Page 119 - ENTREPRENEURSHIP Innovation and entrepreneurship

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112 THE PRACTICE OF INNOVATION

Wallace, the publisher of a farm newspaper in Iowa, and later U.S.
Secretary of Agriculture under Harding and Coolidge—the only holder
of this office, perhaps, who deserves to be remembered for anything
other than giving away money. Hybrid corn has two knowledge roots.
One was the work of the Michigan plant breeder William J. Beal, who
around 1880 discovered hybrid vigor. The other was the rediscovery of
Mendel’s genetics by the Dutch biologist Hugo de Vries. The two men
did not know of one another. Their work was totally different both in
intent and content. But only by pulling it together could hybrid corn be
developed.
The Wright Brothers’ airplane also had two knowledge roots. One
was the gasoline engine, designed in the mid-1880s to power the first
automobiles built by Karl Benz and Gottfried Daimler, respectively.
The other one was mathematical: aerodynamics, developed primarily
in experiments with gliders. Each was developed quite independent-
ly. It was only when the two came together that the airplane became
possible.
The computer, as already noted, required the convergence of no
less than five different knowledges: a scientific invention, the audion
tube; a major mathematical discovery, the binary theorem; a new
logic; the design concept of the punchcard; and the concepts of pro-
gram and feedback. Until all these were available, no computer could
have been built. Charles Babbage, the English mathematician, is
often called the “father of the computer.” What kept Babbage from
building a computer, it is argued, was only the unavailability of the
proper metals and of electric power at his time. But this is a misun-
derstanding. Even if Babbage had had the proper materials, he could
at best have built the mechanical calculator that we now call a cash
register. Without the logic, the design concept of the punchcard, and
the concept of program and feedback, none of which Babbage pos-
sessed, he could only imagine a computer.
The Brothers Pereire founded the first entrepreneurial bank in
1852. It failed within a few years because they had only one knowl-
edge base and the entrepreneurial bank needs two. They had a the-
ory of creative finance that enabled them to be brilliant venture
capitalists. But they lacked the systematic knowledge of banking
which was developed at exactly the same time across the Channel
by the British, and codified in Walter Bagehot’s classic, Lombard
Street.
After their failure in the early 1860s, three young men independ-