I love backstories! Behind the greatest breakthroughs in human histories are often simple patterns and serendipities that stoke my sense of wonder and awe. They also drive me to proselytize about emergent innovation – the kind of everyday innovation that any enterprise can learn to master.
There’s a nice backstory to Galileo’s telescope that’s as applicable today as it was 400 years ago! Let’s start with the basic history, compliments of Radio Free Europe:
Despite the summer heat, the Senate of Venice assembled on this day in 1609 to view a remarkable scientific instrument. It was built by the well-known astronomer and philosopher from Pisa, Galileo Galilei, and could make distant objects appear closer when viewed through one end of its long pipe. It was a telescope.
Not that Galileo had invented the instrument. Credit for that is generally given to a Dutch stargazer who is almost forgotten today, Hans Lipperhay, who unveiled his basic telescope only the previous year, in 1608.
But Galileo, ever the practical perfectionist, had already improved upon the basic essentials and produced a variable-focus instrument that increased the size of the observed object by eight times.
Why he presented it first of all to the assembled Venetian senators is not clear. But perhaps the Venetians, who had business and commerce in their marrow, saw this instrument as a way to boost their glass lens industry. After all, Venice along with Florence, was the leading center for high-quality ground glass for spectacle lenses and magnifying glasses.
Certainly Galileo made money building and selling his telescope to eager customers, until his designs were overtaken in a relatively short time by more sophisticated types.
The outline of the innovation backstory doesn’t need much interpreting:
1. The telescope made Galileo a more productive astronomer. In economic terms, innovation is not “newness” but “new productivity.”
2. Galileo didn’t invent the telescope; he optimized it to his work. Invention must be adopted and used to constitute innovation. Invention, Professor Kathleen Eisenhardt explains, “…is the starting line of the race, not the finish.”
3. Galileo, and the original inventor Lipperhay, were both “lead users” – the folks striving to solve real world problems that MIT innovation scholar Eric von Hippel identifies as perhaps our most productive source of innovation.
4. Classic Schumpeterian economics are at work here: Lipperhay invents the telescope, Galileo quickly “improved upon the basic essentials,” and “more sophisticated types” were soon brought to market (by manufacturers rather than lead users, I would speculate). In this brief span of time, we can see the “creative destruction” triggered by new productivity and the “temporary monopoly” held fleetingly by each round of telescope maker.
5. Galileo’s rapid improvement of Lipperhay’s design was probably greatly facilitated by his proximity to the high level of glass-making in Venice, particularly the grinding and polishing of lenses. Innovation springs from local superiorities.
6. Finally, although absent from the above summary, there is rapid and wide diffusion of Galileo’s tool through many continents and occupations. Often, the best business opportunities require — not the scientific genius of a Galileo — but the ability to identify and harness emerging innovations that will have a similar rapid and wide diffusion. As economist William Baumol notes, “invention is not a prerequisite to being an innovation contributor.” The Internet is an obvious contemporary example.
For a more complete history of innovations in optics and telescopes, see The Galileo Project.
Topics: Innovation, Productivity, Superiorities
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