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72 THE PRACTICE OF INNOVATION

of the time—and photography magazines were among the first spe-
cialty mass magazines—are full of complaints about the extreme dif-
ficulty of taking photographs and of suggestions what to do. But the
problems could not be solved with the science and technology avail-
able in 1870.
By the mid-1880s, however, new knowledge had become available
which then enabled George Eastman, the founder of Kodak, to
replace the heavy glass plates with a cellulose film weighing practi-
cally nothing and impervious even to very rough handling, and to
design a lightweight camera around his film. Within ten years,
Eastman Kodak had taken world leadership in photography, which it
still retains.
“Program research” is often needed to convert a process from
potential into reality. Again, the need must be felt, and it must be pos-
sible to identify what is needed. Then the new knowledge has to be
produced. The prototype innovator for this kind of process-need inno-
vation was Edison (see also Chapter 9). For twenty-odd years, every-
body had known that there was going to be an “electric power indus-
try.” For the last five or six years of that period, it had become abun-
dantly clear what the “missing link” was: the light bulb. Without it,
there could be no electric power industry. Edison defined the new
knowledge needed to convert this potential electric power industry
into an actual one, went to work, and had a light bulb within two years.
Program research to convert a potential into reality has become
the central methodology of the first-rate industrial research laborato-
ry and, of course, of research for defense, for agriculture, for medi-
cine, and for environmental protection.
Program research sounds big. To many people it means “putting a
man on the moon” or finding a vaccine against polio. But its most
successful applications are in small and clearly defined projects-the
smaller and the more sharply focused the better. Indeed, the best
example—and perhaps the best single example of successful process
need—based innovation—is a very small one, the highway reflector
that cut the Japanese automobile accident rate by almost two-thirds.
As late as 1965, Japan had almost no paved roads outside of the big
cities. But the country was rapidly shifting to the automobile, so the
government frantically paved the roads. Now automobiles could—and
did—travel at high speed. But the roads were the same old ones that
had been laid down by the oxcarts of the tenth century—barely wide
enough for two cars to pass, full of blind corners and hidden entrances,