I have been reading up on Donald Stokes theories of innovation, which, for some reason I had not seen before. It is quite philosophical, but has some interesting points. The main one is that "the path to innovative products" does not always start from pure research and evolve towards useful products. Instead, research often moves between quadrants - both left and right as well as up and down. Sometimes, for example, very applied research will highlight a fundamental technology gap, which then drives use-inspired basic research. Beyond Bohr, Pasteur, and Edison, I was trying to map some other projects into the matrix. DARPA, for example, is focused in the Pasteur Quadrant, while the CERN work is certainly Bohr-ish :-)
BrowserID, which we have been developing at Mozilla, is a good example of Edison research. The fundamental building blocks were available, but they had not been put together in a way that met our "consideration of use" (a sign-in system which respects the privacy goal of "law of least knowledge").
BrowserID, which we have been developing at Mozilla, is a good example of Edison research. The fundamental building blocks were available, but they had not been put together in a way that met our "consideration of use" (a sign-in system which respects the privacy goal of "law of least knowledge").