Aligning Innovation with Capital

I was reading up on Charles Babbage and how his work on the Difference Engine was funded. It struck me that his engineering brilliance did not immediately lead to fortune, but it was a genuinely foundational innovation that eventually reshaped the industry; it just needed time and imagination. This is what we’re seeing right now in our transition to an Agentic Software Delivery Lifecycle, except it seems faster than real-time.

SOFTWARE ENGINEERINGCOACHING & LEADERSHIP

Avi Sinharay

9/4/20262 min read

The key issue with viewing software engineering as a capital problem is that the binding constraint becomes: what is the economic value of the solution to the person bestowing the capital? I’ve been in a few situations where investors and subscribers have a very different view of economic value, and the ending has always been unhappy. But history shows that when they align incredible things happen.

Charles Babbage’s work on a Difference Engine was funded by the Royal Navy. Beginning in 1823, the state provided an initial grant and ultimately invested over £17,000 across a decade. The expectation was to improve the manually calculated navigation tables that were notoriously riddled with errors which routinely led to shipwrecks and lost cargo. The project was eventually abandoned in 1842. Babbage struggled with the limitations of Victorian metallurgical precision and entered into severe contractual disputes with his chief engineer Joseph Clement. Crucially, Babbage lost the confidence of his financial backers when he began requesting funds for a far more complex architecture (the programmable Analytical Engine) before delivering a working version of the original machine.

Babbage's failure with the British government is an early masterclass in the dangers of scope creep and poor stakeholder management. The government was only ever interested in a specific business outcome (accurate navigational tables) but Babbage became enamoured with the technical architecture itself. By pivoting his focus to the Analytical Engine before delivering value on the Difference Engine, he failed to navigate the tension between two pillars of LESS engineering principles (Lean, Ethical, Scalable, Sustainable - see previous posts). He had a perfectly 'Scalable' architecture in mind but completely lacked 'Lean' execution. He abandoned iterative delivery in pursuit of the perfect end state. True technological leadership requires balancing the long-term architectural vision with the relentless discipline to ship the immediate increment. His is a historical reminder that engineering brilliance cannot overcome a failure to Ship- Learn- Repeat.

The story doesn’t end with accurate navigational tables. Once the utility of a machine taking over the computation was clear, the applications became boundless: from tide tables which unlocked globalism, to gravity tables which unlocked space travel. Maybe the happier version of this parable is that engineering brilliance may not always lead to individual fame and fortune, but with time and imagination, a genuinely foundational architecture will eventually reshape the industry. This is what we’re seeing right now in our transition to an Agentic Software Delivery Lifecycle.

Avi Sinharay

CEng, MIET, MEng, MA (Cantab.)

Fractional CTO, Director/VP of Technology

Core Expertise

Technology Leadership, AI Native Dev, Operating Model Design, Engineering Culture

Domains

Health Tech, Media Tech