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How Breakthroughs Happen: The Surprising Truth About How Companies Innovate

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I have already been using Hargadon's research in MBA-level electives in innovation and technology management for its valuable insights to the managerial audience. Hargadon shows how innovation is intrinsically a social and cultural process (rather than the act of the isolated genius), and as a consequence, innovation is something that must be managed. The main advantage of Hargadon's work for a general managerial audience is it provides a theory of innovation that is adaptable to a wide-range of industries and technological settings, but at the same time eminently actionable with concrete recommendations and compelling, vivid examples that facilitate learning. Unlike most research on innovation that is narrowly focused on high-tech industries, Hargadon explores innovation as a general social process that is as important in areas as varied as mass manufacturing processes, specialty consumer products, and professional services. The book helps managers understand the importance of social structure and cultural context to the innovation process. In the process of explaining innovation, the book also introduces managers to complex theoretical issues around social structure and culture in a clear way that can be usefully applied by managers to arenas other than innovation. I will be assigning the book in my class this year as it compiles the previous research and adds new insights and cases in a handy and interesting package for the student.

The Summary:
This is book looks to answer the question, "Can Innovation really be routine?" This book not only answers that questions but actually gets into the details of "How". The title of the book is "How Breakthroughs Happen" and Hargadon definitely successfully explains the `How'. He doesn't proclaim that it is easy, but he does give a road map of how to achieve innovation through technology brokering, he even explains the different paths that apply to different types of companies. This book is ambitious since it is going to go in the face of popular belief that innovation is the sole province of geniuses. But it also isn't just another create an "innovative work space" through giving break/games rooms, adding free soda machines and providing all employees with Herman Miller chairs! This isn't a superficial answer to innovation; you can't just throw money at this and hope that innovation will just happen! But follow his rules and strategies you should be able to create an environment where recombinant ideas can flourish.

The central thesis of the book is that Innovation can be achieved through some best practices but first companies need to overcome the romantic preconception that innovation is the sole province of lone geniuses. Hargadon is a social scientist that has been researching innovation for the past decade. He explores the concept of technology brokering and creating Innovation factories a subject he first wrote about in a Harvard Business Review article - Building an Innovation Factory.

Hargadon's research explores in detail Edison's Menlo Park as an example of one of the first documented innovation brokerages. He also looks at modern day examples such as IDEO (a company he has worked at) and Design Continuum.

One of the most interesting topics that is discussed is the debunking of the `Lone Genius Myth' and how the media could be responsible for putting American companies years behind the Innovation race by propagating and even probably being the original instigators of this myth. America's love affair with heroes is behind this myth; everyone wants to believe the stories of the lone genius in the garage inventing the next great technology that will change the world. This is not to say that lone geniuses don't come up with great inventions, but more to the point, they aren't the only source of innovation. Hargadon even goes as far as to explore the theory that Edison propagated this myth as a marketing exercise, he tapped into the America's need for heroes and played up his role as the lone inventor in the lab. In actuality his lab was a perfect example of innovation factory. He had a lot of very smart engineers that worked at the lab and most of his long list of inventions was really a product of their combined genius.

Menlo Park, New Jersey represented the first dedicated R&D facility and showed the industrial world the power of organized innovation. Menlo Park exemplifies Hargadon's model for innovation; by linking people, objects and ideas together from diverse worlds of knowledge you can create an environment where innovation through recombination happens. An modern day example of `Recombinant Innovation' is taken from Design Continuum; they combined the concept of an `inflatable splint' and a basketball shoe to create the concept of a basketball shoe that is used to prevent injuries by providing inflatable ankle support. They created these `air bladders' from medical IV bags.

Menlo Park created an environment where recombinant innovation could happen by modeling the lab on machine shops from which Edison emerged. These machine shops were where mechanics and independent entrepreneurs/inventors worked side by side, sharing tools/machines, stories and inevitably ideas. Edison built his organization to redistribute the ideas emerging from the telegraph industry and applying it to any new industry that electricity was being applied to. By bringing these diverse industries together, by creating an environment where people with diverse background worked on diverse projects, side by side he had created one of the first Innovation Factories. People, Industries and ideas were brought together in an environment conducive to sharing.

Hargadon goes on to explain some of the underpinnings of his theory drawing from network theory and the theory of "small worlds". He then gets into the "how" by showing different brokering strategies:
- A company committed to a full time strategy i.e. IDEO, Menlo Park
- Remain focused on the core business but dedicate groups that bridge different worlds (departments) and help broker ideas - Xerox Parc, 3M's Optical Technology Center
- Develop a strategy to seize on one-time opportunities for brokering i.e. Microsoft and building the Xbox.

Hargadon completes the book by listing 8 rules that are the basis of an organized pursuit of innovation through technology brokering.

If you truly want to create an innovation factory, you should read this book and then apply what it teaches you.

This is a useful book, but it is quite boring. It could have been written in half the pages. I agree with an earlier reviewer that it is wordy and repetitive. You have to be patient to find a new idea buried under a pile of superfluous and redundant paragraphs. But it is insightful nonetheless. If you work in R&D, then you must read this book to see which model is suitable for innovation.

For many who read this book, it may well be a "surprising truth" that innovation succeeds "not by breaking free from constraints of the past but instead by harnessing the past in powerful new ways." I am among those who agree with the prophet Ecclesiastes that there is nothing new under the sun; also with the Greek philosopher Heraclitus who asserted that everything changes...but nothing changes. I also agree with Hargadon's emphasis on the importance of an innovation strategy which seeks to take full advantage of what can be learned from the past inorder to create the future. His core concept is "technology brokering" which he introduces and then rigorously examines in Part I; next, in Part II, he describes the "networked perspective" of innovation, explaining how this strategy influences the innovative process within organizations, regardless of their size and nature; finally, in Part III, Hargadon provides specific and practical examples of how various organizations have designed and then implemented technology brokering strategies. Throughout the narrative, Hargadon explores in depth with rigor and eloquence his core premise: "that breakthrough innovation comes by recombining the people, ideas, and objects of past technologies."

In this context, I am reminded of what Carla O'Dell asserts in If We Only Knew What We Know when discussing what she calls "beds of knowledge" which are "hidden resources of intelligence that exist in almost every organization, relatively untapped and unmined." She suggests all manner of effective strategies to "tap into "this hidden asset, capturing it, organizing it, transferring it, and using it to create customer value, operational excellence, and product innovation -- all the while increasing profits and effectiveness." Almost all organizations claim that their "most valuable assets walk out the door at the end of each business day." That is correct. Almost all intellectual "capital" is stored between two ears and much (too much) of it is, for whatever reasons, inaccessible to others except in "small change....there is no conclusion to managing knowledge and transferring best practices. It is a race without a finishing line."

I think this is precisely what Hargadon has in mind when insisting that the future is already here, that the "raw materials for the next breakthrough technology may [also] be already here [but probably] without assembly instructions," that decision-makers must find their "discomfort zones" rather than remain hostage to what Jim O'Toole calls "the ideology of comfort and the tyranny of custom," and that they should build a "bridge" to their own strengths but also to their weaknesses because, as they perform, so will their organization. I agree with Hargadon that innovation must unfold at the ground level, "in the minds and hearts of the engineers and entrepreneurs who are doing the work." Also, that -- meanwhile -- they and their associates must be guided and informed, not only by their own organization's "beds of knowledge" but also by external sources of information concerning prior successes and failures of the innovation process elsewhere. In the final analysis, there is good news and bad news. First the bad news: "New ideas are built from the pieces of old ones, and nobody works alone." Now the good news: "New ideas are built from the pieces of old ones, and nobody works alone."

Although I've bought many books from Amazon, and occasionally read a review, I've never actually written one. I'm prompted to do so now because of the importance of the message that Hargadon is sending -- one especially instructive to the those practicing (and influencing) new product development.

I am a NPD professional with almost 3 decades of experience and have witnessed many successful breakthroughs (and failures) and have participated in a few. From my perspective, Hargadon's book (part history, part documentary reporting, and part sociological observation) is offering up some key insights into the core of innovation in practice.

Hargadon describes the act of technology brokering as the ability to make new meaningful connections between (seemingly) disparate realms; a bridging across from various fields of science and technology to new and novel application areas. It's both analytical and synthetical, with a lot of rearranging in between.

For organizations, teams, and individual innovators to be effective at technology brokering, it is important to posses both breadth and depth that includes an understanding of multiple scientific disciplines and core principles that underlie technologies; knowledge of the nature and "exploitable" properties of materials, devices, and systems; and, likely, the most important, ability to work interdisciplinarily and collaboratively during the NPD process.

I highly recommend this book for anyone wanting to cut to the core of what makes breakthroughs happen. Arthur Schalow once said that the laser is "a solution looking for a problem". There is a world of technologies with utilizable properties out there, but those existing solutions are not doing the looking -- we, the technology brokers, are doing the looking.

As an experienced engineer/researcher, I agree with Hargadon's basic thesis that great innovators in history have not been leagues above everyone else. More commonly they have simply had the proper education and are in a position to use analogies from other fields to solve a problem in a unique way. Indeed, I would go further and say they are usually merely competent, which does not mean average.

In my experience, the average researcher is usually ineffective. This is due to funding management systems which reward mediocrity, staying within bounds, and not taking risks. True innovators have usually taken personal and financial risks, which Hargadon does not emphasize. However, he emphasizes that once one has a successful invention, they should realize they will not stay unique long and must broker the technology to not wind up like Philo Farnsworth.

This is a new research area pioneered by Hargadon, so the book is not a finished compedium like a macroeconomics text, which can draw upon decades of research. The book is very readable and interesting. It draws upon a number of historical and recent examples. My only complaint is that he might overplay a few firms like IDEO, but later editions might add more examples.

History of innovation process from Thomas Edison on. Focuses on examples of "brokering" processes by which existing ideas from multiple communities (isolated networks) are recombined to improve a new product/process/industry. Example Henry Ford's production line used the processes and ideas that were refined in Brewing, Sewing Machine Factories and Granaries.

This book provides a totally new dimension to look at innovation as a process. The concept of defining technology as an arrangement of Objects (hardware and software, tangible and unchanging), Ideas (understanding how to interact with objects) and People (those who know these objects and ideas) lays the foundation for the research. Innovation is a result of (Objects + People + Ideas) recombined in new ways.Innovations that happen this way are cheaper, quicker and are more likely to succeed. The social side of innovation as a process bridging distant worlds and building new communities is the most valuable contribution of this book. The author uses theories of sociology very effectively to further exploit this phenomenon.

Definition of networks and their relevance to the process of innovation is another important concept." Man is suspended in webs of significance he himself has spun" - Max Weber. Networks link distant social groups and their relationships. Breakthrough Innovations cause a dramatic shift in these networks according to the author. Case studies are liberally used to explain each concept. If Edison was an innovator he was actually great networker transforming the Menlo Park Laboratory of 15 engineers into a factory for patents. If Ford at Highland Park pioneered the assembly line for magnetos and then cars, it should also thank the meat packaging industry among others for the origination of these ideas.

If innovation is a recombination of objects, people and ideas in new ways, it is possible for firms having access to different industries to be the leaders in innovation. Design Continuum's contribution to Reebok pump athletic shoe came from its experience in the pharma industry. This firm with just 110 people is a place for combination of ideas in a systematic manner. " We enjoy working in diverse industries and it brings great benefit to our clients" - Gian Zaccai, CEO of Design Continuum.

The Concept of "Technology Brokering" to create new relationships is the key lesson for managers to practice. Managers in today's global businesses should see innovation as an integral part of business strategy. Taking this responsibility for innovation as a process, they should then promote networking to connect diverse product divisions across countries, encourage people to work in new areas, attract and retain people from diverse industries, and accept innovation as a social process rather than merely pumping money into laboratories that work in isolation. Innovation should happen by design and not by accident.

This book is very different from most other books on innovation and introduces a new paradigm that we cannot afford to ignore.

School have thought you wrong. Great innovations are not different from the rest of us. On the contrary - they are engaged in the same activities as we are. When we Rip.Mix and Burn we are in fact innovating. This book teaches us that using the past as building blocks in creating the future has always been the most successful way to create new innovative products. As such the book is not only very helpful for corporate managers it also captures a central part of the present culture we live in.

Hargadon draws from past as well as present exemples. We get to see the innovative process at Edisons Menlo Park lab, Ideo, Design Continuum, HP, Microsoft among others but the fact stays the same- creativity is essentially a process of picking parts from the past and mixing them with each other to create something new. After reading this book sucessful innovation will no longer be a mystery and Hargadon gives some clear and very helpful advice in unlocking the creative potential of any organization.

A must read for not only for those engaging in innovation but also for all people trying to figure out the pros and cons with copyrights and downloads. And even if you are not att all interested in those topics you will have a lot of material to surprise your friends and families with at the next party.

I myself had a great time reading this book.

With this book, Dr. Hargadon has managed to take several concepts being explored in a number of disciplines and give them clarity, life, and meaning. His exploration of the true nature of innovation has a lot to teach us, cutting across traditional academic and professional boundaries. As someone operating in the world of knowledge transfer in the Canadian health sector, I have already begun to incorporate many of Dr. Hargadon's ideas into my work - to my great benefit. This is a must read and a great contribution to the area of knowledge transfer and knowledge brokering.