Innovation (was Of Coase)

[Les Schaffer <schaffer@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Carrol Cox wrote:

> Why this lust for innovation? Most innovations are either (1)
> destructive or (2) desperate attempts to compensate for the
> destruction brought by prior innovations.

within the engineering world that i am familiar with, the lust for
"innovation" is one of several things:

  1.) the owners/execs of a enterprise want to take their capital and
  find new areas to invest in (because they are not making so much
  anymore in the areas they are already invested in).

  2.) the owner/exec sees another company making inroads in a new
  area. this other company is either a direct competitor via its
  existing products or will be by its new products. therefore the
  owners/exec feel the need to fight strategically via innovation.

  3.) the owner/exec wants to make a show of innovation to the
  stockholders as a way of gaining confidence in management decisions
  or control. "why, we just started a line of yada yada yada which has
  the potential to earn us yada yada yada". so they throw some money
  at, or raise some money for, a new line.

the fourth item is so infrequent in the business world today, its
almost a sin to include in the same list with the other three.

  4.) someone has a good idea and works their ass off to develop
  it. it perhaps has never been done before and even the company
  owners/execs are reluctant to back it. there was an engineer at
  Honda who had an idea for vastly increasing overall fuel economy
  using dual sets of valves. as i recall, he basically worked it out
  w/o much management help.

in other words, most of the "need for innovation" in business is
really a disguise for figuring out how to keep alive any particular
company and its current (possible sickly) business plan and much much
much less to do with creatively solving the needs of homo sapiens.

regarding Carrol's insistence "that capitalism MUST innovate" is an
unacceptable answer: rather, it DOES "innovate" when the
owner(s)/execs need to achieve something in the business planning end
of things which has nothing to do w/ classical innovation a la freedom
and human creativity. and it DOES NOT innovate when said owners have
only for the moment to sit quietly atop their profit mechanisms.  for
example, there are many "old-style" companies where the owners are
content with the profits they make even if their engineers would love
nothing better BUT TO INNOVATE in related areas.

i can't count the number of engineers i know who went to work for
companies excited about their innovative environment, only to realize
later that this environment was just a front for the owners/execs to
do what they had to do to stay in business. the number of "innovative"
projects which are dropped, thereby wasting said working engineers
time (and aspirations), has got to be staggering.

as is the amount of needless competition between engineers in
competing companies (secrecy, duplication, patents shmatents, etc):
there is also destructive competition within innovation. as just ONE
example, an engineer friend of mine who worked for many years at Xerox
tells me that the split between development of laser printers and (the
later innovation of) ink-jet printers was destructive from the point
of view of what COULD be achieved within a different social/production
structure. (i know, "blueprints of the future").

in terms of destructiveness: "innovations" in biology (DDT),
physics-engineering-materials (weapons), etc. and we now have an
explicit new ideology for innovation which is to first innovate for
destructiveness (military programs) followed by using the "cool" stuff
for "human needs". they call 'em "spinoffs".

under the category perhaps of wastefulness but masquerading as
innovation: the product/creation of new NEEDS simply for the sake of
creating MARKETS for COMMODITIES.

i am not arguing __against__, for example, cell phones (from what i
understand they are hugely popular in Third World countries), but am
arguing that the owners/exec of the electronics firms in question had
business needs to solve and couldn't care less about Third World needs
-- i feel stupid even having to state that! -- or innovation. if
someone came along at the same time and developed, say, widget XXX
with the same projected market growth, they might have chosen widget
XXX instead. or if someone came along and said, "oh lets do this
marketing drive for existing product WWW instead of putting money into
new products (err, innovations) and we'll add this much market share",
you could kiss cell phones goodbye. and we all know the stories of
owners/execs at Company ZZ-Bot who nixed widget YYY at one time, only
for it to be acceptable to Company ZZ-Top later on and "it made them
millions".

does Intel care about innovation???

  http://www.intel.com/labs/features/cn02031.htm

  Integration -- the Key Innovation

  In creating the wireless-Internet-on-a-chip technology, Intel
  engineers overcame complexities associated with separate
  optimization paths for communications and computing manufacturing
  processes. Instead of several processes to produce separate chips
  for communications, computing, and memory, Intel took the company's
  leading-edge flash process and incorporated digital and analog
  capabilities into a single process.

  Integrating these components on a single chip eliminates external
  busses and reduces power consumption. This can extend battery life
  substantially, while improving system reliability. The integration
  also saves board space -- thus enabling smaller cell phones, PDAs,
  and other wireless devices -- and increases performance.


  c.f. http://www.newsfactor.com/perl/story/21835.html


does Bangldesh have an __innovation__ problem???

  http://nation.ittefaq.com/artman/exec/view.cgi/4/1039

  BTTB's innovation paralysis

  The reality however is quite different. The telecom sector is
  vibrant, driven by constant flow of innovations. It enjoys one of
  the fastest technology adoption rates on the planet. New products
  and services are introduced in this sector at a breathtaking pace
  making old technology obsolete within years.

  Significant investments in new technology and services need to be
  made constantly to keep pace with new developments in this industry
  to remain competitive.

is china engaging in an "innovation arms race???

  http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/03_15/b3828010.htm


does Xerox have an innovation problem???

  http://www.xerox.com/innovation/2003_ieee.html

> Innovation which is forced on one by invisible social relations
> existing behind your back are a manifestation of unfreedom, not of
> freedom or human creativity.

i think this argument has a lot of merit.

a footnote: engineers, if they are not allowed to be innovative, would
at least like to be creative and smart in their required work on
existing products. but often the dictates from above crush even this
minimal desire for personal fullfillment as "time to market",
reduction of engineering/development costs, etc. all drive lots of
"white-collar" working people to the edge.

les schaffer