As part of celebrating 125 years of strategic consulting, Arthur D. Little today outlined how society can learn lessons from history in order to power future innovation. Based on its own experience working on projects as diverse as the lunar landings, alternative energy and the introduction of electronic trading systems, the world’s oldest management consultancy has analysed five key innovations and how we can learn from them, now and in the future. The lessons cover vision, building on luck, looking beyond the lab, developing technologies in new directions and working together as an extended team. The five key milestones selected by Arthur D. Little are:

• Putting man on the moon (1969) – demonstrating the importance of far-reaching vision and focus on a large scale goal, even if the technology and processes to achieve it need to be developed as the program progresses. Arthur D. Little’s engineers designed and created key experiments ahead of the Apollo moon landings, as well as working in areas such as space suit insulation, laser reflectors and anti-meteor bumpers for space probes.
• Development of synthetic penicillin (1960s) – the discovery of penicillin was a happy accident, caused by leaving the top off a petri dish during other research. However that was the start point and taking this naturally occurring antibiotic and turning it into a drug that could be mass manufactured was a more complex and longer term program. Arthur D. Little patented a process in the 1960s to synthetically create penicillin, contributing to the saving of millions of lives around the world.
• Solar power (1988) – the problem of creating sustainable energy sources is one of the key challenges of our age. Rather than lab research, solar power came into being by looking around our world and using freely available resources, adapted to meet our needs. Arthur D. Little became involved in the early stages of groundwork development for the then new field of solar power in 1988.
• Fibreglass (1931) – originally developed as an industrial material, continual research has found multiple uses for fibreglass, such as in boats, RF coils in MRI scanners, air filters and the blades of wind turbines. This demonstrates the importance of taking existing technologies and developing them in new and innovative areas. Arthur D. Little’s R&D efforts were the starting point for the commercial manufacture of fibreglass, which is now essential across multiple industries.
• Invention of electronic trading (1968) – as projects have become more global, spanning multiple companies ensuring everyone works as a team is paramount. Nowhere is this more vital than in electronic trading with systems processing millions of transactions every second. Arthur D. Little was responsible for the design of the ground-breaking NASDAQ Stock Exchange system – the first all-electronic trading system in the world.

Rick Eagar, Head of the UK Technology and Innovation Management Practice at Arthur D. Little comments, “The wealth of modern societies is based on our ability to innovate and advance knowledge. Arthur D. Little has been involved in helping organizations with strategy, technology and innovation for 125 years and through work on high profile projects we’ve learnt valuable lessons that can be used in the current global race for innovation. We’ve seen innovation accelerate over the last few decades as more formal methodologies have developed and lifecycles of innovation concepts have shortened. There are still many Eureka moments. We can learn valuable lessons from key past projects to help underpin innovation for the next 125 years.” Society currently faces major challenges in areas as diverse as energy supply, climate, health and increasing food/water resources to meet growing population needs. While a range of innovation methodologies, from stage-gate product development to open innovation are being applied by organizations and governments alike to tackle these issues, looking backwards to history can still provide new insights. One key message from 125 years of innovation at Arthur D. Little is that companies should never become self-satisfied with their innovation efforts but remain in a state of “curious restlessness”. Arthur D. Little can help. Recent research by Arthur D. Little uncovered major changes in innovation management trends. A greater concentration on new business areas is at the centre of future innovation, along with a shift of innovation capabilities to Asia and South America. The full report can be downloaded from

www.adl.com/InnovationManagement.