They say necessity is the mother of invention. Adam Smith believed that laziness, or at least self-interest, was the father. He talks of the fire engine and of how, ‘one of the greatest improvements since it was first invented was the discovery of a boy who wanted to save his own labour’.
DEFINING IDEA…
Discovery consists of seeing what everyone has seen and thinking what nobody has thought.
~ ALBERT GYORGYI, NOBEL PRIZE WINNER
Apparently a boy was constantly employed in the first fire engines to open and shut the communication between boiler and cylinder as a piston went up and down. One inventive young lad, who preferred playing to working, noticed that if he simply tied a string to the handle then the piston would open and shut the valve without his assistance, ‘and leave him at liberty to divert himself with his play-fellows’.
Smith goes on to suggest that other inventions are made by, ‘philosophers or men of speculation, whose trade it is not to do anything, but to observe everything; and who, upon that account, are often capable of combining together the powers of the most distant and dissimilar objects’.
Just look at the humble laser. Albert Einstein’s ability to combine distant and dissimilar objects led to his groundbreaking observation of Max Planck’s Law of Radiation. It was ‘Einstein’s coefficients’ in 1917 that laid the foundation for the invention of the laser. Forty years later, Charles Hard Townes and Arthur Leonard Schawlow invented the concept, but they were pipped at the post: the first working laser was demonstrated by Theodore Maiman at Hughes Research Laboratories, California, in May 1960.
Since then laser technology has been adopted into a wide range of unrelated businesses because someone was able to see beyond its current use, tweak the technology and move it into new fields. Today lasers are used in industries as diverse as optical storage in CDs and DVDs, fibre optic communication, bar codes, laser printers, and in medicine, with bloodless surgery, laser healing and eye correction. The same basic technology is also employed in manufacturing for cutting and welding, while the beauty industry uses lasers for hair removal and to treat acne. In the military, lasers are used for range finding, target designation, even testing directed energy weapons. Laser lighting is also used in entertainment, such as the laser light show, the Symphony of Lights, that takes place over Hong Kong every night at 8 p.m.
Smith reminds us that invention is possible by those at the coalface of operation when, ‘each individual becomes more expert in his own peculiar branch, more work is done upon the whole, and the quantity of science is considerably increased by it’. It is also possible for those sufficiently removed from the process to pull in knowledge from other areas and make connections not previously seen by others.
HERE’S AN IDEA FOR YOU…
When a new employee joins the team they are usually keen to exert their influence and make their mark. Those with experience in other businesses or industries either cross-pollinate good ideas into a new business or end up throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Upon arrival, initiate a group brainstorming session to bring existing and new ideas together, and choose the best in a collaborative and supportive way.