{"id":1256,"date":"2012-03-28T12:13:53","date_gmt":"2012-03-28T16:13:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lstr.net\/blog\/?p=1256"},"modified":"2012-10-04T16:28:46","modified_gmt":"2012-10-04T20:28:46","slug":"innovation-translation-and-other-big-ideas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lstr.net\/blog\/2012\/03\/28\/innovation-translation-and-other-big-ideas\/","title":{"rendered":"Innovation, Translation and other big ideas"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m currently reading Jon Gertner&#8217;s book about Bell Labs, <em>The Idea Factory <\/em>(and you should too), and this quote popped out at me. I leave it here for reference.<a href=\"http:\/\/books.google.com\/books?id=uOMt_XCo81QC\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/bks7.books.google.com\/books?id=uOMt_XCo81QC&#038;printsec=frontcover&#038;img=1&#038;zoom=1&#038;edge=curl\" class=\"alignright wp-image-1284\" width=\"128\" height=\"195\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>To those with an open mind, of course, the transistor could be considered a breakthrough of both science and engineering&#8211;in effect both a discovery and an invention. What seemed fair to say, though, wast that the transition was not yet an innovation.<\/p>\n<p>The term &#8220;innovation&#8221; dated back to sixteenth-century England. Originally it described the introduction into society of a novelty or new idea, usually relating to philosophy or religion. By the middle of the twentieth century, the words &#8220;innovate&#8221; and &#8220;innovation&#8221; were just beginning to be applied to technology and industry. And they began to fill a descriptive gap. If an idea begat a discovery, and if a discovery begat an invention, then an innovation defined the lengthy and wholesale transformation of an idea into a technological product (or process) meant for widespread practical use. Almost by definition, a single person, or even a single group, could not alone create an innovation. The task was too variegated and involved. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Right now, I know folks struggling with the concept of &#8220;translation,&#8221; as in translational medicine, the process of taking a scientific biomedical concept and turning it into a practical drug or therapy. <\/p>\n<p>Everyone, from researchers to academic administration to pharma to the National Institutes of Health, are calling for translation. What they mean is innovation, I think. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m currently reading Jon Gertner&#8217;s book about Bell Labs, The Idea Factory (and you should too), and this quote popped out at me. I leave it here for reference. To those with an open mind, of course, the transistor could be considered a breakthrough of both science and engineering&#8211;in effect both a discovery and an [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5,6,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1256","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dumb-thoughts","category-gregs-reference","category-rant-andor-rave","post-preview"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7V2xo-kg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lstr.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1256","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lstr.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lstr.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lstr.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lstr.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1256"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.lstr.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1256\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1285,"href":"https:\/\/www.lstr.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1256\/revisions\/1285"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lstr.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1256"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lstr.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1256"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lstr.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1256"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}