NEWS: Creative release

Meet a physicist who helped shape today’s high-tech world.

TECHNOLOGICAL breakthroughs seem to be a dime a dozen in the last 20 years. Unlike the inventions of old, few of us know the folklore behind the machines and electronics we use every day.

Modern inventors, it seems, do not become household names like (Isaac) Newton or the Wright brothers, even if their inventions touch more lives than those of their illustrious predecessors.
Dr Curtis Carlson: Innovation is a discipline that can be taught and learned.

So, who invented the computer mouse? (At least two billion mice have been manufactured so far.) Who came up with high-definition television (HDTV), and how?

Enter Dr Curtis Carlson, president and chief executive officer of Stanford Research Institute (SRI) International, who was in Malaysia recently to host seminars and give talks about innovation and creativity.

The computer mouse, HDTV, Internet domain tags (.com and .gov, etc) and advanced robotic surgery are all landmark innovations credited to SRI, a non-profit research company.

Carlson, from Rhode Island, the United States, hails from a modest, middle-class family. His mother was a secretary and his father, a designer of industrial equipment such as pumps and valves. Following in his father’s footsteps, Carlson led the team that created the US HDTV standard, for which he won an Emmy award. He also co-wrote a book about the innovative process, titled Innovation: The Five Disciplines for Creating What Customers Want.

“Unlike the industrial era, we now live in a world of abundance, where improvements in knowledge-based products and services have no limits,” said Carlson, 64.

“Innovation, we believe, is the process of creating and delivering new customer value in the marketplace. It is a discipline, that can be taught and learnt. Without these principles our company would not have been able to conceive and create innovations that are at the cutting edge of science and technology.”

Carlson co-authored Innovation with William Wilmot, director and senior associate of The Collaboration Institute, which specialises in workplace communication and collaboration. In the book, they stress the importance of working on ideas that are needed in the relevant market, not just ideas that are interesting. Value creation and forming innovation teams are also crucial to achieving a marketable technological breakthrough, invention, business model or creative design.

“Having a good idea is not enough if you do not know what to do with it” Carlson adds. “James Maxwell and Heinrich Hertz did not realise the huge importance of the radio wave. Hertz’s experiments were expounded upon by others and that led to the birth of the wireless.”

Like many people, Carlson was not sure about his true calling as he was interested in many fields. At the age of 15, he was studying to be a professional violinist and was the youngest ever member of the Rhode Island Philharmonic Orchestra.

However, Carlson stopped music to pursue a Bachelor of Science in Physics from Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts. He went on to obtain a master’s degree and his PhD in atmospheric physics from Rutgers University in New Jersey.

“I do think that my background as a musician and subsequently a physicist inspired my theory of the innovative process,” said Carlson. “My time as a violinist taught me that the right kind of discipline liberates creativity; the wrong kind suppresses it.

“As a physicist, I’m always looking for the fundamental aspects of things. What I have striven for my whole life is how to find the right kind of discipline and process to teach people how to liberate their creativity. This (innovative) process is certainly an artistic science.”

Thomas Edison believed that he had never failed in any experiment; he merely found 10,000 ways that did not work. In the same way, Carlson believes that one can only create and perfect an idea through “iteration”. Constant repetition, rethinking and adjusting are keys to creating a groundbreaking and, ultimately, marketable innovation.

“The idea is to iterate really fast so that you can fail fast to allow you to succeed quickly. Failing is part of the process,” he says.

Given the numerous award-winning inventions that have come from SRI, why is it that he and the company are not household names?

“Usually when we embark on a project, we form a new company. Therefore, SRI is not credited,” he explains. “We do not mind. I have always maintained that to achieve anything of true value in this industry, you need a little humility. I am reasonably well-known and I am more than happy with that.”

Although he is no longer part of any particular project since taking over the reins at SRI, Carlson enjoys teaching others what he knows.

“My research focus now is how to create the most productive and innovative organisation,” he says.