Inspirations


		Albert Einstein Alan Kay Vic Mills Ron Hickman Frederick Tudor Unlikely Inventors (Who didn’t know any better) Wrong Experts (Who should have known better)

		Albert Einstein Ask anyone today to name three geniuses and chances are that Einstein will be amongst them. Yet if his teachers were to be believed he was far from being a genius. At age ten he was apparently told he wouldn't amount to much - he showed little interest in learning the lessons his teachers wanted him to learn. Einstein managed to graduate from secondary school at Aarau in 1900 as a teacher of mathematics and physics. He tried but failed to obtain a post at a University - due in part to a lack of sponsorship from his teachers. Eventually he took up a temporary post at the patent office in Bern where he worked from 1902 to 1909. During this time he published many theoretical physics papers that he had written alone and in his spare time. It was during his time at the patent office that Einstein came up with his famous relativity theories. One afternoon he was lying down on the grass after lunch, playing with the effect the sunlight made through his eyelashes. He wondered how the world would appear to an observer riding towards it on a beam of light. This question sparked the train of thought that led in 1905 to the special theory of relativity and his insights on mass energy equivalence, culminating in the now famous equation e=mc². Einstein's insights came from an insatiable nature of questioning what he observed and active use of his imagination. Einstein’s refusal to be constrained by conventional thinking and accepted ‘common sense’ can be seen in his life and speaks to us still through his famous quotations. "Never lose a holy curiosity" “The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education" "It is the theory that decides what we can observe" "Common sense is the collection of prejudices collected by age eighteen" "We should take care not to make the intellect our god; it has of course powerful muscles, but no personality." "Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." "Try not to become a man of success, but rather try to become a man of value." "Few are those who see with their own eyes and feel with their own hearts" "Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new" "Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts" "Imagination is more important than knowledge”

		Alan Kay Alan Kay invented the computer graphical user interface (GUI) when working at Xerox Corporation’s Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). Xerox management couldn’t see the value in Kay’s GUI technology. In particular, Xerox made its money by the ‘per copy’ counter inside each photocopying machine. Instead it was Steve Jobs who, after a guided tour of PARC, realised the potential of the GUI for making computers easier to operate and incorprated this feature into his Apple Macintosh computer. After seeing how easy it was for people to use the Macintosh GUI, Bill Gates launched Microsoft Windows. The rest, as they say, is history: - and several hundred billion dollars of market capitalisation... Why didn’t Xerox see the value of the GUI? Primarily because their context awareness for the business revolved around photocopiers. Like “Hoover” with vacuum cleaners, “Xerox” is synonymous with “photocopiers”. Not only that, but Xerox didn’t make money from copier sales, but on the usage fees recorded by a little counter that totalled up the number of pages copied. With the GUI there was no counter, so to the Xerox mindset they couldn’t see how to make money from it. Why did Alan Kay come up with the GUI? Kay learned to read by the age of three and as he later said: "By the time I got to school, I had already read a couple hundred books. I knew in the first grade that they were lying to me because I had already been exposed to other points of view. School is basically about one point of view -- the one the teacher has or the textbooks have. They don't like the idea of having different points of view, so it was a battle. Of course I would pipe up with my five-year-old voice." One of Kay’s key insights was that: "Point of view is worth 80 IQ points". His ability to think in different ways to the one point of view held by the computer experts of his day, led him to think of the computer in an entirely new way. What computer experts saw as a number crunching machine programmed through a pseudo mathematical language, he saw as something he called a "super paper" on which people could do anything they could do with real paper, but much more.. Although they operated in very different domains, Kay is a kindred spirit to Einstein in his staunch refusal to be constrained by the prevailing self awareness and ‘common sense’ wisdom of others in his field.

		Vic Mills In the late 1950’s Vic Mills and a team of Procter & Gamble colleagues invented the disposable baby diaper (nappy). According to diaper industry folklore the initial response of P&G senior management was one of respectful admiration for the work but not swift recognition of its commercial relevance to the firm. The response was along the lines of ‘Great idea Vic. Just one question: Where’s the soap?’. P&G had been founded in 1837 by candle-maker William Procter and soap-maker James Gamble. 120 years of reinforcement of the self and context awareness that “We are a soap company” could easily have prevented P&G from seeing the relevance of a product which subsequently brought it billions of dollars in sales and profits and a continuing line of business more than 40 years later. Mills became a legend in his own lifetime and even today P&G staff can win the Vic Mills prize for innovation. P&G no longer defines its self awareness as being a soap company, but that it exists to improve the lives of the world’s consumers.

		Ron Hickman On September 27, 1910, Duncan Black and Alonzo Decker founded the Black & Decker Manufacturing Company. They initially produced specialised machinery, including milk bottle capping and confectionery machines. In 1917, B&D introduced the world's first portable electric drill, creating the power tools industry and a very strong sense of self awareness as a power tool company. In 1968, Ron Hickman invented and patented a folding workbench, destined to become the B&D ‘Workmate’. However, initially Black & Decker weren’t at all interested and it was only after Hickman had set up his own business to produce and sell the Workmate and achieved four years of significant sales growth that B&D took it on. As any DIY enthusiast (or reluctant!) will know, having something to hold a workpiece whilst it was being worked on with a power tool is a great benefit from a customer perspective. Why did B&D not see the relevance of the Workmate straight away? As creators of the power tool industry B&D were manufacturers of motorised tools. As the Workmate had no motor, it wasn’t obviously relevant to B&D. B&D’s example shows how important it is to have a self awareness that is defined from a customer perspective. This is even more amply demonstrated in the case of Frederick Tudor’s Ice Company

		Frederick Tudor and the Tudor Ice Company In the 18th and 19th centuries, the US had a thriving ice cutting industry in New England, centred around Boston. Frederick Tudor’s Tudor Ice Company is a great example of what happens when an industry incumbent doesn’t reinvent itself, or more specifically when it develops the wrong self awareness and context awareness. Frederick Tudor was born into a prominent Boston family in 1783 and chose to go straight into business rather than attend Harvard. Like many entrepreneurs of his day he was not an easy man to work for; the Dictionary of American Biography describes him as "an extreme example of militant, despotic, and punitive individualism." Sounds pretty “organisational era” to us. In 1806, Tudor sent a cargo of ice to the West Indies island of Martinique. Tudor incurred both some debt and the ridicule of his friends, but persisted in his venture, designing improved methods for insulating, storing, and shipping ice. By 1826 his ice cutting company was shipping 12,000 tons a year. By 1836, he was up to 65,000 tons and by 1856 the “Ice King” was shipping 150,000 tons of harvested ice per year, as far afield as India and Hong Kong. The Tudor Ice Company even owned its own specialised ice storage facilities in far flung places such as Madras (Chennai) in India, where the specially designed Ice House used by Tudor’s company from 1842 to 1874 still stands as a local monument. By 1886 the annual ice harvest had grown to 25 million tons, but by 1920, the ice harvesting industry had practically died out, replaced by refrigeration technology. Why did the Tudor Ice Company die out? One one level the answer is obvious - refrigeration technology replaced ice cutting. But that doesn’t explain why it wasn’t Tudor who exploited the new ice making technology. After all, his company had the established global customer base and the international transport and logistics networks that were still needed for selling the ice - which was initially made in large industrial refrigeration plants and shipped. The deeper reason why the Tudor Ice company missed the future was their self awareness. They simply didn’t know what business they were in. They thought they were in the ice cutting and shipping business. In fact the Tudor Ice Company had never understood that it was in the business of providing customers with cold. And when a better way of providing cold came along, the customers naturally turned to them. Frederick Tudor’s awareness rendered him blind to the threat from machine made ice. If he had realised that he was in the cold business rather than the ice business there might be a Tudor Inc fridge or freezer in your kitchen today..

		Unlikely Inventors It is often unlikely people who come up with the breakthrough innovations. Unlike established experts who have a strong sense of identity invested in a previous ‘S’ curve, such people simply refuse to accept the status quo. Examples include: The seed drill - invented by Jethro Tull, a lawyer and barrister - apparently inspired by the memory of a church organ he had once taken apart. The telephone - invented by Alexander Graham Bell, a speech therapist. The pneumatic tyre - invented by John Boyd Dunlop, a vet. The aeroplane - invented by bicycle shop owners, Wilbur and Orville Wright. The suction vacuum cleaner - invented by Hubert Cecil Booth, a structural engineer who designed fairground wheels and bridges. The ball point pen - invented by John Loud, a leather tanner The diving bell - invented by Edmund Halley, an astronomer (as in Halley’s Comet). The hydrofoil - invented by Ramus, a French priest. The life preserver - invented by another French priest (in case you were wondering it was eighty years before the hydrofoil...) The safety razor - invented King Camp Gillette, a salesman. Gillette demonstrated the required self belief and resilience to succeed after having visited metallurgists at MIT, who assured him his idea was quite impossible. The knitting frame, or as it was known then the "stocking frame", was invented by an English vicar, who clearly didn’t stick to his knitting..

		Wrong Experts Experts can often be relied upon to shoot themselves soundly in the foot by summarily rejecting new innovations that promise major upheaval in their fields of expertise. The rejection is all the more severe when the innovation redefines the established expert’s self and context awareness; as the following examples amply demonstrate: “The energy produced by the breaking down of the atom is a very poor kind of thing. Anyone who looks for a source of power in the transformation of the atom is talking moonshine”. (Nuclear Physicist and President of the Royal Society Sir Ernest Rutherford, 1933) “There will never be a mass market for motor cars - about 1,000 in Europe - because that is the limit on the number of chauffeurs available”. (Spokesman for Daimler Benz) “The concept is interesting and well-formed, but in order to earn better than a “C,” the idea must be feasible”. (Yale University management professor on Fred Smith’s paper proposing a reliable overnight delivery service - Smith went on to found Federal Express) “Every part of the scheme shows that this man [George Stephenson] has applied himself to a subject of which he has no knowledge, and to which he has no science to apply”. (Parliamentary Committee 1825) “Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible”. (Lord Kelvin, President of the Royal Society 1890-5) “Aeroplanes are interesting toys but of no military value”. (Marshal Ferdinand Foch, Professor of Strategy, Ecole Superieure de Guerre) “All attempts at artificial aviation are not only dangerous to human life, but foredoomed to failure from the engineering standpoint”. (Engineering Editor, The Times, 1906) “What, sir, you would make a ship sail against the wind and currents by lighting a bonfire under her decks? I pray you excuse me. I have no time to listen to such nonsense”. (Napoleon Bonaparte, 1803) “The idea that cavalry will be replaced by these iron coaches is absurd. It is little short of treasonous”. (ADC to Field Marshal Haig, at tank demonstration, 1916) [Edison’s electric lamp] ... “is good enough for our transatlantic friends ... but unworthy of the attention of practical or scientific men”. (British Parliamentary Committee, 1878) “Radio has no future”. (Lord Kelvin, President of the Royal Society 1890-5) “Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?” (Harry Warner, Warner Brothers, 1927) “Television won’t matter in your lifetime or mine”. (Rex Lambert, The Listener, Editorial, 1936) “Television won’t last. It’s a flash in the pan”. (Mary Somerville, pioneer of radio educational broadcasts, 1948 “Television? No good will come of this device. The word is half Greek and half Latin”. (C. P. Scott 1846-1932) “X-rays will prove to be a hoax”. (Lord Kelvin, President of the Royal Society, 1890-5) “I think there is a world market for maybe five computers”. (Thomas J. Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943) “There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home”. (Ken Olson, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corporation, 1977). DEC was eventually bought by PC manufacturer Compaq. “The Americans have need of the telephone, but we do not. We have plenty of messenger boys”. (Sir William Preece, British Postmaster General, 1896.) “We don't like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out” (Decca rejecting the Beatles, 1962) “That professor Goddard and his chair in Clark College and the countenancing of the Smithsonian Institution does not know the relation between action and reaction, and of the need to have something better than a vacuum against which to react – to say that would be absurd. Of course, he only seems to lack the basic knowledge ladled out daily in high schools”. (New York Times, 1921. The Times printed a formal retraction on July 17, 1969, just prior to the first manned moon landing.) "Louis Pasteur's theory of germs is ridiculous fiction." (Pierre Pachet, Professor of Physiology at Toulouse, 1872). "640K [of computer memory] ought to be enough for anybody." (Bill Gates, 1981).