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116 THE PRACTICE OF INNOVATION

these pieces were scattered and lodged in half a dozen differ-
ent disciplines. Then it found which key knowledges were
missing: purpose of a business; any knowledge of the work
and structure of top management; what we now term “busi-
ness policy” and “strategy”; objectives; and so on. All of the
missing knowledges, I decided, could be produced. But with-
out such analysis, I could never have known what they were
or that they were missing.
Failure to make such an analysis is an almost sure-fire prescription
for disaster. Either the knowledge-based innovation is not achieved,
which is what happened to Samuel Langley. Or the innovator loses
the fruits of his innovation and only succeeds in creating an opportu-
nity for somebody else.
Particularly instructive is the failure of the British to reap the har-
vest from their own knowledge-based innovations.
The British discovered and developed penicillin, but it was the
Americans who took it over. The British scientists did a magnificent
technical job. They came out with the right substances and the right
uses. Yet they failed to identify the ability to manufacture the stuff as
a critical knowledge factor. They could have developed the necessary
knowledge of fermentation technology; they did not even try. As a
result, a small American company, Pfizer, went to work on develop-
ing the knowledge of fermentation and became the world’s foremost
manufacturer of penicillin.
Similarly, the British conceived, designed, and built the first pas-
senger jet plane. But de Havilland, the British company, did not ana-
lyze what was needed and therefore did not identify two key factors.
One was configuration, that is, the right size with the right payload for
the routes on which the jet would give an airline the greatest advantage.
The other was equally mundane: how to finance the purchase of such
an expensive plane by the airlines. As a result of de Havilland’s failure
to do the analysis, two American companies, Boeing and Douglas, took
over the jet plane. And de Havilland has long since disappeared.
Such analysis would appear to be fairly obvious, yet it is rarely done
by the scientific or technical innovator. Scientists and technologists are
reluctant to make these analyses precisely because they think they
already know. This explains why, in so many cases, the great knowl-
edge-based innovations have had a layman rather than a scientist or a
technologist for their father, or at least their godfather. The (American)
General Electric Company is largely the brainchild of a financial man.