Often, we think that the scientific journey leading to technological inventions and innovations is at the core of the modern industrial economy. And tinkering is the act of the preindustrial age. Therefore, there has been decreasing importance of tinkering in developing the workforce to create an Innovation Economy. In contrary to such a belief, the journey of innovation begins with the act of tinkering. Subsequently, science follows tinkering for scaling up innovative ideas.
Tinkering is an intuitive act of a human. On the other hand, science is a formal approach. It appears that ideas originate and grow in the intuitive space first. Subsequently, they manifest as demonstratable practical solutions through the act of tinkering and Craftsmanship. However, tinkering-based idea demonstrations are not scalable. Knowledge supporting intuitive idea generation should be transferred to science to scale up the idea, through fine-tuning and adding additional ones. On the other hand, engineering should take the tinkering approach forward for effective and efficient scientific knowledge usage. However, in the absence of tinkering, ideas do not surface. Consequentially, science and engineering do not find the ideas to scale them up into profitable innovations. Therefore, tinkering is a precursor to science for pursuing an innovation economy. Unfortunately, formal education and R&D for creating an innovation economy have been increasingly marginalizing the tinkering role in developing the future workforce.
Examples of science following tinkering to innovate solutions
We all understand that Thomas Alpha Edison was a tinkerer. His tinkering approach was at the core to demonstrate ideas of many practical solutions. Starting from the light bulb to the gramophone, the list goes on. However, his tinkering-based demonstrations were not sufficient enough to make demonstrated ideas scalable solutions. Upon demonstrations, these solutions stopped growing further—for being increasingly better and also cheaper. Hence, scientific investigations followed for turning intuitive understanding of underlying phenomena into scientific knowledge. The flow of scientific knowledge became the key input for creating a Flow of Ideas to keep making demonstrated ideas like the light bulb increasingly better and cheaper. Subsequently, his ideas kept tuning into scalable innovations.
Even in modern times, the tinkering approach turned the idea of a solid-state switch or Transistor into a demonstrated concept. However, that demonstration was not sufficient enough to fuel the revolution of IT innovations. Subsequently, the journey of scientific knowledge generation about Silicon crystal and other associated materials kept progressing. Of course, this flow of knowledge has been vital in making transistors increasingly better and also cheaper. This is a crucial requirement that science follows tinkering for scaling up demonstrated ideas.
Innovation success stories are led by tinkerers
We all realize that Steve Jobs’ performance in innovation is magical. He is a college dropout. He did not have formal education in any branch related to science and engineer. His strength has been a Passion for Perfection and conceiving ideas for helping customers get their jobs done far better than ever. Often time, his ideas started seeing the light through the approach of tinkering. Upon getting clarity of his ideas through tinkering, he used to ask his R&D team to scale up those ideas for reaching to perfection. On the other hand, in the absence of passion for perfection and tinkering capability, highly educated scientists and engineers often fail to innovate.
Similarly, Bill Gates was a tinker, as far as writing code was concerned. Instead of relying on formal software engineering methods, he used to rely on his tinkering approach to transfer ideas into functional code. Science and Engineering approach used to follow up for fining tunning and scaling up.
Let’s look into the innovation success stories in Japan. Invariably, all major innovation icons in Japan, like Toshiba, Canon, or Honda, were started by tinkerers. They started even selling tinkering-based products. Besides tinkering, they rapidly approached science and engineering to scale up their demonstrated ideas. As a matter of fact, science follows tinkering for innovation successes.
Science scales up tinkering outputs
In the absence of science, tinkering alone does not succeed. For example, in the preindustrial age, our ancestors had steam engines. It was a tinkering-based idea demonstration of producing mechanical motion out of steam—generated from the boiling water. However, it did not scale up. Subsequently, the development of underlying scientific knowledge led to the making steam engine being increasingly powerful, safer, and less costly. In fact, this scientific advancement led to the waves of innovations around the steam engine—forming the 1st industrial revolution. On the other hand, in the absence of tinkering-based useful idea generation, science does not find a subject to work on.
Jugaad does not scale up as science does not follow tinkering
Still, to date, there are numerous make-shift ideas in use in India. In Hindi, they are called Jugaad. Innovation Foundation of India has made a database of more than 300,000 of them. Besides, similar makeshift demonstrations of ideas and their usages are highly visible in all developing countries. However, none of them has grown as a billion-dollar business. On the other hand, the ideas of Carl Benz or Wright Brothers were also Jugaad. They demonstrated their respective ideas through tinkering. But unlike Jugaad, a few of those ideas have become even a trillion-dollar industry. Why is there such a contrast? Unlike Grassroot innovators of Jugaad, innovators in advanced countries embarked on science to scale up their ideas.
Global Innovation Index misses tinkering
We often cite the Global Innovation Index (GII) as a frame of reference to measure and compare countries’ innovation capabilities. However, among the 80 indicators that GII usages, there is no indicator for measuring the tinkering capacity and its linkage with the scientific ability for scaling up. Hence, although countries like India, China, or Malaysia have made rapid GII ranking progress, such rankings fall short on proportionate innovation success stories in those countries. Due to the advancement of formal education, graduates, R&D investments, and publications, GII ranking is increasing, but it does not create the scope for graduates of science to follow tinkering-based ideas to scale up.
Combine Tinkering with Science and Engineering
It appears that tinkering plays a vital role in turning ideas into workable solutions. Such a workable form is vital for science and engineering to take on to scale up. It seems that the separation of science and engineering education from tinkering has been weakening the innovation capability. However, Japan’s tinkering and craftsmanship culture, Europe, and America have been offsetting this limitation. But developing countries are day by day falling behind by having an increasing emphasis on formal education. Hence, we need to combine tinkering and craftsmanship capability development with our formal education. And we need to start integrating it from the early stage so that it leads to developing a passion for perfection and Design Thinking. This integration appears to be vital for preparing the workforce for the innovation economy. Hence, it’s time to realize that science follows tinkering to create an innovation success story.
