An “Innocuous Looking” Box: The Rape Kit, Innovation, and the Matilda Effect

(Source: Public domain from defenseimagery.mil)

Martha “Marty” Goddard invented the rape kit, but until recently, never received credit.

She fought for years to have her idea accepted by law enforcement and the courts, to have sexual assault treated as a crime and not, as author Pagan Kennedy writes, a feminine delusion. 

Goddard was sometimes encouraged, sometimes funded, but often ignored and belittled.  She herself was raped by someone pretending to be a supporter.

She died an exhausted, penniless alcoholic.  Her heartbreaking story is told beautifully by Kennedy in the New York Times Sunday Review.  But Goddard’s idea would, as Steve Jobs encouraged, go on to dent the universe. 

I invite you to read Kennedy’s compelling article.  I hope that, one day, it becomes a book.  It will make you angry and frustrated and maybe want to cry.

Based on my own reading of innovation, I have a short postscript to add.  But first, the basics:

Pay Attention to the "Quiet Innovation" as We Beat Back This Pandemic

Thomas Edison (public domain)

One of the underlying lessons in Innovation on Tap is that we often confuse innovation and technology.

After all, technology is so visible and so cool.

 

I remember columnist Peggy Noonan writing about the sense of wonder she had in the early 1990s.  “I saw a young man named Steve Jobs prowl a New York stage and unveil a computer . . .  It was a time so full of genius and dynamism,” Noonan wrote, “that it . . .was like hearing great music.”

We’ve heard a little of that great music lately as companies respond to COVID-19 by innovating masks, ventilators, and—we hope—vaccines.  Daniel Isenberg and I did a piece on Medium that speaks to what we believe the enduring drivers of the pandemic will be, the places where entrepreneurs can seek opportunities to innovate.  Many of those opportunities are driven by technology, but not nearly all.

And, it's the "not nearly all" that we should pay special attention to as we beat back this pandemic.

For example, what was the most influential innovation of the nineteenth century?  The steam engine?  Railroad? Telegraph? Electric grid? Peter Drucker says, no, it was not nuts-and-bolts technology at all.  It was the R&D lab.

What remarkable innovation arose from the Great Depression?  The New Deal.

In other words, it’s not the combination of gears and ratchets, code and algorithms, microbes and proteins that drives the most important innovation.  It’s the organization of people, knowledge, and capital.  Social innovation.  Getting people to relate to each other and their world differently, and providing the tools and incentives to do it.

Novel Combinations: Making the Most of Too Much

Credit: the author went shopping

Charles Sanna died recently at 101 years old.  His family’s company, Sanna Dairy Engineers (sold to Beatrice Foods in 1967 and now a part of Conagra), delivered powered coffee creamer to the U.S. Army during the Korean War. 

Fearful of missing deliveries to the military, Sanna Dairy regularly overproduced, leaving the company with a perishable product destined for disposal.

Sanna took to the family kitchen in Wisconsin.  By combining water, cocoa, and the excess powdered creamer, he created what would become the Swiss Miss brand of instant hot cocoa.  It was a novel combination, a stroke of genius, and a windfall for Sanna’s company.

Constraint is often described as a key to innovation.  Not having enough of something can lead to all sorts of interesting ideas.  In the case of Charles Sanna, however, his motivation was excess.