Innovative Technologies
Asking the Right Questions
Alain L. Kornhauser, Ph.D.
Professor, Operations Research & Financial Engineering
Director, Program in Transportation
Faculty Chair, PAVE (Princeton Autonomous Vehicle Engineering
Princeton University
Jinan Foreign Language School
Jinan, Shandong China
May 25, 2013
I am pleased and honored to be here with you on this day of
transition.
For each of you it is the end of one journey and the
Commencement of another
Your first journey was guided family who instilled in you
a foundation of knowledge, collection of skill and set of values from
which your mind created dreams, visions and perspectives that
govern your views of the world.
Your new journey has many different possible paths filled with
challenges, opportunities and achievements, but you will follow only one.
The contribution that you make to improve the world as you travel
along your chosen path will involve the many choices that you will
make as you approach each of its many branching points.
Those achievements will be all about your choice as to what body of
knowledge you wish to enhance, what skills you wish to improve and
what values you use as the basis for choosing and pursuing your
path through life.
Choices that will empower you to realize your dreams, achieve your
visions and make your contributions that help create a better world,
a better place for all.
From now on it is about your choices, your desires, your leadership.
35 years ago, I had the great pleasure and honor to visit and lecture in
China as part of one of the very first Scientific Exchanges following the
normalization of US-China relations. In my intervening visits I have
observed first-hand the enormous transformation that has occurred. Only
a two lane road with few vehicles led to the small Beijing airport terminal.
Only buses, bicycles and pedestrians occupied the streets of Shanghai.
Since 1978 monumental change has occurred on a scale that the world has
never seen. China’s human resources were mobilized to rapidly catch up to
the ideas and designs of the industrialized world. China is now the leading
producer of the world’s goods. While monumental, this may have been the
easy part. Over the next 35 years, it will be each of you that will have the
opportunity and the responsibility to lead China through an even greater
transformation of a new and even better world.
The famous Harvard Economist, Joseph Schumpeter (1883-1950)
wrote:
“… [I]n capitalist reality…, it is not [price] competition which counts
but the competition from the new commodity, the new technology…competition which commands a decisive cost or quality advantage and
which strikes not at the margins of the profits and the outputs of the
existing firms but at their foundations and their very lives.”
I pioneered the development of one of those disruptive new
technologies: getting directions on how to get there. For the first 100+
years of the automobile, everyone used a paper map to figure out the
directions on how to drive from one location to another. Every car had
at least one paper map. Cars had map compartments. Rand McNally
was the pre-eminent map maker. It was as well-known as Coca-Cola.
I became convinced that paper maps, while
inexpensive, were not convenient, reliable nor
easy to use. A better way would be to combine
GPS, a digital map database, a routing algorithm,
communications and a portable computing
environment. Many thought I was crazy.
15+ years ago I put the first nation-wide turn-byturn GPS navigation systems on the market in the
US. I was 1st on iPhones and Android. I believed
that the product provided a decisive quality
advantage over paper maps. I pursued my
dreams, my passion. CoPilot™, my product, and
other similar products now guide most motorist.
Today, few if any cars have paper maps.
My innovation with CoPilot™ is but a
small example. You have witnessed
many other transformative
technologies, technologies that have
struck at the very foundations of
existing firms.
Digital photography versus film,
Streaming video/audio content
versus CDs/DVDs,
Smart wireless phones versus landline phones,
Flat-screen TVs versus tube TVs.
We are today sitting at the verge of what is another
revolution in technology: the automation of road
transportation vehicles.
Automated highways are not a new concept. What is new
and revolutionary is the incorporation of sufficient
intelligence in the vehicle so that automation can drive the
car avoid all collisions without requiring any changes in the
infrastructure.
To date, Google has been the innovator. Google saw that
93% of roadway accidents involve human error. 32,000 are
killed each year in the US, in China the estimate is 97,000.
Google set out to develop crash avoidance technology
focused on the vehicle. Focusing resources on the software
and sensors that could substantially reduce these fatalities
(81% fewer fatalities, 65% fewer injuries, 71% fewer
crashes).
The brilliance is in the approach. By focusing the
intelligence on the vehicle rather than the infrastructure,
the development can be done in a “garage” by a few
creative, innovative and motivated individuals. Once
perfected, duplication cost of the software is essentially
free and the computer hardware behaves as Moore’s Law
These are ingredients for viral growth. This is about to
happen. It has Schumpeter’s decisive quality advantages: in
safety benefit, in comfort - not having to drive the car and
eventually in the ability to take the driver completely out of
the car so as to create the ultimate in public transportation:
autonomous Taxis for all.
A fleet of 1.9 x106 aTaxis would serve all 32 x106 daily trips
in New Jersey save 500 lives/year, no congestion, use half
the energy, half the pollution. This is disruptive technology
Over the next 35 years, you will fuel China’s continued transformation with
the new disruptive technologies that you will pioneer.
How will you come up with the ideas, concepts, and innovations? There is no
magic formula, except asking/formulating the challenging question. One
must always ask questions, even the ones that at first might seem the most
silly. 17 years ago, people said to me: “you want to replace the simple map
with all of that hardware and software. That’s crazy!” I tenaciously
disagreed, and asked, “How can it be done?”
I encourage you to remain focused on your vision and tenacious in your
visionary effort, even if many suggest you are crazy. Listen to the advice, but
make your own decisions, follow your own path. In your way you will be
transformative as Bill Gates was the computing environment, Steve Jobs in
the ways we enjoy music, communicate and interact, Henry Ford in the ways
we do manufacturing…
By asking questions, challenging the status quo, you will accelerate China’s
transformation and create a better world for all.
.
Thank You
[email protected]