An Innovation That Deserves Respect

Yesterday’s look at Global Innovation Leaders concerned me. Yes, the report’s conclusions were okay. However, we told just half of the story. It had me wondering about what was being produced.

As a result, we could be talking about a product or service, a process, or a new business model.

Innovative Goods and Services

Products and Services

Like this Harvard Business School online list, examples of innovations mostly include what you would expect.

1. The wheel
2. The printing press
3. The lightbulb
4. Automobiles
5. Computers
6. Cellular phones
7. The internet
8. The Bagless Vacuum Cleaner (This one surprised me.)
9. iPhones

Meanwhile, the History Channel’s list was slightly different:

1. The printing press
2. ‘The compass
3. Paper currency (This one delighted me.)
4. Steel
5. The electric light
6. Domestication of the horse
7. Transistors
8. Magnifying lenses
9. The telegraph
10. Antibiotics
11. The steam engine

The Nail and the Wheel

However, because a list says so little, we should say more.

In a 99% Invisible podcast, a structural engineer told us about the nail and the wheel. To really appreciate the nail, we have to go to a forge in ancient Rome where we would see the heat and what shaping it required. After placing a rod into an orangey (very hot) flame, you take it out, “whack it at the right angles in the right sequence.” Ancient blacksmiths had to make thousands, one by one for everything the Romans built.

Also long ago, in Mesopotamia, the first wheel had nothing to do with transport. As a potter’s device, it made vessels that stored food. Then, perhaps two thousand years later, someone reinvented the wheel and attached it to a cart. Dating back to the fourth millennium BCE, the archeological evidence was uncovered as a buried cart in the Russian North Caucasus. (Since then we have indeed been reinventing the wheel.)

After seeing how it is made (starting at 2 minutes 25 seconds), we can think of the nail as an amazing innovation:

Our Bottom Line: Private and Social Return

Long ago, Edwin Mansfield (1930-1997), a University of Pennsylvania economist, said that a seemingly small innovation can have a large impact. While he was referring to manufacturing inputs like thread, he could easily have been talking about the nail or the wheel. As Mansfield explained, at first an innovation benefits its developer. But then, from there, some innovations go big.

Rippling across millions of individuals, the social return of a small invention–like a nail–deserves our repect.

My sources and more: Yesterday’s post of global innovation leaders inspired today’s post. It started me wondering about specific examples. From there, I found other lists with different goods and services. But also, it took me to 99% Invisible and a wonderful book from Roma Agrawal. Also, please note that today we included several sentences from past econlife posts and our featured image is from 99% Invisible.