Second in a #ReadWithMe series.
Matt Ridley’s How Innovation Works is a treasure trove of examples which suggest that innovation is often serendipitous. Indeed, sometimes “use precedes understanding”. Writes Ridley that “throughout history, technologies and inventions have been deployed successfully without scientific understanding of why they work”. Later science catches up.
This is something to keep in mind, when confronted with the so called “linear model”, by which government funds pure science which leads to applied research which (purportedly) leads to economic progress.
One interesting case in point is variolation. Lady Mary Wortley witness to inoculation against smallpox in Constantinople, where her husband was an ambassador. She did “engraft” “her son Edward, anxiously watching his skin erupt in self-inflicted pustules before subsiding into immunized health. It was a brave moment. On her return to London she inoculated her daughter as well, and became infamous for her championing of the somewhat reckless procedure”.
Ridley remarks that “To a rational person in the eighteenth century, Lady Mary’s idea that exposure to one strain of a fatal disease could protect against that disease must have seemed crazy. There was no rational basis to it. It was not until the late nineteenth century that Louis Pasteur began to explain how and why vaccination worked”.
So, sometimes successful innovation arrives before science and actually defies the then consensus. This contributes to explain why it is so hard to plan it. How can you plan the unexpected?
READER COMMENTS
Phil H
Aug 11 2020 at 12:23am
The problem is that this just sounds like the council of despair. If we can’t possibly plan for innovation, then doesn’t anything go? Yet that has turned out to be conspicuously not true. The institutions of science that emerged in the 18th and 19th century and were perfected in the 20th century have been spectacularly successful. If Ridley is just saying that we can’t plan for innovation, he’s obviously wrong.
john hare
Aug 11 2020 at 4:42am
As an inventor myself, I can say for certain that inspirational moments cannot be planned. Those inspirational moments are a tiny part of the effort to make something work, but clearly a vital tiny part. It’s like and extended mathematical equation that contains multiply by zero anywhere in the equation.
It is the inspiration and the ability and the bravery to try it that make for innovation. I’ve known many people that have had ideas without the guts to try to move them forward. Then they see the idea implemented by others and think that “I should have done that” without realizing the effort that spans between the eureka moment and the delivered product.
The reason these innovations can’t be planned is that there must be many many lines of inquiry diligently pursued for each useful step forward. One item I have been thinking of for years has had a dozen or so eureka moments that each lead a bit closer to a working model. There are thousands of other people thinking about other ways of accomplishing something similar. Planning can’t account for which one will happen or when it will happen. Much less if someone else will find a way to make the gadget unnecessary in the first place.
If I could plan successful innovations, I would have been extremely wealthy decades ago.
Phil H
Aug 11 2020 at 6:03am
“If I could plan successful innovations…” then you’d be Henry Ford, or Bill Gates, or any of the other immensely successful business people who made it their business to profit from innovation. Or you’d be the chancellor of Cambridge or Imperial or MIT or Stanford.
The problem with Mingardi’s and your argument is that it’s black and white. Obviously not every moment can be planned. But it’s equally obvious that creating the right institutional environment does make a massive difference to whether or not innovation happens. Somewhere in the middle is the correct balance, where conditions are provided, but space for serendipity exists. And I’m not convinced that the hunt for that elusive sweet spot is helped by blunt statements like, “How can you plan the unexpected?”
john hare
Aug 11 2020 at 6:57am
The right institutional environment is important. Recognizing that government control more often hinders than helps is even more so.
Jon Murphy
Aug 11 2020 at 8:39am
Phil-
There is a fundamental difference between institutions and planning. Institutions help a multitude of plans flourish. The institutions of the 17th Century allowed exactly this; they allowed the magic of innovation to occur without necessarily scientific backing or approval from the scientific community (and I do mean “magic” in this sentence because “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”).
Now, is it true that individuals, like Ford, Vanderbilt, etc., all planned and thus were able to innovate? Yes. No one is saying to just act randomly. But for every Ford, there are countless other failed inventors whose ideas never made them rich. They planned, too. So individual planning, and consequently industrial planning. cannot be the source of scientific advancement by itself. Rather, as I argue in a current working paper, successful innovation comes from sympathy and discovery, not merely R&D.
Furthermore, I reject wholeheartedly your claim “If Ridley is just saying that we can’t plan for innovation, he’s obviously wrong.” I’d say it is obvious you cannot plan for innovation. The 20th Century is rife with examples of governments and organizations that tried to plan innovation only to have it be spectacularly, and dangerously, wrong: eugenics, socialism, fascism, etc. These were all efforts at planned innovation. They resulted in the deaths of hundreds of millions of people and perpetual social unrest felt still to this day.
Jens
Aug 11 2020 at 9:41am
In that lexical field of “planning”, “innovation”, “institutions”, “government” and “organizations” … how would you describe what has happened in China in the last 40 to 50 years?
Jon Murphy
Aug 11 2020 at 12:15pm
Up to about 10 years ago, they had massive liberalization in their institutions and far less central planning. Unfortunately, they are taking steps back now.
Jens
Aug 11 2020 at 6:11pm
By the way: I don’t think that eugenics, socialism, fascism caused the deaths of hundreds of millions of people because they went hand in hand with centrally planned innovation, but because they did not respect universal human rights. Universal human rights do not allow innovative restrictions (except if necessary to prevent violations of human rights), but they also cannot do without a certain centralization. One or the other lawyer would even call one or the other judgment an innovation.
Jon Murphy
Aug 12 2020 at 10:55am
I disagree. All those systems are centrally-planned innovation. That modern “industrial planning” doesn’t go quite as far is wholly irrelevant. It just means their atrocities are not as large in magnitude.
Jens
Aug 11 2020 at 6:04pm
Reading this post again, i realized what i find strange about it. The problem becomes obvious in the formulation “Lady Mary’s idea”. But Lady Mary actually had no revolutionary idea at all. She saw something in Constantinople that the people there probably learned from other people who lived further east. She neither had the idea for variolation nor developed a specific method for it. Her achievement lies in the fact that she had the appropriate communication skills and the social position to bring this procedure to her home country. That shouldn’t be belittled and her memory should be cherished, but that (just that) was her idea. To be honest, in this light it seems rather unclear why simply national vaccination strategies should not be described as innovative, good and centrally planned measures.
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