Heuretics come out of people’s brains (TECHNOLOGY IS PEOPLE)

Nylon

PARPA should pragmatically prioritize relationships and permissive licensing

Technology transfer is a mystifying abstraction

Notes on the changing structure of American Innovation

# Dupont was unable to replicate viscose rayon
DuPont bought the patent for creating viscose rayon (processed cellulose used for creating artificial silk and other fibers.) However, Dupont was unable to replicate viscose rayon successfully and eventually had to partner with the original inventors to get it to work. () [[Context is important and underrated for knowledge transfer]].

### Related
- [[There are many pieces of equipment or tacit knowledge that only exist  in one or two places in the world]]
- [[Dupont Research]]

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§Tech Tree Model of Heuretics

arthurNatureTechnologyWhat2009

Organizations don’t do anything, people in organizations do things

strevensKnowledgeMachineHow2020

Most human knowledge is not encoded

New ideas need to come out of a single mind

Just having the piece of literature doesn’t solve the problem

In order to extend a heuretic it must be legible to you

Program design is like creating the lego instruction book

Researchers are more important than the research

In defense of academia outline

Playbook for being a field strategist

You need a human to resolve conflicting information

Spectech should pragmatically prioritize relationships and permissive licensing

Many approaches to augmented knowledge generation ignore humans

The most important role of program design is to build a shared context and connectivity between stakeholders

The affordance of a heuretic dictates how it can connect with another node on the tech tree

Roadmaps need to be coupled to people

Boris Hanin conversation 30 Aug 2021

The technology industry used to be better at composting

Most approaches to augmented knowledge generation ignore humans

James Cooper conversation 7 Sep 2021

Program managers are the most important piece of a program

APM Roadmap

Kumar Garg conversation 18 Nov 2021

Jean-Damien Louise conversation 29 Aug 2022

DARPA's Approach to Innovation and Its Reflection in Industry

Heuretics cannot exist separate from humans\*

In a positivistic world knowledge just keeps growing

Understanding the edge of knowledge is a human endeavor

# Heuretics come out of people’s brains (TECHNOLOGY IS PEOPLE)
TECHNOLOGY IS PEOPLE rests on three arguments:
1. [[Heuretics cannot exist separate from humans*]]
2. [[New ideas need to come out of a single mind]]
3. [[Brains are wombs for heuretics]]

#### Why is this not naval-gazing?   
- [[Many approaches to augmented knowledge generation ignore humans]] - this is why they are built on shaky assumptions.
- Any model of technological development that ignores humans is limited
- Incentives matter
- [[Researchers are more important than the research]]
- Realizing that [[Most human knowledge is not encoded]] is important
- [[You need a human to resolve conflicting information]]
- If you ignore that technology is people, you give up a lot of control authority over how technology evolves.  ([[What does technological genetic engineering look like?]], [[What does technological husbandry look like?]])

### Related
- [[Dupont was unable to replicate viscose rayon]] even though they acquired the IP
- [[alexanderYouWantRun2022]] points to a common pattern where people want to put money into a thing and assume some manager type will show up 



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Systemic decay theory of stagnation

Dupont Research

Ideally corporate R+D enables targeted dicking around

# Nylon
- 1927 — [[Dupont Research]]research program in polymers based on [[Rayon]]
	- [[Dupont was unable to replicate viscose rayon]]
	- This phase was mostly dicking around with the phenomenon
- 1930 — produced a precursor to nylon
- 1935 — Nylon actually produced
- 1938 — first commercial product (toothbrush bristles) 
- 1939 — begins commercial production 

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Manufacturing is important and often ignored

Parney Albright conversation 17 Jan 2023

One of the most failure-prone points in technological development is when a technology needs to move from an organization that focuses on R+D to one that focuses on marketing and manufacturing

We only see the science based public stuff from the middle of the century because the engineering was classified

# Technology transfer is a mystifying abstraction
Even in containerized software, which is basically the most modular and legible thing in the world, there is a ton of friction handing a project from one team to another team.  “Hell is other people’s code.” [[‘Off the shelf’ technology is code for TRL 9 and maybe 8]]. 

Technology transfer makes sense in a world where if you can look at a drawing on a piece of paper and know everything about it, which was the case until the late 19th century. 

We can abstractly think of you handing the “IP” - patent documentation to me but in order for me to actually do anything with it, so much more needs to be done. Patents aren’t even written by the people who created the technology anymore! Perhaps an extreme analogy but patents represent technology the way the dollar represents gold. The way in which a patent is insufficient to transfer a technology is analogous to how [[Just having the piece of literature doesn’t solve the problem]]

[[A patent describes the key new concept]] but usually doesn’t touch many implementation details. Since [[The creation of a heuretic has two steps - conception and implementation]], it means that patents actually underdetermine a heuretic. This underdetermination means that raw “IP” is useful for suing someone who successfully copies the idea (because to copy the whole of it they need to copy the new concept piece), but it is not particularly useful for copying the heuretic itself. See [[Dupont was unable to replicate viscose rayon]]. [[aroraChangingStructureAmerican2020]] cites this phenomenon as one of the drivers of the creation of corporate labs. The implementation piece is (I suspect) one reason why large companies acquire startups for their technology instead of just buying the technology itself. [[A technology company is a package of human capital and IP]]. 

### Related
- [[Heuretics come out of people’s brains (TECHNOLOGY IS PEOPLE)]]
- [[Manage the Transfer not the Technology]]
- [[Context is important and underrated for knowledge transfer]]
- [[Most tech transfer offices are not profitable]]
- [[Are there examples of successful technology transfer out of a lab without close collaboration between someone in the lab and the external organization?]]
- [[Any technology that comes out of a university needs to go through their tech transfer office]]



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Benʼs working notes

Dupont was unable to replicate viscose rayon

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