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Invention, Innovation Systems, and the Fourth Industrial Revolution

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Invention, Innovation Systems, and the Fourth Industrial Revolution Technology and Innovation, Vol. 18, pp. 257-265, 2017 ISSN 1949-8241 • E-ISSN 1949-825X Printed in the USA. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.21300/18.4.2017.257 Copyright © 2017 National Academy of Inventors. www.technologyandinnovation.org INVENTION, INNOVATION SYSTEMS, AND THE FOURTH INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION Arthur Daemmrich Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, USA This article reviews the interplay of major inventions and changes to innovation systems during three historical industrial revolutions as the basis for understanding whether a new revolutionary era is underway at present. The periods start with widespread use of steam power and manufacturing using interchangeable parts from the 1850s onwards; electrification, synthetic materials, and mass production beginning in 1900; digital computing and electronic communications starting in the 1960s; and a potentially emerging fourth revolution of arti- ficial intelligence and distributed small-scale manufacturing. Specific inventions, changes to national innovation systems, shifts in workplaces and the organization of labor, and evolving styles of consumption are considered for each of the discrete industrial eras. The article con- cludes with lessons about spillovers from innovation that underpin industrial revolutions and offers perspective on contemporary debates concerning the rate of technology change. It also suggests that organizational and institutional structures that support inventors and ensure returns to corporate innovation in the United States will need to adjust if a fourth industrial revolution has begun. Key words: Invention; Industrial revolution; Innovation system; Labor; Consumption INTRODUCTION arising from new methods of producing and shipping A fourth industrial revolution has started accord- goods or for generating and transmitting information ing to recent essays by technology entrepreneurs, (3). Industrial revolutions are profound because they policy reports issued by the World Economic Forum, are periods in which key innovations lead to new and organizers of numerous high-profile conferences ways of doing things, not just efficiencies or increased (1,2). Defining and dating industrial revolutions— production at lower prices. More recently, a debate periods during which technology, manufacturing, and emerged in the 1990s about the significance of rela- employment change rapidly and in synchronicity— tionships among science, technology, and industry for can be contentious among historians of technology, industrial revolutions and the sometimes awkward fit business, and economics. Yet, ever since Joseph of the chemical and pharmaceutical industries with Schumpeter’s groundbreaking Business Cycles was traditional divisions of steam power as the source of published in 1939, historians, economists, and others the first, electricity as core to the second, and com- have delineated epochs to explain systemic changes puting and communications as the foundation of _____________________ Accepted November 30, 2016. Address correspondence to Arthur Daemmrich, Director, Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation Smithsonian (NMAH), Lemelson Center, MRC 604, P.O. Box 37012, Washington, DC, 20013-7012, USA. Tel: +1 (202) 633-6396; E-mail: daemmricha@ si.edu 257 258 DAEMMRICH a third industrial revolution (4,5). Other historical foretells rising productivity, longer lifespans, and even studies have contested the very existence of industrial a transhuman merging of people with computers revolutions, with some scholars arguing instead for (8,9). Other forecasters, including Sun Microsystems gradualist or evolutionary interpretations (6,7). founder Bill Joy, warn that a near-term future dom- Rather than being only gradual or always revo- inated by artificial intelligence has no place for or lutionary and accelerating, this article suggests that need of humans (10). Historical perspective from past change over time exhibits features of punctuated periods of rapid and profound change suggests that equilibrium. Sometimes technology and social sys- even revolutionary innovation in technology does not tems undergo incremental adjustments, but at other eliminate work or make humans unnecessary (11). Of historical periods, which can last for three or four equal importance, and largely missed by proponents decades, rapid and profound changes occur. Each of a fourth industrial revolution, technology does not of the industrial revolutions analyzed here involved change through its own agency. Revolutionary peri- changes in widely used technologies, innovation ods inevitably bring significant changes to work and systems (ways of organizing and financing innova- consumption as methods and means of production tion), the organization of labor (places and ways of are transformed. However, these changes emerge working), and methods and means of consumption. through a dynamic push and pull relationship among These four aspects only rarely change rapidly together. inventors, business entrepreneurs, and consumers, When they do, the impacts are significant, conse- and not from human adaptation to the imperatives quential, and ultimately global in scope. of new technology. This article describes the key components of three widely recognized industrial revolutions in the United THE AMERICAN INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION States and offers an initial assessment of whether a Originating in England toward the end of the 18th fourth is underway. The first industrial revolution century, the first industrial revolution took hold in began in Britain with the introduction of steam the United States starting in the mid-19th power; mechanization of agriculture, manufactur- century. In ing, and transportation; and shifts to factory work. It his magisterial study of the United Kingdom, Paul manifested later in the United States with the inven- Mantoux defined it succinctly: “The industrial revo- tion of precision tooling and interchangeable parts. lution consists in the invention and use of processes The second industrial revolution originated in the which make it possible to speed up and constantly to United States with the electrification of the country, increase production” (12). Mantoux and subsequent scaling of mass-production via assembly lines, and the historians analyzed the first industrial revolution as invention and mass production of synthetic plastics more than a one-time change in technology or as and other new materials. The third industrial revo- resulting inexorably from innovations in steam power. lution also began in the United States thanks to the Instead, they argued that the industrial revolution invention of semiconductors, widespread adoption of involved the emergence of a completely new approach computers, and new systems for information storage to production, work, and consumption, a process and processing. A fourth industrial revolution may be that took over a century to fully unfold in England. about to begin thanks to a convergence of advances People moved from rural villages to urban centers as in artificial intelligence, reduced barriers to entrepre- work was centralized in factories. Consumption also neurship, and the spread of technologies that enable shifted, as goods increasingly were produced not just rapid prototyping and niche market sales. In each of for royal families, but also for a broader, albeit still these revolutionary periods, new inventions and new exclusive, capitalist class. approaches to organizing innovation led to anxieties Entrepreneurs in the United States rapidly bor- about the deskilling of labor and fears of disruptions rowed new ways of generating and using energy from to existing political and social order. England, and trained craftsmen, such as Samuel Slater, The present historical moment is characterized by a brought knowledge of new milling and weaving prac- high degree of anxiety around technology change and tices to North America (13). A transformative and disruptive innovation. To technological utopians, a revolutionary moment came for the United States convergence of computing power and bioengineering with the invention of precision milling, first for guns INVENTION AND THE 4TH INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION 259 and soon thereafter for bicycles, sewing machines, and other components and to demonstrate the supe- and other consumer goods. Pioneered at the Harper’s riority of their materials (19). From the bespoke Ferry Armory in West Virginia, lathes designed for manufacture of goods for royal families and wealthy greater precision and built to follow repeated pat- merchants in Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries, terns for making metal parts ushered in a specifically the industrial revolution had made it possible by 1900 American contribution to the long wave of the first for an emerging middle class to own a household full industrial revolution (14). The resulting “uniformity of consumer products and to travel by themselves to principle” of interchangeable parts made it possible to neighboring towns, setting the stage for tremendous hire fewer skilled laborers for factory work, a critical demand for the automobile. factor in light of mid-19th century labor shortages in the United States. Craftsmen at Harpers Ferry ELECTRIFICATION AND MASS PRODUCTION consequently spurned the new technology, viewing A second industrial revolution took hold firmly it as a threat. Yet, it soon caught on elsewhere, start- in the 1910s as American cities installed electrical ing with
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