The Big Data Boom Is the Innovation Story of Our Time

In the 1670s, in Delft, Netherlands, a scientist named Anton van Leeuwenhoek did something many scientists had done for 100 years before him. He built a microscope.

This microscope was different, but it was not extraordinary. Like so many inventions, he borrowed and tweaked his predecessors' ingenuity. But when he looked through this microscope, he found things that did seem extraordinary. He called them "animalcules," microbes in water droplets and human blood that ultimately provided the foundation for the germ theory of disease and eventually inspired a host of medicines and treatments.

The Leeuwenhoek discovery is crucial to our understanding of innovation, not only because it changed the face of biochemistry, but also because it represents a fundamental theme of discovery.

Breakthroughs in innovation often rely on breakthroughs in measurement.    More