The Top 30 Innovations of the Last 30 Years-Wharton Roundtable
Monday, February 16, 2009SUSIE GHARIB: As we mentioned, a panel of judges from the Wharton school at the University of Pennsylvania helped us choose the top 30 innovations. I recently talked with three of them: Professors Kevin Werbach and Karl Ulrich and Vice Dean Thomas Colligan. I began by asking Colligan why the Internet was selected as one of the blockbuster innovations on our list.
THOMAS COLLIGAN: The Internet has connected billions of people across the world. So access to data as the price points have come down dramatically, so when people get up in the morning they can go to the Internet and they have access to the outside world.
GHARIB: Kevin, as I look down this list of the top 30, they're in so many different industries. Is there a unifying theme? What ties all of these innovations?
KEVIN WERBACH, PROF., LEGAL STUDIES & BUSINESS ETHICS, WHARTON: One thing that ties them together is that they are all innovations that are platforms for new innovations. Take the Internet or e-mail or even things like the human genome project. It's not just the innovation itself. It's the new kinds of industries and content and applications and so forth that get grown on top of that original innovation that allows it to be magnified in its importance.
GHARIB: So Karl, are these innovations a solution to a problem or were they a breakthrough, a novel way of doing something?
KARL ULRICH, CHAIR, OPERATIONS & INFO. MNGMT, WHARTON: They can be both of those things. But in every one of those cases, the innovation solved a fundamental human problem. If it didn't, it wouldn't have exploded the way it did.
WERBACH: But the funny thing though is that the people who designed it didn't necessarily fully see the problem they were solving. So you can take the Internet 30 years ago these kooky academic engineers didn't realize they were building the kind of platform that Tom talked about. It just they put the technology in place and then it flourished.
ULRICH: Sometimes you get lucky. You solve your own problem and it turns out to be a problem that everyone has. Sometimes you don't.
GHARIB: Tom, everybody talks about innovation. Why is innovation so important?
COLLIGAN: Well innovation typically helps you first to market and gives you periods of exclusivity, gives you margins that you would otherwise not have until people come in and try to replicate what you're doing.
GHARIB: Do you think, Karl, that with some of the financial issues that many companies are facing and individuals are facing that this means less innovation, less entrepreneurship?
ULRICH: I doubt it. I think this period right now presents some unique opportunities. You look at our MBA students, many of them are now exploring entrepreneurial careers, in part because they don't have some of the same options they have in financial services.
WERBACH: It's actually fairly well established, in IT at least, that big innovations happen in the down economic times, the talent is cheap, everything else is cheap. There's space to create something and build it up. It's actually a really good time to be an entrepreneur rights now.
COLLIGAN: I do worry about the health care space, because the pharma space because research and development dollars have continued to increase and the question is will we ever give get a return on that investment.
GHARIB: This list of innovation suggestions was pretty long. Were there any innovations that didn't make the final list, didn't make the final cut, Karl?
ULRICH: There were some really major innovations in agriculture, for example, that didn't make the list. I speculate that it's because they're really the result of loss of incremental changes and no single blockbuster innovation.
COLLIGAN: The financial services space has been excluded from this I think principally because of the current environment. So when you really look at what's happened in that space, capital markets, technology, hedge funds, private equity and so on, that's been excluded from the list.
GHARIB: Kevin, do you think the United States will continue to be the leader when it comes to innovation?
WERBACH: Only if it continues to be a magnet for the great talent around the world. We're in a fundamentally global environment, no country, no organization can go it alone. The real innovators are the ones who can draw on great platforms for the best ideas and the best people from anywhere in the world.
ULRICH: Let me just add one thing to that, which is, a lot of companies, the U.S. gets a lot of credit because it often is a home to many of the innovative companies. But often those companies draw on talent for their projects from all over the world. I'm involved in a project now that draws on people from Australia, the UK., Mexico and United States and the U.S. gets credit for that.
COLLIGAN: And remember, we're 4 percent of the world's population and with the Internet connecting billions of people, I don't think we're going to be as dominant as we once were.
GHARIB: You're all educators. Do you think our school systems are properly educating the new generation of innovators and entrepreneurs?
COLLIGAN: Our school systems need some improvement. I think technology can clearly get us up to scale from where we are currently.
WERBACH: We need to use those innovations that we have to tackle the challenge of the schools. No, we're not nearly going far enough with our school systems and it's critical if you're going to nurture future innovation.
GHARIB: Let's look ahead 10 years. What's going to be the next new big innovation, Karl?
ULRICH: I think we'll look back in 10 years and say that genomics was really the big change in the last decade.
GHARIB: Tom? What do you think?
COLLIGAN: I agree with Karl, I believe it's the health care area. I believe that health care will be significantly improved over the next 10 years.
GHARIB: Kevin?
WERBACH: I think it's still going to be the Internet. We're actually just getting started. We're just at the point now where the whole world is connected. The real innovation starts going forward.
GHARIB: Gentlemen, thank you so much for your time. Tom, Kevin, Karl, we really appreciate it.
