The American Heritage Dictionary defines innovate: to begin or introduce (something new) for or as if for the first time. Innovation is defined as: the act of introducing something new. These are the definitions. However, certain words are more than definitions; they become paradigms - our mental models of what these words mean to us.

The exploration and production industries paradigm started as far back as the Spindletop discovery when Anthony Lucas defied all the naysayers and found oil where most of the experts said it couldn't be found. He was doing it for the first time. And while exploring for oil, Lucas and two brothers, who owned and operated the Spindletop rotary drilling rig, innovated such things as drilling muds, controlled circulation, multiple casing strings and much more. Since Lucas, we've drilled wells deeper than 30,000 ft (9,150 m) true vertical depth and drilled in water depths greater than 10,000 ft (3,050 m). Each time there was a first, led by a person or small group that stepped out of the conventional domain to risk doing something they had never done before, and in many cases the innovation had never been done before by anyone.

Granularity

Another perspective to the paradigm to innovate might be to look at innovation in the context of granularity. Figure 1 shows a pyramid depicting multiple levels of innovation starting at the top with the various energies like wood, coal, oil, gas, nuclear. These were and are the underpinning energies of our society. Then the next level, if we stick with oil and gas, are the major industry innovations like rotary drilling, geophysical exploration, electric logging, offshore exploration and development, hydraulic fracturing, horizontal wells, subsea drilling and completions, deepwater exploration and development, etc. The next level of on the pyramid reflects the innovations that impacted the challenges and problems of the higher level of innovations. These might have been tri-cone bits, seismic, gravity and magnetic technologies, various logging devices, offshore platforms, floating drilling rigs, etc. The next level is more specific to the previous level and so on. At the bottom level you have what I call the field-based innovations which address a particular problem or challenge that needs a solution. This could be a new way to use software for calculating casing design or a way to get rid of water in a gas well in Colorado. What is an important feature to consider is that innovation is usually tied to some problem or challenge.

The innovator, whether he or she is a rig hand, pumper, programmer, engineer or geologist, starts with recognizing a problem or challenge and visualizing a solution.

Dependence

Each level of innovation depends on the one below it and the one above it. If there is no problem above, there is little likelihood the stimulation for an innovation will occur. I think this explains why some visionary innovators see the problem earlier than the problem or challenge manifests itself; hence, they see the problem and possible solution, but the timing is way off. We can see this time and time again where these innovators prematurely innovate something, but the innovation never gains traction to be recognized as a real industry- or technology-changing innovation. One of the unrecognized strengths of industry research organizations was to identify and sometimes stimulate and manage innovations both internally and externally. Much of this capability has been lost by the current industry.

Also, for the innovation to be timely and effective, it is dependent on the innovation levels below it. For example, the next level of rotary drilling to drill different types of rocks forced the innovation to go from the bladed drag bit to a tri-cone bit - a major innovation. However, if the industry didn't have certain innovations for materials and manufacturing, tri-cone bits would have been delayed for years.

If you step back and view innovation from the point of view of a paradigm, it becomes clearer why it's easier for innovations to occur at the lowest level since the problem and challenges are clearer to identify, and if there is some support, a potential innovation is made. It gets more difficult to make major innovations or even manage innovations at the higher levels.

For example, years before horizontal drilling became a major technology, some innovative individuals had developed special tools to make a horizontal well bore and had actually drilled a number of horizontal wells. They traveled from company to company trying to garner some interest. But there was no perceived need for horizontal well bores. In fact, there was major push back by the stimulation and drilling communities. Many said, "A fracture treatment will always outperform a horizontal well bore." The drilling community found multiple reasons: problems drilling at 90˚, running casing, cuttings transport, etc. It took many years, during which oil production was falling and shallow tight oil reservoirs were uneconomical, before some gutsy people pushed the use of horizontal well bores.

Risk

Usually, the original innovators, who recognized these higher level challenges and problems before most and made the major innovation breakthroughs, hardly ever reaped the reward and recognition. The reason for this is usually commercial. The higher the level of the innovation challenge, the more money that is needed to take the innovation to commerciality. Also, ability to test the innovation in a field situation to determine if it is feasible, safe and commercial is another major hurdle. And unless the innovator has the support of management and enough resources and staying power, the original innovations usually fail.

Being an innovator means taking risk, doing something for the first time. A programmer who innovates some code that might have some early bugs, can live through a learning curve, whereas a group of innovators trying to develop a new deepwater pump has a much higher risk to fail and probably has a smaller chance to endure the learning curve. The cards are stacked against the innovator. Management wants early success, operations people don't want to test the innovation and many times they don't even understand why the innovation is needed. Yet there is a certain cut of individuals who for some reason want to innovate - it's a passion, a mission. They don't do it for fame or money, even though they dream that just this once they just might hit it. And a few do, just like a few make it in athletics, music, painting, acting, etc.

In today's world the buzz words fly: Be innovative, creative, think out of the box.