学进去

A snake-robot designer, a technologist, an extradimensional physicist and a journalist walk into a room. The journalist turns to the crowd and asks: Should we build houses on the ocean? Like a think-tank panel, members of the team dream up far-out answers to the crucial problem, such as self-driving housing units that could park on top of one another in the coastal city center.

The setting is X, the enterprise which considers more than 100 ideas each year, in areas ranging from clean energy to artificial intelligence. Although only a tiny percentage become “projects” with far-reaching creativity, these projects exist, ultimately, to change the world, like Waymo, the biggest self-driving-car company. In the past 60 years, something strange has happened. As the academic study of creativity has thrived (蓬勃发展), the label innovation may have covered every tiny change of a soda can or a toothpaste flavor, but the rate of productivity growth has been mostly declining since the 1970s. John Fernald, an economist, points out that the notable exception to the post-1970 decline in productivity occurred when businesses throughout the economy finally figured out the breakthrough technology-information technology. John Fernald says, “It’s possible that productivity took off, because we picked all the low-hanging fruit from the IT wave. ”Actually, the world economy continues to harvest the benefits of IT. But where will the next technology shock come from?

Breakthrough technology results from two distinct activities-invention and innovation. Invention is typically the work of scientists and researchers in labs, while innovation is an invention put to commercial use. Seldom do the two activities occur successfully under the same roof. They tend to thrive in opposite conditions; while competition and consumer choice encourage innovation, invention has historically progressed in labs that are protected from the pressure to generate profit.

Allowing well-funded and diverse teams to try to solve big problems is what gave us the computer and the Internet. Today, we fail to give attention to planting the seeds of this kind of ambitious research, while complaining about the harvest. “Companies are really good at combining existing breakthroughs in ways that consumers like. But the breakthroughs come from patient and curious scientists, not the rush to market,” says Jon Gertner, the author of The Idea Factory.

“Technology is a tall tree, ” John Fernald said. “But planting the seeds of invention and harvesting the fruit of innovation are entirely distinct skills, often mastered by different organizations and separated by many years. ” As for me, both of them are essential for technology, although they are relatively independent. I don’t think X is a planter or a harvester, actually. It is like building taller ladders. Nobody knows for sure what, if anything, the employees at such enterprises are going to find up on those ladders. But they’re reaching. At least someone is.