A tribute to Isaac de Rivaz; what innovation really is: marketing
How many times have you heard that “this new, very innovative hydrogen engine will drive a breakthrough into the automotive industry. Thanks to the great work of our R&D labs, consumers can now face the future oil shortage with no fear thanks to hydrogen-powered car engines”?
Well, what if hydrogen-powered engines existed for more than 2 centuries? Back in 1805 (patented in 1807, on January 30th), Swiss inventor Isaac de Rivaz had invented the first hydrogen-powered car.
However, people today still dare to talk about innovative moves when presenting their so-called inventions!
What if I went to Jean-Louis Gassée in the Valley to purchase the sourcecode of BeOS, now dead but a long-time best OS, and launched it saying it’s highly innovative, grabbing the best of Linux’s memory management, Mac OS’s usability, and MS Vista’s vista? I bet I could create quite a buzz around the lanch, and catch a ridiculous, but thinking twice no-so-ridiculous, market share in a wink at a rather low standard-updating OS re-programming price. (Okay, I acknowledge this last statement is a complete utopia)
Anyways, incremental innovation (95% of innovations in volume vs. 5% disruptive innovations) is all about listening to what the market wants, keeping the best and removing the crap from your product, copying some good features from the competition, and again, listen to your clients and build a bridge between you and them – to ensure future communications effectively happen. Believe it or not, I’ve just defined marketing.
Today’s hydrogen engines should be a million times better than those of Isaac de Rivas; today’s OSs are definitely better than what they used to be: Ubuntu is simpler than any former Linux release; Mac OS X has nice functionalities such as exposé and rapid shutdown; Vista users probably don’t realize it yet, but more than 3,000 new features were been implemented since the birth of XP. I have an old Windows 95-powered PC at home, and I can tell the difference. What the open-source community, Apple and Microsoft have done wrong in the time between was to look-down at petty or old competitors such as BeOS (and/or OS/2, an IBM-MSFT jointly ventured product at the time). Although we learn not to cheat on one’s neighbour at school, I believe not taking into account what your competitors do in the world of work is a big, big mistake.
Too bad we lost 10 years, but it could be worse. Have all car manufacturers engineers taken a look at Isaac de Rivaz’s invention pattern?
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i have never really been very intrested in hydrogen engines, and i never thought that these engines can be marketed. but know that i know a little bit about them i can see that there can be great success if this idea really was pushed. the reason i am commenting u is i would like to know more about these engines and how they function. i saw the rendering of the engine but i would like to know how exactly they convert oxygen into energy. thank you for any info u can share.
Hey Corey,
Sorry about that, but I’m no expert in energy and mechanical engineering.
I was more intending to focus on Isaac de Rivaz’ genius as an innovator, entrepreneur, and visionary.