Here's an Idea!

I was working for DuPont at the time, and I had been asked to create a fiber that would be strong enough to reinforce radial tires. Working with a group of polymers, I made an unusual-looking solution. It was liquid crystalline -- meaning that it had the molecular organization of matchsticks, rather than of cooked spaghetti (as was usually the case). No one -- including me -- had ever seen a polymer solution like this one before. It was watery and cloudy -- which led some people to believe that it had some sort of solid material in it. In order to turn a polymer solution into a fiber, you have to spin the solution in a machine called a spinneret. It took me a few weeks to convince the person who was in charge of the equipment to try spinning the solution, because he thought that doing so would clog the spinneret.

A large part of innovation is welcoming difference. You have to be open to the unusual and understand that difference is often positive, not negative. A lot of people see something unusual and assume that it's wrong. Innovation is the ability to see something unusual and to recognize that the answer may lie in its difference.

Stephanie Kwolek started working for DuPont upon graduating from college in 1946 and remained with the company until her retirement, 40 years later. She is the recipient of numerous awards, including the 1996 National Medal of Technology and the 1999 Lemelson-MIT Lifetime Achievement Award. Kevlar, the material that resulted from Kwolek's work at DuPont, is five times stronger than steel. It is used in such items as bulletproof vests, radial tires, fiber-optic cable, suspension bridges, and spacecraft shells. Kwolek's name appears on 17 U.S. patents.

Jake Burton

Founder and Owner
Burton Snowboards
Burlington, Vermont

A lot of people think that I invented snowboarding, but that's not true. When I was about 14, I was exposed to a rudimentary product that embodied the concept of snowboarding, but it wasn't very functional or sophisticated. The Snurfer was marketed by Brunswick, a company that also created bowling alleys. An employee at the company had come up with the idea by putting a wooden platform on two skis. Clearly, that company's management never realized the value of what it had. I had no idea that snowboarding would become as popular as it has -- but did realize that people would want the product, and I committed energy to making and marketing it.

In certain industries, "innovation" refers to something scientific, or it involves some sort of technical research. I have a completely different perspective. What I do has an element of opportunism to it: It's market-oriented. I think that's how many innovations come about. It's certainly how innovations happen at our company. We ask, "What do people want? What's missing?" There's so much technology in the world today that, whenever you identify a shortcoming, you can find the tools to address it. If the original product is a hassle for people, they'll fork over money for something that's better.

Innovation doesn't have to be complex. I think that a lot of people are intimidated by the prospect of trying to make something better, because they feel that innovation has to be a scientific process. Or they feel that they have to come up with something extraordinary for it to be seen as innovative. Yet the solution is invariably very simple; the tools are usually right there. Problems arise when people don't use their imagination, because they end up making things too complex. But everyone has the ability to make innovation happen.

Jake Burton (info@burton.com) left Manhattan -- and a potential career on Wall Street -- shortly after college, and founded Burton Snowboards in Vermont in 1977. That company now dominates the snowboard industry. Burton prefers to call himself a "pioneer," rather than an inventor. (For the record, Burton did not invent the snowboard; there are snowboards that date back to the 1920s. The other major snowboard pioneer is Tom Sims, of Sims Snowboards, in Seattle.) Snowboarding has fast become a popular sport: In 1998, roughly 3.6 million snowboarders took to the slopes of the United States.