Matching needs with seeds
Welcome to Blanks, a newsletter about bringing climatetech to market. In the previous newsletter, you learned why venture capital is a good fit for climatetech. This time, let’s talk about need-driven and seed-driven innovation.
In 1968, the 3M scientist Dr. Spencer Silver discovered a new type of adhesive that stuck lightly to surfaces without leaving residue. Spencer didn’t have an application for the invention right away but believed it had potential. Meanwhile, his colleague Art Fry struggled to keep track of hymns in his choir. When practicing on Wednesday nights, he used little scraps of paper to mark the songs of this week’s service. But when he opened the hymnal on Sunday, all the paper bits had fallen out of place. He needed something that could stick to the papers and recalled Spencer’s adhesive. Together, they created the Post-it Note.
In the early 1920s, there was a pressing need to find a treatment for diabetes. Researchers had identified insulin as the missing chemical in people with the disease. The surgeons Frederick Banting and Charles Best, working at the University of Toronto, figured out a way to isolate and purify insulin. In 1922, they successfully treated a 14-year-old boy with insulin and saved his life.
The Post-it Note is an example of a seed-driven innovation, a process where the starting point is the capability that a technology can offer. The technology is developed without a clear application in mind and later finds valuable use. The diabetes example on the other hand illustrates the case of need-driven innovation. The starting point in this process is to get a deep understanding of the problem, and then go out and find solutions.
Is one approach better than the other? Not necessarily. To achieve accelerated innovation, you need to intertwine the two approaches. The innovation professors Vish Krishnan and Karim Lakhani argue that only using one of the approaches is like “clapping with one hand”. Universities, labs, and R&D departments around the world are constantly coming up with new discoveries, but the success rate of translating them to a market need is low. Vish and Karim say that technology transfer needs to go from being like “passing a baton” to being more like “a contact sport like American football”.'
The importance of meshing the supply and demand side is visible in the Post-it Note and diabetes examples too. Spencer’s new adhesive wouldn’t have yielded anything without Art finding an application for it. And the 14-year-old boy in Toronto wouldn’t have been successfully treated if Frederick and Charles hadn’t found a way to isolate insulin.
An innovation process needs to be constantly synchronized between seeds and needs. Pushed back and forth between the supply and demand side. Only then can we achieve breakthrough innovations with real impact.