In Breakthrough, Xerox PARC researcher Mark Stefik and his psychologist wife examine the roots of innovation via the stories behind key advances made at the world-famous research centre.

'Invention,' the Stefiks write, 'is having an idea; innovation is the other 99 percent of the work'. Managing innovation, they go on to say, isn't easy. And that's the point: you need to learn from the experience of those who have been successful at it.

The Stefiks talk about several types of research. Basic research, typically funded by universities and governments, aims at increasing fundamental knowledge. Radical research, typically carried out in corporately funded labs, addresses specific problems and is the source of most of the breakthroughs discussed in this book. Product development is the most specific and incremental, and comes very late in the process, after the breakthroughs have been made.

The authors also distinguish between closed and open innovation. Closed innovation, which dominated technology companies' work through much of the 20th century, was the province of a single company that would seek to hire the best technical people in an industry. The assumption that spending the most on research and development would assure continued industry leadership served Xerox, IBM and AT&T well for quite a few decades. Open innovation -- the technique IBM adopted in creating the PC -- is today's model of collaborating with industry partners and adopting technologies developed by start-ups. The downside is that standardisation can become a barrier to innovation.

One thing that strikes you on reading this book is how many great technologies were invented at PARC, but only brought to market when the inventors moved elsewhere -- Ethernet networking, laser printers and screen fonts are examples. As Mark Stefik notes in his epilogue, in 2000, when it became apparent that Xerox was in trouble, PARC began reinventing itself as a research company. Stefik was chosen to direct one of PARC's six laboratories, and writing this book was part of his efforts to understand what was happening to industrial research and what decisions he should make.

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