By MIKE MAGEE
“The technological leaps of the 1900s — microelectronics, antibiotics, chemotherapy, liquid-fueled rockets, Earth-observing satellites, lasers, LED lights, disease-resistant seeds and so forth — derived from science. However these applied sciences additionally spent years being improved, tweaked, recombined and modified to make them obtain the dimensions and impression essential for improvements.” Jon Gertner, writer of “The Thought Manufacturing facility.”
The Thought Manufacturing facility is a historical past of Bell Labs, spanning six many years from 1920 to 1980. Printed a decade in the past, the writer intentionally centered on the story contained in the story. As he laid out his intent, Jon Gertner wrote “…when the drive to invent has change into a mantra, Bell Labs supplied us a method to enrich our understanding of the challenges and options to technological innovation. Right here, in spite of everything, was the place the foundational concepts on the administration of innovation had been born.”
One of many students Gertner likes to reference is Clayton Christensen. As a professor at Harvard Enterprise College, he coined the time period “disruptive innovation.” The Economist journal beloved him, labeling him in 2020 “probably the most influential administration thinker of his time.”
A course of thinker, Christensen deconstructed innovation, exploring “how waves of technological change can observe predictable patterns.” Others have come alongside and adopted in his steps.
Establish a technologic advance with a possible useful market area of interest.
Promote its attraction as a “should have” to customers.
Drop the associated fee.
Surreptitiously push apart or drawback rivals.
Handle surprises.
Medical improvements typically illustrate all 5 steps, albeit not essentially in that order. Think about the X-ray. Its discovery is attributed to Friedrich Rontgen (Roentgen), a mechanical engineering chair of Physics on the College of Wurzburg. It was in a lab at his college that he was exploring the properties of electrically generated cathode rays in 1896.
He created a glass tube with an aluminum window at one finish. He connected electrodes to a spark coil contained in the vacuum tube and generated an electrostatic cost. On the skin of the window opening he positioned a barium painted piece of cardboard to detect what he believed to be “invisible rays.” With the cost, he famous a “faint shimmering” on the cardboard. Within the subsequent run, he put a lead sheet behind the window and famous that it had blocked the ray-induced shimmering.
Not realizing what to name the rays, he designated them with an “X” – and thus the time period “X-ray.” Two weeks later, he satisfied his spouse to put her hand within the line of fireplace, and the cardboard behind. The resultant first X-ray picture (of her hand) led her to exclaim dramatically, “I’ve seen my demise.” Every week later, the picture was revealed beneath the title “Ueber eine neue Artwork von Strahlen” (On A New Type of Rays).
William II, German Emperor and Prussian King, was so excited, he rushed the physicist and his spouse to his fort in Potsdam for a celeb look and lecture on these “invisible rays.” The New York Occasions was significantly much less excited once they reported on January 19, 1896 on the lecture and Roentgen’s “alleged discovery of how one can {photograph} the invisible” labeling the scientist “a purveyor of outdated information.”
However one week later, on January 26, the paper had a change of coronary heart, writing: “Roentgen’s photographic discovery more and more monopolizes scientific consideration. Already quite a few profitable purposes of it to surgical difficulties are reported from varied international locations, however maybe much more placing are the proofs that it’ll revolutionize strategies in lots of departments of metallurgical business.”
By February 4, 1896, the paper was all in, conceding that the “Roentgen Ray” and the picture of spouse Anna’s hand had “nothing in widespread with bizarre pictures.” The next day, the Occasions used the time period “X-rays” however by no means spoke of it once more till Roentgen’s demise in 1923, when the Occasions obituary known as it “one of many biggest discoveries within the historical past of science.” And in 1901 Roentgen acquired the Nobel Prize in Physics. Roentgen by no means sought a patent on his discovery, feeling to take action can be unethical. He donated the 50,000 Swedish krona prize to the College of Wurzburg.
And now to the opposite “XX” within the room. When Musk bought Twitter, and renamed it “X”, he was centered on political domination not technologic innovation. He financially inserted himself into Trump World for a small (to him) funding of $300 million. On this oligarchal cocoon, he has been quick at work dismantling federal companies, typically along with his 4-year outdated son (additionally named “X”) on his shoulders. His targets are laced with apparent battle of curiosity. For instance, the NTHSP (Nationwide Freeway Visitors Security Program) within the Division of Transportation (slatted for destruction) has been investigating Tesla’s excessive price of auto-pilot deadly accidents; and the tip of federal subsidies for widespread electrical charging stations advantages Musk financially since Tesla already enjoys a prohibitive lead over his rivals.
However can Trump and Musk handle the surprises forward? As Erik Brynjolfsson PhD (MIT), who presently directs Stanford’s Digital Economic system Lab and teaches a seminar titled “The AI Awakening: Implications for the Economic system and Society,” likes to evangelise, innovation that guarantees elevated productiveness not sometimes encounters paradoxical blowbacks. These are available in many varieties. For instance, dramatic new chemical substances that drastically increase crop yield may be discovered to irreparably hurt delicate ecosystems that grasp by a thread.
Or extra related to Musk, highly effective social media platforms, like “X” no 1, could also be undermined by the very explosion of misinformation, hate messaging and international propaganda that they enabled. Simply ask Kelly Ann Conway’s daughter, Claudia Conway, how her mom’s unleashing of “alternate details” throughout Trump’s first time period has impacted her household trajectory – massive time blowback.
Lawless actions by the chief department have energized metropolis, state, and federal authorized practitioners. And Musk’s appearances, with “X” quantity 2 purposefully poised on his shoulders within the Oval Workplace, drew a particular Press introduction this week from the President. “That is X, and he’s a fantastic man — excessive IQ,” stated Trump. All of this has despatched Musk approval rankings into the cellar together with Tesla gross sales in Europe and the U.S. Within the newest ballot of Republicans, 3/4’s are not looking for Musk to have “lots of affect” within the Trump administration. And Tesla has skilled its first ever annual gross sales decline.
Extra “surprises” seemingly lie forward. As legendary Tech Analyst, Kara Swisher, says the “bromance between Trump, Musk could also be doomed by egos: There can solely be one.” Denis Cortese MD, former CEO/President of the Mayo Clinic and Director of ASU’s Middle for Healthcare Supply and Coverage, sums it up properly in responding to this piece: “Innovation could be disruptive. Disruption for the sake of disruption shouldn’t be innovation….however it would possibly require innovation in an effort to recuperate.”
Mike Magee MD is a Medical Historian and common contributor to THCB. He’s the writer of CODE BLUE: Inside America’s Medical Industrial Complicated. (Grove/2020)
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