What is
the difference between innovation and invention ?
A
question I asked to myself today while reading a report on CNN about an innovation-to-be
that turned out to lack credibility soon before being hailed a great success.
I have
no interest in mentioning names other than CNN and Reuters, the two media
giants that smoked out the rats. But I shall summarize the story.
There
is this online platform responsible for offering inventors a place to meet
millions of investors, whose modest investments combined could give a
convincing-invention the financial means to become an innovation. The platform
has proven success in concept and application, and many artists, entrepreneurs
and inventors have resourced worldwide support from it. Unfortunately, some
brilliant marketers have taken advantage of the platform’s credibility to make
easy money. They used already familiar products as actors of their
science-fiction-invention. To collect their fortune, they only had to combine a
new LED bulb that looks familiar but has fake powers, a smart phone app that must
be created but does not yet exist, a lot of computer generated graphics of how
an app could, if created, control color and intensity of a light bulb, that if
existed would react to such an app, and then they left the rest of the
marketing process for the presenter’s innocent looks and sincere tone of voice.
The
result? Millions of dollars in investments from hundreds of thousands of people
expecting to receive one or more of ‘the magnificent bulbs’ in return, in March
2013. Fascinated by the story, science-specialists (not sure if they are
scientists or just enthusiasts) went on to analyze the data presented and to
quickly spot an endless list of holes in the logic behind the invention. The
thing that ended badly for the ‘innovators’, the online platform, and of
course, for the many people who trust what they see and bet on it.
So, could this product have been real? Yes it could have, if the innovator had the technology to make it an invention. As long as he doesn’t, it remains science fiction!
The definition of science fiction is: Fiction based on imagined future scientific or technological advances and major social or environmental changes.
Maybe what the ‘innovator’ had hoped for was to create the product after raising funds enough to invest and embark on research and development. And maybe not!
An
online platform that promotes inventions that only need funding to become
innovations is expected to give you products that are out-of-the-box,
fascinating, brilliant, much-needed, never-done-before… that and more. But they
should, first and foremost, be based on proven experiments, not just plausible
theories. That is the difference between invention and innovation. Invention
comes first, if it strikes acceptance it becomes innovation. But innovation
without invention has another name: fraud!
I can't teach anyone how not to fall for such scams because everyone probably has fallen,
or would fall, for a well knitted lie, sometime. But if it is too good to be true, it probably is.
"I cannot teach anybody anything, I can only make them think." Socrates
Peace
Nael Gharzeddine
