Segway, Invention Versus Innovation
On the surface invention and innovation are closely related words, but in practice they can be worlds apart. Invention is focused inwardly on a new idea. It is a world of secrets and patents. Innovation on the other hand is focused outwardly and is a process that takes an idea (an invention) and applies it successfully to a given situation or problem. Innovation is a world of collaboration, adjustments, and adapting to the market. See Wikipedia for more on innovation and how it differs from invention.
The Dorky Segway - Great Invention Lacking Innovation |
Most Inventions Fail Without Innovation.
TechDirt’s posting, Why Segway Failed To Reshape The World: Focused On Invention, Rather Than Innovation, has a great write-up on innovation and invention using the Segway as an example. Here the Segway was a great invention for personal transportation, but there was no real innovation process to make it successful.
Segway - A Great Invention that Failed to Launch. The reason that the Segway failed is because people look dorky when riding a Segway. Paul Graham’s recent essay about why the Segway failed to change the world tells us that a lack of innovation killed the Segway invention from becoming a huge success. Paul tells us that the Segway made people look dorky and that a better design would have made the Segway more appealing to a mass market. Paul says in his essay:
“Curiously enough, what got Segway into this problem was that the company was itself a kind of Segway. It was too easy for them; they were too successful raising money. If they’d had to grow the company gradually, by iterating through several versions they sold to real users, they’d have learned pretty quickly that people looked stupid riding them. Instead they had enough to work in secret. They had focus groups aplenty, I’m sure, but they didn’t have the people yelling insults out of cars. So they never realized they were zooming confidently down a blind alley.”
Segway Failed the Reality Test. Sometimes it is is the little things that destroy a great, new idea. I have always liked the Segway, but the normal person does look dorky when riding them. With a bicycle, a skateboard, or a motorcycle, the rider does at least to appear to be making an effort when riding them. The rider of a bicycle, skateboard, or motorcycle seems to be one us “normal” people. With a Segway, the rider appears to make no effort when riding the Segway. The Segway rider ends up looking more like a “want-to-be” Pope riding a Pope-mobile than an “average” person. Thus, the Segway becomes relegated to selected security occupations such as mall police and outdoor security.
Prototype to Success. This is one of the reasons I am a big believer in prototyping. New ideas are great, but until you get them in front of real people you do not know whether the idea is practical. Prototyping with real people in real situations is an innovation process that adjusts and adapts the new idea to meet the market need. The new idea is then killed, validated, or transformed to make a new idea great.
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Tags: Innovation, Invention, Protoyping