Woof! Innovation Is Doomed But Novel Gym Shoes Continue
October 23, 2025
This essay is the work of a dumb dinobaby. No smart software required.
I have worked for commercial and government firms. My exposure ranges from the fun folks at Bell Labs and Bellcore to the less than forward leaning people at a canned fish outfit not far from MIT. Geography is important … sometimes. I have also worked on “innovation teams,” labored in a new product organization, and sat at the hand of the all-time expert of product innovation, Conrad Jones. Ah, you don’t know the name. That ices you out of some important information about innovation. Too bad.
I read “No Science, No Startups: The Innovation Engine We’re Switching Off.” The write up presents a reasonable and somewhat standard view of the “innovation process.” The basic idea is that there is an ecosystem which permits innovation. Think of a fish tank. Instead of water, we have fish, pet fish to be exact. We have a hobbyist. We have a bubbler and a water feed. We even have toys in the fish tank. The owner of the fish tank is a hobbyist. The professional fish person might be an ichthyologist or a crew member on a North Sea fishing boat. The hobbyist buys live fish from the pet side of the fish business. The ichthyologist studies fish. The fishing boat crew member just hauls them in and enjoys every minute of the activity. Winter is particularly fun. I suppose I could point out other aspects of the fish game. How about fish oil? What about those Asian fish sauces? What about the perfume makers who promise that Ambroxan is just as good as ambergris. Then these outfits in Grasse buy whale stuff for their best concoctions.
Innovation never stops… with or without a research grant. It may not be AI, but it shows a certain type of thinking. Thanks, Venice.ai, good enough.
The fish business is complicated. Innovation, particularly in technology-centric endeavors, is more complex. The “No Science, No Startups” essay makes innovation simple. Is innovation really little more than science theorists, researchers, and engineers moving insights and knowledge through a poorly disorganized and poorly understood series of activities?
Yes, it is like the fish business. One starts with a herring. Where one ends up can quite surprising, maybe sufficiently baffling to cause people to say, “No way, José.” Here’s an example: Fish bladders use to remove impurities from wine. Eureka! An invention somewhere in the mists of time. That’s fish. Technology in general and digital technology in particular are more slippery. (Yep, a fish reference.)
The cited essay says the pipeline has several process containers filled with people. (Keep in mind that outfits like Google Deepseek want to replace humanoids with smart software. But let’s go with the humans matter approach for this blog post.)
- Scientists who find, gather, discover, or stumble upon completely new things. Remember this from grade school, “Come here, Mr. Watson.”
- Engineers who recycle, glue together, or apply insight X to problem Y and create something novel as product Y.
- MBA-inspired people look and listen (sort of) to what engineers say and experience a Eureka moment. Some moments lead to Pets.com. Others yield a Google-type novelty with help from a National Science Foundation grant. (Check out that PageRank patent.)
The premise is that if the scientific group does not have money, the engineers and the MBA-inspired people will have a tough time coming up with new products, services, applications, or innovations. Is a flawed self-driving system in the family car an innovation or an opportunity to dance with death?
Where is the cited essay going? It is heading toward doom for the US belief that the country is the innovation leader. That’s America’s manifest destiny. The essay says:
Cut U.S. funding, then science will happen in other countries that understand its relationship to making a nation great – like China. National power is derived from investments in Science. Reducing investment in basic and applied science makes America weak.
In general, I think the author of this “No Science, No Startups” is on a logical path. However, I am not sure the cited article’s analysis covers the possibilities of innovation. Let’s go back to fish.
The fish business is complicated and global. The landscape of the fish business changes if an underwater volcano erupts near the fishing areas not too distant from Japan and China. The fish business can take a knock if some once benign microbe does the Darwin thing and rips through the world’s cod. What happens to fish if some countries’ fishing community eat the stock of tuna? What if a TikTok video convinces people not to eat fish or to wear articles of clothing fabricated of fish skin. (Yes, it is a thing.)
Innovation, particularly in technology, has as many if not more points of disruption. The disruptions or to use blue chip consultant speak or exogenous events occur, humanoids have a history of innovating. Vikings in the sixth century kept warm without lighting fires on their wooden boats made water tight with flammable pine tar. (Yep, like those wooden boat hull churches, the spectacle of a big time fire teaches a harsh lesson.)
If I am correct that discontinuities, disruptions, and events humans cannot control occur, here’s what I think about innovation, spending lots of money, and entrepreneurs.
- If Maxwell could innovate, so can theorists and scientists today. Does the government have to fund these people? Possibly but mom might produce some cash or the scientist has a side gib.
- Will individuals not now recognized as scientists, engineers, and entrepreneurs come up with novel products and services? The answer is, “Yes.” How do I know? Easy. Someone had to figure out how to make a wheel: No lab, no grants, no money, just a log and a need to move something. Eureka worked then and it will work again.
- Is technology itself the reason big bucks are needed? My view is yes. Each technological innovation seems to have bigger price tags than the previous technological innovation. How much did Apple spend making a “new and innovative” orange iPhone? Answer: Too much. Why? Answer: To sell a fashion item. Is this innovation? Answer: Nope. Its MBA think and that, gentle reader, is infinitely innovative.
If I think about AI, I find myself gravitating to the AI turmoil at Apple and Meta. Money, smart people, and excuses. OpenAI is embracing racy outputs. That’s innovation at three big outfits. World-changing? Nope, stock and financial wobblies. That’s not how innovation is supposed to work, is it?
Net net: The US is definitely churning out wonky products, students who cannot read or calculate, and research that is bogus. The countries who educate, enforce standards, and put wandering young minds in schools and laboratories will generate new products and services. The difference is that these countries will advance in technological innovation. The countries that embrace lower standards, reduced funding for research, and glorify doom scrolling will become third-world outfits. What countries will be the winners in innovation? The answer is not the country that takes the lead in foot ware made of fish skins.
Stephen E Arnold, October 23, 2025
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