Personally, I would have to class myself as a pacifist. Perhaps outright coward could be another descriptor. War for me is something to be avoided, due to the inherent risks and fact that I have no interest in playing a role in the overall scheme of other people who want stuff like oil, power and more money for themselves. Oh, and I don’t look good in green.
However, war is a very natural part of life, and therefore, business. As a model for innovation and commercialisation, war is actually hard to beat, because normal commercial rules do not apply. In the race to either kill more effectively or to become harder to kill, there are organisations that are well-funded, without woolly-minded shareholders wondering about their potential returns.
War has delivered more than its fair share of marketable solutions that we take for granted, and has helped generate incredible wealth for large multinationals. War is a well-entrenched part of not just the human need to forcefully screw over other people, but also global business, marketing and technical development.
The absolute global epicentre for this effect comes from the US, which has perfected the art of combining military research with science to produce highly significant technology. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) carries the can for projects that would be just too risky and expensive for normal commercialisation means.
Since coming into being in the late fifties, DARPA has created the internet, mobile phone technology, lasers, rockets, weather satellites and is currently working on invisibility (mock them not – in theory, it is as plausible as splitting the atom). Put just these few achievements together (it has one, a lot more stuff) and it would be hard to think of any other organisation that has had much impact on so many people in so many ways.
Fuelling this is a pretty big cheque book. In 2008, the worldwide spend on military gear was $1.4 trillion, of which the US accounted for 42 percent – a good effort for a country that represents just four percent of the global population. Little wonder it enjoys throwing its weight around so much, because the US holds a technical supremacy that money does buy. As the US marine and Desert Storm veteran Colonel James Braden once said, “I don’t ever want to be in a fair fight.”
Along with all the blood lust comes the other prong, the continual need to save and preserve life, because the other side is not satisfied with using harsh language.
You can track the lineage of modern day technology way back in time, and under the most dramatic of circumstances. Let’s head back to London during World War II, at the height of German air dominance, with Londoners cowering in shelters during the Blitz. Hitler is preparing to take the small island by softening it up. Infrastructure, housing, industry and people’s psychological wellbeing are all coming under nightly attack. So dire is the campaign that Churchill can only say, “Death and sorrow will be our companions on the journey, hardship our garment, constancy and valour our only shield.”
The opportunity to fight back is limited because the Luftwaffe has faster, more agile planes, but also the element of surprise; you just can’t see the buggers coming soon enough or even see them at all in the dark skies. This, as a core issue, extends well beyond the white cliffs of Dover. Every single military mind is working hard on an early detection system, because the advantages of knowing here the enemy is at any given moment would prove to be a new massive leap ahead.
Both the US and the British Governments are working on a new technology known as a magnetron. Without going into too much detail, it is a simple device that creates radio waves that bounce back when they hit something. The problem is the first magnetrons don’t generate much power and therefore have very limited ranges. Called in to make improvements is a small company called Raytheon, a company that just happens to employ a clever guy called Percy Spencer.
Spencer is accredited with effectively turning the tide of the war, and the bombardment of London. He creates an improved way to produce the copper tubes for better scalability of manufacturing, to get this new technology into the aeroplanes of the Allies. He also changes the fortunes for Raytheon, which goes from a turnover of $1.5 million prior to the war to $180 million by 1945.
The new system reverses the German fortunes and is officially called radio detection and ranging, or the more marketable ‘RADAR’. The lives radar saves are, of course, hard to count. First, Hitler has to call off the invasion, and the bombardment, seeing as the Allies now know exactly where the Germans are.
In modern times, I doubt anyone would want to get onto a plane without radar. The downside, of course, is if you are on the other side. Especially in the case of Hiroshima, which felt the blunt edge of radar’s capabilities, when it directed the Enola Gay.
The story for radar does not actually end there. B2B marketing efforts for radar actually failed in the early days. Raytheon struggled to get into large commercial applications such as ferries. It was Percy Spencer, again, who transformed what The New York Times described as “the mythical death-ray by giving accurate precision, so that the death stroke may be delivered” into one of the most indispensable household items ever.
Fiddling about with a magnetron, he noticed that a chocolate bar melted in his pocket. He went a step further, and popped some popcorn. This led to what everyone with an ounce of mischief has done at some time: he blew up an egg with what he patented as ‘microwave cooking’.
The road to consumer homes started with B2B marketing. This amazing new cooking method that heated the water molecules in food, but hardly touched moisture-less containers did not come cheaply. Standing at two metres tall, the first microwave oven didn’t sit neatly on top of a kitchen cupboard, and sold for the equivalent of $34,000 in today’s money. Large restaurants, cruise ships and hotel chains pioneered the development of the microwave oven. Potato chip manufacturers
also played a large part, cutting down production time from days to minutes for drying freshly fried chips.
It took until 1975 for microwave ovens to become a true consumer item. Prior to that, the core technology had existed within military applications, then commercial for 30 years before cracking consumer markets. War, what is it good for? For more than 350 million of us, it at least means warming up that coffee you forgot within an ad break.
Andrew Clarke 10:29 am on November 27, 2011 Permalink
Small kingdoms – perhaps they do need violence. Really good read – look forward to reading more.
Matt Pepper 9:50 am on November 28, 2011 Permalink
How much money will this post save companies? After 20 years in marketing, it is amazing to see the same old problems come around again and again.