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Did you know that the incandescent lightbulb
first emerged some thirty years before Thomas Edison famously
"turned night into day"? Or that Henry Ford's
revolutionary assembly line came from Singer sewing machines,
meatpacking, and Campbell's Soup?
In this fascinating study of innovation,
engineer and social scientist Andrew Hargadon argues that
our romantic notions about innovation as invention are actually
undermining our ability to pursue breakthrough innovations.
Based on ten years of study into the origins
of historic inventions and modern innovations from the lightbulb
to the transistor to the Reebok Pump athletic shoe, How
Breakthroughs Happen takes us beyond the simple recognition
that revolutionary innovations do not result from flashes
of brilliance by lone inventors or organizations. In fact,
innovation is really about creatively recombining ideas,
people, and objects from past technologies in ways that
spark new technological revolutions.
This process of "technology brokering"
is so powerful, explains Hargadon, because it exploits the
networked nature -- the social side -- of the innovation
process. Moving between historical accounts of labs and
factory floors where past technological revolutions originated
and field studies of similar processes in today's organizations,
Hargadon shows how technology brokers create an enduring
capacity for breakthrough innovations.
Technology brokers simultaneously bridge
the gaps in existing networks that separate distant industries,
firms, and divisions to see how established ideas can be
applied in new ways and places, and build new networks to
guide these creative recombinations to mass acceptance.
How Breakthroughs Happen identifies three distinct
strategies for technology brokering that managers can implement
in their organizations.
Hargadon suggests that Edison and his counterparts
were no smarter than the rest of us -- they were simply
better at moving through the networked world of their time.
Intriguing, practical, and counterintuitive, How Breakthroughs
Happen can help managers transform their own firms into
modern-day factories.
Andrew Hargadon is Assistant Professor
of Technology Management at the Graduate School of Management
at the University of California, Davis.
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