Jesse Eppink
At the TU Delft Science Center, me and my project group had a conversation with Alex Lokhorst, who currently does the marketing, sales and communication of the TU Delft Science Centre. I consider him a self-made and entrepreneurial man, who has been involved in many innovative projects. Until 2007 he worked as a manager of the ski- and snowboard school at SnowWorld, an indoor ski-park. He disliked the 'straight’, and rather dull existing ‘old’ generation snow domes. 1 The basics of his idea were not that complicated. He had an idea how to improve this, but had a really hard time pushing the idea through. Nevertheless, he now has the patent on the so called ‘butterfly shaped snowdome’, a sort of bowl-shaped snow park that is successful all over the world right now. After discussing his invention, he emphasized the importance of giving ideas a chance. Ideas might be useful and profitable, but if that is not the case, they might in the future lead to other inventions which are worth working towards. Interpreting this, I asked myself the following question: Is innovation in itself a useful objective?
In order to research that, the first thing to do is to pick a definition of innovation. "Innovation is an activity or process which may lead to previously unknown designs pertaining either to the physical world, the conceptual world, the institutional world or combinations of these which - when implemented - expand the set of options.” 2 This was taught me by Prof. dr. Van den Hoven in the third week of the course Responsible Innovation. This expanding of the set of options on itself may not sound very useful or responsible. In the past, there have been plenty of examples of clever inventions, with bad consequences. The atomic bomb for instance, was definitely expanding the set of options to end the second world war. Albert Einstein, the famous scientist whose discoveries led to the production of it, afterwards said the following: "Had I known that the Germans would not succeed in producing an atomic bomb," he said "I would have never lifted a finger." 3 Knowledge acquired from innovation can in the wrong hands surely be harmful.
On the other hand, there are enough examples where innovation does contribute more than was predicted at first. For instance, the enhanced designs for wheelchairs to be used for sports, now benefits not only sporting disabled people, but wheelchair users in general. New insights on greater performance of wheelchairs and the approach of effectively matching the technologies available with the customer, nowadays expand the set of options for the whole disabled public.4
Another example of an innovation with a goal beyond the reach of its own project is the so called ‘Nuna’, a solar powered car designed and produced by TU Delft students in association with companies. On their website, their goal is stated as follows: “The aim of the Nuon Solar Team is showing the world the possibilities of high-end technology and sustainable energy.5 In other words, this car, which will cost a great amount of time and money, is not even designed for practical usage.
For me, the lesson is clear. In order to come to radical and successful innovations, you sometimes just have to take a chance. Nowadays, the chance of translating a new original idea into a successful commercial product is less than 0.1 percent.2 Nevertheless, we must never stop innovating. New inventions lead to new insights and new insight lead to new inventions. My only concern is on the consequences of ‘successful’ inventions. We should not develop and implement all sorts of new techniques, unless we have thoroughly thought about the long-term effect the innovation may have. If that is the case, innovating to innovate is not that bad at all.
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Sources:
[1] Linkedin Indoor Ski Slope: https://www.linkedin.com/pub/alex-lokhorst/17/422/797
[2] MOOC Responsible Innovation: https://courses.edx.org/courses/DelftX/RI101x/3T2014/courseware/474dd04c54de4cee80338b9fc1d7dcb2/13c62dca6c91425bacf5e382ae51b405/
[3] The Atlantic – Technology: http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/11/ive-created-a-monster-on-the-regrets-of-inventors/249044/
[4] Wheelchair tech. in the Paralympics and its spin-offs: http://theconversation.com/wheelchair-technology-in-the-paralympics-and-its-spin-offs-8924
[5] Nuna: http://www.nuonsolarteam.nl/nuna/