The Innovators

Innovation occurs when ripe seeds fall on fertile ground. Instead of having a single cause, the great advances of 1937 came from a combination of capabilities, ideas, and needs that coincided in multiple places. As often happens in the annals of invention, especially information technology invention, the time was right and the atmosphere was charged.

“A new idea comes suddenly and in a rather intuitive way,” Einstein once said, “but intuition is nothing but the outcome of earlier intellectual experience.”

Great innovations are usually the result of ideas that flow from a large number of sources. An invention, especially one as complex as the computer, usually comes not from an individual brainstorm but from a collaboratively woven tapestry of creativity.

The main lesson to draw from the birth of computers is that innovation is usually a group effort, involving collaboration between visionaries and engineers, and that creativity comes from drawing on many sources. Only in storybooks do inventions come like a thunderbolt, or a lightbulb popping out of the head of a lone individual in a basement or garret or garage.

“We had to learn their vocabularies in order to be able to run their problems. I could switch my vocabulary and speak highly technical for the programmers, and then tell the same things to the managers a few hours later but with a totally different vocabulary.” Innovation requires articulation.

Aiken was similarly open about sharing ideas. “Don’t worry about people stealing an idea,” he once told a student. “If it’s original, you will have to ram it down their throats.”

“The thing that Von Neumann had, which I’ve noticed that other geniuses have, is the ability to pick out, in a particular problem, the one crucial thing that’s important.”

Should intellectual property be shared freely and placed whenever possible into the public domain and open-source commons? That course, largely followed by the developers of the Internet and the Web, can spur innovation through the rapid dissemination and crowd-sourced improvement of ideas. Or should intellectual property rights be protected and inventors allowed to profit from their proprietary ideas and innovations? That path, largely followed in the computer hardware, electronics, and semiconductor industries, can provide the financial incentives and capital investment that encourages innovation and rewards risks.

One aspect of innovation is inventing new devices; another is inventing popular ways to use these devices.

There was a key lesson for innovation: Understand which industries are symbiotic so that you can capitalize on how they will spur each other on.

Noyce was great at strategic vision and seeing the big picture; Moore understood the details, particularly of the technology and engineering. So they were perfect partners, except in one way: with their shared aversion to hierarchy and unwillingness to be bossy, neither was a decisive manager. Because of their desire to be liked, they were reluctant to be tough. They guided people but didn’t drive them. If there was a problem or, heaven forbid, a disagreement, they did not like to confront it. So they wouldn’t. That’s where Andy Grove came in.

Grove’s mantra was “Success breeds complacency. Complacency breeds failure. Only the paranoid survive.”

Innovation can be sparked by engineering talent, but it must be combined with business skills to set the world afire.