How Breakthroughs Happen: Technology Brokering and the Pursuit of Innovation
Author: Andrew Hargadon
Did you know that the incandescent lightbulb first emerged some thirty years before Thomas Edison famously "turned night into day"? Or that Henry Ford's revolutionary assembly line came from an unlikely blend of observations from Singer sewing machines, meatpacking, and Campbell's Soup?
In this fascinating study of innovation, engineer and social scientist Andrew Hargadon argues that our romantic notions about innovation as invention are actually undermining our ability to pursue breakthrough innovations.
Based on ten years of study into the origins of historic inventions and modern innovations from the lightbulb to the transistor to the Reebok Pump athletic shoe, How Breakthroughs Happen takes us beyond the simple recognition that revolutionary innovations do not result from flashes of brilliance by lone inventors or organizations. In fact, innovation is really about creatively recombining ideas, people, and objects from past technologies in ways that spark new technological revolutions.
This process of "technology brokering" is so powerful, explains Hargadon, because it exploits the networked nature-the social side-of the innovation process. Moving between historical accounts of labs and factory floors where past technological revolutions originated and field studies of similar processes in today's organizations, Hargadon shows how technology brokers create an enduring capacity for breakthrough innovations.
Technology brokers simultaneously bridge the gaps in existing networks that separate distant industries, firms, and divisions to see how established ideas can be applied in new ways and places, and build new networks to guide these creative recombinations to mass acceptance. How Breakthroughs Happen identifies three distinct strategies for technology brokering that managers can implement in their organizations.
Hargadon suggests that Edison and his counterparts were no smarter than the rest of us-they were simply better at moving through the networked world of their time. Intriguing, practical, and counterintuitive, How Breakthroughs Happen can help managers transform their own firms into modern-day invention factories.
About the Author:
Andrew Hargadon is Assistant Professor of Technology Management at the Graduate School of Management at the University of California, Davis.
September 2003 - Innovationwatch.com
"Intriguing, practical, and counterintuitive..."
Vice President, Global Procurement Services, Hewlett-Packard Company - Corey Billington
"I have used Hargadon's technology brokering concepts and they work. They have helped make HP an innovator in supply chain management, saved millions, and delivered impressive results."
Stanford Professor, author, Weird Ideas That Work, and coauthor, The Knowing-Doing Gap - Robert I. Sutton
"How Breakthroughs Happen is the best book ever written on how and why innovation happens, and how companies can cash in on it. Hargadon deftly explains the detailed steps that make innovation happen in any organization, especially how the most successful innovators use existing ideas to create breakthrough technologies, products, and services. If you enjoyed The Innovator's Dilemma or The Tipping Point, you will find Hargadon's book just as well-researched and well-written, but even more useful."
Publishers Weekly
A light bulb flashing over the head of a lone scientist is the universal symbol of invention, but Edison's electric light bulb, which was the product of a whole team of engineers working with ideas cribbed from other inventors, is the rule rather than the exception, argues this fascinating primer on business innovations. Every breakthrough-be it the steamship, the transistor or the rise of rock 'n' roll-is a collective effort that combines and tweaks already existing ideas and technology in novel ways. Drawing on systems theory, cognitive psychology and "microsociology," management professor Hargadon examines innovation as a phenomenon of networks connected by "technology brokers"-people or organizations that link isolated groups and industries to integrate previously unrelated viewpoints and technologies to resolve new problems. He applies this framework to business case studies ranging from Henry Ford's mass-production methods to the work of present-day industrial design firms. Companies can stimulate innovation, he suggests, by cultivating a diverse network of projects, clients and suppliers to "capture" new ideas and exploit the resulting innovations, as well as by constantly testing models and prototypes, encouraging informal collaboration among employees and fostering a culture that embraces open-mindedness, iconoclasm and the freedom to "fail your way to success." Hargadon's argument is a well-written and well-supported corrective to the "lone genius" myth of technological innovation. While not quite a blueprint for breakthroughs, his provocative viewpoint and intriguing case studies will give managers new techniques to ponder. (July) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.
Soundview Executive Book Summaries
The Truth About How Companies Innovate
Innovations take far less time than you might imagine when you get the right people to combine the right elements. Although numerous myths prevail about innovations, many of them are far from correct, according to Andrew Hargadon, the director of technology management programs at the Graduate School of Management at University of California, Davis. He points out that the great inventions of the past were not developed in secrecy, and were not created by a sole inventor. Instead, most of the great inventors, including Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell and Steve Jobs, brought together the best elements of existing technologies to which their network connections gave them access.
Hargadon says these and most other great innovators use or used a process he calls "technology brokering" to invent. This process is based on recombining existing ideas, like Elvis Presley mixing country and western music with rhythm and blues to revolutionize rock and roll, or Henry Ford and his colleagues sparking the revolution of mass production by combining the machines, ideas and people developed in other industries.
Brokering Technology
Hargadon conducted an eight-year study of how innovation really happens, and identified three innovation strategies that work. These are:
- Technology brokering firms. Hargadon points out that Thomas Edison's Menlo Park research lab produced over 400 patents in just six years, including fundamental advances in telegraphy, telephony, phonographs, generators, mimeographs and light bulbs. The lab succeeded because of its connections to a range of markets and the ability to find new markets for the emerging technologies. Modern technology brokering firms similarly innovate by moving between markets and being the first to see how the existing ideas of one market can be converted into innovations in another.
- Technology brokering groups.Groups within larger firms can pursue dedicated technology brokering strategies to create novel solutions within any one division by learning about and combining the best ideas across the organization.
- Technology brokering projects. To exploit opportunities for technology brokering, firms must make major changes in the existing networks within and with their environment. GM created its Onstar venture to integrate cellular telephony into automobiles by building a focused team that connected divisions across GM and with outside technology and service providers.
How Breakthroughs Happen also focuses on the advantages that a strategy of technology brokering provides to experienced companies and entrepreneurs who are pursuing innovation. It also drives home the point that technologies are formed by tightly arranged combinations of people, ideas and objects, and describes how innovation is a process of taking apart and reassembling these elements in new combinations.
Ford Brings It All Together
To demonstrate the breakthroughs and the advancements that can be made when technologies that already exist are duplicated in another field, or reapplied to other industries, Hargadon provides a detailed look at how the Ford Motor Co. innovated the assembly production line by using the "disassembly" lines of the Chicago meatpackers as a model, and borrowed a system for casting iron parts from the Westinghouse Airbrake Co. Ford's engineers also adopted ideas and conveyor equipment that granaries and breweries had been using for more than a century to move materials around.
How Breakthroughs Happen also points out how many revolutionary innovations or discoveries come from not just a single "inventor," but are the result of two people working closely together, such as Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, or Bill Gates and Paul Allen. This concept even stretches back to Thomas Edison, whose vision and salesmanship was complemented by Charles Batchelor's mechanical skills.
To illustrate the importance of technology brokering in a modern organization, Hargadon uses numerous examples from the past and present to describe how brokers bridge otherwise disconnected worlds and the ways firms can exploit the lessons learned by others who have built networks that connect the people, objects and ideas from different worlds in the pursuit of innovation.
Why We Like This Book
How Breakthroughs Happen opens up the universe of possibilities that are available when the resources of different industries, firms and divisions are brought together and old ideas are applied in new ways. Hargadon's expert insights offer exciting tips about building new networks and recombinations. While examining successful breakthroughs and processes, Hargadon offers useful strategies that can help managers turn their firms into invention factories. Copyright © 2003 Soundview Executive Book Summaries
Table of Contents:
| Foreword | ||
| Preface | ||
| 1 | The Business of Innovation | 3 |
| 2 | Recombinant Innovation and the Sources of Invention | 31 |
| 3 | The Social Side of Innovation | 55 |
| 4 | Bridging Small Worlds | 65 |
| 5 | Building New Worlds | 91 |
| 6 | Technology Brokering in Practice | 123 |
| 7 | Technology Brokering as a Firm | 133 |
| 8 | Technology Brokering Within the Firm | 159 |
| 9 | Exploiting Emergent Opportunities for Technology Brokering | 183 |
| 10 | Looking Back, Moving Forward | 205 |
| Epilogue | 217 | |
| Notes | 229 | |
| Further Reading | 241 | |
| Index | 247 | |
| About the Author | 255 |
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