How to Pick Two, Compare Their Styles, and Write the Paper That Actually Analyzes Something
Two innovators. One before 1960, one after. Compare their innovation styles and marketplace contributions in 2–3 pages with three outside references. That is a tight brief with a lot of room to get wrong. Most students either pick names without thinking about whether they actually contrast well, or write biographical summaries instead of an analysis. This guide shows you how to avoid both problems.
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Get Expert Help →What This Assignment Is Actually Testing — It Is Not a Biography Assignment
This is not a history paper and it is not a biography. The assignment asks you to compare and contrast innovation styles and contributions to the marketplace. Style means how they approached innovation — their methods, mindset, process, and relationship to risk, collaboration, and failure. Marketplace means economic and commercial impact — what they changed about industries, consumer behavior, or business models. Both dimensions need to be in your paper. Students who write “Thomas Edison invented the lightbulb and Steve Jobs invented the iPhone” have described, not analyzed.
The 2–3 page requirement is actually tighter than it sounds. That is roughly 500–750 words. You do not have space for extended biography. Every sentence needs to be working — either establishing a point about innovation style or demonstrating a marketplace contribution. Trim anything that is just background narrative and not directly in service of the comparison.
Three outside references, none from course materials. That means published books, peer-reviewed articles, or credible journalism — not Wikipedia, not the course textbook, not lecture slides. The reference requirement is about showing you can situate these innovators in real scholarship. It is also worth noting: three references for a 2–3 page paper means roughly one source per page, which is not a lot. Make each citation count. Use them to support your analytical claims, not just to attribute biographical facts.
The Trap: Picking Famous Names Without Checking Whether They Actually Contrast
Edison and Jobs is the default pairing. It works — but it has been done so many times that it risks reading as unoriginal. More importantly, students often pick a pairing based on name recognition without thinking through whether the two innovators actually have contrasting styles. If both your innovators used similar methods — say, both were lone geniuses who ignored conventional wisdom — your comparison will be thin. The best pairings have genuine structural differences in how they approached innovation, not just in when they lived.
How to Pick Your Two Innovators — the Decision That Shapes the Whole Paper
The assignment gives you one constraint: one person from before 1960, one from after. Beyond that, you have full latitude. Use that latitude deliberately. The pairing you choose determines how much analytical material you have to work with and how interesting your comparison will be to write and to read.
There are three questions worth asking before you commit to a pairing.
Three Questions to Ask Before Committing to a Pairing
A good pairing gives you contrast in style, parallel in domain or impact, and enough source material to write with evidence.
Do Their Innovation Styles Actually Differ?
- Did one work alone, one in collaborative teams?
- Did one innovate through scientific experimentation, one through market intuition?
- Did one disrupt an existing industry, one build an entirely new one?
- Did one iterate incrementally, one bet on radical leaps?
- If their styles are too similar, your comparison will be shallow
Is There a Useful Parallel in What They Did?
- Comparing innovators in similar domains (both in manufacturing, both in communications) makes the contrast sharper
- Comparing across wildly unrelated fields forces you to abstract the comparison so much it loses specificity
- The best pairings share a domain or a type of impact — then the style differences become visible against a common backdrop
- Ford and Musk both transformed transportation — the parallel makes the contrast in style more meaningful
Can You Find Sources?
- Major historical innovators (Edison, Ford, Tesla, Bell) have extensive published biographies and Harvard Business Review analyses
- Some post-1960 innovators are well-documented; others are too recent or obscure for quality sources
- Run a quick library database search before committing — if you cannot find three credible sources total, reconsider the pairing
- Avoid innovators whose primary coverage is only blog posts or news articles
One more thing: “innovator” does not have to mean tech inventor. The assignment says great innovators in the broad sense. Ray Kroc (pre-1960) systematized the fast food franchise model — that is a business process innovation that transformed an industry. Ingvar Kamprad built IKEA on a design-for-assembly innovation in retail furniture. Howard Schultz reinvented the American coffee shop. If your course has a business or management orientation, business model innovators are just as valid as technology inventors.
Strong Pairing Options — With Notes on What Each Comparison Yields
Thomas Edison vs. Steve Jobs
The most-used pairing. Edison: systematic experimentation, “invention factory” model, focused on solving specific problems for commercial application. Jobs: design-led intuition, secrecy-driven development, product as cultural artifact. Both built ecosystems around their inventions. The contrast is method — empirical grind vs. aesthetic vision. Plenty of sources; risk of feeling generic.
Henry Ford vs. Elon Musk
Both transformed transportation. Ford: assembly line, mass market pricing, vertical integration. Musk: platform innovation, energy ecosystem thinking, manufacturing as engineering problem. The parallel makes the contrast crisp — same domain, 100 years apart, opposite approaches to scale and workforce. Strong source availability for both.
Nikola Tesla vs. Jeff Bezos
Tesla: visionary inventor, poor at commercialization, died broke. Bezos: no single invention, but built the infrastructure of modern e-commerce and cloud computing. The contrast is genius vs. systems — one had the ideas, one built the machine that makes ideas scalable. Interesting for a paper on what “great innovation” actually means.
Ray Kroc vs. Reed Hastings
Kroc franchised McDonald’s and systematized fast food at national scale. Hastings disrupted video rental, then cable television, then content production — three consecutive reinventions. Both are business model innovators rather than technology inventors. Good choice if your course emphasizes business strategy over engineering.
Walt Disney vs. Satya Nadella
Disney built the entertainment industry’s first vertically integrated entertainment empire — film, parks, merchandise, storytelling. Nadella took a declining Microsoft and reinvented it around cloud infrastructure and open-source philosophy. Both are organizational innovators as much as product innovators. Less obvious choice; high analytical potential.
Marie Curie vs. Jennifer Doudna
Both scientific innovators who fundamentally changed what is possible. Curie: radioactivity, double Nobel Prize, working against institutional resistance as a woman in science. Doudna: CRISPR gene editing, Nobel Prize 2020, working in the age of commercialized research. Strong thematic parallel around scientific breakthrough + gender in science, if your course touches on those dimensions.
The Edison-Jobs Pairing Is Fine — But Only If You Say Something Specific
If you choose Edison and Jobs, you need to move past the obvious. Do not just say Edison was empirical and Jobs was intuitive — that is the first paragraph of every paper on this topic. Push into something more specific: Edison’s Menlo Park model as the first organized R&D laboratory, and how Jobs similarly built industrial secrecy into Apple’s development culture. Or the comparison between Edison’s business failures (AC vs. DC) and Jobs’ (Next, early Apple). The more specific your analysis, the better — regardless of which pair you choose.
What “Innovation Style” Means — and How to Analyze It Rather Than Describe It
Innovation style is not personality. It is not “Edison was hardworking” or “Jobs was demanding.” Style in this context means the approach, method, and philosophy an innovator used to generate and develop new ideas and bring them to market. It is analytical, not biographical.
There is a well-established framework in innovation management literature for categorizing innovation types and approaches. When you analyze style, you are essentially placing each innovator within these categories and showing why their placement explains both their achievements and their limitations.
| Style Dimension | What to Look For | Pre-1960 Example | Post-1960 Example |
|---|---|---|---|
| Invention vs. Innovation | Did they create something genuinely new, or did they take an existing idea and find the right application/market for it? | Edison invented practical incandescent lighting; he also innovated the business model of electricity distribution | Jobs did not invent the smartphone; he found the design and ecosystem that made it a mass consumer product |
| Solo vs. Collaborative | Did they work largely alone (or claim to) or did they build teams and organizational structures around their vision? | Tesla was largely solo; Ford built a massive industrial organization | Bezos built Amazon on organizational innovation; Musk assembles technical teams but maintains singular vision |
| Incremental vs. Disruptive | Did they improve on what existed, or did they change the rules of the game entirely? | Ford’s assembly line was disruptive to how manufacturing worked, even as cars already existed | Hastings went from DVD rental by mail (incremental on Blockbuster) to streaming (disruptive to broadcast) to original content (another disruption) |
| Technology-Driven vs. Market-Driven | Did the technology come first and find a market, or did a market problem drive the search for a solution? | Edison was largely technology-driven — he built what he could build and found applications | Jobs was market-driven — he started with what the user wanted to experience and worked backward to the technology |
| Relationship to Failure | How did they treat failure — as data, as shameful, as inevitable? What did they do with it? | Edison famously treated failures as information: “I have not failed, I’ve found 10,000 ways that won’t work” | Musk runs rapid iteration cycles — SpaceX has blown up rockets publicly and treated each explosion as a test |
| Ecosystem vs. Product Thinking | Did they create a single product or an interdependent system that locked users in and expanded their market? | Edison built an entire electrical infrastructure — generator, cable, meter, bulb — not just the lightbulb | Jobs built the iTunes/iPod/iPhone/App Store ecosystem — each product made the others more valuable |
Your paper should pick two or three of these dimensions and analyze your chosen innovators against them. You do not have space in 2–3 pages to cover all six. Pick the dimensions where your two innovators actually differ — those are the ones that will produce the most interesting comparison. Dimensions where they are similar add less analytical value.
The question is not just what they built — it is how they thought about building it. Two people can both produce transformative innovations and approach the problem in fundamentally opposite ways. That is what makes the comparison worth writing.
Innovation management literature distinguishes between invention (the new idea) and innovation (the commercialization of that idea). Most “great innovators” are actually great at the second part.Analyzing Marketplace Contributions — What “Contribution to the Marketplace” Actually Means
This is the second analytical lens the assignment requires, and it is often underdeveloped. Students write “Edison changed the world with electricity” without specifying what that meant economically — how it affected industries, labor, capital allocation, and consumer behavior. The marketplace lens is about commercial and economic impact.
Here are the four dimensions of marketplace contribution worth analyzing in your paper — pick the ones most relevant to your chosen innovators.
Market Creation vs. Market Disruption
Did they create a market that did not exist before, or did they enter and disrupt an existing one? Edison did both — he created electrical distribution infrastructure (new market) and competed directly with gas lighting (disruption). Bezos disrupted retail but also created the cloud computing market. Understanding which type of marketplace impact your innovator had shapes how you frame their contribution.
Scale and Speed of Adoption
How quickly and widely did their innovation reach the market? Ford’s Model T brought automobile ownership from a luxury to a working-class reality within a decade — that scale is part of what makes his marketplace contribution remarkable. Jobs’ iPhone went from launch to cultural ubiquity in under four years. Scale and speed of adoption are measurable, which makes them useful to cite with specific data in your paper.
Industry Transformation
Which industries changed because of what they built — and how? Ford did not just sell cars; he transformed manufacturing practices, supply chain management, urban planning, and labor relations. The ripple effects of an innovation are often as significant as the innovation itself. Your paper should go one level deeper than “it changed everything” and specify what changed and why that matters economically.
Business Model Innovation
Did they change not just what was sold, but how the economics of the industry worked? Netflix changed not just distribution but the entire content financing and ownership model. Edison changed electricity from a utility into a metered service. Amazon changed retail from a transaction to a subscription relationship. Business model innovation is often the most durable kind — harder to copy than a product feature.
Use Specific Numbers When You Can
Saying Edison’s electrical system changed manufacturing is a claim. Saying that by 1900, Edison’s companies had installed electrical systems in over 500 communities across the US is evidence. Look for quantitative data — market share, adoption rates, revenue figures, number of patents, industry growth statistics — whenever you can. It makes your marketplace analysis concrete rather than impressionistic. Your three references are partly there to give you this kind of specific, citable data.
An External Reference Worth Knowing: Harvard Business Review on Innovation Types
The Harvard Business Review has published extensively on innovation typologies — including Clayton Christensen’s disruptive innovation framework, which distinguishes between sustaining innovation (improving existing products for existing customers) and disruptive innovation (introducing simpler, cheaper products that eventually capture the mainstream market). This framework is directly applicable to comparing pre- and post-1960 innovators. Christensen’s “The Innovator’s Dilemma” (1997) is a verified, widely-cited academic source available through most university libraries. It gives you analytical vocabulary for describing both innovation styles and marketplace contributions. HBR articles by Christensen are also available at hbr.org and are appropriate to cite.
How to Structure the 2–3 Page Paper — Every Paragraph Has to Work
You do not have room to waste. At 500–750 words, the structure needs to be tight. Here is one approach that works cleanly within the page constraint — adjust based on your course’s formatting requirements.
| Section | Approx. Length | What It Does |
|---|---|---|
| Introduction | 75–100 words | Name both innovators. State the time periods. Signal the key dimension of contrast you will develop. End with a thesis-style sentence: “While [Pre-1960 innovator] approached innovation through [X], [Post-1960 innovator] built their contributions on [Y] — a contrast that reveals how the conditions and demands of innovation shifted across a century of market development.” Do not spend sentences summarizing what you are about to say — spend them saying it. |
| Pre-1960 Innovator: Style + Contribution | 175–225 words | This is not a biography paragraph. It is an analysis paragraph. Start with the innovation style: how did this person approach the problem of creating something new? What was their method, their relationship to failure, their organizational approach? Then pivot to marketplace: what did they change, in which industry, at what scale? One or two specific facts with a citation. End the paragraph with a sentence that sets up the comparison: something about the constraints or context that shaped their approach. |
| Post-1960 Innovator: Style + Contribution | 175–225 words | Mirror the structure of the previous paragraph but for the post-1960 innovator. Use the same analytical dimensions — style, then marketplace contribution — so the comparison is direct. The mirrored structure makes the contrast legible without you having to over-explain it. Again, one or two specific facts with a citation. |
| Compare and Contrast — The Analytical Core | 150–200 words | This is the paragraph most students shortchange. It is where you make the actual argument — what the comparison reveals about innovation, about marketplace dynamics, or about how the environment of each era shaped what was possible and what was rewarded. Do not just restate what you said in the two individual paragraphs. Make a point. “The contrast between X and Y suggests that innovation in the pre-industrial era was necessarily product-centered, while post-digital innovation rewards ecosystem thinking above all else.” That is a claim. Build this paragraph around a claim. |
| Conclusion | 75–100 words | One solid paragraph. What does the comparison between these two innovators tell us about innovation as a phenomenon — not just these two people? What can businesses or individuals today take from this analysis? End cleanly. Do not introduce new information. Do not summarize bullet-point style. A strong final sentence that gives the reader something to think about is worth more than two sentences of restatement. |
Finding Three Outside References — What Qualifies and Where to Look
“None of which are the texts or materials in the course” means you need to go find sources independently. That is the whole point of the reference requirement — it is checking whether you can locate credible, relevant scholarship on your own. Here is where to look and what counts.
Source Types That Qualify
- Published books by scholars or credible business writers (biographies, innovation management texts)
- Peer-reviewed journal articles from management, economics, or business history journals
- Harvard Business Review articles (these are edited, peer-reviewed-adjacent, and academically credible)
- Long-form journalism from major outlets (The Atlantic, The Economist, Wall Street Journal, New York Times) for recent innovators
- Business school case studies if accessible through your library
Source Types That Do Not Qualify
- Wikipedia — use it to find sources, not as a source itself
- Course textbook or any course-provided reading
- Blog posts without identified authors or editorial oversight
- Corporate websites or press releases about the innovators
- YouTube videos or podcast transcripts (unless explicitly permitted by your instructor)
- AI-generated summaries or AI-written articles
Specific References Worth Knowing for Common Pairings
| Innovator / Topic | Useful Reference | Why It Works |
|---|---|---|
| Edison | Israel, P. (1998). Edison: A Life of Invention. Wiley | Comprehensive scholarly biography with detailed treatment of Edison’s laboratory methods and commercial strategy. Available in most university libraries. |
| Henry Ford | Watts, S. (2005). The People’s Tycoon: Henry Ford and the American Century. Knopf | Covers both the innovation and the marketplace transformation — the assembly line and its economic and social consequences — in analytical depth. |
| Steve Jobs | Isaacson, W. (2011). Steve Jobs. Simon & Schuster | The authorized biography. Dense with specifics on his innovation philosophy, design process, and relationship to failure. Widely cited and credible. |
| Elon Musk | Vance, A. (2015). Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future. Ecco | Covers his innovation approach in detail — the engineering philosophy, the vertical integration strategy, the relationship to risk and failure. |
| Innovation frameworks (any pairing) | Christensen, C. (1997). The Innovator’s Dilemma. Harvard Business School Press | Gives you analytical vocabulary (sustaining vs. disruptive innovation) applicable to comparing any two innovators. One citation, useful across multiple paragraphs. |
| Jeff Bezos / Amazon | Stone, B. (2013). The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon. Little, Brown | Detailed on the business model innovation behind Amazon — customer obsession, platform thinking, willingness to run at a loss to build market position. |
Google Scholar Is Your Fastest Route to Peer-Reviewed Sources
Go to scholar.google.com and search your innovator’s name plus terms like “innovation strategy,” “business model,” or “marketplace impact.” Filter by date if your course prefers recent sources, or leave it open for historical innovators. Click “Cited by” on any relevant article — the papers that cite it are often more targeted and more recent. For most major innovators, you will find either peer-reviewed business history articles or management journal analyses that are far more citable than encyclopedia entries.
Mistakes That Cost Points — and What to Do Instead
| # | The Mistake | Why It Costs Points | The Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Writing a biography instead of an analysis | The assignment asks for a comparison of innovation styles and marketplace contributions — not a timeline of each person’s life and achievements. A paper that reads like two Wikipedia entries side by side has not completed the analytical task. | Every paragraph should make a claim about innovation style or marketplace impact. Biographical facts are only there to support a claim — not to fill space. Test each sentence: is this supporting an argument, or is this just a fact I found? Cut the second kind. |
| 2 | Picking a pairing without genuine contrast | If both your innovators approached innovation similarly — both lone geniuses, both technology-driven, both disrupted the same type of market — your compare-and-contrast will be mostly contrast without the compare, or vice versa. Thin contrast produces thin analysis. | Before you commit, write one sentence about each innovator’s style. If the sentences sound similar, reconsider the pairing or dig deeper to find where the real differences are. The dimensions table in the Style Analysis section of this guide gives you six places to look for contrast. |
| 3 | Treating “marketplace contribution” as just “they were successful” | Saying Jobs changed the world or that Ford revolutionized manufacturing is not an analysis of marketplace contribution. It is a vague assertion. The assignment is asking what specifically changed in the marketplace — which industries, at what scale, through what mechanism. | For each innovator, ask: which specific industry changed? How did it change? What did competitors have to do differently because of this innovation? What did consumers gain or lose access to? Answer those questions with specific facts drawn from your sources. |
| 4 | Comparing without actually connecting the two innovators in the paper | A paper that has a paragraph about Edison and then a paragraph about Jobs and then a conclusion that says “both were great innovators” has described two people but not compared them. The comparison needs to happen explicitly — language like “unlike Edison, Jobs…” or “where Ford solved for scale, Musk solves for systems integration…” | Use explicit comparative language throughout the paper, not just in a dedicated comparison paragraph. The reader should see the comparison happening, not just be told that two people are being compared. |
| 5 | Running over 3 pages by including too much background | The page limit is real. A paper that exceeds it signals poor editing and difficulty prioritizing the analytical over the descriptive. The structure should be tight — if a sentence is not making an analytical point, it is a candidate for cutting. | Draft long, then cut. Write what you know, then go back and identify every sentence that is pure background narrative rather than analysis. Cut those. The paper will be stronger for it. |
| 6 | Using Wikipedia or course materials as references | The assignment explicitly excludes course materials, and most academic courses at this level exclude Wikipedia. Submitting a paper with either signals that you did not do the independent research the assignment was designed to require. | Run a quick source check before you submit. If any of your three references is from Wikipedia or your course syllabus, replace it. The sources section above gives you specific, citable books and frameworks you can use instead. |
Pre-Submission Checklist — Week 1 Great Innovators Paper
- One pre-1960 innovator and one post-1960 innovator clearly identified
- Paper analyzes innovation style — not just biographical achievements
- At least two specific dimensions of style contrast identified and discussed
- Marketplace contribution addressed with specific industry impact, not just general success claims
- Compare-and-contrast section uses explicit comparative language to connect the two innovators
- Three outside references included — none from course materials, none Wikipedia
- Each reference has at least one in-text citation in the body of the paper
- Paper body is between 2 and 3 pages (500–750 words) excluding reference list
- No paragraph is purely biographical — every paragraph is making an analytical point
- Conclusion offers a takeaway about innovation, not just a restatement of what was said
FAQs: Week 1 Great Innovators Case Study
What the Best Papers on This Assignment Do That Average Ones Do Not
The papers that stand out on this assignment do one thing consistently: they make an argument. Not just “here are two innovators and here is what they did,” but “here is what this comparison reveals about how innovation works, what it requires, and what conditions determine whether a great idea becomes a great marketplace contribution.”
That argument does not need to be elaborate. A single clear thesis — one that the two biographical examples illustrate and support — is enough to transform a description into an analysis. The difference between a B paper and an A paper on this assignment is usually not more information. It is more clarity about what point the information is serving.
Pick your pair deliberately. Analyze style with the dimensions in mind, not just biography in mind. Quantify marketplace impact where you can. Use your three references to support claims, not just to supply facts. And write a comparison paragraph that actually compares — using language that explicitly connects the two innovators around a shared analytical question.
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