[Leica] What is "Innovation"

[Erwin Puts <imxputs@knoware.nl>]

According to many contributors, Leica has no innovative products, nor 
the capacity to be innovative.
But do we really know what "innovation" stands for? My handbook 
defines innovation as:
Quote:
The process of crating new products, or new ways of making old 
products, so that the creator has an effective monopoly in the market 
for as long as it takes others to copy.
In the West innovation is seen mostly as the Big Bang type of 
breakthrough. In Japan it is seen much more as an incremental thing 
that can turn the smallest change into a dramatic innovation. There 
is even an appropriate Oriental saying: " A little thing will will 
always be a little thing, but contemplation of a little thing can be 
a very big thing indeed."
End Quote.
Well then the question if the leica company is innovative depends on 
the perspective. As a big bang view Leica is not and never was 
innovative. The M3 was not a big bang product. It was as obsolete 
functionally in 1954 as the R8 is now if we have to believe the 
current mainstream thinking. Around 1955 many fully featured  SLR 
models and the advanced Japanese rangefinders with all kinds of specs 
were on the market. If we condemn the R8 because of not having every 
feature every camera from the other marques possesses, this is 
exactly the same valid proposition for the M3 at its time. It lacked 
many features the competition had. And indeed a few years later sales 
went down dramatically because of the SLR wave. We may admire the M3, 
but economically it was in the same position as the R8 is now.   The 
M3 had no motordrive, no automatic exposure, a ridiculously low synch 
speed of 1/50, only a limited range of lenses and the viewfinder did 
not accept a wide angle lens. The solution of lenses with spectacles 
was an ergonomic disaster.
The Nikon Sp was much more feature laden than the M3. But it did not 
make it. The SP-M3 pair might be called yesterdays Hexar RF-M6 pair.
But is the RF an innovative camera?. By no means. It is a component 
product, with a Copal shutter, an M6 type viewfinder, the motorwinder 
form the original Hexar and exposure automation that can be found on 
every small point and shoot model. There is nothing of a big bang 
idea here.
The only real big bang in photography were the Konica AE and the 
Minolta AF. But even these technologies wee already on the market for 
a long time. They only migrated them to SLR models. There is no big 
bang innovation in photography.
If we look at the incremental view of innovation,then the M6 is as 
innovative as the Hexar. Both add incrementally to the product in 
order to keep or get marketshare. That Leica adds different features 
than does Konica or Voigtlander, is not the issue. Both might grow 
incrementally and I am sure Leica is contemplating the little things.
Any camera is a tool, not a product to worship and to talk endlessly 
about, thought his might have its charm. We should appraise the 
features and possibilities of the M6 as a photographic tool for its 
designated type of photography. We do not say the any fourwheel drive 
car is not innovative because it does not have sportscar type 
suspension. It is a subtle type of fallacy to define a long list of 
features collected from the common denominator of all camera models 
and then discredit any camera that does not match this list.
I am just reading Isaac Newtons "opticks" and the first sentence reads:
"My design of this book is not to explain the properties of light by 
hypotheses, but to propose and prove them by reason and and 
experiments. "
If we all could adhere to this statement.

Erwin