On 4 December 2013 19:32, <cbullard@h...> wrote:

Or...

like breeding?

Consider the role of the elite cultivar in plant breeding.   Consider the open source model of finding fit mating candidates in the wild.  Consider the challenges of mating tools and requirements?

Invention and innovation are not the same thing.  Inventions are birthed.  Innovations are bred.  Not all mating is breeding (targeted characteristics).

Some breeding is discovery.   Back to the submarine analogy:  at the end of WWII, the US Navy captured the Japanese super-submarines that were to have launched bombers off the US coasts.  They were amazed at the size and technologies.  For the first time, they realized a submarine was not just a ship hunter but could be a weapons platform.   They needed better power and the right weapons.  They realized they had nuclear expertise and they had captured the German rocket team.   From their nuclear expertise, the German's rocket expertise, and the Japanese submarine, the modern submarine fleet was bred.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_D%C3%B6nitz

<<German doctrine at the time, based on the work of American Admiral Alfred Mahan and shared by all major navies, called for submarines to be integrated with surface fleets and employed against enemy warships. By November 1937, D��z became convinced that a major campaign against merchant shipping was practicable and began pressing for the conversion of the German fleet almost entirely to U-boats.^[5] He advocated a strategy of attacking only merchant ships, targets relatively safe to attack. He pointed out that destroying Britain's fleet of oil tankers would starve the Royal Navy of supplies needed to run its ships, which would be just as effective as sinking them. He thought a German fleet of 300 of the newer Type VII U-boats could knock Britain out of the war>>

The germans not only had submarines, but had the right idea (attack civil ships) to use them.  You can have very good technology, and apply it poorly...  apply it with old ideas, that don't result on all you can get with that new piece of tech.

D��z was the architect of the german submarine strategy. He took a technology, and shaped it for a purpose, where it would be effective, ignoring other people ideas and actually designing for success.