The document discusses challenges faced by inventors and innovators in getting their ideas adopted. Some key points: 1) Innovators often face resistance from organizations wedded to the status quo, as change threatens existing structures and ways of doing things. Initiating change is difficult and risky. 2) Inventors do not always make good product champions, as they tend to be independent thinkers who do not easily fit into organizational hierarchies. Their temperaments are not always suited for commercialization efforts. 3) Cultural influences within companies and industries can inhibit innovation, as existing success breeds complacency and risk aversion. Breakthroughs are less likely to emerge from tightly controlled environments. 4) While

1. CHAMPIONS & INVENTORS
The Sources of Invention, John Jewkes,
David Sawers, & Richard Stillerman,
2nd Ed., 1969, 1958
“Let the feelings of society cease to stigmatize independent thinking.”
John Stuart Mill p. 169

2. PHILOSOPHICAL PREAMBLE The Prince, Niccolo Machiavelli
• “It should be borne in mind that there is nothing more
difficult to handle, more doubtful of success, & more
dangerous to carry through than initiating changes in a
state’s constitution. The innovator makes enemies of all
those who prospered under the old order, & only
lukewarm support is forthcoming from those who would
prosper under the new. Their support is lukewarm partly
from fear of their adversaries, who have the existing laws
on their side, & partly because men are generally
incredulous, never really trusting new things unless they
have tested them by experience.” p.21
• “Men nearly always follow the tracks made by others &
proceed in their affairs by imitation. . .” p.19

3. HISTORICAL EXAMPLE
• Leonardo da Vinci “They strut about puffed
up & pompous, decked out & adorned not with their
own labors but by those of others & they will not
even allow me my own. And if they despise me who
am an inventor how much more should blame be
given to themselves, who are not inventors, but
trumpeters & reciters of the works of others.”
p. 92-93

4. CASE STUDY
Elting Morison (technology historian ex.) used in Winning through Innovation, Michael L. Tushman & Charles A. O’Reilly III, p. 3-8
• Tyranny of success
– US Navy: 1898 (Spanish-American War) – believed to
be best in world
• Continuous aim gunfire An inventor
– British Admiral Percy Scott Not a product champion
• 3000% accuracy increase
– US Lt. William Sims - a product champion
• Presented more & more data unsuccessfully
• US Navy perceived no problem, no crisis
– NAVY values: loyalty, obedience & courage
– Enter Teddy Roosevelt

5. MOST SPECIFIC INVENTIONS FORESEEN –
NO WAY p. 171, 270
• Light emitting diode
• Poulsen – magnetic recording
• Penicillin
• Nylon
• Transistor
• Insulin
• Radio
And when invention is proven, how long does it take to get a useful product?
The jet engine invented in 1939, while the 1st jet-propelled airliner flew in 1958. p. 178

6. HAPPY ACCIDENTS
If it ain’t broke…Break IT!, Robert J. Kriegel, p. 155-156
• The Microwave
• Cornflakes
• ScotchGard
• Velcro
– Swiss mountaineer & chemist George de Mestral
(1948)

7. INVENTOR-CHAMPION PERSONALITY
• “. . .firms dealing with outside inventors are disposed to
speak of them as „awkward fellows‟.” p. 140
• “The inventive drive continues to be found in people
who, because of their temperament & outlook, are not
easy to organize.” p. 170
• “There are:
– part-time inventors,
– inventors capable of 1 burst of innovation & nothing more,
– inventors unable to pass examinations,
– inventors who by their temperament would not survive a week in
an organized regime.” p. 187
Over-optimism & over- pessimism bring trouble. P. 175

8. BALANCE
• Every community must decide how best to maintain
continuity & a reasonable measure of stability while
leaving open channels for new ideas & room for
change. It cannot afford to be tossed about
defenselessly by the demonic impulses of the
innovator, yet it can ignore him or suppress him only
at risk of stagnation.p. 22
• “. . . if there were no method for enforcing standards
& side-tracking the charlatans, we would be overrun
by a jungle of cranky ideas.” p. 187

9. BALANCE MISTAKES
Lee De Forest, inventor of a small glass bulb, &
colleagues ended up in NY court on charges of
misleading “gullible investors on the
preposterous claim that his worthless device
would transmit the human voice across the
Atlantic Ocean.” Two colleagues were
convicted & De Forest managed to escape with
a lecture from the judge. De Forest later
enjoyed success with his “audion tube that
laid the foundation for the multibillion-dollar
electronics industry.” Denis Waitley, Empires of the Mind, p. 104

10. CULTURAL INFLUENCE
• “. . . within the corporation, resistance to
innovation is only to be expected because
change upsets everything that is orderly,
uniform & predictable.” P. 212
– The aircraft jet engine did not come from the
aircraft engine manufactures of the day. P. 266
– The self-winding wristwatch did not come from
the Swiss watch industry. P. 293-294
“. . . but only backing ‘sure things’ guarantees that innovative & new approaches will
be avoided.” David Dotlich, Peter Cairo Stephen Rhinesmith, Head, Heart & Guts, p. 182

11. CULTURAL INFLUENCE
DARK SIDE ‘CONSEQUENCES’
Richard Pascale Anthony Athos, The Art of Japanese Management
• “Certain kinds of corporate decisions require a leap of faith.
Interestingly, neither Matsushita nor ITT [under Geneen]
excelled in major breakthroughs in basic or applied research. There are
no tales in these tightly controlled firms of inventive heroes who
courageously stuck to one product like Xerography or Polaroid cameras
until faith was rewarded. At ITT perhaps the precondition of
unshakeable facts made impossible the suspension of disbelief necessary
to pursue such inventive crusades.” p. 63-64
• “. . . When stakes get too great & anxiety is high, learners tend to avoid
experimentation & openness to new experiences & revert to previous
success behavior.” p. 146
• “. . . if an organization faces no threat, inertia & status quo undermine
needed innovation.” Winning through Innovation, Michael L. Tushman & Charles A. O’Reilly III, p. 40

12. INVENTORS’ RISKS
Peter Drucker, The Essential Drucker
• “The creative innovator exploits the success of others. The
creative imitator does not invent a product or service; he
perfects & positions it” because in its original form, it lacks
something. p. 167
– EX: IBM
• “. . . High tech innovators are least likely to be market-
focused & most likely to be technology & product-focused.
They therefore tend to misunderstand their own success &
fail to exploit & supply the demand they created.” p. 168
– Cyrus McCormick invented the harvesting machine but failed to make
sales because farmers could not get banks to loan them the money until
McCormick offered installments based on his predicted pay-back of the
farmers. p. 186

13. RESEARCH
• “But the essence of research is that it cannot be costed in any
systematic way: firms move towards or away from it almost as an act
of faith.” p. 113
Note: “Edison did not set out to
improve the candle.” Gary Heil, Tom
• Thomas Edison had 1180 patents Parker, & Rick Tate, Leadership & the Customer Revolution, p. 9
– “Counting the expense of experimenting & fighting for my claims in
court, these patents have cost me more than they have returned me in
royalties.”
• 80% of all product innovations initiated by customers in scientific
instruments & machinery industries. Pascale & Athos, The Art of Japanese Management, p. 190
– J&J debacle with its Palmaz-Schatz stent
• Counterpoint: Rust brothers invented the cotton picker
– They said if they had know that since the Civil War, that the US patent office
had issued approximately 750 patents for a cotton picker of which all
failed, they would have been too discouraged to continue. P. 244
• http://www.criticalpast.com/video/65675066983_cotton-picker_Rust-Brothers_demonstration-of-machine_cotton-bolls
Early 1880s, light bulbs & sockets came in 175 different sizes. Robert B. Reich, The Future of Success p. 48

14. IDEA DISSENT P. 115
• “Watt & Boulton looked upon Murdock‟s idea of the steam-
locomotive as a mental disease, which had to be cured.
• Edison fought against use of alternating current.
• Marconi could not be brought to see the significance of wireless
telephone.
• Baird saw no hope for the cathode ray tube.
• Lawrence, inventor of the cyclotron, missed the significance of a
suggestion submitted to him which would have greatly
simplified the particle accelerator.
• Kroll, discoverer of the 1st practicable method of making
titanium by the magnesium process, nevertheless discounted the
possibility of the sodium process. . .”
“Is not every new discovery a slur upon the shrewdness of those who overlooked it?” p. 115

15. BUSINESS SHORTCOMINGS
Sidney Finkelstein, Why Smart Executives Fail, p. 196
Xerox Palo Alto Research Lab
– Successful in inventing new incredible products
– Failed to maximize benefits internally from same
products
– Product examples
• Graphical user interface adopted by Apple
• Computer mouse
• Ethernet

16. DO ALL GREAT COMPANIES FAIR
BETTER THAN INVENTORS?
Jim Collins & Jerry Porras, Built to Last, p. 25-26
• Boeing’ 1st airplane flopped. Boeing, for a
while, went into the furniture business to
survive.
• HP went a year before its 1st sale.
• 3M’s 2nd president went salaryless the 1st 11
years of his tenure.

17. BUSINESS INNOVATIVE PROCESS
Du Pont invented nylon Michel Robert, Strategy Pure and Simple, p. 44
– So what! Nylon had no customer or market!
– Along came:
• Stockings
• Carpet
• Shoes
• Thread
• Sweaters
• Fishing line
o Out of room

18. INNOVATIVE PROCESS Ex.
Time Magazine, “The Most Basic Form of Creativity”, (June 26, 1972:84)
Edwin Land’s recount of his development
of the Polaroid camera
“One day when we were vacationing in Santa Fe in 1943 my
daughter, Jennifer, who was then 3, asked me why she could not
see the picture I had just taken of her. As I walked around that
charming town, I undertook the task of solving the puzzle she
had set for me. Within the hour the camera, the film & the
physical chemistry became so clear that with a great sense of
excitement I hurried to the place where a friend was staying to
describe to him in detail a dry camera which would give a
picture immediately after exposure. In my mind it was so real
that I spent several hours on the description.”
Investigating business failure, Finkelstein listed 4 high-risk areas where businesses
often fail, one of which was innovation & change. Sidney Finkelstein, Why Smart Executives Fail, p. 16

19. WHEN NOT TO INVENT
• EXAMPLE
– P&G during development of Pringles potato
chips, wished to imprint a picture or word on the
actual chip. Typical development time is 2 years
from its own R&D labs. Under P&G CEO
Lafley‟s challenge, P&G went out to its global
network expressing need & discovered an Italian
bakery in Bologna, Italy, owned by a university
professor who had already invented equipment
that could meet this need thus saving 1.5 yearsLiz
Wiseman, Multipliers, p. 110

20. CONCLUSION1
• “. . . the remarkable efficiency of the Chinese abacus as a
calculator was limited to a dozen or so digits in a linear array &
so was useless for advanced algebra. . . the relative lack of
Chinese mathematical innovations from the mid 1300s to the
1600s may have been the price paid for the convenience of the
abacus. . . the very superiority achieved by the Song China
would become by 1800 a source of her backwardness, as though
all great achievements carry the seeds of ossification.”
John K. Fairbank, China, p. 3
• “Not far from the invention of fire we must rank the invention of
doubt . . . for it is out of doubt of the old that the new springs; &
it is doubt of the new that keeps invention within bounds.
T.H. Huxley p. 14
“For where there is success, there has to be failure.” Peter Drucker, The Essential Drucker, p. 284

21. CONCLUSION2
• Most executives & employees “are only too conscious of
what the boss won’t let them do, of what company policy
won’t let them do, of what the government won’t let
them do.” Innovators, as a group, either do not
understand, do not know, and if they know they don’t
care or choose to ignore this ‘common knowledge.’ Peter Drucker, The
Effective Executive, p. 95
• “Yet the impassioned champion *innovator+ is *curse+ to
everything that traditional, civil, organized corporate
endeavor stands for. But we must hire him, even though
he will alienate some good people, irritate almost
everyone, & in the end fail anyway more often than not.”
Tom Peters, Thriving On Chaos, p. 248