Where to Innovate: Consider the Big Picture
There is a natural tendency to focus innovation efforts for a new technology on the technology itself.? Of course, honing the core technology is necessary; but it can also distract from recognizing valuable opportunities -- in particular, ones that can only be appreciated by pulling back to view the “big picture”.?? As poet John Donne stated “no man is an island”, the same is true of inventions. No technology exists in isolation.? To get the most out of a technology, both the core technology and its adjacencies need to be optimized and innovated upon.?
The illustration below schematically identifies a host of areas which impact a core technology and are often fertile for innovative improvements.?? Where do you look for synergistic opportunities for optimization and innovation?
Physical Chemist (retired)
4 个月Not a mention of pilot plant work or the discrepancies which arise between pilot plants and scale operations. In my experience, those discrepancies spur research which leads to more fundamental models explaining the discrepancies and better control of the operation.
technology scout / corporate sherpa
5 个月Thanks Robert Kaminsky for another thought provoking article. To answer your question, I look for new tech/solutions targeting functional interfaces.