Question

To what degree would you characterize Given's development of the camera pill as "science-push” versus "demand-pull”?

Please answer in more than 350 words with real life example.

Answer in word format only. Please add real life example in the discussion. No copy paste from wikipedia or other sites

Thanks

Subject: Management of Technological Innovation

Answer 1

The development of camera pill was based on a combination of “demand-pull” and “science-push”. Of course, an innovation requires some kind of need from the society which generates the demand for it. For example, unless you face the shortage of fuel, you won’t think about developing alternate sources of energy like solar, wind, nuclear or electric. For many years we were relying on gasoline driven cars having IC engines in them guzzling tons of fuel. Unless we got to know that fuel sources are getting depleted and more use of fuel is causing damage to the environment in terms of air pollution, we didn’t start looking for renewable sources of energy of a mass scale (though renewable sources have existed for years). People started looking for alternate sources of fuel like hybrid fuel, containing water and alcohol, bio-fuel, etc. Electric vehicles which are a fad these days have been developed decades back by GM but GM failed at it. Because – (a) High cost of energy storage (b) Lack of technology to provide (Lithium Ion Batteries) to provide energy storage solutions for cars. Its only with the advancement of technology (“science-push”) that we are seeing the fruition of scientific efforts. This was the same case with the development of camera pill, whose need (“demand-pull”) was already felt 10 years before it was developed, but it was developed and ready for use only 10 years later when scientists made effort to develop it with advancements of technology.

The point here is that every innovation starts with a need, but it takes science push to really push the product in research & development to take the shape of a product/service.