[MUSIC PLAYING]
EUGENE FITZGERALD:
The innovation process
that we describe Inside
Real Innovation is generic.
It applies to any area
because it's the human process
of innovating.
That's how we
arrive at producing
new things in the
marketplace, regardless
of the particular field.
In the book, we go through
different examples,
but one of the main examples
is a 20-year-old story
so that we can talk about
fundamental innovation.
And we were fortunate
enough to have
participated in that
innovation the whole time.
Typically, the nature of
fundamental innovation,
it changes over a
long period of time
and it jumps from
organization to organization.
In this particular case, we
moved with the innovation
through different organizations
until final marketplace
adoption.
And so that example
of strained silicon
allows us to really elucidate
that fundamental process that's
occurring over that
long period of time.
So one of the interesting things
about fundamental innovation
is that you end up having
a chance to create what
are called innovation
paradigms, which then throw off
incredible economic
growth for decades.
And we are fortunate the
United States to have one.
Ground zero for
the information age
is pretty much something called
Moore's law, where roughly
over time the density
of transistors
has doubled every two
years for 40 years.
People can't really
comprehend the economic growth
that that caused
the United States
because it's buried throughout
all our institutions
now after 40 years.
And with Moore's law
coming to an end,
it's that slow growth
now that's coming in
that we're seeing economically.
At the end of the innovation
paradigm like that,
and you get slower
growth, what happens
is people enter what
Thomas Kuhn called
the pre-paradigm phase,
where people are searching
for the next paradigm.
And you really
start to appreciate
the beauty of the
old paradigm where
people are running around
trying to find, well,
how are we going to get growth?
How are we going to growth?
There's lots of encouraging
things going on.
People are having
maker spaces, they're
trying to connect virtually
using the internet
to try to find out what the
next innovation paradigm can be.
One of the things that
Thomas Kuhn pointed out
is that the next paradigm
is inherently unpredictable.
The fact that
Moore's law is ending
is very exciting in a way.
I think it's very stressful
to all the institutions
that have really grown
and experienced fantastic
well-being during
this 40-year period,
but because it is the basis
for our entire information age
so far, the fact
that it's slowed down
is very exciting, because
as far as anybody can tell,
mankind's demand
to be connected at
and ever-lower cost
is not satiated.
So to me that's
always been exciting,
because whoever figures out
how to make the next integrated
circuits that make the
next systems that then make
the next software that
lead us into the future
is one of the most
exciting areas.
To address that,
we've been looking
in general at different
kinds of electronic systems
saying, well, if we could
miniaturize and bring
all these different
things together
into the same
manufacturing platform
that Moore's law created,
then we could imagine
having the flexibility
to design fundamentally
new integrated circuits that
can lead us into the future.
Now that's cutting across
industry structure,
fundamental research, all
sorts of different factors.
And what we've been able to
do is use MIT's smart program
in Singapore to fund
a larger effort where
we can get materials people,
process people, device people,
circuit people together.
Let them all influence each
other with some infrastructure,
partnering with
industry, so that we
can try to arrive at this next
significant wave of integrated
circuits.
And if we're successful,
it will lead us
down a path of some new Moore's
law-like economic growth.
