy, materials and so on.

And those improvements are, basically, competitively driven: it always make sense to use less stuff to get the job done. And we'll see improvements of that all the way, but it is a losing battle because the efficiency curve means that you make dramatic improvements and then, over time, to get that last little bit of improvement, it's diminishing returns until you get a leap-through technology, when you can make a dramatic improvement but that requires re-tooling and a whole different kind of product approach.

Narrator

Increased efficiency is a useful weapon in the competitive market for consumer goods.

Edwin Datschefski

We're now reaching a point where it would be sensible, if you have a 10-year-old washing machine, to throw it away, buy a brand new washing machine because the amount of water, energy and soap powder that you will save will be worth all that energy to make a whole new washing machine.

Narrator

But for a product to have the ‘total beauty' of sustainability, the designer needs to consider the social impact of that product.

Edwin Datschefski

We have to realise that products have consequences for people. They're often hidden but in the chain of manufacturing a product, people are exploited sadly at the moment and getting good conditions for workers across the manufacturing chain is something that designers have a role in ensuring.

Sustainability is about a win-win-win situation where we optimise the benefits to society, the benefits for the economy and the benefits for the environment. In the past, it seems like the environment and even the welfare of people come second to profit, but unless we have the three platforms working together we can't have a sustainable future.

Narrator

So, why are sustainable products hard to find?

Edwin Datschefski

Companies would like to say: ‘Yes, we'll make a super-green product and consumers will buy it in their droves'.

Unfortunately, they rarely do because, to get a product like that, you're going to have some kind of performance change. And I say change with good reason: it's going to perform in a slightly different way at a slightly different price point to the products that the consumers are used to. So, unless they see a real clear benefit for themselves, green by itself is not enough to sell more product. This makes the designer's job especially hard so they have to make the product better, and better for the environment: better in terms of performance, price and environment all at the same time. Hey, well that's why we pay designers — they've got to do something for their money!

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