Underestimating Innovation

In the light of innovation and advancement, some people are very hesitant towards accepting change. 

How many times have you nagged about a new Facebook layout? How do you feel about this then and now comparison?

What ever happened to Tom?

I personally remember feeling reluctant to make the move from Myspace → Facebook.

Here's a list of impressionable quotes that went completely wrong.

Class Quotes

1. "I think there is a world market for maybe five computers." - Thomas Watson, Chairman of IBM, 1943

What do you think Watson would have to say today? IBM, a COMPUTER hardware company, and their chairman didn't have faith. But let's contextualize this - in 1943, we were near the end of World War II and the focus was on wartime products (e.g. rifles, engine parts). This is the problem with tunnel vision.

2. "There will never be a bigger plane built." - A Boeing engineer, after the first fight of the 247, a twin engine plane that holds ten people

The tragedy of this statement is how small this engineer was thinking. Engineers should know better - there is always room for improvement.

3. "The horse is here to stay but the automobile is only a novelty - a fad." - The president of the Michigan Savings Bank advising Henry Ford's lawyer not to invest in the Ford Motor Co., 1903

I bet he soon wished he, too, had invested in the Ford Motor Co. This is the problem I was drawing to with the Myspace/Facebook and layout change tension. People resist change: the horse worked, so why change something that's not broken? This investor failed to realize how the convenience achieved with the automobile could change the world and, furthermore, that luxury in one world can become a necessity in another.

4. "The world potential market for copying machines is 5000 at most." - IBM, to the eventual founders of Xerox, saying the photocopier had no market large enough to justify production, 1959

Yet again, another instance where IBM couldn't be more wrong. My takeaway here is do NOT doubt your ideas. If you are appropriately confident, then pursue your vision. 

5. "Everyone acquainted with the subject will recognize it as a conspicuous failure." - Henry Morton, President of the Stevens Institute of Technology, on Edison's light bulb, 1880

Morton was likely jaded from the many light bulb's developed in the years leading up to Edison's successful attempt. People WILL DOUBT you, they WILL TRY to DISCOURAGE you. Be strong, and be confident. Tenacity does pay off.

Additional Quotes

1. "The abolishment of pain in surgery is a chimera. It is absurd to go on seeking it... Knife and pain are two words in surgery that must forever be associated in the consciousness of the patient." - Dr. Alfred Velpeau, French surgeon, 1839

Sad, indeed. Just a couple of years later in 1842, Crawford W. Long documented the first successful general anesthetic. Imagine if doctors today had Dr. Velpeau's tone...

2.  "Men might as well project a voyage to the Moon as attempt to employ steam navigation against the stormy North Atlantic Ocean." - Dr. Dionysus Lardner, Professor of Natural Philosophy and Astronomy at the London University College

Dr. Lardner, you may have been on to something there... Sometimes we make these remarks that are seemingly ludicrous at the time, but they may turn out to be completely valid in the future. I can see us laughing one day about how foolish we were to dismiss the feasibility of teleportation.

3. "Airplanes are interesting toys but of no military value." - Marshal Ferdinand Foch, French military strategist, 1911

Interestingly enough, a year later Foch became a World War I commander. However, by the time WWII came around, aircraft had advanced to the point in which it started to become a major game changer in war.

4. "Computers in the future may...perhaps only weigh 1.5 tons." - Popular Mechanics, 1949

1.5 tons - today the lightest laptop weighs in at 1.72 pounds.  

5. "There is no likelihood man can ever tap the power of the atom. The glib supposition of utilizing atomic energy when our coal has run out is a completely unscientific Utopian dream, a childish bug-a-boo. Nature has introduced a few fool-proof devices into the great majority of elements that constitute the bulk of the world, and they have no energy to give up in the process of disintegration." - Robert A. Millikan, in his speech to the Chemists' Club, 1928

Millikan, Rutherford, and Einstein all vehemently believed the atomic bomb to be impossible. The front-runners in physics and chemistry denied its plausibility.