Would you bite the hand that feeds you? The story of a lighthouse keeper.

Note: The following story is based on possible instances and thus not necessarily historically true. Rather than summarizing the historical development of lighthouse technology, the aim of this story is to put selected phenomena of innovation dynamics in a narrative context.

This is the life story of an old lighthouse keeper, who made a living with keeping the light house. Having Winter’s (2003) definition of ordinary capabilities in mind, one might describe the lighthouse keeper’s profession and operational routine as a zero-level capability. Figure 1 shows Winter’s (2003) concept of the hierarchy of capabilities. One also might assume that the lighthouse keeper has no noteworthy higher order capabilities, which, according to Winter (2003), would enable him to extend and modify his daily operations. However, this assumption will be proven wrong. 

In the old days, when the lighthouse keeper was young, he was filled with pride being the first operator in the newly built lighthouse. He felt doing something valuable for the society since the lighthouses were considered as a public good to protect ships. Linking this common perception of a lighthouse to an institutional aspect, one could follow Hollingsworth (2001) definition about institutions by saying that the safety function of light houses is a shared value within the society. But coming back to the lighthouse keeper, the initial pride and motivation soon was substituted by loneliness, due to a lack of communication. Those days he spent endless days in isolation not knowing what was going on outside his cone of light. Neither did the terrestrial radio and television broadcasting work reliably at this remote place, nor did the postman come at a regular base. But he had a telephone; they have laid a cable to the lighthouse. However, there has been this institutional convention that a company phone is not meant for private use. Again bringing in the societies perception, it is exactly this loneliness and isolation which triggers this institutional tendency to romanticise the work of a lighthouse keeper. It is this being away from all the trouble feeling and the idea of endless time for enjoying a cup of tea and a good book.

Facing the reality, the implied lighthouse keeper felt his social communication skill diminishing. Or to say it with Adler & Known’s (2002) words, his social capital was decreasing due to a lack of social relations which, in the long run, was effecting the lighthouse keeper’s motivation. In this difficult phase of life his major consolation has been the fact that time never stands still. Technologies emerge, develop, dominate and sooner or later are substituted by something else (e.g. Dosi, 1982). Or to rephrase it, the dynamics of innovation bear trajectories (competing paths of technological progresses), and after a series of decisions and concepts one dominant design emerges which stays until the next paradigm shift (Utterback & Suarez, 1991). The terrestrial television broadcasting has been slowly substituted by satellite TV, which enabled the lighthouse keeper to install an antenna and thus to watch television also in his remote lighthouse. When looking at Orlikowski’s (1992) structural model of technology the satellite broadcasting is an innovative result of human action which in reverse influences human action (watching TV at a remote place) and furthermore the use of this innovation has an impact on the institutional properties of the organization (if one can talk about the lighthouse as an organization). But what has been even more influencing for the lighthouse keeper was the diffusion of the personal computers along with the internet. And applying Roger’s (1964) diffusion curve to personal computers one could call the described lighthouse keeper an early adopter. Being a part of the first users within the computer trajectory the lighthouse keeper soon has become a passionate PC hobbyist.

As time went by, he had the idea to improve his daily work by using his computer. Combining the computer technology with microcontrollers, actuators and mechanics and applying this to the lighthouse technology, he was able to come up with a simple but working computer aided light control system for his lighthouse. This improvement made his work even simpler. At the same time there has been a lighthouse equipment company which had the capability to spot him and his innovation. This could be described as the absorptive capacity of this firm, since they have been able to identify an innovation outside the company (Cohen & Levinthal, 1990). What this company eventually did is that they involved the lighthouse keeper into their innovation process. According to von Hippel (1976) the lighthouse keeper could be described as a lead-user for this company which thereby followed a user-innovation approach. Since they have been the first lighthouse equipment manufacture using computerized light control, they ironically called this innovation project “Leuchtturmprojekt” (German for lighthouse project) which is a German phrase for a trend-setting and ideal project. The history has shown that this innovation indeed has been trend-setting and it diffused rapidly. As discussed by Rolfstam (2009) public procurement can be used as an innovation policy tool. In this case the public procurement for the public owned lighthouses has encouraged the implied company to improve the innovation (policy makers demanded a redundant fail-save system) and it furthermore accelerated the diffusion of the innovation.

One now can think that the company might have hired the lighthouse keeper as an innovation manager/engineer for their “Leuchtturmprojekt”. Unfortunately, this has not been the case. The lighthouse super-user has developed his ideas through a learning-by-doing mode. This form of innovation can be called the Doing, Using and Interacting (DUI) mode introduced by Berg Jensen et al. (2007). However, the company has certain organizational institutions. By using Searle’s (2005) expression of X counts as Y in C one can describe the organization’s hiring policy as: An engineering degree counts as an entry requirement in the human resource department of the company. Coming back to Berg Jensen et al. (2007) the company thereby heavily relays on the Science, Technology and Innovation (STI) mode which gives no room for innovative lighthouse keepers without a University degree.   

To sum it up, the lonely lighthouse keeper initiated a paradigm shift. And considering that this new paradigm (computer controlled lighthouses) substitutes the work of a lighthouse keeper one can draw the link to Schumpeter’s (1934) notion of creative destruction. So, did the lighthouse keeper bit the hand that feeds him? Did he substitute himself? Can the old man and the lighthouse be compared with Hemingways (1952) The Old Man and the Sea? Catching a big fish but loosing it all? Not in this case. Due to the institutional value and shared perception of the romantic lighthouse the local tourism industry requests an old man living in the lighthouse and showing the tourists around.

While the old man is still making a living with keeping the lighthouse, the implied lighthouse equipment manufacture is in big trouble due to a dramatically decrease in sales. The emergence of the Global Positioning System (GPS) paradigm reduced the importance of lighthouses significantly.