“And it's my contention that that is a major component of why Silicon Valley was able to develop the technology as rapidly as it did, because we were all sharing—everybody won.”
—Jim Warren, commenting on the Home Brew Computer Club
Location, location, location, warn the folks who sell real estate about the importance of place. However, location also has lots to do with innovation. From a historical perspective, Jim Warren is largely correct about innovation being a place where everybody wins. The key word in his observation is "sharing". The place where everybody shares is a place where everybody can win.
A place where everybody can win trust, sharing and incentives for all partici-pants is the best incubator of innovation. As Bob Brands points out in his InnovationCoach column: "Frequently, the key motivator is less financial than it is recognition for their job well-done, validation for their Zen-like ability to  conjure new concepts, test and re-test prototypes. So, just FYI – motivation isn’t always about money – but motivation is critical. Reward your people – they are your best Innovation resource."
A recent survey from McKinsey confirms that view, reporting that "three non-cash motivators rise above all other forms of incentive: Praise from managers; the attention of leadership that takes place in one-on-one conversations; and the chance to lead projects, teams or task forces." Brands notes that such nods and recognition topped even cash bonuses, increased base pay, and stock or stock options--the three top-ranked financial incentives, McKinsey found.
Hmmmm, places where everybody wins, huh? Then for 2012, we may be well advised to look back at such "places" where innovation, maybe even some paradigm-shifting innovations, percolated up for the world to see. Creating or re-creating the attributes and incentives of "winning" places from the past may well help to jump-start flagging innovation during this season of recession, uncertainty and fear that has most in a strangle hold of inaction.
Places worthy of inquiry:
1. The Moore School lectures (1946): necessity of sharing during World War II meets the summer's-long manifesto for electronic digital computing.
2. The Barta Building (1950): real-time, general-purpose electronic computing bursts upon the scene in a sharing community totally beset from outside forces. Three-hundred inventions and Information Technology result.
3. Lincoln Laboratory (1965): pre-ARPANET, transcontinental networking between computers in a Barta Building colony usher in thoughts of the Internet.
4. The Home Brew Computer Club (1975): The Age of Acquarius meets the founders of personal computing, who innovated a few new uses for the Intel 8080 chip (1974)...and put computers on everyones' desktops. Also check out Bob Cringely and PBS television's: Triumph of the Nerds: The Rise of Accidental Empires
Also, look into Chapters 4, 5 & 7 of Bright Boys.
So, what then of Bell Labs? Think again, while reading Bob Lucky's most interesting account: "Leadership, Life, and the old Bell Labs" (2004)
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