Gunfire at Sea: A Case Study of Innovation

Yesterday, I had one of those discussions with a colleague that centered on "why is innovation sometimes so difficult?" More specifically, we were talking about how people's biases and preferences get in the way of innovation. My comment was that the root cause is having human beings involved and once the machines take over we won't have this problem.

This is not a new thing. I was reminded of the classic paper Gunfire at Sea: A Case Study of Innovation. Naval officer William S. Sims found a new method for aiming shipboard cannons with far superior accuracy compared to the existing method. However, he encountered severe opposition when he tried to get it broadly adopted.

I won't tell the whole story here. Read the paper when you have time to ponder and absorb it.