COLLABORATIVE INNOVATION: ESSENTIAL FOUNDATION OF SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY - Collaborative Computational Technologies for Biomedical Research - page 34

deal with the issue of failure versus learning. Edison did not invent the light
bulb; it had been created 35 years earlier. His development team in Menlo
Park, New Jersey, worked tirelessly to perfect the design of a commercially
successful light bulb. It required new technologies to create a vacuum in the
bulb, a totally new approach to fi laments, and a structure to secure the fi lament.
Edison's team examined and created experiments based on over 3000 theses
and conducted over 10,000 experiments [10]. Edison created a database of
knowledge coupled with his diverse reading, which ignited his ability to gener-
ate a broad range of hypotheses [1].

2.6 EMPOWER INNOVATION CHAMPIONS

2.6.1 Nature of Champions

Scientifi c research is not easy work. It entails long hours, multiple unknowns,
and endless complexity. In the fi nal analysis of success, those who prevail to
the end are not the most intelligent (although intelligence doesn't hurt) or
the most famous or the most endowed with resources. Rather, success is
bestowed upon the most creative, connected, and committed; those who can
move from ideas, through strategy, into action. This is the domain of the spir-
ited champion.

2.6.2 Role of Champions

Without champions, the ordinary inertia that plagues most organizations
will stifl e most innovation, because innovation, by its nature, is change, and
change, by its nature, is threatening to most people because it destabilizes the
status quo.
To make any innovation occur, three underlying issues must be understood
and addressed according to Stanford's Kathleen Eisenhardt [3, pp. viii-ix]:

First, innovation is the result of synthesizing, or “bridging” ideas from different
domains . . . extraordinary innovations are the result of simultaneously thinking
in multiple boxes, not of the oft-prescribed “thinking outside the box.” In short,
extraordinary innovations are often the result of recombinant invention. . . . while
it may be appealing to focus on the future, breakthrough innovation depends
upon exploiting the past . Combining often well-known insights from diverse set-
tings creates novel ideas that can, in turn, evolve into innovations (for example,
the Apple iPod used no new technology. Its meteoric sales were due to using
existing technology in new ways that improved the user interface).

Second, the organizing structure can dominate creativity. Years of academic
research suggest that, beyond some fairly low threshold, successful innovators
are not really more gifted or creative than the rest of us. Rather, they simply
exploit the networked structure of ideas within unique organizational
frameworks.