Annoying the engineers is a legitimate path to innovation

[Andrew Smith]

From the story behind the development at Kodak of the first digital camera.

"I wanted to build a camera with no moving parts. Now that was just to annoy the mechanical engineers. Most cameras at the time were mechanical marvels, and I couldn't build a mechanical camera to save my life. So I thought, since these guys are the cream of the crop, I'll just make one with no moving parts, and that'll annoy the hell out of them."

And the rest is history. More at https://www.bbc.com/future/article/2...amera-was-born

Andrew

[Andrew Smith]

And it's never easy demoing a product when it's a completely mind-blowing product.

"Gareth would give me a list of people to invite. I'm a junior engineer, you know, and I'm inviting managers. And then those managers saw it, then they invited other managers. And I got some pretty important people in these rooms.

"I did the same thing each time. Whoever was sitting on the right side – I would take a head-and-shoulder shot of them. And then the tape would start to move – I'd feel better because it was working. I would explain to people what this thing was… and then when the tape stopped, I would take a picture of the first person sitting on the left side. The tape would start again. Previous to this, we had brought in the playback unit, and the monitor, on a cart and we put it in the back of the room, and Jim would go back there. I would pop out the tape and I would pass it to him and he would put it in there. He'd be talking and all of a sudden the picture would come up. And the minute that picture came up, I lost control of every meeting."

Andrew