How can you tell when an innovation will succeed and when it will fail? 

This is a question we’ve long wrestled with. There are no easy, black-and-white answers. In fact, our nearly three decades of experience at PCDworks working with start-ups has taught us that there’s a better question to ask instead.

How can you tell whether an innovator will succeed?

We’ve seen many great ideas fail to gain traction, and we’ve also seen rough, unproven ideas evolve into incredible successes. The better predictor of success is the people behind the innovations.

So, what is it that makes certain innovators more likely to succeed? To answer that, let us tell you about Sonia Dagan, PhD. She’s an innovator we’ve recently had the pleasure of working with, and from the first time we met her, we were certain: this is an innovator who will succeed.

An Innovative Vision: Save Crops and Protect Pollinators

Sonia has a clear vision: save crops from harmful bugs using LiDAR. It’s an interesting problem—and one that matters. Few things are more important than food to human survival, and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations estimates that, globally, up to 40 percent of crops are lost each year due to plant pests and diseases. Solving this problem also comes with a clear financial incentive, as those lost crops translate to lost dollars. Invasive insects alone account for an annual loss of at least $70 billion. 

The traditional solution to bugs is pesticides. However, pesticides don’t differentiate between good and bad bugs. They kill both indiscriminately. They can also damage the environment, contaminating water and soil, and they have negative repercussions for human health, including increased risk of cancer. 

Sonia looked at the existing solutions and thought, We can do better. We can save crops and protect pollinators. The two are not mutually exclusive but interconnected. Pollinators benefit 78 percent of crops grown worldwide and contribute approximately $29 billion to US agriculture. By protecting pollinators, we help crops.

She came up with a compelling new solution: LiDAR. 

It Takes a Village 

As the proverb says, “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” The most successful innovators, like Sonia, recognize that you need others’ help to innovate. 

Sonia received funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF) and collaborated with USDA Agricultural Research Service (ARS) groups, who provided a colony of 2 mm ambrosia beetles for her research efforts.

As Sonia reared the beetles in her apartment, she soon recognized a problem. Her PhD is in electrical engineering, not entomology. To create the best solution, she would need extensive knowledge of not just LiDAR, but also bugs. So she found and hired an entomologist, who would prove invaluable.

Then she ran into another problem. To develop the technology, she needed to observe bugs flying in a controlled setting. She needed a wind tunnel. Like most of us, though, she didn’t have a wind tunnel lying around. She had something even better, though: a father who was an ingenious craftsman who could build anything. She told him about her dilemma, and he built her a tabletop wind tunnel.

Problem-Solving in Action: Persist, Persist, Persist!

No sooner had the problem of the wind tunnel been solved than another one arose. Sonia needed to study other insects besides ambrosia beetles. That meant she needed test subjects (a.k.a., bugs), which she didn’t have. Undeterred, she and the entomologist ventured outside and collected the needed insects themselves. 

On to the next problem: bugs are usually pretty small, and they clearly are not prone to following instructions. The entomologist taught Sonia about insect handling techniques she could use. They started with bumblebees they had captured. They chilled them in her home freezer to knock them out. Then the entomologist wrangled them to a lab table and carefully tied strings around them so Sonia could hang them in the wind tunnel. As they thawed and woke up, they began to fly to try to escape, and Sonia was able to bounce LiDAR off of them to gather the data she needed.

They repeated the process with several types of bugs, and then they faced a new challenge: fruit flies. Tying a string around a bumblebee is hard enough. Trying to tie one around a fruit fly is, well, stupid. It was time to get creative again. At the entomologist’s instruction, they got a little teeny toothpick, and with a little teeny drop of glue, they affixed it to the back of the little teeny fruit fly. They hung the toothpick in the wind tunnel, the fruit fly buzzed its wings, and Sonia was able to pick up the bounce of the LiDAR. In this way, she learned how to discriminate between the bug species by the unique signature of the wing reflections.

During the course of this testing, they’d moved into a university lab on the same campus where the entomologist had a lab. Then COVID happened, and the lab was shut down. If it were another innovator, their research might have ground to a halt. Since it was Sonia, she called on her father’s help again, and he turned a basement space into a lab for them. They moved into the basement to continue their work. 

If there is one certainty in innovation, it is that problems will arise. Sonia’s drive and determination in the face of difficulties was the number one reason we were so certain she would succeed. 

The Key to Success

Sonia has now developed some of the most effective technology that exists today to identify and quantify insects in flight. So what is it about her that has led to success?

She had a great idea, but she didn’t just have a good idea. She is eaten up with the need to innovate, and no matter what problem comes up, she finds her way around it.

It comes down to mindset. Innovation is not simply an action, but a way of thinking and looking at the world. The innovators who succeed are the ones who are curious about the world and have the drive and persistence to creatively overcome challenges.

If that sounds like you, contact us to see how we can help bring your vision to life.