Innovation needs light bulbs . . . and lenses
Thomas Edison didn’t invent the light bulb, but he made affordable, long lasting electric light a reality. And this wasn’t just because he was struck by a sudden inspiration (a light bulb going off over his head): it was because because of disciplined experimentation coupled with a commitment to industrialisation. Most people know that Edison worked his way through thousands of designs for bulbs before patenting a bulb with a carbon filament, and that, even after filing his patent, he worked through thousands more choices for the material that would provide the carbon filament, finally settling on bamboo. It is less frequently mentioned that Edison and the workers at this lab also invented much of the equipment necessary to produce bulbs at scale, as well as the infrastructure needed to distribute power.
Edison himself said of this endeavour that, ‘There was no precedent for such a thing, and nowhere in the world could we purchase these parts. It was necessary to invent everything: dynamos, regulators, meters, switches, fuses, fixtures, underground conductors with their necessary connecting boxes, and a host of other detail parts, even down to insulating tape.’
And, of course, Edison also gave us the highly memorable quote that, ‘None of my inventions came by accident. I see a worthwhile need to be met and I make trial after trial until it comes. What it boils down to is one per cent inspiration and 99 per cent perspiration.’
There are some clear lessons for those of us in large enterprises who aim to innovate. With some notable exceptions, large enterprises are often seen as slow to innovate - or even not to innovate at all. This is often diagnosed as a lack of ideas, and a lot of effort is putting into helping people come up with new ideas (often through exercises involving many post-it notes).
There is nothing wrong with generating new ideas. However, most large enterprises already have more ideas than they realise: they employ lots of smart people who are enthusiastic about improving their business, helping customers and doing better. Most of those people, especially those who work directly with customers, know the unsolved problems that they face every day, and unsolved problems are a great source of innovation.
But if all we focus on is the generation of ideas, then we are at risk of putting our effort into the one percent (the inspiration) and forgetting the 99 per cent (the perspiration).
And I believe that it’s the 99 per cent that most companies need to improve on. Edison and his colleagues did not succeed simply by being passionate and imaginative: they succeeded through a process of disciplined experimentation, trying design after design and filament after filament, by accepting the implications of failed experiments and disproven hypotheses, by asking and answering hard, practical questions about manufacturing, distribution and cost.
Often large companies do not proceed with such discipline when they aim to innovate. They regard ideas as rare and delicate, treat them with tender caution, and dare not challenge them too harshly.
If we aim to innovate, we must treat ideas with precision and rigour. We must get good at framing hypotheses and defining the experiments that will test those hypotheses. We must take lessons from the scientific method, and take measures such as creating control groups. And, above all, we must learn to live with the truths we discover.
And if, after many failed experiments, after many disproven hypotheses, we discover something that works, we discover the filament that shines, we must recognise that we have only just begun. Now we must do the hard work of industrialisation.
Generating ideas is good: it’s good turn on the light bulbs above people’s heads. But if we don’t focus those ideas, if we don’t pass them through the lenses of disciplined experimentation and rigorous industrialisation, all they will do is make us feel a little brighter and a little warmer. With focus, we can also get something done.
