Light bulbs are the icons of industrial inspiration. The light bulb has been the symbol of a new idea for decades, representing a fundamental innovation that changed the way the world works.   Last week, General Electric published the results of a survey in which 73 percent of all respondents thought that the light bulb was Thomas Edison’s most important invention (although Edison himself preferred the phonograph).

 

 

Now advances in semiconductor technology may make the light bulb obsolete by 2010, to be replaced by light emitting diodes.

 

An 11 February New York Times article highlights several companies pioneering in this area:

 

n      Kopin Systems has developed “nanopockets,” which cuts the voltage needed to get light out of a chip, making the diodes feasible to provide backlighting for product displays.

n      Color Kinetics creates specialty lighting applications for billboards, shows, and home design.

 

 

Here are three predictions about the way in which the light bulb will (and will not) be displaced: 

 

n      We can expect the technology to begin its adoption in niche markets where conventional light bulbs don’t do the job (see work by Clayton Christensen or Geoffrey Moore).  This is already happening.  Examples from Color Kinetics demonstrate this, highlighting sets for the Broadway Musical “Hairspray” and special lighting for Children’s Hospital in Boston.

 

n      The big players in lighting today (Philips and General Electric) will probably not be the leaders in this new technology.  This in spite of the fact that both companies have major research initiatives in this area.

 

As Rebecca Henderson noted in 1990:

 

“Architectural innovations [entailing fundamental changes in the product or service] destroy the usefulness of the architectural knowledge of established firms … this destruction is difficult for firms to recognize and hard to correct."

 

n      When GE does another survey in 44 years celebrating Edison’s 200^th birthday, will those surveyed still think of the light bulb as Edison’s greatest invention?  My prediction is yes -- the iconography of the light bulb, representing inspired industrial innovation, will be more durable than the product itself.

 

Here’s a comment from John Jordan:

 

You forgot the other big player in lighting: Siemens owns Sylvania and is already building (or at least designing) lighting-oriented LED factories.

 

 

I have to take issue with Henderson on this one - there's a nice evolutionary path (starting with specialty and then moving to automotive) and the big incumbents realize the existing business is so industrial as to be radically commodified when the Chinese decide to get into it (not that it's very profitable now).  Plenty of things could go wrong, to be

sure: Philips is so mismanaged that they may not make the transition, and GE may not want to invest given that lighting is the weak sister to the other more glamorous divisions, but I wouldn't cede the 2013 market to Kopin just yet.