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74 THE PRACTICE OF INNOVATION

“felt.” Otherwise one cannot define the specifications for the solution.
We have known, for instance, for several hundred years that math-
ematics is a problem subject in school. A small minority of students,
certainly no more than one-fifth, seem to have no difficulty with
mathematics and learn it easily. The rest never really learn it. It is pos-
sible, of course, to drill a very much larger percentage to pass math-
ematics tests. The Japanese do this through heavy emphasis on the
subject. But that does not mean that Japanese children learn mathe-
matics. They learn to pass the tests and then immediately forget
mathematics. Ten years later, by the time they are in their late twen-
ties, Japanese do just as poorly on mathematics tests as do western-
ers. In every generation there is a mathematics teacher of genius who
somehow can make even the untalented learn, or at least learn a good
deal better. But nobody has ever been able, then, to replicate what this
one person does. The need is acutely felt, but we do not understand
the problem. Is it a lack of native ability? Is it that we are using the
wrong methods? Are there psychological and emotional problems?
No one knows the answer. And without understanding the problem,
we have not been able to find any solution.
2. We may even understand a process and still not have the
knowledge to do the job. The preceding chapter told of the clear and
understood incongruity in paper making: to find a process that is
less wasteful and less uneconomical than the existing one. For a
century, able people have worked on the problem. We know exact-
ly what is needed: polymerization of the lignin molecule. It should
be easy—we have polymerized many molecules that are similar.
But we lack the knowledge to do it, despite a hundred years of
assiduous work by well-trained people. One can only say, “Let’s try
something else.”
3. The solution must fit the way people do the work and want to
do it. Amateur photographers had no psychological investment in the
complicated technology of the early photographic process. All they
wanted was to get a decent photograph, as easily as possible. They
were receptive, therefore, to a process that took the labor and skill out
of taking pictures. Similarly, eye surgeons were interested only in an
elegant, logical, bloodless process. An enzyme that gave this to them
therefore satisfied their expectations and values.
But here is an example of an innovation based on a clear and sub-
stantial process need that apparently does not quite fit, and therefore
has not been readily accepted.