Designed by Accident?
by Michael Hay on February 5, 2010
Over at Slashdot there is a story about the “The Journal of Serendipitous and Unexpected Results” where the discussion is started about scientists and researchers usually not sharing all of the wrong turns they took to get to their final destination. Sometimes unintended consequences, or outright accidents lead to extraordinary break throughs. However, more often than not the notion of continuing in the face of many repeated failures, in short never giving up, leads to break throughs as well. It reminds me of the Japanese Daruma dolls and their associated saying: seven times down eight times up [never give up]. From my experiences in EE school I can say that one of the chief lessons I’ve learned from the program was to never give up. Whether it was a lab experiment or merely coursework that was utterly befuddling the important point is to keep going.
At Hitachi we invest a lot in R&D and core R&D for that matter. Here is a link to a video documenting stereo camera technology that was co-developed with Subaru for automotive collision avoidance. The thing that I want to point out is that the R&D backing this innovation is cited at nearly 20 years, Hitachi/Subaru didn’t give up. Another example of getting up for the eighth time is the Motoczysz C1 990 which was built by Michael Czysz who was not an engineer or a motorcycle racer, but an architect with a dream. By never giving up he created a truly innovative and revolutionary motorcycle. Below is a YouTube video of the C1 990.
So the next time you are in the middle of solving an interesting business problem or tinkering in your garage, remember many times being successful is more about getting up the eighth time than coming up with most novel idea.
