Reverse Salients And Innovation

Nicholas Carr discusses reverse salients and points towards his article on the weakest link and innovation.

It is an article that took a couple of readings to fully assimilate it. Nick says

One of the best ways to think about how such systems progress is through the idea of “reverse salients.” The great technology historian Thomas P. Hughes introduced the phrase, in the context of technological innovation, is his book on the development of electric power systems, Networks of Power. He borrowed the term from military jargon, where it referred to a section of an advancing force that falls behind the front and hence slows the progress of the attack. Technological systems, he showed, advance in a similar way. Progress is held up when a reverse salient forms in some component or subsystem, but then begins again when the problem is solved – until the next reverse salient forms.

It is quite true that the progress to the ultimate step is held up by one component or subsystem. I had been referring to this as a lack of allround development of the system. I think Web has been such a system. The reverse salient has moved from technologies to standards to browsers to users. Now Web’s dependency on a personal computer is being resolved by accessing it through more popular and accessible devices like mobiles. Like Nick says, another reverse salient will be introduced, or rather it will move.

It is a different approach for studying how innovation progresses. In fact I think this is close to the way Theory Of Constraints can be applied for maximum ROI. Innovation stems from the need for solving constraints. The thing to note here is that, the reverse salients will move on to something else, requiring more innovation.

One of the things Nick discusses is use of open source in solving the reverse salients. I always think open source is beneficial because you get a wider base of talent to solve your problems. However, it does have its own problems, but the advantages far outweigh the disadvantages.