The Tale of the Scale: An Odyssey of Invention (review)

For any student of innovation processes, Solly Angel's highly readable odyssey—The Tale of the Scale—is a worthy case study. There is something genuinely Homeric about the tale, with all of the recurrent symbolic elements of myth playing out yet again. Man has an idea—a vision, really—of a svelte, inch-thick scale for weighing one's self, is gripped by said idea, and tirelessly pursues its development through thick and thin and characters of all shades in pursuit of the proverbial golden fleece. Although Angel succeeds in prototyping the product, he fails in efforts to bring it to market. Like Homer, he ultimately returns home, wiser, and of course with a wonderful story.

I found The Tale of the Scale all the more intriguing because I have long been an admirer of Angel's previous work with architect Christopher Alexander in developing the remarkable Pattern Language series of books on the built environment. Among many concepts, "pattern language" underscores the importance of context for the success of the details, that there is a structural and procedural ecology of place that links across scales, with "emergent" intangible qualities of place and experience as key phenomena.

I mention this here, as one might argue that there is a structural ecology in the way that innovation emerges—that ideas can be seen to both emerge and develop within context (and by doing so, alter that context to a greater or lesser extent). In its most basic aspect, the story Angel relates in The Tale of the Scale speaks to this aspect of the innovation process, as the greatest challenges that he ultimately faces are less technical than they are contextual—for while he succeeds in inventing his scale, he cannot get the market to adopt it.

So what are the elements here that speak to processes of technological innovation? One fundamental theme is the all-too-common phenomenon of the inventor focusing primarily on the idea or the technology itself, rather than the problem, market, and opportunity that the technology represents. For example, it is only toward the end of the "Tale"—after several years of work—and only related to the reader in the closing chapters of the book that Angel asks the question of whether there might actually be a need or desire for a one-inch-thick scale. Additionally, the physical and performance parameters Angel strives for are described more in terms of an artistic vision and conceptual beauty—an ideal—than in terms of market need or opportunity. What emerges is the concept of such a scale pursued as an end in itself, not as the development of a product. This is not to say that rigorously market-driven innovation (product development) is the only path to innovation, although one might argue it is generally a more systematic and "efficient" methodology. But more to the point, successful ideas must have some way of connecting to and becoming adopted by their contexts.

In my experience, it is the interplay and coevolution of a technological vision with an (emerging) understanding of market potential that leads to the successful commercialization of technological innovation. Often what unfolds, however, is variously described as a "design it first, then see if we can sell it" model—also known as "build it and they will come." This of course opens up a discussion about the differences between invention and innovation, with invention arguably being the realization of an idea, and innovation being the cultural adoption of that idea, whether it be through the marketplace or some other cultural forum. As such, The Tale of the Scale is an excellent addition to the literature of innovation. I applaud Angel for the courage to share the story, and thank him for doing so as engagingly and self-effacingly as he has. He may not have been able to bring the scale successfully to market as a product, but as a Tale, he may well have succeeded...