Peter Drucker defined in his book “Innovation and Entrepreneurship” seven classes of opportunities. He named these the "sources of innovation"...
- THE UNEXPECTED
- INCONGRUITIES
- PROCESS NEEDS
- INDUSTRY AND MARKET STRUCTURE
- DEMOGRAPHICS
- CHANGES IN PERCEPTION
- NEW KNOWLEDGE
I work for company that manufactures custom hermetic housings for the microelectronics industry. My entire industry was built from NEW KNOWLEDGE. The birth of the microprocessor made the housings we make essential. Without our housings the microchips and other components would be exposed and could get damaged.
When the PERCEPTION of consumers CHANGED about how they would communicate with each other created much innovation in my industry. Packaging an component manufacturing have to keep up with the the consumer demand for data. The more data we consume with our HD TVs, iPads, iPhones, Kindles, WiFe hotspots, etc the faster data transfer devices we need.
High end electronics historically was used by the military but as the DEMOGRAPHICS changed to include academia and business users, the popularity at usefulness of them grew. As people grew accustom to such electronics they blossomed into the commercial arena.
NGK Sparkplugs took advantage of their INDUSTRY AND MARKET STRUCTURE in the early 90s as Intel's Pentium processor was introduced. NGK is an industry leader in the sparkplug business which uses a ceramic based insulator. This ceramic knowledge tranferred well into the ceramic substrate business and they made millions packaging Intel's and AMD's early processors.
The invention of the IC in the 50s quickly led to the PROCESS innovation of thermalcompression bonding. It was imperative to be able to connect these new IC's to the circuit boards. Now we have automated machince that can process thousands of wirebonds per minute.
We are constantyly dealing with INCONGRUIETIES in our business. Our customers want a smaller package that has more I/O (ins and outs) and can dissipate more heat. Although difficult, our industry as developed many ways to pack I/O into smaller and smaller footprints and the utilization of various metal alloys and brazing methods allow for strong heat dissipation.
The microwave over was an UNEXPECTED invention by Ratheon Corporation. An engineer in the 40s was working on a new vacuum tube called the magnatron. He noticed his nearby lunch was "cooking" while he was working on the magnatron. He finally detemined that the low level microwaves from the tubes were causing the cooking. Raytheon developed the Radarange and put it to market in 1947.
How interesting that you should mention that your company, actually the entire industry, was built on new knowledge... yet not directly, but in a supporting role. If not for the microprocessor, there would have been no need for what your company provides, as well as the other required components to make this item functional and useful. New knowledge bred the need for yet more new knowledge to develop both hardware and software. The original breakthrough was in itself insufficient to make a product that could be sold to the general public "as is". Just think of the jobs/careers and the markets created from this innovation.
ReplyDeleteAn interesting take on perception. Do you believe that in this case, consumer behavior and/or demand is a perception of reality? Are people's perception of mobile device uses and capabilities a perception or a result of the device providers creating a need, or telling the customers that their devices have unlimited potential and they now believe they not only can use, but need the extra ability?
ReplyDeleteGreat example of unexpected. I think that all unexpected results are incredible. I remember years ago I had a student working in my biochemistry lab and they mixed up the solutions that I had asked them to use for a chromatographic experiment and the results provided a vey surprising result that no one would have expected. After a little more work, I ended up implementing this mistake into a production process for a clinical drug.