Sharp was one of the pioneers of LCD manufacturing in
As so often in the technology business, the crucial decision which put Sharp on the road to technological and market leadership in LCD came down to one man.
In 1987, Sharp had produced a TV with a three inch LCD screen.
In 1988, the leader of the LCD development team, Isamu Washizuka, told his team that the next size of panel they would develop would be 14 inches.
The engineers were amazed assuming, naturally, that the increase in panel size would be incremental in steps of an inch or so at a time.
The same year, at the autumn Japan Electronics Show, Sharp showed off a 14 inch display.
The achievement had many consequences.
The first was that Sharp realized the LCD could come to rival the CRT.
The second was that, in 1991, Sharp decided to put the unprecedentedly massive investment of $640 million into manufacturing LCDs
The third, in 1992, was that Washizuka won the Consumer Electronics Award from the IEEE.
The fourth was Sharp's pre-eminence in LCDs for two decades.
But more importantly for today, how do we best detect these important moments of "innovation"? I'm not sure if I, back in 1988, would have readily recognized the importance of 14'' and its impact on the world 20 years later.
Juniboss
It's setting a tough target that's important, not the target itself. When TI's Pat Haggerty asked his engineers to give him a transistor radio and later a pocket calculator, they did it, even though these things hadn't been done before.
Once achieved people said 'Wow, these transistor-thingies or these IC-thingies are really useful. Where else can we apply them?'
Same with Sharp. People were expecting incremental progress. The Sharp engineers were asked for a big leap.
It made all the difference