Marketing Innovation

Accidental innovation - Corn Flakes!

Sometimes, you just can't improve on reality.

From http://yhoo.it/l1UDs8

Corn Flakes

As a Seventh Day Adventist, Dr. John Harvey Kellogg adhered to his faith's vegetarian diet as well as the teachings of the cultish, nutritional hardliner Sylvester Graham, the inventor of graham crackers.

In 1894, while employed by the Battle Creek Sanitarium in Michigan, he began experimenting with ways to make that restrictive diet more palatable and an inexpensive way to feed his charges.

Leaving some boiled wheat unattended, it went stale. Attempting to salvage it by rolling it into dough, Kellogg (aided by his brother Will) found that it tore into pieces and refused to hold a shape. Undaunted, they toasted the flakes and were pleasantly surprised by the result.

After a bit of trial and error, the brothers decided to use corn, instead of wheat, as the main ingredient. The result was deemed tasty enough by patients that Will founded a company bearing the Kellogg's (NYSE: K - News) name to sell their corn flakes.

Dr. John, however, opted out of the venture, angered that his brother tampered with the healthful nature of the recipe by adding sugar to the mix. It should be noted that the elder Kellogg wasn't so much worried about obesity or bad teeth; as a staunch practitioner of sexual abstinence, he theorized that his corn flakes would suppress physical urges. Sugar, an aphrodisiac in his opinion, would undo that.

Further revolutionizing how the world eats breakfast, a patient at Kellogg's sanitarium, C.W. Post, used his own variation of the cereal to create his own company and a competing product, Post Toasties.

Innovation: Make the NASCAR Sprint Cup Chase a real playoff

The format of the Chase to the Sprint Cup (NASCAR) and the FedEx Cup (PGA Tour) both bother me because they are billed as a "playoff," when they are, in fact, nothing of the sort.  

In order to have a playoff, you need to have at least two leagues/divisions/conferences/etc.  Neither sport has that. Just singling out the top performers during the regular season and making them the only ones who can win does not a playoff make.

Those two programs are not, in my mind, marketing innovations.

The upcoming IndyCar Racing League (IRL) race at Texas June 11 gave me an idea, though.  Instead of one long 550 km race, they are running two back-to-back 275 km races.  These are both full-field affairs, with the running order in the first race determined by traditional qualifying procedures (fastest lap starts first), and the second race starting positions determined by the finishing order in the first race (could be highest finish first, or invert the field).

Pretty cool.  More action for the fans.

My idea For NASCAR takes it quite a bit further.

Let's organize the Sprint Cup drivers into two leagues -- let's call them the American and National leagues, just for convenience.

Before the season starts, the drivers are assigned to each league based on the prior season's point finish. Drivers who finished in an odd numbered position (1,3,5, etc.) would go into the American League, and the even-numbered finishers go into the National League.  There would be 25 (or more) drivers in each league, with pretty good parity between the leagues.

The first 26 races of the season would be run as two league races -- half field events.  Instead of the Goody's Fast Relief 500, as at Martinsville last weekend, there'd be the Goody's Fast Relief American 250, and the Goody's Fast Relief National 250. Points would be awarded according to the current system.

It would be great for fans, because they get more meaningful action each weekend.  NASCAR would have a great opportunity to stage some sort of event between the races -- a “halftime show,” if you will.  The networks would love it.

After 26 races, only the top 12 to 15 drivers from each league go into the Chase -- that's the 24 to 30 top drivers, which would make for great racing. The Chase races would all be full length affairs, designed to test the durability and talent of the teams competing.  And the Chase would be a true playoff between drivers from two leagues.  There would be a champion driver and a champion league.  Drivers might cooperate on track more to prevent a rival league’s driver from advancing -- it would add a new dimension to race strategy.

The drivers who didn’t make the cut end their season there.  No “start-and-park” teams in the Chase, no wasting money driving laps that don’t mean anything. 

Races would be both shorter and more exciting. There would be lower costs associated with fielding a team for 26 short races, which might bring more sponsors into the sport.  Sponsor deals could be worked for the “regular season” and then again for the playoffs.  Much more flexibility.

NASCAR fans tune in more during the summer than the fall -- the NFL is pretty stiff competition.  For a team owner running outside the top 10 or 12, the Chase is currently a huge money drain.  With my proposed playoff system, there is more excitement for the fans and a better ROI for the owners and sponsors.

With a total of 50 cars each weekend, there's more opportunity for owners and drivers to compete at the Cup level -- and more opportunity for sponsors.

That strikes me as a marketing innovation!

 

What the Market REALLY Wants

The market doesn't want innovation, it wants results.

Dan and Chip Heath in the November, 2010 issue of "Fast Company" magazine (page 84) put it very succinctly:  

You've heard the old saying "If you invent a better mousetrap, the world will beat a path to your door."  Don't bet on it.  The world's felt need isn't for a better mousetrap.  It's for a dead mouse.

Excellent advice for innovators -- focus on the result, not the process.

The Vanilla Paradox: Crossing the Blue Ocean to Mass Market Success

Do you have an innovative product in a mature market?  That isn’t an oxymoron -- most innovations are improvements on existing products or services, and need to be differentiated from what is currently available.  Otherwise, they risk becoming, as a former IBM colleague put it, “just another flavor of vanilla”.

So, how do you go about avoiding the Vanilla Paradox^TM?  I believe that the answer lies in combining the lessons in Geoffrey Moore’s “Crossing the Chasm”/“Inside the Tornado” books with the ideas in W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne’s “Blue Ocean Strategy”.

The main lesson from Moore is that to penetrate the mass market (aka “cross the chasm”), you should identify a niche, or market segment, and provide a “whole product” to it.  A “whole product” is defined as “the minimum set of product and services necessary to ensure that the target customer will achieve his or her compelling reason to buy”.  (Click on the image to see a larger version.)

In other words, a complete solution to a real problem.

That may appear to be obvious, but the key words are “complete” and “real”.  In many innovations, the entrepreneur will offer a new capability, but not a solution.  The customer must still perform some integration-type work to make the innovation into a success.  (These customers are the “early adopters” on the other side of the chasm.)  The “whole product” concept is key.

The other challenge is the “real” problem.  If you have improved an existing product or service, whether it is a light bulb, trailer hitch, asthma inhaler, or invoicing service (etc.), there are a great number of existing customers who are perfectly content to stick with the status quo.

What you want to do is make these customers think differently about the product or service in a way that makes them predisposed to consider buying your innovation.  The message from “Blue Ocean Strategy” is that you need to reinvent the “value curve”.  The objective is to create a “blue ocean” (i.e. uncontested market space) vs. a “red ocean” (a hyper-competitive market space).

The value curve is the relative weight that customers assign to various factors in the purchase decision. Very often price is the most important factor in the value curve, but there are usually others.  

Let’s take ice cream.  Store brands will win on price, but Häagen-Dazs, Edy’s and other premium brands have differentiated based on purity of flavor, fat content, texture, and so on.  And that’s just for vanilla! Ben & Jerry’s has all sorts of funky names for their flavors and a mystique that customers buy into as part of the brand.

Chan and Mauborgne show that the innovator has four strategy options in reshaping the value curve (click on the image to see a larger version of the chart):

• REDUCE certain factors below the industry standard
• CREATE new factors that the industry does not offer
• RAISE certain factors above the industry standard, and
• ELIMINATE certain factors altogether.

Sometimes, the best way to do this is “create” a new way of looking at the product or service -- ask customers to think about their product usage in a new way.  Are they wasting time using existing products?  Is there a safety problem with the current way of doing things?  Is there a new capability that your innovation would enable?  If so, bring that to your customers attention, and you know have a “complete solution” to a “real problem”.  

And you’ve crossed the blue ocean! 

The New Sharpie Liquid Pencil: A Temporary Marker!

I saw a press release the other day about a new invention from Sharpie, the Newell Rubbermaid brand of markers.  They announced the imminent arrival of a “Liquid Pencil” -- a writing instrument that uses a capsule of liquid graphite to provide the feel of a gel pen with the erasability of a pencil.  I described it to my 19-year old daughter, and she said, “Cool!  A pen for people who make mistakes!”

As an innovator and student of innovation, I am constantly amazed at what people come up with.  I’ve worked with a wide range of innovative products and services in my career, and some of the most intriguing are those in mature industries (trailer hitches, for instance).   The Liquid Pencil seems to be another.

I would have loved to be around when the inventor said, “Y’know, I think we need a better pencil.  One that writes like a gel pen but can still be erased.”  What sort of reaction did he or she get?  Especially from management?    

Even better, once the idea gained traction, it would have been great to be part of the team coming up with the marketing -- the value proposition.  Here’s a quote from Sally Grimes, VP of Marketing for the Markers, Highlighters, Art and Organization global business unit (there’s a mouthful!) in the press release:   “It solves the No. 1 consumer dissatisfaction with mechanical pencils -- breaking leads -- while also giving users the added confidence of stronger, darker lines that stand the test of time, plus the ability to erase and edit as they go.”  A pen for people who make mistakes, indeed!

An interesting aspect to this product (from a marketing perspective) is the break with what has long been one of Sharpie’s key product attributes: permanence.  The press release notes this:  “The Sharpie Liquid Pencil joins the Sharpie Pen as the brand further expands from permanent markers into near-neighbor categories.” 

I think that this is smart.  Growth in the marker category itself has already shown Sharpie to be an innovator.  They’ve got a huge color palette, retractable markers, a wide range of tip sizes, mini-Sharpies, industrial products, highlighters, and recently, pens.  (Really, they are just really, really fine point Sharpies, but you can use them as a pen for writing notes, etc.,  and put them in your pocket -- neither of which you would really do with a regular Sharpie.) 

This move into an adjacent, “near-neighbor” category is a great way to grow.  You build off of established relevance and credibility, and add new function to existing customers while attracting all-new customers.  In an earlier post, I talk about a way to innovate by “questioning your constraints, but knowing your boundaries”.   In this case, the team at Sharpie questioned the constraint of “permanent pens”, but knew that (at this point in time), they are in the writing instrument business (their boundary).

I’m a bit of a nut about writing instruments -- I’ve got lots of pens, pencils, and fountain pens -- and can’t wait to try out this Sharpie Liquid Pencil.  It’ll be available in September, 2010 and will carry a price tag of $1.99.  Let me what you think when you get your hands on one.

The End of the 4 P's of Marketing -- and How to Get Them Back

I’m in the market for a new digital camera, and I’ve been doing research for months about which one to buy.  In the course of that research, I’ve noticed that the price band for any given model is very narrow -- across all “places” where the camera is available.  The Internet is my primary source of information about price -- Amazon, J and R Photo, B and H Photo -- but as I branch out into mass merchandisers like Best Buy, Circuit City, and even the office superstores and department stores, I’ve noticed that they all offer a given model at essentially the same price.

So two of the four “P’s” -- price and place -- have been removed from the marketer’s arsenal as levers of differentiation.   Price has found its floor below which no firm will go, and it is available everywhere.  What to do?  

The answer to which the business world turns seems to be to spend money on a third “P” -- promotion.  Advertising is not only a method of promotion, it has become the source of entire business models. 

This is not sustainable. 

The amount of advertising that the average buyer is subjected to -- across all media -- makes the incremental impact of any single ad microscopic.  (If there is any impact at all.)  In short, you can’t promote your way to differentiation, either.  What’s left?

The fourth “P”:  product.  The product (or service) itself is the one lever that a company can use to differentiate itself.  The way to accomplish that is through innovation -- continuing to improve your offering through new features that benefit your customers (current and future). 

Going down this path is a commitment to a new way of doing business.  Once on this path, you can’t get off.  Anything you introduce will be copied, and become the basis of competition for everyone.  You must stay out ahead of the pack.  Innovation must become -- and stay -- part of the DNA of your organization.

The good news is that innovative products that offer new features that benefit your customers reignite the ability of the other three P’s to be marketing levers.  Innovative products have less competition than commodities, so you can offer them in unique places.  You can price in a premium for that innovation (or perhaps you have lowered costs, so you can offer more at a given price point.)  You can promote a difference (or, even better, have other people -- influencers -- promote it for you!)

The erosion of the three P’s seems to point to an inescapable conclusion:  innovation is imperative.  Keeping your “eye” on innovation can bring the four “P’s” back into play.

Disruptive Innovations Require Education and Outreach

Are the Speedo LZR swimsuit and nanotechnology swimming upstream against the current of public opinion?

Yesterday, my local paper, the Raleigh (NC) News and Observer had two items that were seemingly totally unrelated, but struck me as significant for people marketing innovative products or technologies. 

In the first item, guest sportswriter Scott Fowler, of the Charlotte Observer, laments the incursion of the technology that makes the Speedo LZR suit such a hit. For those that are unfamiliar with it, the LZR is a technological tour de force, utilizing amazing technology to compress a swimmer into a hydrodynamic bullet.  It is totally legal and meets all the sanctioning body's regulations.  It includes new seam sealing technology and new materials that repel water.  It's been tested at NASA.  The most controversial aspect is that the polyurethane panels take body parts that the rest of the fashion world tries to accentuate and squeezes them away.   An article in Fast Company magazine describes this "form drag" as being largely caused by breasts and buttocks, so this suit strives to smooth them out.  All this technology has resulted in over 40 world records since the suit was introduced.  The swimming world has been so moved that the Italian swim coach called wearing the suit the equivalent of "technological doping".  Mr. Fowler doesn't agree with that statement but says that the rate at which records are being broken "cheapens" the records themselves, and concludes with "I still don't like it".  Not a resounding endorsement.

The other article, titled "Tiny Tech, Unknown Risks" is about unknown hazards that may (or may not) be posed by nanotechnology.  It mentions that David Berube, an NCSU professor of communications, has received a National Science Foundation grant of $1.4 million to study how to communicate nanotech risks.  Not benefits; risks.  The article states that Dr. Berube believes in the potential of nanotechnology, but that the "public, in general, has no idea what is happening", creating the opportunity for a backlash of public opinion against the technology in the event of a negative event caused by an unknown (or worse, known but undisclosed) facet of the technology. 

Both of these subjects -- revolutionary swimwear and revolutionary materials science -- are disruptive innovations.  The swimsuit has improved human performance in arguably one of the most elemental sporting events.  Nanotechnology has created revolutionary new products in everything from fabric to pharmaceuticals.  The products are well accepted -- who doesn't like stain resistant clothes?

But these two articles point out a risk with innovation -- that those who are not adopters of the technology can become critics.  And their ranks can swell quickly. 

Disruptive innovations, in particular, require the market to be educated before it will buy.  While most effort is being spent educating the market, it is important that there are people totally distant from the purchase decision who must also be educated -- the influencers.  Who are they?  It can be tough to say.  Sometimes there are prominent media personalities who can be approached.  There might be consumer advocacy groups that would appreciate an early, honest conversation.  Outreach is suggested; being in a "react" mode means damage control at best.  And outreach  must be forthright -- "marketing" is a bad word to many such people.  They perceive that marketing is often a coverup (particularly if they decide that you are trying to "spin" them.)

The LZR has been swiftly adopted by the people who matter most, competitive swimmers.  No rules have been broken, and the records will fall.  All sports have enhancements to the equipment that make old records obsolete (golf might be the poster sport for this phenomenon) and there will always be people who liked things better the way they were.  (Note:  the suit goes on sale to the public later this year.  You can pre-order now at the Speedo website.)

Nanotech is at a critical juncture.  It will not disappear, but, like genetically modified food, and food irradiation, market acceptance could be well below its potential if the public decides that nanotech is dangerous.

Perhaps there should be an effort by some organization or organizations to fund a grant on how to educate the public about the benefits of nanotechnology, before the other side has too big a head start.

Think Differently about Your Business and Innovation Can Happen

I've just finished reading a great book called "Small Giants:  Companies That Choose to Be Great Instead of Big" by Bo Burlingame.  In it, he profiles 14 companies, from a single person firm to a $200 million-a-year company (which may not be all that small to some people!)  Each of the companies, or, more accurately, their leaders, made a decision to stop growing at some point and focus on the unique culture and offerings that made their company great.

One company stood out to me from an innovation standpoint, and that is CitiStorage in New York City.  They are in the records storage business, which is a fancy way of saying that they store boxes of files for a fee.  This is a commodity type of enterprise.  Differentiation is difficult, if not impossible.  It is hard to imagine how one can store boxes better than the next guy.  It's easy to do a bad job, but doing a great job of storing boxes?

The owner, Norm Brodsky, had an opportunity to get into the business, and very quickly learned that the barriers to entry were pretty strong.  Customers typically entered into long term contracts; there was a per-box removal fee to move to another supplier; and price competition was fierce.  Not exactly a level playing field.

Mr. Brodsky needed a new way of thinking about his business.  One day, it came to him -- he wasn't in the records storage business, he was in the real estate business, renting space to boxes!  Once he had that in mind, he asked himself how to make more money from a rental property.  Simple -- have more rental units.  Looking at how the business of renting space to boxes worked, it was by the square foot.  So, logically, if he could store more boxes per square foot than his competitors, he could lower prices AND pay the removal fee to get business in.  So he looked for a warehouse with "very high ceilings and racks that go right up to the roof".  Bingo.  He found one, opened it up, and then went and built a few more like it.  A major breakthrough. 

To me, that is what innovation and entrepreneurship are about -- having a breakthrough idea (in any industry) and making it real.  That breakthrough comes from thinking differently about your business.

I should mention that innovation is just part of the CitiStorage story.  Mr. Brodsky has put together a great culture.  Here is his company's vision, from their website: 

We are more than Archival Storage and Records Management.

CitiStorage strives to better the lives of our employees, customers and community. Our entrepreneurial leadership sets a high standard of honesty and integrity, which is the foundation of our reputation. We believe in the inherent dignity of the individual and recognize that our strength is in our diversity. Committed to personal growth and advancement, we offer ongoing training and staff education. Our ability to change and create new ways of meeting our customers' needs and surpassing their expectations will ensure our company's long term success.

NOTE:  Here's a link to the full story.

Incremental Innovation: How It Happens

Thanks to a tip from Paul Zimmerman, a fellow student in Western Carolina's Master of Entrepreneurship program, I recently received the Kauffman Thoughtbook 2007, a sort of primer on entrepreneurial thinking combined with an annual report on the activities of the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation on Entrepreneurship. (The book is free and available here.)

In it is an essay titled "Toward a Theory of Growth of Innovative Firms", by Michael Levin, Entrepreneur-in-Residence at the Kauffman Foundation. I think that there is a great lesson on the power of incremental innovation in the essay. Here's some of his key thoughts:

"By definition, innovative firms are "idea" firms. The ideas can take many forms: new products, new services, or new ways of doing things that save money, provide more convenience, or both. Truly innovative firms, in turn, tend to grow explosively -- because they are delivering something that consumers or other businesses really want and cannot find elsewhere.

"High potential ideas may not be obvious, in part because they aren't always radically or entirely new. Google was not the first search engine, nor was Starbucks the first coffee shop chain. But both improved upon existing formats well enough, in enough ways, to be decisive winners.

"More often than not, big ideas come from tweaking not-so-big ones. Fred Smith called his venture Federal Express because it was first meant to provide rapid delivery for the Federal Reserve System. When that concept fell through, Smith expanded the strategy to serve the general business market. The rest is history.

"One key to unlocking growth, therefore, may be to find better ways of identifying and developing seemingly marginal improvements, "tweakable" ideas, that could prove to be big with the right execution."

This is a good working definition of "incremental innovation" (as opposed to "radical" or "disruptive" innovation.) Incremental innovation doesn't get a whole lot of press, because it doesn't seem all that glamorous, compared to new "blockbuster" drugs, or other miracle inventions. However, most innovation falls into this category -- probably north of 90%.

Entrepreneurs are, by nature, curious. Use that curiousity to look at the way things are currently done, and ask yourself if they can be done better, or cheaper, or faster, or more conveniently. As Tom Kelley of IDEO says in "The Art of Innovation", watch your customers. Find out what they might really want. Give it to them. Test it out. Change it till it works, like Fred Smith of FedEx. In short, "deliver something that [people] want and cannot find elsewhere."

Maybe the next Google or Starbucks is right around the corner.

"Obvious" gets more meaning from Supreme Court

I have just finished my first-ever reading of a decision by the Supreme Court, and it was fascinating!  The case was "KSR International Company v. Teleflex Inc.", which tells you nothing, but it dealt with patent law.  More specifically, it dealt with what constitutes an "obvious" invention.

First, some case background.  The accelerator pedals in cars used to be connected to the engine by means of a cable, and there was a spring that made the cable retract when you "let off the gas".  In recent years, that cable has been replaced by a wire, with a sensor on the pedal that detects its movement and sends it to an actuator on the engine that regulates the flow of fuel. 

There is no shortage of patents on such pedals and sensors, one of which says that you should mount the sensor on the "fixed structure" of the pedal to reduce wire chafing.  (By the way, the fact that you still push on a pedal and feel resistance is entirely due to familiarity.  You could just as well have a dial on your armrest and accomplish the same thing with regard to controlling the speed of the car.)

But we don't have dials; we still have pedals.  And in the never-ending search for the perfect driving environment, the adjustable pedal was invented to accommodate people with longer or shorter legs than average.  There is also no shortage of patents on mechanisms for this adjustment, one of which covers how to provide a fixed resistance through the entire range of pedal travel, the so-called "constant ratio" problem.

The problem at hand came about when the engineers at KSR and GMC added a sensor to the fixed part of the adjustable pedal.  Teleflex had a patent that had claimed such an arrangement, and sued in District Court, where they lost.  KSR successfully argued that putting a sensor on the fixed part was an obvious combination of the "prior art", so the patent claim was invalid.  So far, so good (for KSR and for reason.)

But Teleflex appealed to the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, which hears all patent cases.

Patents are interesting things.  The Constitution of the United States provides for an inventor to retain the exclusive right to an invention for a limited time "in order to promote the useful arts".  Subsequent law grants a patent for an invention that is useful; novel; and (here's the tricky part) "non-obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art."  Whew! 

Fortunately, in this case, the District Court had defined "ordinary skill" as "an undergraduate degree in mechanical engineering (or an equivalent amount of industry experience) [and] familiarity with pedal control systems for vehicles."  Again, this sounds reasonable.

The CAFC, however, reversed the district court, applying the "Teaching, Suggestion and Motivation" test in a very narrow way that held that since the earlier patents didn't apply to adjustable pedals, then it was not obvious for the engineers to put the sensor on the fixed part of the adjustable pedal. 

The Court of Appeals seems to have a pretty dim view of the ordinary skill level of engineers if they thought that the combination of these two earlier concepts wasn't obvious.

So KSR appealed to the Supreme Court, which overturned the decision. Justice Kennedy wrote the opinion for the unanimous court.  As one with an engineering background, and a few patents, too, I think that this is a great decision.   

Some say that broadening the definition of "obvious" will stifle innovation.  I disagree.  It may lead to fewer patents issuing, but that isn't necessarily a bad thing.  I've long felt that there are too many trivial (OK, obvious) things that receive patents.

The vast majority of innovation is "incremental", in that it makes small improvements to solutions to existing problems.  Very, very few inventions are truly "radical" or "disruptive" (to use two words common in innovation theory).  Incremental inventions, especially combinations of existing technology, that behave in predictable and expected ways should be considered obvious.

In the syllabus of the case appears this quote: 

"When there is a design need or market pressure to solve a problem and there are a finite number of identified, predictable solutions, a person of ordinary skill has good reason to pursue the known options within his or her technical grasp.  If this leads to the anticipated success, it is likely the product not of innovation but of ordinary skill and common sense."

Just because you were clever doesn't mean you have an invention.  Not every advance is worthy of a monopoly right to exclude everyone from the product of your cleverness.  That said, many advances are worthy of that right, which is what a patent grants.  This case effectively raises the bar for which advances do qualify for the right to be covered by a patent.

I believe this ruling will have profound impacts on a number of fronts. 

First will be a flurry of actions seeking to overturn patents on the basis that they are obvious.  These actions will likely be brought by companies licensing the rights to patents from the patent holders.

Second will be a large increase in the number of patents rejected by the US Patent and Trademark Office, particularly in software, business methods, genetics, and pharmaceuticals.

Third will be an increase in the number of products with incremental innovations at lower prices by more companies.

I think this decision sets forth a reasonable definition of innovation and skill, and differentiates between ordinary creativity and true invention.  It seems like a positive step forward for American industry and American consumers.  (It also seems to raise the profile of engineers by increasing the definition of "ordinary skill"!)

I'd like to conclude with some words from Justice Kennedy's opinion:

"Granting patent protection to advances that would occur in the ordinary course without real innovation retards progress and may, in the case of patents combining previously known elements, deprive prior inventions of the their value and utility."

"A person of ordinary skill is also a person of ordinary creativity, not an automaton."

"We build and create by bringing to the tangible and palpable reality around us new works based on instinct, simple logic, ordinary inferences, extraordinary ideas, and sometimes even genius.  The advances, once part of our shared knowledge, define a new threshold from which innovation starts once more.  And as progress beginning from higher levels of achievement is expected in the normal course, the results of ordinary innovation are not the subject of exclusive rights under the patent laws.  Were it otherwise patents might stifle, rather than promote, the useful arts."