Now I am at a loss. If none of the usual
approaches—planning, genius, science,
technology, and creativity—is
sufficient for innovation, how does
someone go about it?
This was on our minds when we
started our work on the report. If Chile
winds up adopting policies based on
assumptions that do not work, it will
not succeed in its goal of improving
its competitiveness. This is why we
stepped back to ask how innovations
actually happen. We produced the new
interpretation you see in the report,
and that allowed us to make policy recommendations
that are likely to help
Chile. And any other country as well.
Our new interpretation is that innovations
emerge in history. Every innovation
bears the imprint of its history
and its era. The more common notions
of new ideas and adopted practices
hide the historical emergence. Unless
you can see how historical emergence
works, you cannot create policies that
foster it.
Our examples of Pasteur and Edison
point out that innovation is not
simply a moment of insight, it is the
product of the era (the times). The
ingredients of an innovation are a
concern or problem for which a resolution
would be valuable, a set of existing
components (including technologies)
that enable or constrain possible
resolutions, and a proposal for a particular
combination of components
(a design). Pasteur’s concern was to
protect people against rabies; existing
components included methods for
producing animal vaccines, expertise
in chemistry, expertise in microscopy,
and a validated theory of germs; the
proposal was a rabies vaccine. These
three elements are all highly depen-