

Why The Flow Of Innovation Has Reversed - wave
http://www.unionsquareventures.com/2008/09/why_the_flow_of.html

======
ericwaller
_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.

~~~
breck
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
_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>), 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
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.

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

------
mkn
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).

------
anamax
> 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.

------
troystribling
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
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).

------
sown
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.

------
known
America Invents and Japan Innovates.

