# Innovation requires multiple people # Innovation requires multiple people [[Innovation is measured by impact]]. For a heuretic to have a large impact someone needs to conceive it, implement it, and disperse it. Each of these often requires creating multiple support heuretics [[Innovation requires multiple heuretics]] and multiple skillsets. It’s rare that a single person has all of the skillsets you need to do (or manage other people to do) each of those pieces. Even more extreme, people with the skills in one stage of the process might not even *conceive* of the other stages. The scientist who discovers a phenomenon in a lab might not realize that it could or should be made into a practical thing that lends itself to a particular business model or even that she *should* be thinking about those things. The brilliant salesman might not even realize that he should be hanging out with scientists and inventors. Each person needs context in order to do a good job with their role Something something handoff Argument for why an innovation ecosystem is relevant [[From the outside the innovation ecosystem looks complete and healthy]] This may be another argument for [[There are a number of experiments that seem like they can only be done in the context of an organization]] Of course, this also stands in contrast to the fact that [[New ideas need to come out of a single mind]]! ### Examples * Penecillin * Alexander Fleming discovered the phenomenon in 1928 * `Fleming was a famously poor communicator and orator, which meant his findings were not initially given much attention. [[27]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penicillin#cite_note-Lax2004-27) He was unable to convince a chemist to help him extract and stabilize the antibacterial compound found in the broth filtrate.` * Howard Florey figured out how to use it for medical applications in 1941 * [Jasper H. Kane](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jasper_H._Kane) and G. Raymond Rettew used [Margaret Hutchinson Rousseau](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Hutchinson_Rousseau) ’s deep tank fermentation techniques to produce penicillin at scale - otherwise the entire US supply was enough for one person * The scaling up was pushed by the US government Software is an outlier because it actually enables one person to do all the steps of the process. Mark Zuckerberg could conceive, implement, and disperse Facebook. An upshot of this is that [[One person or class of people do not deserve credit for an innovation]] ### Related * [[Most tech transfer offices are not profitable]] * [[Manage the Transfer not the Technology]] * [[One person or class of people do not deserve credit for an innovation]] * [[We stand on the shoulders of too many giants to give them all credit]] <!-- #evergreen --> [Web URL for this note](http://notes.benjaminreinhardt.com/Innovation+requires+multiple+people) [Comment on this note](http://via.hypothes.is/http://notes.benjaminreinhardt.com/Innovation+requires+multiple+people)