From Test Tube to Main Street

Going from innovative idea to implementation is so complicated that Lewis M. Branscomb and Philip E. Auerswald refer to the journey as crossing "Death Valley." In their keen little book, Taking Technical Risks: How Innovators, Executives, and Investors Manage High-Tech Risks, the authors say that the job is even tougher during an economic slowdown, when financing is tight and customers are less inclined to part with their money.

According to Harvard educators Branscomb and Auerswald, finding an answer to the zillion-dollar question—will this thing work?—requires much more than the technical analysis that is generally taught. They say that innovation requires deftly managing the dynamics created by various cooks in the kitchen—scientists, investors, project managers, corporate division chiefs, and university department heads, among others.

For example, the book says, you have to figure out whether all the parties even agree on how to define success. Is it return on, say, a venture capitalist’s investment? If the government is involved, is success defined as the project’s impact on national security? If a university is part of the effort, does success mean merely advancing knowledge for knowledge’s sake?

The authors say it’s also crucial to know whether institutional barriers to risk-taking can be overcome, especially in organizations that haven’t fermented a culture of innovation. In addition, they say it’s necessary to know whether everyone is open to finding unintended uses for the process or product. The example they cite is Minnesota Mining & Manufacturing Co. (www.3m.com), where a scientist experimenting with glues produced one that was surprisingly weak. Rather than toss it out as a failure, the researcher realized the glue had possibilities, and 3M wound up with Post-it Notes.

Taking Technical Risks is textbookish enough that it won’t be hitting any bestseller lists even though it is a wellspring of information and insight. But in many ways, it may be as important a book to moving concepts out of the lab and into the real world as Geoffrey Moore’s Crossing the Chasm: Marketing and Selling High-Tech Products to Mainstream Customers was to technology marketing.

Just the Factoids, Ma'am

In his entertaining and thought-provoking new book, The Sum of Our Discontent: Why Numbers Make Us Irrational, David Boyle argues that we imbue statistics with too much magic and power. He says the figures spewing out of the media, government, and research institutions reduce complex and often mysterious phenomena to their lowest common denominators. They may make us say, hmmm, but they limit our view of the world, he says.

What, for example, are we to make of the supposed fact that 160,000 hackers infiltrate the Pentagon’s computer system each year? Is that a lot or a little? How far do they get? How about the assertion that 55% of corporate layoffs are announced on a Tuesday? What does someone do with that?

"Our big problem is what numbers won’t tell us," writes Boyle, an associate at London’s New Economics Foundation (www.neweconomics.org). "They won’t interpret. They won’t inspire, and they won’t tell us what causes what."

Wired for Change

Since it was founded 140 years ago, Nokia Corp. (www.nokia.com) has morphed repeatedly: from a lumber and paper products concern into a producer of industrial rubber goods, a power company, an electronics outfit, and, finally, into a cellphone manufacturer. Today, despite being in a market that has bloodied competitors, Nokia is doing well.

After reading Dan Steinbock’s The Nokia Revolution: The Story of an Extraordinary Company That Transformed an Industry, it is not that difficult to see why. From its beginnings as a paper mill along the Nokia River near Tampere, Finland, Nokia has consistently used diversification to deal with political and economic uncertainties at home, in the rest of Europe, and in neighboring Russia. Nokia also promotes a culture that values agility; communicates well with customers; takes a world view of markets; and invests heavily in research and development.

The Nokia Revolution is long and sometimes dry, but it is illuminating.

Diddlebock is a Denver-based writer and editor with Context.