Dealing With Technologies In Search Of Solu

The classic story of 3M and the development of Post-It notes is told often. Essentially, while trying to develop a powerful adhesive, 3M researchers created a substance that was tacky. A single champion (Spencer Silver) spent years talking about the substance to people around the company until he found someone else in the company who needed a reusable bookmarks (Art Fry). That led to an incredibly successful new product.

This story is often told as a demonstration of the importance of perseverance. 3M had developed an interesting technology in search of a solution and it ultimately found one.

Unfortunately, most of the time when companies have a technology without knowing what to do with it, the results are not so spectacular. The Segway is a technical marvel, but the niche for this product is much smaller than the developers hoped for. And the Segway has at least built up a following. Most technologies in search of a solution never come to market.

There is a valuable lesson in the 3M story, though. 3M is a massive company. The success of the enterprise did not depend on finding an immediate use for the adhesive they discovered. As a result, there was plenty of time for Spencer Silver to shop it around until serendipity led him to Art Fry.

These days, of course, many innovations happen in small startups that organize around a particular technology. Small organizations have tremendous agility and can adapt quickly to changes in the market. Larger firms often have difficulty shifting procedures in ways that allow them to respond quickly to changes. The layers of management that provide checks and balances within the organization can prevent it from pivoting when required.

But, small startups also need to start selling quickly. Capital investments generally provide a finite time horizon before the firm has to start generating enough operating income to sustain the organization in the long-term or to entice additional rounds of investment.

Consequently, startups struggle when they have a technology without a clear solution. The need to generate revenues creates pressure to market that technology quickly. The initial application of the technology may not be sufficient to allow the new venture to succeed. Instead, startups facing a technology without an application should consider partnering or licensing their technology to a large company.

Large firms with a history of innovation are great places to park technologies without a current application. The near-term survival of a large firm is not in doubt. As a result, there is no pressure to shoehorn a particular technology into a product where it does not fit. Instead, there is room to allow time for opportunities to use technologies to open up.

In order to make this happen effectively, large organizations need to have mechanisms for alerting people broadly through the company about current capabilities. With Post-It notes, 3M was lucky to have a champion for the tacky adhesive.

A champion is certainly valuable for promoting a particular technology. At the same time, large organizations need to have groups that have the task to maintain a searchable database for existing capacities. The team in charge of this database needs to have a few people who also understand its content. These individuals function like research librarians who can help other individuals within the organization to best find out about any technologies that might suit their needs.

Ideally, large organizations that want to be more innovative will make queries to their repository of technologies a part of their process of generating new ideas. In this way, large organizations can make more repeatable the serendipity that led to the Post-It note.