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Breakthrough Innovation; Yes or No?

November 5, 2012 By Jeffrey Gotro Leave a Comment

ConfusionI was thinking about what makes companies innovative.  One could argue that Apple is a very innovative company, but are they?  Certainly they have developed a string of successful products that have been a runaway commercial success.  But did Apple invent the mp3 player  that  led to the iPod or the cellphone that led to the iPhone, or the tablet computer that led to the iPad? The answer is no to all of those questions.  Then, how did Apple innovate?  Apple had a culture of carefully determine what the were not going to work on and Steve Jobs in particular drove this hard.  Apple’s innovations in my mind come from really figuring out what the customer wants (easy to obtain music to take with you in a cool design that is super easy to use, think iTunes and the iPod).  On the other hand, Apple had some pretty nice breakthrough innovations as well in the innovative touch screen and the finger swipe to change and expand images.  They also were very focused on the design and aesthetics of their products.  The recent Apple/Samsung patent infringement case had a lot of design issues being challenged.

Now let’s take a look at some of the truly breakthrough innovations like the transistor, then the integrated circuit, graphic user interface, battery technology, polymers (yes, the invention of polymers revolutionized the materials industry), lasers, computer software, blockbuster drugs like Lipitor, and the list goes on.  None of these were a result of incremental product developments but took years of basic research.  The problem is where is this type of long-term breakthrough research being done?  Most of the big corporate research labs (and the ones that created these blockbuster innovations) no longer have a focus on long-term or blue sky research.

So where are the next innovations going to come from?

  • Big corporate labs? (IBM and Exxon are examples for powerful research labs)
  • Universities?
  • Consortia?
  • Open Innovation?
  • Small startups?

Interesting question.  No doubt many companies are continuing to innovate and develop new products.  If they don’t they die.  The question is how many of these companies will be able to have a differentiated, completely new to the world product?

I want to stay away from politics, but one key to growing the economy is to create entirely new industries.  The invention of the integrated circuit created an entire new computer industry.  Lasers enabled CD’s and DVD’s and created new industries.  Our favorite topic, polymers created an entirely new industry and along with that created millions of jobs.  What is the next new industry breakthrough that will result in economic and job growth.  How do you think innovation can grow the economy and add jobs?

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Polymer Innovation Blog

I’m Dr. Jeff Gotro and welcome to the Polymer Innovation Blog. Over the last 40 years I have been involved in polymer research, along with product and process development. I acquired invaluable experience working for IBM, AlliedSignal, Honeywell, Ablestik Labs (now Henkel) and in multiple consulting projects. In this blog, I (along with some guest contributors) will share our experiences, tips, and “tricks of the trade” to get more out of your innovation efforts and discuss new trends and technical advances in the polymer industry.
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