Eight Innovation Lessons from Leonardo da Vinci’s Machines

I recently had the privilege of visiting the Museo Nazionale della Scienza e della Tecnologia in Italy. As a long-term student of innovation, I have dreamed of visiting the museum that houses much of Leonardo da Vinci’s work. My hope is that by studying da Vinci’s work from the 1400s firsthand, I can learn things that can help engineers and scientists in the 21st century. In his famous notebooks, da Vinci documented his own “studies” of fluid flow, bird flight, and human anatomy. What could a study of his methods possibly reveal as guiding principles for innovation in the past and in the future? Here are eight innovation lessons from the Master.

1. Find Innovation in Water-Stained Walls

Many of us have looked at the sky and seen the shape of a rabbit or horse formed in the clouds. Da Vinci’s fantastic mind certainly saw the simple things too, but we can only imagine the detailed connections his great mind made between random patterns and swirls. For example, da Vinci used water-stained walls as inspiration and an innovation tool. It is hard to know if da Vinci simply relied on luck and serendipity as sources for new ideas, or if he used the stained walls to tap into his subconscious and help him with existing projects. His projects at the time may have been at the forefront of his mind and the stains helped pull out new ideas. He did not use water-stained walls for random musings; he used them to give life to his paintings. After learning of his water-stain inspiration, I viewed the Mona Lisa, The Last Supper, and his self-portrait in new light.

Engineers and scientists who develop new products or ideas may need a version of a water-stained wall to bring forth new creative ideas. What is your water-stained wall? In today’s Internet-connected world, “deep googling” may be an example of water-stained walls. Deep googling means going beyond page one of search results to page 10 and beyond to get new insights. The search results are connected to the original search term, yet they are loosely connected providing new insights into the original idea. This may be how some of the great innovators you personally know actually think. They often have dynamic, nonlinear thought processes. Rather than give you the equivalent of the first page results from a Google search, they jump ahead to something new and unexpected.

2. Reuse Fundamental Concepts

After viewing da Vinci’s many mechanical prototypes, it was clear to me that he repeatedly reused simple principles in new ways. He was an expert in the use of worm screws, cogs, pulleys, gears, motion translation, and tension. Five hundred years later, these concepts seem fairly simple. However, the way he combined these elemental components in new practical ways to create machines for making mirrors, dredging rivers, and creating a multitemperature furnace are amazing. His deep knowledge of some fundamental concepts before others understood them made him a genius.
If da Vinci were alive today, what fundamental concepts would he bring under his will? For your career, take into account concepts you should bring under your dominion. Consider what new fundamental elements you can combine in new ways to address practical problems today.

3. Make Your Own Cogs, Mix Your Own Paint

Walking through the museum and looking at the machines closely made me think that da Vinci had a workshop where he made many of these fundamental components and devices (gears, cogs, pulleys, work screws, and so on) himself or he supervised others who made the core fundamental building blocks. The great builder probably mixed a lot of paint and made a lot of cogs himself. In a similar vein, I have also heard that great chefs boil their own water.

4. Maintain an Iron Will

Da Vinci, in his study of bird flight, calculated the ratio of a bird’s wing surface area to its weight. He used this calculation to estimate the surface area of a wing required to lift the weight of an average man. He then created prototype drawings and mechanical examples to test the ratio. He even built an example that required three men to spin a spiral wing (what is believed to be the first example of a helicopter). Ultimately, as we now know, birds produce more power or thrust per unit of mass. For much of da Vinci’s life, the idea of flight fascinated him. He produced many studies on the flight of birds, including his Codex on the Flight of Birds as well as plans for several flying parachute and hang gliding machines. It is not clear if even the hang glider worked in his lifetime. Yet, he did not give up his study.

5. Bridge Distant Worlds

Da Vinci’s use of skills in one area surely helped him in other areas as he experimented in such diverse fields as art, war machines, and bridges. He also seemed to be able to observe and learn from nature and then bridge his learning to practical everyday applications. His studies of fluid flow, human anatomy, and flight, it seems, were attempts to learn from nature with the aim of building practical machines, art, and sculptures.

The pattern for innovation today is similar, but instead we often bridge ideas from distant markets to create something new. Andrew Hargadon’s book How Breakthroughs Happen: The Surprising Truth About How Companies Innovate makes this point. Hargadon applies this framework to business case studies ranging from Henry Ford’s mass-production methods to the work of present-day industrial design firms. Hargadon suggests that companies can stimulate innovation by cultivating a diverse network of projects, clients, and suppliers to “capture” new ideas and exploit the resulting innovations.

Consider what worlds outside of your technical area you should be learning from.

6. Realize That Secrecy Increases Value

Da Vinci is famous for having written most of his personal notes and studies in reverse. He wrote backward, from right to left, such that the result is a mirror image of normal writing. Was he trying to hide his work? He must have had another reason to write backward.

I have three thoughts:

1. He was left-handed, so writing backward was more efficient.
2. He believed that by making his work appear to be secret, it made them more valuable.
3. He actually wanted to conceal his work.

The quality of the sketches and the studies that da Vinci made are amazing. Were they only for his personal use? Or, is it plausible that he used them as a type of marketing brochure for potential clients? If you were a potential da Vinci customer and you reviewed his high level of craftsmanship and quality of work, wouldn’t you be more inclined to think that he would do incredible work for you? A hypothesis is that he used his studies and notebooks to showcase his work and the fact that he wrote them using mirror writing gave the reader the impression that they were for personal use. Was Leonardo da Vinci a genius salesman, too? Probably!

What does this mean for you? In simple terms, develop great prototypes of your work. Your customer or partner may value your work even more if you treat it as if it were special and protect it with secrecy. Should you put a password on your software and encrypt your files? Possibly, but ultimately you want people to see your ideas and designs, so do not make the encryption too difficult to break. To give your ideas more credibility, consider how to protect them in the right way, but do not make the audience work too hard to understand your work. You want them to work just hard enough.

7. Recognize That Risk Has Its Rewards

Da Vinci studied, tested, and prototyped to learn. One of his daring studies was to perform an autopsy on a person to better understand muscles, tendons, and ligaments at a new depth to improve his art and sculptures. His willingness to take on this risk at a time when the church forbade human autopsies shows his commitment to knowledge and being the best. The result was that he probably knew more about human anatomy than any person up to that time. Consider if you are willing to go the extra step and take risks to understand something in your work to this depth.

8. Design Eternal Beauty

The famous art historian Bernard Berenson said it best about Leonardo da Vinci: “…nothing that he touched but turned into a thing of eternal beauty. Whether it be the cross section of a skull, the structure of a weed, or a study of muscles...” As engineers and scientists, we have a chance to create something of eternal beauty each day. Let’s get to work and prototype and make the world a better place.

Innovation, National Instruments, and Leonardo da Vinci

The advent of robot-assisted surgery using the da Vinci Surgical System (DVSS) from Intuitive Surgical, Inc. has helped surgeons overcome some of the limitations of manual laparoscopy. In robot-assisted laparoscopy, the surgeon sits at a console and remotely controls endoscopic instruments via a surgical robot. The 3D visualization provides depth perception, and the wrist-like articulations of the console instruments improve surgeons’ dexterity by diminishing tremor and scaled motion and increasing range of motion. The coordinated hand-instrument movement reduced laparoscopic surgeon training time using robotic systems in comparison to using manual laparoscopy. The system’s designers used NI LabVIEW graphical system design software to develop a platform to ensure medical students and new surgeons perform robot-assisted laparoscopic surgery using the correct movements to maintain the highest level of patient safety. Read the full case study.

Leonardo da Vinci might be intrigued if he realized that his ideas, captured on medieval parchment, are protected today by a high-tech solution built in the late 20th century. Using a computer-based system, the Seattle Art Museum monitors the integrity of priceless da Vinci manuscripts owned by Bill Gates of Microsoft. NI LabVIEW software and programmable automation controllers (PACs) are used to monitor the temperature and humidity of the six kiosks containing the manuscript pages. Read the full case study. 

– John Hanks

John Hanks is the vice president of industrial and embedded product lines at National Instruments. He holds a bachelor of science in engineering from Texas A&M University and received a master of science in engineering from the University of Texas at Austin.

Other articles by John Hanks:

How to Cultivate Your Technical Reputation: Nine Tips during Difficult Times
Eight Rules for Prototyping
Predicting the Future of Technology: Tips for Innovators
Eleven Shocking Green Engineering Numbers

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