All too often, we see innovation as a single event. A genius like Steve Jobs envisions a thousand songs in our pocket and the iPod is born! Or Alexander Fleming notices a mold growing in a petri dish and suddenly penicillin transforms medical science.
Yet the truth is that the road to any significant innovation is a long and twisted path. First, scientific research uncovers important insights. Then, those discoveries must be engineered into useful solutions and finally, new products and processes must be implemented at scale in order to transform a particular field or industry.
