7 ms·

Why The Flow Of Innovation Has Reversed

41 points by wave 18y ago

anamax 18y ago
> The vector of innovation has changed. It used to be that innovation started with NASA, flowed to the military, then to the enterprise, and finally to the consumer. Huh? NASA didn't produce much innovation. Bell Labs did. Edison did. GE did. Heck, even GM and Ford had their day. NASA - not so much. Even if we restrict ourselves to innovation by govt organizations, NASA is behind at least two of the national labs.
pg 18y ago
Computers simply got cheaper. You don't have to be NASA or General Dynamics to afford them.
ericwaller 18y ago
The vector of innovation has changed. It used to be that innovation started with NASA, flowed to the military, then to the enterprise, and finally to the consumer. Today, it is the reverse. All of the most interesting stuff is being built first for consumers and is tricking back to the enterprise. The basic premise of the article is wrong. NASA specifically, may not play as large a role as it once did, but (most) innovation is still very much a top-down process. Even twitter (which I've seen hailed as innovative again and again) is just a hack on SMS, which of course was not developed by consumers. He also seems to be implying that web 2ish "social engineering" has outpaced electrical engineering as a means of innovation, which is at best a confusion between the application layer and underlying technology stack.
- JulianMorrison 18y ago
  What's your point, consumer-led development doesn't code protocol stacks? True enough, but how important is that? SMS was "a feature of the environment" that Twitter took advantage of. But without SMS it could have used email or IM or Morse telegraph or whatever was to hand. I don't think that supports your argument.
  - ericwaller 18y ago
    If you tried to quantify and sum each of the various innovations which enable twitter, you'd find a relatively small amount of consumer led innovation in the application layer, served by a huge amount of top-down innovation in the technology stack. And regardless of the implementation tech (IM, email, etc), I'd imagine you'd find the same thing to be the case. I don't mean to say that consumer-led innovation can never produce radically new technologies, just that the general direction of innovation is still top-down.
    - netcan 18y ago
      Trying to quantify these things is like trying to quantify the importance of joints in mountain climbing. Knuckles, Wrists, elbows or shoulders?
- breck 18y ago
  I agree. I wouldn't consider Twitter or Facebook or craigslist innovative. They are really simple technologies (ignoring the software scaling challenges) that have been marketed extremely effectively. They all are dependent much more on the innovation of others (the cell companies, ISPs, open source software). I haven't heard of many technologies developed at Facebook or Twitter that are being used by NASA or other traditional giants, while I have heard of the converse.
  - tsuraan 18y ago
    I agree. I wouldn't consider Twitter or Facebook or craigslist innovative. They are really simple technologies (ignoring the software scaling challenges) that have been marketed extremely effectively. I don't understand why you don't think that's innovative. The definition of innovative is to introduce something as though it was new (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/innovate http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/innovate), which is a far cry from invention. Innovation isn't about creating new things, it's about taking established things and making them appeal to people in a new way.
    - jonmc12 18y ago
      From wikipedia - "Invention that gets out in to the world is innovation." In that sense, a real innovation is something that is well understood, and tested for its benefit. The thing about craigslist, twitter, facebook, wikipedia, etc is that the real reason that they are so valuable is only a matter of speculation at this point. They are only the beginning of the experiment - not the final output. You can take a circuit level innovation, and re-apply it in several contexts. You can't take the magic of craigslist or facebook and incur the same value in another situation.. all you can do is speculate on why it worked, and be another iteration of a highly distributed experiment. What the author is calling innovation, is really just leveraging off the reduced costs of infrastructure to test new tools on consumers. When someone formalizes why the 'social engineering' approaches work, predictably, against this data set, they will then be able to improve, and re-apply with more certainty in the market. That's innovation. I'm not sure how rigorous 'social engineering' is at present, but maybe 'social experimenters' is a better name.
deleted 18y ago
[deleted]
troystribling 18y ago
For the consumer adopting a new technology is an individual decision which is increasingly becoming monetarily inexpensive requiring mostly a time investment. For the enterprise a change in technology is an organization decision that will impact internal processes that could cause changes to the way hundreds or thousands work leading to a large expense. Because of this cost difference the consumer will be more likely to experiment with new technologies than the enterprise, also, since changes in consumer technology is driven by many individual decisions not a organization decision the changes will occur faster. Currently, this change in the flow of innovation is focused on information technologies. Over time as the cost of other technologies (biotech, custom manufacturing, ...) fall I would expect to see a similar result.
MaysonL 18y ago
Most of the comments here seem to be focussed on the supply side. The big change that this article hints at is on the demand side. Back in the late 50's NASA and ARPA were two of the biggest customers for computer innovation. Now we are (where we is Internet users in general, not HN readers).
mkn 18y ago
I think the author may be equivocating on innovation. Anyone would have to agree that the kinds of innovations that NASA was/is responsible for (whether directly or through funding subcontractors) were of a fundamentally different kind and scale than current .com/Web 2.0 innovations. Twitter isn't an X-15; Google is great, but it's no Moon landing. The kinds of innovations we seem to think we are seeing today are clever tricks compared to the kind of R&D that went into NASA's frankly glorious history of innovation. The resources and incredible intellectual capital that had to be (and still has to be) invested in a new launch vehicle, satellite, or manned craft is just orders of magnitude higher than what is required for innovation of the internet-startup kind. None of this should be seen to denigrate the innovations that are minting millionaires and billionaires today. Indeed, the truly wondrous thing is that a mere clever trick can make you for life. Unless I'm missing something (and I'm not, at least here), this is the very reason that ycombinator and Hacker News exist at all; You can fund significant innovation that may earn $10^6-$10^9 for $10^4. For a contemporary example of the difference between these two kinds of innovation, just look at SpaceX. Elon Musk made his money the clever trick way (low initial capital + clever trick + hard work + wonder of the internet) and is now engaged in the "old school" way of making money with innovation (high capital + lots of Ph.Ds + hard work of 100s to 1000s of people + rigorous design, construction, and testing).
known 18y ago
America Invents and Japan Innovates.
sown 18y ago
I think the nature of innovation has changed a little, too. I used to work at NASA's TDRSS installation and innovation and new ideas are not really their thing. Maintaining their amazing uptime is, though.

41 points by wave 18y ago

> The vector of innovation has changed. It used to be that innovation started with NASA, flowed to the military, then to the enterprise, and finally to the consumer. Huh? NASA didn't produce much innovation. Bell Labs did. Edison did. GE did. Heck, even GM and Ford had their day. NASA - not so much. Even if we restrict ourselves to innovation by govt organizations, NASA is behind at least two of the national labs.

pg 18y ago

Computers simply got cheaper. You don't have to be NASA or General Dynamics to afford them.

ericwaller 18y ago

The vector of innovation has changed. It used to be that innovation started with NASA, flowed to the military, then to the enterprise, and finally to the consumer. Today, it is the reverse. All of the most interesting stuff is being built first for consumers and is tricking back to the enterprise. The basic premise of the article is wrong. NASA specifically, may not play as large a role as it once did, but (most) innovation is still very much a top-down process. Even twitter (which I've seen hailed as innovative again and again) is just a hack on SMS, which of course was not developed by consumers. He also seems to be implying that web 2ish "social engineering" has outpaced electrical engineering as a means of innovation, which is at best a confusion between the application layer and underlying technology stack.

JulianMorrison 18y ago
What's your point, consumer-led development doesn't code protocol stacks? True enough, but how important is that? SMS was "a feature of the environment" that Twitter took advantage of. But without SMS it could have used email or IM or Morse telegraph or whatever was to hand. I don't think that supports your argument.
- ericwaller 18y ago
  If you tried to quantify and sum each of the various innovations which enable twitter, you'd find a relatively small amount of consumer led innovation in the application layer, served by a huge amount of top-down innovation in the technology stack. And regardless of the implementation tech (IM, email, etc), I'd imagine you'd find the same thing to be the case. I don't mean to say that consumer-led innovation can never produce radically new technologies, just that the general direction of innovation is still top-down.
  - netcan 18y ago
    Trying to quantify these things is like trying to quantify the importance of joints in mountain climbing. Knuckles, Wrists, elbows or shoulders?
breck 18y ago
I agree. I wouldn't consider Twitter or Facebook or craigslist innovative. They are really simple technologies (ignoring the software scaling challenges) that have been marketed extremely effectively. They all are dependent much more on the innovation of others (the cell companies, ISPs, open source software). I haven't heard of many technologies developed at Facebook or Twitter that are being used by NASA or other traditional giants, while I have heard of the converse.
- tsuraan 18y ago
  I agree. I wouldn't consider Twitter or Facebook or craigslist innovative. They are really simple technologies (ignoring the software scaling challenges) that have been marketed extremely effectively. I don't understand why you don't think that's innovative. The definition of innovative is to introduce something as though it was new (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/innovate http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/innovate), which is a far cry from invention. Innovation isn't about creating new things, it's about taking established things and making them appeal to people in a new way.
  - jonmc12 18y ago
    From wikipedia - "Invention that gets out in to the world is innovation." In that sense, a real innovation is something that is well understood, and tested for its benefit. The thing about craigslist, twitter, facebook, wikipedia, etc is that the real reason that they are so valuable is only a matter of speculation at this point. They are only the beginning of the experiment - not the final output. You can take a circuit level innovation, and re-apply it in several contexts. You can't take the magic of craigslist or facebook and incur the same value in another situation.. all you can do is speculate on why it worked, and be another iteration of a highly distributed experiment. What the author is calling innovation, is really just leveraging off the reduced costs of infrastructure to test new tools on consumers. When someone formalizes why the 'social engineering' approaches work, predictably, against this data set, they will then be able to improve, and re-apply with more certainty in the market. That's innovation. I'm not sure how rigorous 'social engineering' is at present, but maybe 'social experimenters' is a better name.

deleted 18y ago

[deleted]

troystribling 18y ago

For the consumer adopting a new technology is an individual decision which is increasingly becoming monetarily inexpensive requiring mostly a time investment. For the enterprise a change in technology is an organization decision that will impact internal processes that could cause changes to the way hundreds or thousands work leading to a large expense. Because of this cost difference the consumer will be more likely to experiment with new technologies than the enterprise, also, since changes in consumer technology is driven by many individual decisions not a organization decision the changes will occur faster. Currently, this change in the flow of innovation is focused on information technologies. Over time as the cost of other technologies (biotech, custom manufacturing, ...) fall I would expect to see a similar result.

MaysonL 18y ago

Most of the comments here seem to be focussed on the supply side. The big change that this article hints at is on the demand side. Back in the late 50's NASA and ARPA were two of the biggest customers for computer innovation. Now we are (where we is Internet users in general, not HN readers).

mkn 18y ago

I think the author may be equivocating on innovation. Anyone would have to agree that the kinds of innovations that NASA was/is responsible for (whether directly or through funding subcontractors) were of a fundamentally different kind and scale than current .com/Web 2.0 innovations. Twitter isn't an X-15; Google is great, but it's no Moon landing. The kinds of innovations we seem to think we are seeing today are clever tricks compared to the kind of R&D that went into NASA's frankly glorious history of innovation. The resources and incredible intellectual capital that had to be (and still has to be) invested in a new launch vehicle, satellite, or manned craft is just orders of magnitude higher than what is required for innovation of the internet-startup kind. None of this should be seen to denigrate the innovations that are minting millionaires and billionaires today. Indeed, the truly wondrous thing is that a mere clever trick can make you for life. Unless I'm missing something (and I'm not, at least here), this is the very reason that ycombinator and Hacker News exist at all; You can fund significant innovation that may earn $10^6-$10^9 for $10^4. For a contemporary example of the difference between these two kinds of innovation, just look at SpaceX. Elon Musk made his money the clever trick way (low initial capital + clever trick + hard work + wonder of the internet) and is now engaged in the "old school" way of making money with innovation (high capital + lots of Ph.Ds + hard work of 100s to 1000s of people + rigorous design, construction, and testing).

known 18y ago

America Invents and Japan Innovates.

sown 18y ago

I think the nature of innovation has changed a little, too. I used to work at NASA's TDRSS installation and innovation and new ideas are not really their thing. Maintaining their amazing uptime is, though.