| Although social needs have been playing a pivotal role in the history of human civilization, they were not considered in science research until the 19 th century. With the institutionalization and professionalism of science and technology, the scientists had to get out of the ivory tower of academic research, and began to pay more attention to social needs. Especially after World War I, when human society entered into the era of Plan science and Big science, how to adapt social needs actively had become a common topic in the scientific community.However, after 100 years of crazy chasing of social needs, although adapting needs have been applied to a wide variety of scientific applications successfully, people have to admit that social needs are not the only driving force of technological progress when looking back on history. The reason is that there are quite a class of scientific discoveries and inventions, which are not derived from any social needs, but on the contrary, they create unprecedentedly strong social needs.Thus, this dissertation is named of Adapting Needs and Creating Needs, which takes the invention of the military technology like computer technology as the main clue, and applies the approaches of case studies and comparative analysis. By combining the disruptive innovation theory from the field of economic management with the SST method, the dissertation expands the existing disruptive innovation theory, and also expands the concept of incremental innovation correspondingly. In the article, incremental innovation only aims at adapting to existing and explicit needs of military users. It often encounters the crisis of being behind or beyond needs. Meanwhile, Disruptive innovation began with imaging of needs and focuses on creating needs and exploring implicit needs of a few users from the need scenario. It can surprise most people usually, but it is often influenced by the path-dependent effects. Thus, disruptive innovation is different from ordinary innovation, which tends to encounter more difficulties. In order to defuse the crisis, incremental innovation have to create needs, so that it can develop a new technical direction and get rid of the technology bottlenecks and existing tracks. And Disruptive innovation has to aim at adapting needs, and disguises as incremental innovation to obtain innovation resources.Consequently, when the invention of science and technology turns into a complex historical process from occasional history events, two kinds of development patterns are no longer clearly distinguished and isolated from each other, but interact and dependent with each other. It is exactly their combined effects that promote the development and innovation of military technology. As a result, the dissertation has a theoretical and practical dual significance by clarifying the philosophical intricate relationship between the two studies. |
