Lighting Industry: A Classical Case of Innovation

Exactly one hundred years ago Edison launched modern electrical lighting. He began studying the problem in 1877, and within a year and a half had made more than 1,200 experiments. Concurrently, recognizing that the series wiring systems then used for arc lights would not be satisfactory for incandescent lamps, Edison directed much more effort toward development of dynamos and other necessary equipment for multiple circuits. On October 21st, 1879, Edison lighted a lamp containing a carbonized thread for the filament. The lamp burned steadily for two days. Later he learned that filaments of carbonized visiting card paper (Bristol board) would give several hundred hours life. Soon carbonized bamboo was found acceptable and was used as the filament material. Extruded cellulose filaments were introduced by Swan in 1883. The first complete incandescent lighting system was publicly demonstrated at Edison's laboratory in Menlo Park, New Jersey, on December 21st, 1879. Edison was not only a great inventor, he was also a real innovator and entrepreneur. He determined the price of the lamp at a level of 40 cents despite the fact that the cost of one lamp at the beginning was 1.25 dollars. After three year's production he reduced the cost to 37 cents and more than compensated for all losses by an enormous turnover. The case of the lighting industry is very informative for innovation and industrial policy. The lighting industry first became the mother of electrical engineering, but later it was a highly specialized industry of less importance. On the other hand it still satisfies a quite important need. What might the future of the lighting industry be

Basic, Improvement and Pseudo-Innovations and their Impact on Efficiency

This paper was prepared on the basis of a research study of innovations, carried out by the authors. It's main aim is to promote a closer consensus in the discussion about innovation policy, in preparation for the forthcoming workshop "National Innovation Policy and Firm Strategy" (December 1979). We are grateful to Gerhard Mensch, Wolfgang Sassin, Christopher Freeman, Jurgen Kuczynski and Rolfe Tomlinson for various impacts given in discussions and talks

The Diffusion of Flexible Automation and Robots

This working paper is based on the authors' contributions to the Innovation Management Workshop held at IIASA in June 1981. Chapters 1-4 were written by Heinz-Dieter Haustein; chapter 5 was prepared by Harry Maier. The authors describe the role of flexible automation in increasing productivity, characterize flexible automation as a socioeconomic phenomenon, make a rough forecast of robot diffusion, and present some information on robots and national innovation policy using the GDR as an example

Decision Support for Innovation Management: Application to the Lighting Industry

Making decisions about resource allocation for future innovations is a challenging task in both planned and market economies. Not only can such decisions not be reversed without considerable loss of efficiency, but the decision maker generally faces a number of conflicting objectives. In this report the authors try to combine two disciplines that have been evolving independently for a long time: innovation theory and decision theory. A decision support system for managing innovations should reflect the multistage nature of the innovation process and should also be suited to multiobjective decision making. At the same time it is necessary to simplify the real situation for the decision maker in order to apply former procedures. A very promising scheme is the decision tree, though it has shortcomings. Application of decision trees is closely connected with the evaluation process. Almost all models for evaluating innovation projects operate with only one objective. However, discussions with decision makers in the lighting industry, which shows classic features of the innovation process, revealed the necessity to include at least three objectives in the evaluation. Therefore, the authors have made use of the possibilities of multiobjective decision making. The decision problem in this work concerns the allocation of resources to innovation projects for the 1981-85 Five-Year Plan in the German Democratic Republic. At present the model for evaluating innovation projects is based upon linear programming and decision trees. It will be improved in close collaboration with decision makers, using the results of goal programming and other aspects of decision theory

Selection and Evaluation of Innovation Projects

This working paper presents the first step of an ongoing research project which will be continued during the next few years at the University of Economic Sciences in Berlin. The subject of this paper is the decision-making process for decisions on innovations. During the past three decades considerable efforts have been devoted to investigating the role and importance of innovations for the growth and prosperity of firms both in market and planned economies. Effective management of innovations is a decisive factor in their development. A certain increase of funds devoted to R&D does not result in an appropriate increase of output in terms of productivity. Problems of an "optimal" management of innovations are investigated in many countries. The study was initiated by decision-makers of a particular industrial branch in the GDR. An analysis of the advantages and disadvantages of the decision-making process revealed the necessity of a decision support system. The approach developed is tailored to the case study but is general in several aspects. This paper describes a model for resource allocation in R&D which is well suited for our case study. The choice of the model type was based on an analysis both of the decision-making process in the particular firm and of existing models for this purpose. A combination of innovation theory and economic-mathematical methods for aiding decisions is from our viewpoint a necessary condition for a successful development and implementation of a system we are aiming at. A system of this kind will improve the decision-maker's understanding of the relationship between the long-term development of the firm and the resource allocation in R&D

Long Waves in World Industrial Production, Energy Consumption, Innovations, Inventions, and Patents and their Identification by Spectral Analysis

Scientists like to make the irregular regular, to draw curves even in cases where nothing can be seen at all. Periodical wave curves are an excellent means of organizing the unorganized, of arranging the unarranged. Recent studies on long waves in economic development have found a periodicity in the time series of inventions and innovations that works exactly like a clock with an accelerating mechanism. What we have done here is simply to collect some interesting empirical figures and to exploit them by spectral analysis in order to find out whether regularities exist, and if so, whether they are statistically significant

Appropriate Technology

Social and technical innovations are crucial to solving or alleviating many important contemporary problems; for example improvement of living and working conditions in the developing countries. In this paper we try to explore some problems of technological change. The main ideas contained in this paper are the result of discussions among the three authors, who have very different social backgrounds and viewpoints. Most of the ideas in the paper were presented at the IFAC Symposium "Criteria for Selecting Appropriate Technologies Under Different Cultural, Technical and Social Conditions", (Bari, Italy, 21-23 May 1979). The discussions at this meeting and at other scientific meetings, especially those at IIASA, the East-West Center Honolulu, and at the Institute for Developing Countries, in Berlin, German Democratic Republic, stimulated our thinking about appropriate technology

Innovation and Efficiency

Innovation is a complex phenomenon that involves all spheres of technological, economic, and social activity, from research and development to investment, production, and application. In the management of innovation the relationship between innovation and efficiency is the key issue. In this report, therefore, we elaborate on a method for measuring efficiency in the innovation process. The core of our concept of efficiency is the link between the efficiency of the production unit that has adopted an innovation (dynamic efficiency) and the efficiency of the entire production field within which production units must act (average efficiency). The development of relative efficiency is connected to differences between basic, improvement-related, and pseudo innovations and to the decision-making environment for managers. Factors influencing innovative activities follow a continuum of efficacy ranging from inhibiting to strongly promoting innovative activities. Looking at the innovation process from the standpoint of the innovating system, we distinguish major determinants of performance and them compare the performance of industrial organizations through a profile showing these determinants in research and development, production, and marketing and in management at all stages