Global challenge of innovation / By Basil Blackwell and Samuel Eilon

The power of innovation - innovation pursued with massive technologi cal and financial resources - was demonstrated across the whole gamut of the material aspects of human existence during the Second World War. For the first time in history, the entire scientific and technological estab lishment of the warring nations was marshalled to tackle not only the weaponry but the communications, supply and health of the whole community. The successes achieved, with cost only a secondary con sideration to the principal aim of survival, demonstrated the ability and provided the existence theorem that, given enough intellectual and financial resources, almost any material problem of mankind could be overcome and any material want satisfied. To adapt Archimedes - 'Give me a big enough technological lever and I will change the earth. Such innovation, far removed from the much slower evolutionary processes of previous eras, merits a distinctive name and we have chosen, for reasons

which emerge in the book, to call it macroinnovation. While the globe itself may not have been changed, the years following the Second World War saw it being dramatically modified as a result of this massive investment in innovation. Civil air transport girdled the earth, rocket-powered access to its outer limits became a reality, the power of the atom was harnessed and the quantum leap achieved in electronics in the War entered every aspect of everyday life.

In the victorious countries much of this was supervised and financed by the state machinery set up for the Second World War. Still heavily biased towards defence, it absorbed a significant part of the investment of industry in setting up and maintaining large research and development departments and so enabled many sectors to build up their innovative capabilities at the taxpayer's expense.