Although history recognizes James Watt as the mechanical genius of his steam engines that launched the Industrial Revolution, Watt\u2019s greatest lasting innovation reflected a larger penchant for marketing. He invented the horse power\u2014the value and measure that defined efficiency in his industry. Most importantly, Watt\u2019s new word outlived every engine he designed or built. The word horse power represented a clever rhetorical technique by Watt and his partner Matthew Boulton, whose business flourished by charging mine owners only one-third the cost of the savings achieved by substituting their own engines for the inefficient Newcomen steam engines.
The pursuit of market expansion led the collaborators to think of brewers as the place to find value in this new production technology. In the 18th century, breweries had only known how to use horses\u2014not steam\u2014to power their mills.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So it became the task for Boulton and Watt to recalculate the parameters for their steam engine accordingly. After observing horses for a while, Watt determined that the typical coal-pulling pony pulled 22,000 foot-pounds per minute. Extrapolating this to larger horses, Watt increased the test results to 50% \u2013 that is, 33,000 foot-pounds per minute of work \u2013 and called it horsepower.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\nSome historians believe that Watt exaggerated the total weight that a horse could pull for such a sustained period of time. However, his comparison of the power of a steam engine to a team of horses working together proved to be of particularly compelling marketing value to potential buyers, whether they were brewers, millers or mine owners. Horsepower became a global standard that helped establish the Boulton & Watt brand and their business.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The idea of using innovation metrics\u2014measures of the unique value inherent in an innovation as a means of marketing it\u2014works better than the traditional method of adding new \u201cfeatures\u201d and \u201cperformance features\u201d to attract consumers to products and services. By creating a new language that allows people to identify the value and effectiveness of a particular idea, innovation metrics have the potential to become so compelling\u2014or at least so creatively marketed\u2014that they, like horsepower, become the preferred standard for a product or brand. This means, in turn, that these metrics should be crafted with the same sensitivity as the innovations themselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Although this may seem difficult to achieve, introducing innovative values can be a significant effort from old technology. For example, in the 1880s, Harley Procter, son of the co-founder of Procter & Gamble, was simply testing an experimental analysis of the addition of ingredients to Ivory Soap\u2014a product that was not classified as pure soap; he found that these ingredients, mixed together in the ratio 56\/100, yielded 1% Ivory. He subtracted the number from 100 and wrote the slogan \u201c99-44\/100% Pure.\u201d And this value\u2014derived, like horsepower, from a purely empirical calculation\u2014became an integral part of the soap\u2019s brand equity and in many ways was responsible for Procter & Gamble\u2019s later success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In contrast, Willis Carrier\u2014the entrepreneur most responsible for the commercialization of air conditioning\u2014took a much more subtle route to innovation. He conducted elaborate studies examining the complex relationship between humidity in the air and ambient temperature and studied the effectiveness of various cooling technologies on them. With large charts and countless formulas, Carrier presented his work on the implementation of air conditioning methods in a 1911 paper titled \u201cRational Psychrometric Formulae,\u201d which solidified air conditioning as a new technical discipline. Carrier\u2019s technologies were truly eye-opening because they not only controlled humidity levels but also precisely regulated temperatures. Based on Carrier's calculations and the new equipment that resulted from this research, consumers were convinced enough to spend large sums of money not only to cool down their hot factories but also, for the first time, to "condition" the stale air in factories in the hope of improving product quality - by removing unwanted moisture from the air. <\/p>\n\n\n\n