Page 86 - The Drucker Lectures

Claremont Address [ 67

We will again, I think, have to learn to innovate, for we are
at the end of a period of technological continuity. I know this
sounds very strange. All of us have been led to believe that we
have been living in an age of rapid technological change. And
then you look at the facts, and it just ain’t so. Until very recently,
there was no industry around for which the basic technological
foundations had not been laid before World War I. The com-
puter, you might say, was the first one of which this isn’t true.
Technologically we have been modifying, we have been extend-
ing, we have been adding on, but we have not been innovating.
In social innovation, which in many ways is far more impor-
tant than technological, we haven’t been doing much either. We
have been extending and we have been taking fairly well known
things to the four corners of the earth, but we have not greatly
added. We are facing a period which is far more likely to be
like that heroic age of innovation from about the Civil War pe-
riod to the First World War. The period began with the aniline
dyes and the first practical dynamo in 1856, and ended with the
electron tube in 1911. A technological innovation came out on
average every 14 to 17 months, leading almost immediately to
new businesses and new industries. And incidentally, at the risk
of shooting down a favorite balloon, there is no evidence that
technology is being diffused any faster today than at any time in
the past; in fact, there’s a lot of evidence that it is much slower.
Within nine weeks after Edison demonstrated the first electric
lightbulb, they sold shares in electric lightbulb companies in
England. And delivered lightbulbs. They didn’t light anything,
but within the space of a year they actually had installations in
Europe. The same was true of the telephone. Things just don’t
travel today quite that fast. It’s only that they get a great deal
more publicity; that is the only real difference.
Now, I think we face a time when major innovations are likely
to come, brought about by energy crises, resource problems, but