What do you mean by avalanche?Avala

What do you mean by avalanche?
Avalanche is an important metaphor
for innovation.1 It is a cascading
series of events where each one triggers
new events. Entrepreneurs try
to anticipate the right moment—the
tipping point4—when an innovation
proposal will trigger an avalanche of
people adopting the proposal. If the
timing is too early, the proposal will
not be a tipping point. If it is too late,
someone else will have started the
avalanche. The metaphor is borrowed
from complexity theory, where snow
avalanches or sandpile avalanches
can only be described by the frequency
and duration of a cascade, but it
is impossible to predict whether any
particular event will trigger a cascade
or how long it will last. Edison banked
on cheap electricity causing an avalanche
of people moving from gas to
electric lighting. Intel Chairman Andy
Grove once said any technology that
could do something 10 times better
than any current technology creates
a high risk of an avalanche in favor of
that technology. In the Internet, the
introduction of the Mosaic browser in
1994 triggered an avalanche into the
World Wide Web and into commercial
use of the Internet; prior to that time,
commercial uses were discouraged.
Today, a number of education leaders
see MOOCs as the beginning of an avalanche
that will transform education.
What about research in science and
technology? If we would pay for more
research and development, we would
have more components to solve our
problems.
We agree that science and technology
R&D are important, but R&D is
not a reliable precursor of innovation.
Technologies are deeply woven into social
systems and their practices. Even
when we have an exploitable scientific
recurrence, we cannot predict how the
corresponding technology will be used
because that depends on how the social
system moves with it.
What about putting those three elements
together? Suppose we pay attention
to creativity, science, and technology.
Can we then get the innovations
we need?
Still no. That is the Silicon Valley
Illusion. Silicon Valley tries to reduce
innovation to an equation: science +
technology + creativity = innovation.
There are many social processes and
practices in the background that enable
Silicon Valley to be a technology
innovator. No one has been able to
replicate Silicon Valley in other places
because they do not understand all the
social processes, and even if they did,
the processes probably would not fit
with the culture of another region. It
is far better to establish close ties with
people in innovation regions than to
try to replicate their regions in yours.