Breakthrough: Stories and Strategies of Radical Innovation

309 Pages·2006·13.71 MB·English

by  Mark Stefik, Barbara Stefik

Stories and
Strategies
of Radical
Innovation
Breakthrough
Mark Stefik
and
Barbara Stefik
Breakthrough

Breakthrough
Stories and Strategies of Radical Innovation
Mark Stefik and Barbara Stefik
The MIT Press
Cambridge, Massachusetts
London, England
© 2004 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any
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Set in Sabon by SNP Best-set Typesetter Ltd., Hong Kong. Printed and bound in
the United States of America.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Stefik, Mark.
Breakthrough : stories and strategies of radical innovation / Mark Stefik and
Barbara Stefik.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-262-19514-3 (alk. paper)
1. Technological innovations. 2. Inventions. I. Stefik, Barbara. II. Title.
T173.8.S745 2004
608—dc22 2004042642
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Dedicated to the many brilliant and creative people who have worked
at the Palo Alto Research Center, for living a culture of innovation
that inspired this book. With gratitude to George Pake, the founder of
PARC, who passed away on March 4, 2004. Pake knew how to set
direction with incentives and also how to encourage creativity by
staying “out of the way.” He set an example for research leaders
everywhere.

Contents
Preface ix
Acknowledgments xi
I Invention and Innovation
1 The Breakthrough Dilemmas 3
2 The Dance of the Two Questions 27
3 Invention: Seeing Differently 47
4 Innovation: The Long Road 69
II Fostering Invention
5 Mentoring and Apprenticeship 85
6 The Prepared Mind and the Aha! Moment 115
7 The Beginner’s Mind and Play 129
8 Walking in the Dark 149
III Fostering Innovation
9 Innovative Research Groups 161
10 Obstacles to Radical Innovation 181
11 Cultures of Innovation 207
12 Innovation at the Crossroads 231
Afterword 255
Notes 261
Bibliography 285
Index 291

Preface
Innovation is subtle, complex, and full of surprises. It depends on orga-
nizational culture and practice as much as on individual brilliance. This
book is for people who are interested in innovation and especially in
breakthroughs. It explains how leading companies succeed repeatedly in
inventing the future.
Open innovation refers to strategies that companies use to acquire
technologies from other companies and to market their own technol-
ogies. Open innovation makes good economic sense. However, it is only
half of the story. Nobody ever created a breakthrough with open inno-
vation. Open invention refers to strategies for creating inventions and
breakthroughs. The challenges of the new century require strategies for
both open innovation and open invention. Without a culture of innova-
tion that honors the pursuit of breakthroughs, the tendency is to opti-
mize the routine, to pursue incremental improvements, and to resist the
truly innovative.
This book is a road map to the ways of invention and innovation. It
introduces the terminology and the practices of leading inventors, entre-
preneurs, and managers in innovative organizations. Among its goals are
to illuminate how innovation works and how breakthroughs are created.
The chapters in part I introduce two questions that must be answered
for every successful innovation: What is possible? What is needed?
The chapters in part II focus on invention and on the experiences of
creative researchers and inventors at work. Without invention, there can
be no innovation. These chapters address the following questions: Do all
inventors work the same way? Do researchers work alone, or in teams?
What makes breakthrough inventions different from incremental
product improvements? What does an “Aha!” feel like? How do repeat