XXPaper TECHNICAL DAY, HELSINKI, 1. 4. 2004

INNOVATION

Risto Linturi

Few years ago in Taipei - IT World Congress, I had a pleasure to speak shortly after Bill Gates. He praised the potential of mobile phones and what good things you could accomplish after Microsoft would just make all those mobile wonders possible. I had my speech on paper but I changed the beginning. I stepped out of the podium with my Nokia Communicator visibly in my hand. Then I read the initial part of my speech from my phone. He was the king and I was the jester, but I had clothes.

Now I have my notes again on paper. If paperless office would have arrived so rapidly as many predicted in the 80’s, we would not be here physically. This would be my virtual avatar and you would all have stayed home with your virtual reality helmets on. Lunch recipes would be sent to you over email.

Some things should always remain the same. Some innovations feel really good. Do you know why we use the right one when we shake hands? Left was often dirty.

Jules Verne had quit writing opera librettos 1863 when he wrote about Paris one hundred years in the future. He imagined a world where cars would fill the streets; Latin and Greek were not taught in schools, large corporations, powerful engines and technocratic values had taken over. Keller had invented mechanic pulp twenty years earlier and Watt patented his chemical pulp innovation only nine years earlier in 1854. Paper from rags had become very expensive, as rags were in short supply.

Jules Verne described huge computing machines in banks and numerous scribes writing down the results of the computations. He had faxes and stock markets were electronically connected but he could not imagine printers. He did see that paper would be cheap and usage would grow enormously but he still did not see how common causes it would be used for. When Jules Verne had these visions, people did not even imagine of toilet paper – rich people used leek and others used left hand.

I visited Tanzania few years ago. They had tiny computing machines – pocket calculators - that must have outperformed any of Verne’s visions. For them, paper and pen are still too expensive, but many could invest in small solar powered calculators. They still seem to consider it strange if you take bread in your left hand. Side effects of pulp have not progressed so far.

Sumerians did not have any kind of paper - not even papyrus. I do not know if they shook hands. But they invented book keeping in their temples. A soft tile was pressed with symbols and left to dry. They had one pile of tiles for each personal account. They also had tiles specifying exchange rates between various products. They did not need to be afraid that someone would steal or forge their books. Worlds first and heaviest story about Gilgamesh was also pressed on the same tiles after being stored for one thousand years only in storytellers heads.

Greeks invented money instead of IOU’s. Money was valuable metal, worth it’s weight. It was easier than book keeping in the local temple at least for the soldiers travelling all over the world. It was Chinese who printed IOU’s on paper and then sent them across their part of the world. Someone then thought that you could use the real money while it’s representation was travelling and invented the banking system and paper money. Another unexpected side effect of paper.

It is paradoxical; paper industry has eyes on China as a growing market. Ts’ai Lun invented paper and many speciality chemicals. This year is 1900^th^ anniversary of paper. Diamond Sutra from 960’s consists of 130 volumes of Chinese classics. Chinese invented movable type in 1040’s. Early second millennium numerous professional books on gardening, fishing, pharmaceuticals, weaving, mathematics, and engineering had spread through the country – paper from rag and bamboo changed their world. Also Koreans and Mongols had movable types before Europeans. Thousands of them per font actually. Very big investment.

China was on the verge of full-scale industrialization some three hundred years before Europe. I would actually give this speech in Chinese unless Ming emperors had stopped all progress in early 1400’s. They built the Great Wall of China, stopped international trade, and research, turned inwards and stagnation followed.

Paper consumption may not always increase. MIT Media Lab and others strive to create a paper that can be electronically reprinted. Such paper would be great; perhaps few would be enough. I wonder in they have thought about disappearing ink. I guess it is easier to develop than permanent ink. I could print weekly reports with in and use the same blank papers next week. Not a good invention for you paper manufacturers, no wonder you have not been talking about it.

Printed-paper is very easy to read and browse. Future laser displays will fit in eyeglasses and they project directly to our retina. There is no question that some day computers will be good enough to bypass current printing technology as a display.

It is not only a question of what we prefer as readers. Newspapers today create a huge network between talented writers, advertisers and readers. This business model is supported by advertisements and challenged by the internet. People search jobs, housing and leisure trips increasingly from web pages. Most correspondence, product catalogues and other searchable databases are already electronic.

Few years ago I wrote about a mobile phone that would continuously tape all voices it hears. Now memory capacity is large enough and next decade it is hundred times bigger. With speech recognition and Google, this lifelong recorder, returns you to the past. You need to remember when, who or what. Or the replay will be a soap opera.

This kind of devices might bring us closer back to oral tradition of the early Sumerians and Finns of not so long ago. Professor William Crossman claims we forget reading when computers start talking. He comes from USA, which explains his attitude. Crossman’s scenario is not totally impossible. But it takes a century.

In the meantime we have mobile phones that tape and project all we have ever heard or seen. Nokia has already announced plans on this direction. We will not carry so much paper with us, if paper does not add more value than it does today.

I do not wish to predict a downturn for paper consumption. Even if western world would slowly give up on paper and developing countries would partially jump over the paper phase of our history, world paper consumption should grow for decades. And there are possibilities. We can only guess on tomorrow’s lifestyles. If you enhance quality and add intelligent features to paper, you get more for less. There must be many new uses for paper that cannot be replaced by virtual reality.

Globalized mantra of today - be competitive. Strangely current western strategy aims to efficiency instead of innovation. India and China are huge potential competitors with endless supply of educated cheap labour. Increases in productivity cannot suffice for our current living standards unless developing nations start to consume as much as we do. As we talk about products limited by natural resources, this cannot happen. We must create added value, not bound to increased material demand.

The same year 1776, when a very innovative paper was signed, Adam Smith published the foundation to economic theory. In “Wealth of the Nations” he described that added value comes from the division of labour. People concentrate on what they do best. Specialization and exchange has developed into extremely complex forms guided by Adam Smiths invisible hand –free market.

Human collaboration has been a continuous problem for philosophers and many other scientists. During enlightment it was thought that our minds start as blank slates and all that is good is derived from our culture. Rousseau had an opposing view. Without easy co-operation, innovations are difficult and Adam Smiths theory wrong.

This problem was elegantly condensed in the form of prisoners’ dilemma. (One hundred thousand hits from Google.) In the game you have two players. When they collaborate, both get 3 points. Joint result is good. If only one collaborates and the other declines, collaborator gets no points and cheater gets 5 points. Joint result is moderate. If neither collaborates, both get one point. How would you play? If you cheat, you may get five or one. If you are nice, you may get three or zero. Selfish decision-making does not seem to favour co-operation. This is against invisible hand. This dilemma many people tried to solve with hundreds of papers through decades.

Twenty years ago Robert Axelrod was able to show that if you repeat the game and players remember previous games, it does pay to be nice. It does not pay to cheat, but immediate punishment and forgiveness are good strategies. Winner, TIT FOR TAT starts by being nice and then plays as the same opponent played last time. This is so easy that it must be inbred in biological systems. We have a tendency to self organize in cooperative forms to add value. This is the foundation of most innovations.

Much of our collaboration resembles an anthill. If you look at an individual ant, what they do seems sort of mindless. They are machinelike; simple and few algorithms. Returning from a successful trip an ant leaves a chemical trail. Other ants searching for food are encouraged by this trail. An anthill produces wide and smooth roads to all the good places. Similar signals coordinate attacks against enemies, and few other incidents. Anthill gathers and uses environmental information very efficiently. All inventions have been just random accidental mutations and nobody is in charge.

Complexity theory says that information handling, innovativeness, is most efficient on the edge of chaos. Capability to adapt according to signals from the environment. When structures are rigid, change requires much energy. This may explain why increased productivity, lowering transaction costs and increasing specialization lead us towards the edge of chaos where turbulences are commonplace.

Most of our great innovations resemble accidental mutations in the anthill. World is full of originally underestimated innovations like pulp. Seemingly small ideas spread as viral memes. Then they cause complexity theory’s bifurcations and emergent structures that surprise everybody, whether toilet paper or industrialization. Current economic theory actually seems to suggest that even profit in a free market can only be gained when you do not understand where it really comes from. Well, I guess already Marx said this. If some person shows he does understand it, competitors can employ him. If you have something that others cannot buy, it is not a free market.

If you see a doorbell, which you push to ring the inside telephone, it’s not common. If it causes my mobile phone to ring, you must be standing in front of my door. If you are there only virtually, pushing what looks like my doorbell, you are using my patent, not a free market. I wonder if someone tried to patent putting mobile phone numbers on the telephone catalogue.

Let us return to paper. Most Finns this week plant seeds on wet napkins to have grass for Easter decorations. Many younger Finns have experienced only filtered coffee. Some people use paper clothes. With appropriate chemicals paper can be turned into pieces of furniture. There used even to be a car that was mostly paper. Trabant it was called and many of them are nowadays upside down in gardens, filled with dirt and flowers. Some innovations require paper and some others may make it useless. Digital photography may do both but I do not know in which order. There will also be innovations that totally change the way, how we make paper.

When you wish to be innovative, it helps to be systematic. If you are too systematic, you end up with small enhancements to existing products or you end up retired having studied millions of unsuccessful paths. You must jump over most things.

It is easy to be creative. You just need to be a little crazy and not accept those categories and structures that other people consider true. You need to see through hierarchies and means that have become ends. You need to switch metaphors and connect things together that previously did not belong together.

If you do this, you can produce more ideas per week than your company can research in a year. You become a nuisance or a circus star. Creativity needs to be increased in those directions, which are promising. Categories need to be broken but not randomly. Think about toilet paper with cartoons and advertisements or toilet paper, which becomes blue when we should see the doctor. You could also print paperback books on toilet paper. People do like to read and I like to be a nuisance.

I start my systematic search from resources. How does the company differ from competitors and customers? What are the resources and capabilities that could be used and developed? What are the existing networks? For chemical companies these strengths are connected to processes just as they are for paper mills.

XX paper chemicals might benefit if someone invented an efficient process to manufacture pulp and paper in homes. Common benefit (for XX and paper manufacturers) would be new products from the roll process that require chemical like substances.

With all bases covered, I would continue to all sorts of trends. Fresh water is becoming scarce in many wealthy areas. Forty years ago I was amazed to see that a string of toilet paper hanging over the edge could empty a bucket full of water. If we add nanochrystal surfaces, paper perhaps could produce fresh water from the sea.

There are many other trends. We will have lots of seniors with us. Mobility is increasing. People are worried about their environment and quality of what they breathe or put in their mouths. Various reagences can be printed on paper to later be analyzed by regular scanners and PC-software.

From trends I continue to enablers. I mentioned few of them already. We have infrastructural enablers like mobile phones, PC’s, digital cameras, scanners. These allow totally new kinds of mass products.

Then we have product enablers. Nobel physicist Richard Feynman gave a speech in 1959 on miniaturization. “There is still plenty of room at the bottom”. He told how we can write Encyclopaedia Britannica on the head of a pin, and challenged other scientists to create a working engine that would be less than half a millimetre per side. Then he told that all the books ever written on earth would fit inside the same space if each letter took 100 atoms.

He talked about the synthesis of biology, physics, mechanics and producing one-millimetre long automobiles, whole tiny factories and chemistry. Creating tailored molecules he predicted would benefit both chemistry and biology.

We have now accomplished many of the things that Feynman predicted but applications are familiar only in ICT. There is still plenty of room for imagination.

What could be done with surfaces that attach to the wall like lizards. Tiny fullerene tubes are tough enough to lift a car – how could they enhance paper quality. How could we use electric conductors and printed electronics, nanochemicals changing colour with magnetic fields, or surfaces, which collect solar energy. All these can be combined with paper processes to serve various needs as construction materials, decoration, energy supply, sensors, emitters or what have you.

Genetic engineering may affect paper industry as much as it may affect chemicals. Craig Venter managed to create our genetic chart in record time. Then he created a wholly synthetic, computer designed bacteria and now he is collecting genetic information from marine life. Life is very strange. If you put few cells in a liquid, your cells multiply by themselves and then they change your liquid to something else. You can also add cells to a surface and your whole surface changes.

Genetic engineering may produce trees that illuminate themselves as today’s genetically altered butterflies do. Trees better suited for paper can also be expected. But I would not be surprised to see stuff that grows in the sea that could be used instead of trees or a biological process that would actually grow into paper by itself.

Yes – very improbable that it could work with copy machines and as toilet paper – we had that already, it was called leek.

My next phase is customer oriented. Before division of labour was common, we used to provide for our own needs. Most people were very self-sufficient still couple of hundred years ago even in western countries. Now to add value, we need to find out what others may wish. If I want to create minor innovations I ask my own customers. If I wish to be more innovative, I ask their customers. Answers are however usually limited to existing categories of thought, to existing metaphors and other structures.

I usually start with science fiction and mythology. Those are people, who are not concerned with too many limitations. What would you do if you had all the magic of the world? Very often the answer was telepathy. No wonder mobile phones and text messages become so popular and killed paper messages. I can exchange ideas with whomever I wish, wherever they are. Nasa Ames Research centre is developing it now for sub vocalized speech suitable for classrooms, exams and stiff negotiations. Nobody would notice that we talk. If you cannot imagine how this could be really useful, read myths and tales. Always when you manage to find some mythical wish or magical talent that has not yet been accomplished technologically, but could – then patent if you can and become rich or publish and become famous.

Another exercise is going through daily routines of people. If you do it carefully enough you notice really many things that people would be happy to do without.

Technologically oriented people very often are surprised by how people behave and what they buy. People are considered stupid because they buy stuff that they should not need. It is amazing how few developers have studied Maslow’s theory of human motivation. Even though hierarchy of human needs is not proven in detail, it opens up a whole world of needs that most engineers seem to be unaware of. Those are the needs we really have. Current move to creative class motivation is easy to explain.

We have biological needs, safety needs, belonging and love needs, esteem needs, cognitive needs, aesthetic needs, self-actualization needs and transcendence needs. This is a brief list and the needs are much more detailed. However it is easy to see that we have used paper and chemicals in each category.

What if you could grow paper into food, use special nanochrystal paper to tattoo a snake on your shoulder that starts to move when you are excited? Special paper for various chemical analysis, self photocopying paper, tapestry that changes colour, collects extra humidity or sunlight to cool the room. Systematic walkthrough would give us thousands of possibilities.

This method requires that in each step you go through a list of earlier findings from capabilities to trends and enablers to needs. This way we try to overcome a limitation of our brain. We seldom connect two things that are not yet connected. They need to be simultaneously forced in our working memory.

There are many of us who believe that organizations like the anthill have a mind of their own and sometimes it is not concerned at all with human needs. These hive minds are formed by organizational routines and values. They subsume all individuals who get immersed in organisations. Thus in order to be profitable we do need to study the various aims that different organizations seem to have. Army, church, government, schools; … they would all be very different if human needs were their main concern. However, if you wish to be profitable, organizational needs must be respected. Many organizations need their papers even if people do not.

I have tried to stay loyal to my paper. Many of you must have noticed that I am not an expert on either special chemicals or cellulose products. But I can make weird questions. Kings used to have jesters or harlequins in their court. Harlequin cannot lose his credibility, only his head. All others he is supposed to irritate and reveal their weaknesses by ridiculing them. King should be treated lightly. Hopefully I managed to save my head.

I am aware I skipped all the sweaty parts of innovation. Especially the implementation and diffusion I left untouched. Most innovations are small enhancements in each process. One percent is a huge sum of money and every step in efficiency saves natural resources. Each real innovation adds to the sum total. Each innovation brings is closer to the edge of chaos and faster, weaker, flexible structures.

Many thanks for your attention.