Skip to main content

Serendipity - Error - Exaptation - Inventions


Serendipity describes an unexpected or coincidental finding that proves to be beneficial and helpful outcome. An example of serendipity is the invention of the microwave ovens by the engineer and inventor Percy Spencer while working at the  Raytheon Corporation as an engineer. It is expedient to mention that the engineer – Percy Spenser attempting to develop a radar-related research project with a new vacuum tube when he realized the melting of the candy bar within his pocket. He did tested it with popcorn (Krueger, 2010). Spencer had the realization of a melting candy bar inside his pocket during his experimentation. He then decided to have the popcorn placed inside the machine and the popping of the corn immediately open up a new innovative and revolutionary device (Bih, 2003; Zhang, 2017).

Error inventions are generally discoveries or innovations that came to the limelight through an unintentional action. These often come as a result of a researcher or scientist making a huge mistake in attempt on creating something which then led to something else that become very beneficial and useful, though not their original intent. The invention of penicillin by the scientist Sir Alex Fleming in attempt to discover a disease curing drug (Krueger, 2010). After experimenting Fleming did not stumble on the outcome he anticipated, but after throwing away his experiments, then he spot what he was trying to uncover. Penicillin was created after Fleming realized that the contaminated Petri dish that was discarded by himself contained a mold that that dissolved all the bacteria surrounding it. He then proceeded to growing an investigating the mold by himself to ascertain and uncover the fact that the mold contained a powerful antibiotic – penicillin (Krueger, 2010; Ligon, 2004).

Exaptation describes the adaptation for usage or deviation of object usage from its itended original purpose as a result of changes to its characteristic features. The invention of Post-it notes, from an attempt in creating strong adhesive. The inventor by name Spencer Silver, was a researcher at the 3M Laboratories working on a project to create a strong adhesive tape (Krueger, 2010). His final product was an adhesive tape created that was less strong than the existing tape. Because, it was a tape, it actually could stick on different objects, though it could be easily pulled off. It was recorded that the actual idea came up when the less adhesive tape was utilized by a member of his choir to reserve as his place within his hymn book. The post-it notes were leveraged for a purpose other than the reason behind their original creation (Krueger, 2010; Fischel & Halskov, 2018). 

References

Bih, J. Z. (2003). The microwave technology. In 13th International Crimean Conference Microwave and Telecommunication Technology, 2003. CriMiCo 2003. (pp. 15-21). IEEE.

Fischel, A. D., & Halskov, K. (2018). A survey of the usage of sticky notes. In Extended Abstracts of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 1-6). https://doi.org/10.1145/3170427.3188526

Krueger, A. (2010). 15 Life-Changing Inventions That Were Created By Mistake. Insider. Retrieved from https://www.businessinsider.com/these-10-inventions-were-made-by-mistake-2010-11

Ligon, B. L. (2004). Penicillin: its discovery and early development. In Seminars in pediatric infectious diseases (Vol. 15, No. 1, pp. 52-57). WB Saunders.

Zhang, H. (2017). The History of Microwave Heating. In Microwave Heating of Foods. Retrieved from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/312192693_The_History_of_Microwave_Heating 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Innovative Competitor and Market Landscape Changes

                 The evaluated print book market share for Amazon has risen up to above half of the market share with and Barnes & Noble’s just having one-fifth of the entire market share. The dominance of Amazon, in this market space has been consistent for over 14 years with Barnes & Nobles still hanging in there with a massive gap between the two. It is important to mention that after Barnes and Nobles did close 90 out of the 720 locations with the period of seven years, which also, resulted in locations becoming lacking of any bookstore, it appears prepared to call it quits (Pandey, 2018; Majed et al., 2018). Branes and Nobles existed way long even before Amazon made its footprint in the market in 1996, but now, amazon has grown its business and customer base presenting itself as a leader in the book retailing space review (Matousek, 2018; Pandey, 2018). Amazon strives in making the experience book purchasing customers have a...
Post a Comment
Read more

Think Tank Methods - Delphi vs. Nominal Group Technique

T he  Delphi technique is a problem-solving technique characterized by systematic forecasting involving a well structurally defined interactivity between a group of professionals or experts on a subject in question. The Delphi technique typically follows through a posting of questionnaires having generally open-ended questions to the panel and seeking individual responses which would be further analyzed, compiled, and ranked upon agreement from each participant (Brady, 2015; Hohmann, 2018). This method is often comprised of a minimum of two rounds with high involvement of expert interactions and contributions through question answering and rationale provision to support specific answers (Ameyaw, 2016; Brady, 2015). The benefit of the sequence of rounds is to accommodate for inevitable revisions and possible changes as the discussions evolve through different rounds. Thus, with the Delphi method, there is a gathering of a consensus and choice on a predetermined topic without necess...
Post a Comment
Read more

Planning and Forecasting - A Business Approach & Supporting Forces

  The concepts of forecasting and prediction are geared towards future occurrences. Though this similarity in orientation or focus, both concepts has a thin line of differentiation that through could be blurred by contextual usage still shows the existence of a difference between these two concepts. By definition the process of forecasting entails gathering requirements and making a future-state related prediction. Forecasting is data driven and leverages the available data comprising of current and previous data points in predicting the outcome of future event occurrences. In other words, the processes and procedures involved in determining what the future market trends, sales revenue, new product adoption, etc., and the impact vis-à-vis the organizational impact. To greater extent forecasting is classifiable as a sub-discipline of prediction as it generally focused on leveraging time series approaches in prediction making (Döring, 2018). Prediction has the objective of attempting...
Post a Comment
Read more