Science and innovation, an ambiguous relationship
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Photo by Today’s science is tomorrow’s technology. — Edward Teller
870millions of euros is the amount invested, in two years, by the French’s Public Investment Bank (BPI) in Deep tech startups. Deep tech, this “new” branch of startups aiming to capitalize on substantial scientific knowledge, has been experiencing a definite fashion effect for several years. Between 2015 and 2018, the sector posted a 22% growth to reach $58.8 billion in global investments in 2018. We finally put into perspective the 870 million of the BPI over two years. And for good reason, deep tech seems to be behind the most revolutionary technologies of recent years. Materials science, artificial intelligence (AI), biotechnology, blockchain or quantum computing, and deep tech is on every journalist’s lips. In universities too, Ph.D. students, experts in their field, are increasingly encouraged to embark on entrepreneurship’s supposed “great adventure”.
The idea is simple: to earn money, it seems good to invest in strong innovations that will shape tomorrow, but in recent years all seem to come from science, so let’s invest in science. Indeed, many of the innovations of our era come from scientific progress. The Internet, for example, was built in the ’60s for the army, but mostly by scientists of the ARPA (now DARPA, Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency). The nuclear power plants, developed by the Commissariat aux Energies Atomiques et aux Energies Alternatives (CEA) are also a good example of the strong impact that the science of the 60s has on our current lives. Finally, science appears to us as a vector of innovation. This disciple born from the curiosity of a few seems to carry in it the secrets of tomorrow’s technologies. But was the invention of the computer itself an innovation? Was it science that innovated? Or is it Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, who, 38 years after the creation of the first computer, really innovated by making this technology accessible to the general public? Perhaps if we go back even further (a little further), Man needed science to “invent” fire and thus capture what is perhaps the first innovation in our history?
In recent years, the answer seems simple: innovation rhymes with technology, which in turn rhymes with science. However, it seems quite interesting to stop for a moment and to wonder about the relationship between these two worlds. Is science essential to innovation?
What is Science? If not maths
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The scientist is not the man who provides the real answers, but the one who asks the real questions. — Claude Lévi-Strauss
Even before sinking into the abyss of our question, it seems good to try to define what science is. If we try to find a universal definition. One could answer, with humor, that Science is a magazine. But, although one would be quite right, one would probably ask the wrong question.
Science is knowledge, as its etymology tells us, from the Latin Scientia, knowledge. However, although its Latin origin seems to lead us so quickly to our answer, science is a polyseme, one of those words with several meanings. Michel Blay, historian of science (ah hold, of science and not of science), describes science as “the clear and certain knowledge of something, based either on obvious principles and demonstrations, or on experimental reasoning, or the analysis of societies and human facts”. However, even if this quotation is very beautiful, a physicist would have great difficulty in adhering to such a statement, or at least physics (among others) would not be a science. Indeed, Blay maintains that knowledge must be “certain”, but in Physics, knowledge is theoretical, never certain. Of course, one could interpret the thing differently, science would not be theories, or at least theories would not be science, but rather observations. Indeed, a theory is never certain, in fact, we even say that a theory is “true” until proven otherwise, it is falsifiability. History is full of proofs of false theories as if they were just waiting for it. One of my favorite examples, because it carries an important moral, is that of Newton and Einstein.
Since the discovery of Isaac Newton in the 16th century, the three laws of the same name served as a pillar for all physicists, to the point where they were no longer “theories” but laws, “certain”. However, as the ages advance, so does technology, and the small telescope that Lippershey had invented develops into much more massive tools capable of observing further and in more detail. But “the devil is in the details”, and three centuries later we realize that these famous laws do not seem so certain. Indeed, while in our solar system Newton’s laws apply with breathtaking precision, in a more distant universe, with more voluminous stars, they bring disturbing results. We then look for explanations, trying to “correct” the problem. Perhaps the observations are wrong? Scientists were certain: Newton could not be wrong. It was not until 1905, when a young German flew against the tide, that we finally began to realize that Newton was perhaps “wrong”. This young German is Albert Einstein. While certainty was to be found in Newton’s laws, Einstein proposed a new theory, more precise, more complete, a new “certainty”: the theory of relativity.
To avoid being bad-mouthed, I must point out that, although the theory of relativity is a “truer” version of Newton’s theory, Newton’s theory is still extremely accurate when it comes to calculating the motion of nearby stars. Many physicists will prefer its use to that of relativity because of its simplicity (the theory of relativity is very complicated).
So what can we learn from this story? Perhaps, among other things, that certainty has no place in science, because nothing ever seems certain. Science (in my opinion) is observation. A scientist is first and foremost a curious person, who on a beautiful autumn night started to look at the sky, or who in the spring fell in love with the observation of the lawn. However, a scientist will never say that he carries the absolute truth, he has observed, he has theorized, he is never certain and maybe even just waits to be proven wrong. Some could say that we are, at least, certain of the observation. But this would be deluding ourselves because even observation is biased. We only observe what we can observe. In the beginning, the earth was at the center of the universe, then it was the sun, then finally the stars were not only a simple decoration around the solar system. What awaits us tomorrow?
Science is thus the knowledge acquired by the observation of what we see, and perhaps also the set of hypotheses resulting from this knowledge. It does not seem certain, however, and is only based on our capacity to observe and hypothesize.
Innovation isn’t an invention, so what is it?
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The value of an idea depends on its use. — Thomas Edison
Although the term innovation sounds familiar, it is not easy to define it correctly. Today, in the age of pixels, the tendency is to answer that innovation means developing new technology, inventing a new programming language, and launching a startup. But innovation is perhaps more than that. When in 1873, Claude Monnet [13] invented impressionism, was he innovating? Probably yes. However, he did not invent any new technology, nor did he launch any startup. Maybe innovation is not linked to technologies after all, so what is it?
To innovate is to create something new but not only. Indeed, we can already say that to innovate is to invent, to invent the new. This new can be anything. The technology of course, but also a toy, a political system, a language, an accent, a recipe, a fashion. Innovation is not limited, it is a vast concept that does not stop at the borders of a single discipline. We could even innovate in science, maybe even that’s what Einstein did when he invented relativity. Yet innovation is not just inventing, otherwise, anyone would be an innovator. So what is the mystery ingredient? Social impact.
An incredible invention is good, but if it stays in your garage, you might as well not have invented anything (although). Innovation is not just an invention, it is an invention with a social impact. This does not mean that it needs to improve people’s lives, but rather that it needs to be widely known or used. Thus, an innovation is defined as a new invention, in any field, with a societal impact.
Two magnificent worlds with very interesting interaction
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If you look at history, innovation doesn’t just come from giving people incentives; it comes from creating environments where their ideas can connect. — Steven Johnson
Science is therefore based on the art of observing and theorizing, innovation on the art of inventing and convincing (if tempted), fields that may seem to be opposed. However, perhaps we can find similarities between them or at least logic.
Indeed, the goal would be rather to find a logic in it, our initial question being to understand if innovation needed science to exist. So we are trying to find out what are the mystery ingredients of this strange potion that is innovative.
On the face of it, one could find some rather quick counterarguments to this statement. In what way did André Breton need science when he invented surrealism (and thus created an innovation in art). Or in what way did Yves Saint Laurent need science when he turned the world of fashion upside down with the most peculiar innovations? These two men probably didn’t need physics, or mathematics, at least not necessarily more than the basics learned at school. Neither of them was a doctor in biology or chemistry, but only simple men who liked to paint, draw, and dream. Yet perhaps they called upon science without even realizing it.
Let’s try to forget for a moment the connection that one would naturally make between science and mathematics or physics. Now let’s even forget the word science and replace it with “knowledge”, which seems to define it well. Let’s ask ourselves again: did Saint Laurent or Breton need knowledge when they innovated? Could they have innovated without it? Our question then takes a completely different turn and answering it now seems much less simple. Yet, except for a few things, it is not supposed to have changed, science being knowledge.
But if we consider science as knowledge, it would be easy this time to exclaim: “But then, since no one is devoid of knowledge, innovation is necessarily linked to knowledge and therefore to science! This is indeed true, and it concludes my thesis.
…
Of course, things are not so simple, and rather than rush to embrace convoluted conclusions, it would be more appropriate to ask the question of the limits of our conclusion. Science is knowledge, all right, but what knowledge? Is the knowledge of the alphabet a science, and therefore would it be sufficient for an innovator to know how to write to consider that science was necessary for innovation? It, therefore, seems important, if not necessary, to define the limits of our vocabulary. In our question: should all knowledge be considered science? And what should be considered as the innovator’s contribution to innovation? Indeed, if the innovator brings his whole self to the innovation, should we consider that one of his knowledge that has no relation to the innovation created could have an impact? Let’s take the example of the startup Pardi.
Pardi is a company created by Julie and Léa, two friends, two management students, one in London, the other in Paris, and two women who (like many) have developed an awareness of the climate issue. So what is Pardi? A new eco-responsible management software? An app about Paris? About London? No, Pardi is a new refillable mascara. The mascara, is a cosmetic product full of science, chemistry, and material science, that Julie and Léa did not master. But today: Pardi exists, and the first copies are selling.
Of course, the prism is biased. No, Julie and Léa did not have the scientific knowledge to create this innovation. They had the imagination, but still needed the assistance of experts to make the idea a reality. So science was not necessary for the ideation, but the realization? We could also raise the fact that, although they did not know the technical fields surrounding the mascara, they did know the use of the mascara as well as the knowledge of the climatic problems.
Would she have succeeded in creating this mascara without the assistance of “scholars”? To answer this new question, I will take a personal example.
A few weeks ago, I came across a YouTube video of someone making a drone out of Lego. How does it work? No fluid physics or other complicated sciences but trial & error as we say so well in English. We try, we fail, we start again, improving each time, and the drone ends up flying. A few days after this video, a friend of mine (a second-year engineering student at the Ecole des Mines de Paris) tells me that she is taking a course to design a drone. So I ask her about what I saw in this video: “Did you test the lift of the engines? Did you test several designs? After that, she explained to me that for the moment (and for the next 4 weeks) the teaching unit only consisted of courses in fluid physics and material physics… Nothing that had seemed necessary to the man in the video. But two months later, my friend still doesn’t have a flying drone, and it took the YouTuber a few minutes of trial & error to get a working drone.
So perhaps innovation can sometimes be due more to persistence and chance than to well-calculated science. That said, let’s not forget that our definition of science is knowledge due to observation. By carrying out this error testing method, our young inventor has created a source of knowledge for himself, gradually learning what to do by observing (another important word in my definition of science) and creating his science. Knowledge is perhaps not necessary upstream of the innovation, but will undoubtedly be acquired during the creation process. The innovation will thus be the result of knowledge acquired throughout the ideation and the creation, and of knowledge obtained upstream.
Finally (and although I had planned to answer the opposite), everything seems to point to the fact that science is somehow linked to innovation. However, there seems to be a lot of science to discern, that upstream of innovation, that acquired during the innovation process, that acquired afterward perhaps?
This is the idea behind the C-K theory, based on work carried out by Armand Hatchuel and Benoît Weil at the Ecole des Mines de Paris. Innovation is a constant back and forth between a concept base and a knowledge base. So knowledge, science, is indeed necessary for innovation?
But what are the other factors? Luck? Networking? Money? Education, perhaps if more knowledge means more innovation? Or maybe experience, if more knowledge means more innovation? Maybe a little bit of all? Because if a man puts his whole being into his innovation, then finally, everything must be necessary for good innovation.
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