LESSONS
FROM AN INNOVATOR
He
was an Australian, from Brisbane, and he wore that black leather cowboy
hat Aussies like, a white T-shirt and baggy brown pants. He carried a
little too
much weight as many of us do these days, especially when you get over
50, which I’d say he was.
There were just the two of us on the shuttle from LA International airport
to the Sheraton Gateway where Air New Zealand had kindly organised rooms for
us to make up for the fact that our plane had been six hours late leaving New
Zealand. I can’t remember the last time I was on an Air New Zealand flight
that both left and arrived on time. This particular delay had caused us both
to miss onward connections and Air New Zealand’s charity meant we didn’t have
to spend ten hours hanging around the airport bars.
After we had exchanged grizzles about the airline and compared war stories
about previous trips, he told me that he was on his way to Detroit, and that
he goes there four times a year. It seems he is an inventor and he has developed
what he called “a simple device” that dramatically reduces exhaust emissions
in cars. “Bush wants emissions reduced by 14% over the next four years,” he
told me, his eyes twinkling. “Our device can reduce them by 40%.” He visits
Detroit regularly because GM is very interested in his invention and has asked
for an exclusive deal. “We knocked that on the head,” he said smiling, “because
last trip we demonstrated our invention to the EPA (Environmental Protection
Agency) and they said that if they get results like that in a couple more tests,
they’ll require it to be installed in every new car made in America.” I didn’t
do the maths but I would imagine if that happened he wouldn’t have to watch
quite so closely what he spends in the grocery store each week.
My travelling companion told me that he has been working on the idea for
the last twenty years. In fact, he started when he was an apprentice. “I kept
thinking there just had to be a better, more efficient way, for combustion
to take place inside an engine. It took me only a couple of years to work out
what had to happen but a lot longer to figure out how to build something that
would make it happen. The device itself is simple. The problem was really the
software. We used the same software used in missiles in the end.”
In the fifteen minutes it took us to get to our hotel, I learned three lessons
about innovation.
1. It starts with curiosity, especially about how something could be made
better. It was George Bernard Shaw, the Irish playwright who said, “Some men
see things that are and ask why. I see things that never were and ask why not.” That’s
the kind of thinking that leads to innovation. While most of us can think of
reasons why things cannot happen, innovators ask themselves, “What would have
to happen to make this work.”
2. The device does not have to be complex. My colleague pointed out to me
several times just how simple his device was. In fact, he told me that the
engineers at GM didn’t believe that (a) something that simple could make such
a big difference and (b) that they hadn’t thought of it themselves. As Edward
de Bono, the expert on creative thinking, once said, “Innovations have logic
only in hindsight.”
3. It takes persistence and commitment to get an idea into the marketplace.
Twenty years or more is how long this Aussie has been working on his invention
and at least five of those years have been trying to get someone to buy it.
God knows how much money he has ploughed into this project, or what he has
gone without to convert a dream into reality. He’s not there yet but he thinks
he can see light at the end of the tunnel.
It’s amazing who’s out there and what they’re doing - and what you can learn
from them.
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