Boeing's 787 Dreamliner and the Decline of Innovation

[unhappycamper]

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-01-24/boeings-787-dreamliner-and-the-decline-of-innovation



Boeing's 787 Dreamliner and the Decline of Innovation
By Brad Stone and Susanna Ray on January 24, 2013

By the standards of commercial airplanes, the Boeing 787 was supposed to be a modern marvel. Its carbon-fiber body and new electrical system give it a reduced weight, which allows it to burn 20 percent less fuel than the midsize airplanes it's meant to replace. The interior cabin features cathedral-like archways to reduce the sense of claustrophobia and enlarged windows that dim at the touch of a button. Because of the new, stronger composite materials, the cabin can also be maintained at higher pressure and humidity, so travelers feel fresher at landing. The airplane even has a soaring name, the Dreamliner, the winning submission in a naming contest held on America Online 10 years ago.

Now the Dreamliner has turned into a nightmare for Boeing (BA) and the airlines that paid a list price of more than $200 million per airplane. It suffered problems typical for new planes, ranging from brake malfunctions to computer glitches. On Jan. 16, the Federal Aviation Administration grounded the fleet after the battery on a 787 that had just landed in Boston caught fire and another produced a fault that forced an emergency landing by an All Nippon Airways flight bound for Tokyo, with the passengers evacuating via inflatable slides.

The grounding of the 787 was in many respects inevitable for a project marked by missed opportunities, narrowed visions, and, yes, dreams deferred. It's also a dispiriting example of the shrinking tolerance for risk among corporate executives and government regulators, which is stifling innovation and threatening America's competitive edge. "I often wonder, if society existed as it does today with the media, politicians, and lawyers and managers focused on not missing earnings by two cents per quarter, whether we would have made the advances of the past," says Bob Bogash, who retired after a 30-year career at Boeing and now writes a blog about aviation, rbogash.com.

The skies have long been a showcase for America's genius for invention. More often than not, Boeing, founded in 1916 on the shores of Seattle's Lake Union by a lumberman named William Boeing, was right in the thick of it. During World War II, the B29 Superfortress had a pressurized cabin and remote-control guns. The 707 ushered the U.S. into the Jet Age in the 1950s, and the 747, introduced in 1970 as the world's first wide-bodied aircraft, revolutionized long-haul air travel. All of these efforts had teething problems even worse than the 787's. Bogash recalls that “the 747's windshields used to crack so often that when I was based in Honolulu as a field service engineer I had two spares in my home garage, just in case." And yet each time, Boeing made the necessary fixes and plunged ahead with the next big bet.

[PSPS]

1. Here we go. Duh Gubmint "is stifling innovation and threatening America's competitive edge."

The grounding of the 787 was in many respects inevitable for a project marked by missed opportunities, narrowed visions, and, yes, dreams deferred. It's also a dispiriting example of the shrinking tolerance for risk among corporate executives and government regulators, which is stifling innovation and threatening America's competitive edge. "I often wonder, if society existed as it does today with the media, politicians, and lawyers and managers focused on not missing earnings by two cents per quarter, whether we would have made the advances of the past," says Bob Bogash, who retired after a 30-year career at Boeing and now writes a blog about aviation, rbogash.com.

Sure thing, Bob. Let's just throw anything out there, even shoddy outsourced cheapest-vendor crap, and let the public-at-large pay the ultimate sacrifice lest we threaten "America's competitive edge." Geesh. This guy is a real piece of work.

[Blue_Tires]

2. It should also be mentioned that Boeing used to have much tougher domestic competition

From Douglas, Lockheed and others, so they HAD to innovate and take risks with the 707, 727, 747, etc...

But for the past 20 years now, they've pretty much had the American market to themselves...

[Egalitarian Thug]

3. That's the key to this issue throughout the economy. Competition has been steadily reduced

through collusion and market manipulation for generations now. There will never be another aircraft manufacturer start up because the entire industry, from manufacturing to service, is controlled by fewer than a dozen players.

Competition and innovation are expensive and so-called investors will not tolerate them. We are living under the tyranny of the financial industry, It controls everything from our government to our food & water, and I see no signs that there is any will to change that at all.