UM Innovation

A few weeks ago, I attended the UM Innovation Showcase to check out some of the groundbreaking new technologies UM faculty and students are working on. Interestingly, both the keynote speaker and the private equity investors that I spoke with all remarked on the same thing - how early stage most of the technologies were, and the huge amount of risk and uncertainty that is involved in bringing such nascent technologies to market. It occurred to me that this sort of high risk/high reward type of innovation often overshadows smaller, more incremental, but less risky innovation that goes on all around us all the time. It's sort of like comparing baseball players - you have the sluggers who hit for a lower average but are always "swinging for the fences," and the smaller guys who hit for a higher average, have less power, but are more likely to get on base. Both are critical to the team's success, but most of the attention goes to the slugger because everyone like to see the home runs.