[FDE] Invention, innovation, and process improvement.

[Robert Jueneman]

Those were intended to be grand, sweeping generalizations, in keeping
with my understanding of your guidelines of looking for ideas that have
had a significant impact at the societal level.

The invention of the concept of asymmetric cryptography by Diffie,
Merkel and Hellman, together with its realization as a practical scheme
by Rivest, Shamir, and Adleman, certainly constituted Invention with a
capital I, and was perhaps one of the top 10 intellectual inventions of
all time, IMHO.  (That would be an interesting list to debate, wouldn't
it?!)

The Innovation provided by the crystallization of public key
cryptography into a public key infrastructure, and its subsequent
adoption within web browsers and server as a means of securing
electronic commerce was a collaborative effort involving many hundreds
of people, including members of the American Bar Association's
Information Security Committee, the X.500 and X.509 standards bodies,
the IETF's PKIX committee, and numerous implementers in all of the major
software companies.  Leaders in that effort included Steven Kent, Hoyt
Kesterson, Michael Baum, Sharon Boyen, Warwick Ford, and others too
numerous to recall.  I'm proud to have played a role in that effort as
well.

The realization that other forms of public key cryptography were
possible (e.g., DSA and ECC) again took a considerable amount of effort
and represented noteworthy accomplishments by El Gamal. and later
Koblitz and Miller.  But the basic principle was already established by
then.  They stood on the shoulders of giants, and then lifted the bar
even higher.

So to my mind, that represented significant Process Improvement at the
societal level, again with a capital P and capital I, as opposed to the
more mundane progression from RSA-512 to 1024 and then 2048 as computers
got faster.

Bob

Message: 2
Date: Fri, 18 Apr 2008 18:58:39 -0700
From: "Ali, Saqib" <docbook.xml at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [FDE] Invention, innovation, process improvement
To: fde at www.xml-dev.com
Message-ID:
	<addede3b0804181858t61dbeac6p2feacc62cedb58a0 at mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

Thank you Sir! This is exactly the information that I was looking for.
If you have more, please do share. I can certainly use that my
innovation vs. improvement presentation next week.

I find it interested that you categorized ECC as process improvement
rather then invention. Can you please elaborate on why that is the
case?

Thanks again.



On Fri, Apr 18, 2008 at 11:43 AM, Robert Jueneman <rjueneman at spyrus.com>
wrote:
> Invention:  The field of public key cryptography, by Diffie, Hellman,
&
>  Merkel, with subsequent refinements by Rivest, Shamir, Adleman, El
>  Gamal, Koblitz, and Miller, to name but a few.
>
>  Innovation:  The development of X.509 PKI, and its incorporation
within
>  Internet servers and browsers to facilitate global electronic
commerce
>  via the web.
>
>  Process improvement:  The replacement of RSA-based public key
technology
>  with the stronger and more efficient elliptic curve cryptography.
>
>  Bob
>
>  Message: 4
>  Date: Thu, 17 Apr 2008 21:09:41 -0700
>  From: "Ali, Saqib" <docbook.xml at gmail.com>
>  Subject: [FDE] Invention vs. Innovation vs, Process Improvement
>  To: fde <FDE at www.xml-dev.com>
>  Message-ID:
>         <addede3b0804172109y1571f503gdda558cde8aad93 at mail.gmail.com>
>  Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
>
>  Hello All,
>
>  I am looking for some examples of the following in the security
field:
>  1) Invention;
>  2) Innovation; and
>  3) Process Improvement.
>
>  Can you please provide examples Security related technologies that
>  fall into each of these categories.
>
>  Note: That I am using the strict definition of Innovation, which is:
>  "Innovation occurs when someone uses an invention - or uses existing
>  tools in a new way - to change how the world works, how people
>  organize themselves, and how they conduct their lives. Innovation is
>  distinct from improvement in that it causes society to reorganize.
>  Innovation is taking an invention and finding new uses for it."
>  Wikipedia.
>
>  Please make sure when you provide examples of innovation it conforms
>  to the above definition.


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End of FDE Digest, Vol 19, Issue 8
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