Page 129 - ENTREPRENEURSHIP Innovation and entrepreneurship

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122 THE PRACTICE OF INNOVATION

companies of 1845 had shrunk to five or six. And the same
rhythm characterized the electrical apparatus industry, the tele-
phone industry, the automobile industry, the chemical industry,
household appliances, and consumer electronics. The “window”
has never been very wide nor open very long.
But there can be little doubt that today the “window” is becoming
more and more crowded. The railroad boom of the 1830s was con-
fined to England; later, every country had its own local boom quite
separate from the preceding one in the neighboring country. The elec-
trical apparatus boom already extended across national frontiers, as
did the automobile boom twenty-five years later. Yet both were con-
fined to the countries that were industrially developed at the time. The
term “industrially developed” encompasses a great deal more territo-
ry today, however. It takes in Japan, for instance. It takes in Brazil. It
may soon take in the non-Communist Chinese territories: Hong
Kong, Taiwan, and Singapore. Communication today is practically
instantaneous, travel easy and fast. And a great many countries have
today what only very few small places had a hundred years ago: large
cadres of trained people who can immediately go to work in any area
of knowledge-based innovation, and especially of science-based or
technology-based innovation.
These facts have two important implications.
1. First, science-based and technology-based innovators alike
find time working against them. In all innovation based on any
other source—the unexpected, incongruities, process need,
changes in industry structure, demographics, or changes in percep-
tion—time is on the side of the innovator. In any other kind of
innovation innovators can reasonably expect to be left alone. If
they make a mistake, they are likely to have time to correct it. And
there are several moments in time in which they can launch their
new venture. Not so in knowledge-based innovation, and especial-
ly in those innovations based on scientific and technological
knowledge. Here there is only a short time—the “window”—dur-
ing which entry is possible at all. Here innovators do not get a sec-
ond chance; they have to be right the first time. The environment is
harsh and unforgiving. And once the “window” closes, the oppor-
tunity is gone forever.
In some knowledge-based industries, however, a second “win-
dow” does in fact open some twenty to thirty years or so after the first
one has shut down. Computers are an example.