Prevailing Interest. The Innovation Paradox.
If you’re interested in developing renewable petroleum from microbes, Dr. David Berry is your man. In fact, he may also be your man for therapeutic medicine, diagnostic devices and myriad alternative energy technologies.
After finishing a Bachelor's degree in neuroscience at MIT in 2000 and reaching this stage of his medical training at Harvard University, David Berry asked himself what most people would not ask themselves at this point: Why not throw on a Ph.D. thesis in biological engineering too?
Indeed, why not? Berry calls his combined degrees an "ad hoc M.D.-Ph.D." And despite the incredible focus and determination he needed to accomplish such a feat in six years, Berry is disarmingly relaxed and personable. And at last week’s BIF Collaborative Innovation Summit, he said something that made the audience laugh.
It was the kind of spontaneous laugh that bespoke a truth that goes to the heart of what I call the innovation paradox. He said that while he has positive relations with the oil companies, he wonders how urgently committed they are to alternative fuels. “Companies trying to make renewable energy probably shouldn’t be big oil because they have a prevailing interest in their current offerings.”
Thomas Edison had a prevailing interest in direct current even faced with the superiority of Tesla’s alternating current over long distances.
Dr. Terry Pierce, Special Advisor for Disruptive Innovations for Under Secretary Jay Cohen, Department of Homeland Security echoed the same thought when he talked about why RCA sat on the LCD technology (Developed in 1968) and allowed the Japan and Korea to become market innovators. RCA had a prevailing interest in solid state (CRT) technology. Dr. Pierce estimated the loss of this failure to innovate in the billions of dollars.
If there was a key lesson revealed at the Summit, it’s that when companies have a prevailing interest (i.e. shareholder profit via current offerings] they won’t seriously invest in their own demise – even if they can see the writing on the wall. It is the innovation equivalent of the lessons taught in Barbara Tuchman’s book, March of Folly.
David R. Yaun, Vice President, Corporate Communications, IBM Corporation also talked at the Summit revealing his battle with the “naysayers” at IBM when he promoted his Global Innovation Outlook. He was fortunate to have a champion in IBM’s CEO.
How do you innovate when you have a paradoxical prevailing interest? I think it should be the prevailing question at next year’s BIF-5.
MB
Creativity Central
2 Comments
Reader Comments (2)
Hello Martin!
I was browsing through your website and exploring your thoughts on Creativity and Innovation. I enjoyed reading several of your blogs and I felt that your ideas on Innovation were quite insightful. I am an Innovation Research Assistant at The DeSai Group- a consulting firm that focuses on the domains of Strategy-Driven Innovation™, Leadership, Learning and Execution capabilities for continuous growth and optimal business results. Feel free to visit us at http://www.desai.com
I would like to take the liberty to welcome you to our “Community of Friends” at the DeSai Group. We look forward to inviting you in on-going research and collaborative conversations in the future.
I look forward to hearing back from you.
Best Regards,
Yauhan Mehta
Innovation Research Assistant
ymehta@desai.com / (860)-233-0011 x818
The DeSai Group: http://www.desai.com
Blog & Downloads: http://www.strategydriveninnovation.com
Hey Marty,
You have a wide range of interests and thoughts, I suppose like many of us.
I enjoyed your posting of this young man, how envious I am of such smart people. Big oil does have a responsibility, like all businesses, to maximize profits to their shareholders. It is a good thing we have a government that helps foster research in other directions but they too fall victim to demands of shareholders(lobbyists and big-money interests). I wonder where Green Power could go if the government would give incentives to companies like it has to big oil and other large consumer-driven machines?
I remember seeing somewhere that the Compact Disc was actually invented back in 1955 but the board governing(or whoever) the use of such technology could not fathom anyone wanting to buy a disc that was as big as a record(slightly thicker) that could hold 12 hours of material. Bill Gates couldn't see where his computer company was going 30 years ago either.
Nice blog.
Mike Feddersen a.k.a. AZMike
You can see dysfunctional rants at http://twitter.com/azmike