Eric von Hippel

Advancing the State of Practice

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By Jim Euchner, VP, Global Innovation, Goodyear, and RTM Editor-in-Chief

This issue begins RTM’s 60th continuous year of publication. Originally called Research Management, it was founded as a journal by and for practitioners of research and development in order to share lessons learned and build best practices. The journal, renamed Research-Technology Management in the 1980s, has now served several generations of R&D and innovation leaders, and it will help executives and practitioners manage through many changes in the future.

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User Innovation

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By Jim Euchner, RTM Editor-in-Chief

When I was a graduate student, I had a compelling need for sleep. My thesis involved many experiments in sequence, each of which required me to spend about 20 hours doing the analytical chemistry to generate results. My sleep was suffering. To reduce the time needed to complete the experiments, I decided to automate the process. That proved harder than I thought. It required innovation, not just implementation. The automated gas sampling system I developed to meet my own needs went on to be used by future graduate students and was eventually commercialized by an analytical equipment company. And I got my sleep.

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