16 thoughts on “Innovation”

1. Great points.
   One could argue that Elon Musk gave the world the first viable electric car and he’s from South Africa.

   There is a reason that aircraft produced in Russia and Communist China, markedly resemble U.S. warplanes. With the wholesale infiltration of the majority of our corporate, educational and government entities, especially Hillary Clinton’s open to the cyber world server, it’s to be expected. Starting with Boeing’s B-29 bomber copied by Russia, many other products from the U.S., Europe and Japan, have been reverse engineered by China.

2. I don’t think these examples allow the inferences being made (in other words, there’s an awful lot of ignorant BS in this).

   Yes, the US had great big V-8s and that was because people wanted them. In Europe and Japan, where they don’t have their own oil (before the 70s), cars with decent gas mileage were the norm because that’s what people wanted. When the Arab Oil Embargo hit, people wanted cars with better gas mileage and Europe and Japan had the cars to sell. Moreover, American cars were, in an awful lot of ways, pieces of shit because they were designed that way; they were intended to be replaced after a couple of years (I have some stories about cars from the 70s and early 80s that I owned) and people were fine with this. Oh, yeah, remember when the price of oil dropped again and then no one wanted fuel efficient vehicles? And then the price of oil went up again and fuel efficiency was important again? Yeah, people don’t remember.

   As to the light airplane market and innovation, I’d like to ask why does the market in Europe drive innovation so hard? How are they used? Is this use different from the US? How big is this market? Is it worthwhile for an American mfg’er to get into and dominate?

3. … and what boss said too.

4. Corporate bureaucracies deserve a great deal of credit for stifling innovation. Large corporations I worked for in the 80s had small Personnel Departments that dealt, almost exclusively, with payroll and benefits issues. They never thought to insert themselves into the line of business decision making process. Now the spawn of Personnel, HR operates as both zampolit and stasi at every level of the production hierarchy.

5. It wasn’t only lack of innovation that killed the Big 3. Union thugs ruled the factory floors. Assemblers worked at their own leisurely pace. They not only showed up to work drunk and baked, they spent their lunch hour topping off.

   I know these things from having had several friends with elder brothers working at the now defunct GM plant in Newark, Ca. Saw it with my own eyes.

   In the 70’s, several iconic cars were produced: The Challenger; Road Runner; NASCAR Charger; The Judge GTO; the Mach I.

   Yes, there were some wretched designs…Gremlin K Car and Pacer will forever be badges of shame.

   But at the core, it was fecklessness and greed that brought Detroit to it’s present condition.

6. JD, you are conflating innovation with evolution. All your examples are evolutionary tweaks to innovations originally designed in the US. Well, mostly. If you look at true innovation, like personal drone aircraft, I am sure you will find 90% of all the startups are in the US. US moved past the fangible innovations into virtual – think NFTs. I personally think this is devolution, but to each his own.

7. Rat;
   Here in Minnesota, several workers at the Ford Ranger plant in St. Paul, several employees were caught drinking beer at the outdoor picnic tables, during their lunch hour.

   Then, some Chrysler workers were also busted not only drinking beer on their lunch breaks, but buying it, as well.

   Both of these exposes were brought to us by local TV stations, you know, back when the media actually took everyone to task?

8. Maybe I’m too close to the subject. Those of you in other industries – is the innovation, leadership, entrepreneurship energy in your sector coming from the US and being monkey-copied by other countries, only cheaper? Or is it coming from abroad like the light aircraft industry?

9. Those of you in other industries
   
   A patent attorney told me that reverse-engineering is a well developed skill in Asian countries. First, Japan and later superseded by China.

10. In the 90’s, I was working at FSI International, in Chaska, MN. We made equipment for pumping all the various high purity chemicals needed to process silicone wafers into IC chips. 1/2 of our jobs were in the Pacific rim, and in 1994 I was handed the job of managing a Motorola project in Chengdu, China. At the time (and I think it’s still true today), you had to have a Chinese business partner to do business in China….that meant the Chinese government.

    I couldn’t believe they were going to build a wafer fab in China, and said so to my Motorola boss. He assured me the fab they were building was only capable of producing circuits with (large) .8 micron lines, which were being used for chips in Motorola MicroTAC cell phones. I asked him, “Do you really think the Chinese are so stupid they won’t build on that tech?”

    He said “Not my call”.

    Today, Chinese wafer fabs produce 60nm conductors, which are used in the most powerful CPU’s. Those plants have no foreign “partners”.

    The Chinese didn’t steal our tech; we sold it to them for filthy lucre.

11. BTW, in ’91, I saw a working flat screen TeeVee at a Phillips facility, that had been made in 1988.

12. Shipping the manufacturing jobs over seas has also affected innovation. It was good initially as it gave us Americans cheaper products, this decreasing cost of living. It also boosted world wide economics, which does help with peacekeeping efforts. However, too much overseas production keeps the control overseas as well, thus quality lacks and eventually so does innovation to tweak, improve, etc.

13. Regarding European innovation in aviation, you’ve got FAA regulations, but you also have our tort bar. I’m not a pilot myself, but I’ve been around small airports enough to have those who are in the know point out certain aircraft as “real widowmakers.” Around cars, you’ll see the same thing, especially with things like vintage Citroen 2CVs and VW Bugs & Rabbits. Cute cars, huge deathtraps. Regulations and lawyers killed them off–many would say “thank God”.

    So part of the deal is that our tort bar is killing of new ideas, and I’m guessing another part is that the engineers in the former Warsaw Pact are now allowed to do innovative work and have fun. So what we have is nations in Europe with “our” basic makeup, but without the tort bar and FAA/etc to slow them down.

    Another thing, since we mention cars, is that the Germans and Japanese had the advantage of high fuel taxes. In the U.S., we spent the 1950s and 1960s developing wonderful V6 and V8 engines; in Europe and Japan, it was little four cylinder engines that needed to rev high with transmissions capable of handling that. So when we had our fuel crunch came, we were primed for European and Japanese cars.

    And yes, as mjb notes, our trade policies have wrought havoc as well. I have interacted with a lot of former engineers who become “anything but” because the manufacturing engineering and quality jobs that used to be here are not overseas. If a third of your engineers become financial advisors and such, you’re going to have trouble sustaining innovation.

14. Another thing, since we mention cars
    
    Good to get confirmation of what I wrote.

15. I forgot the lawyers…behind every hardship you’ll find a lawyer.

16. OK, one more thing about innovation that comes to mind; it flourishes when a person has a little bit of extra time to think. Now consider how work-weeks have been getting longer and longer.

    We might wonder whether a lot of innovation dies in a 55 hour work-week.

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