"[1]: 2 Technology brokering can teach firms how to effectively shift the focus of traditional R&D teams from trying to invent completely new products to combining previous innovations.
The advantage of empathic design, especially when combined with technology brokering firms, is that it leads to innovative products that suit the particular problems of the customer.
The first examples of technology brokering can be found as early as 1876 with Thomas Edison in his Menlo Park laboratory.
I simply assembled into a car the discoveries of other men behind whom were centuries of work….Had I worked fifty or ten or even five years before, I would have failed.
To teach that a comparatively few men are responsible for the greatest forward steps of mankind is the worst sort of nonsense.