King's College London

New research led by King’s Business School has revealed why some people become permanently associated with innovations they did not actually create.

The study, published in the Academy of Management Journal, examines one of history’s most famous cases of mistaken attribution: the guillotine. Despite giving the machine its name, Dr Joseph-Ignace Guillotin did not invent it. He was a physician and politician who argued during the French Revolution for executions to be less cruel and applied equally, regardless of social class.

Similar ‘beheading machines’ had been used for centuries in many European countries, including England, before Guillotin’s proposal. The French version used in the revolution was later designed and built by others. Yet, despite initial multiple attributions, the history not only remembers Guillotin, but extend to him the dark tones derived from the machine abuse, forgetting the humanitarian aims that motivated the original proposal

The research, co-authored by Professor Paolo Aversa of King’s Business School, Professor Paul Gouvard of ESSEC Business School and Dr Maria A. Makarova of Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, asks why innovations so often become attached to a single “heroic” figure.

Its findings challenge the popular idea that innovation stories are simply about giving credit where it is due. Instead, the study shows that attribution is a social process. People, institutions and the media do not just recognise innovators after the fact. They help create the link between a person and an innovation while the innovation itself is still being debated, interpreted and judged.

In the case of the guillotine, Dr Guillotin’s proposal became tied to the moral questions dominating Revolutionary France: equality before the law, cruelty in punishment and the rights of citizens. Supporters saw the proposed machine as a humane reform. Opponents saw it as a symbol of revolutionary excess. Both sides helped strengthen the association between the man and the machine.

That association endured even after the guillotine’s meaning changed dramatically. What began as a proposed reform to make punishment less arbitrary became a lasting symbol of state violence and the Reign of Terror. As the machine’s reputation darkened, Guillotin’s reputation darkened with it.

The findings have clear implications beyond history. In business, technology and public policy, innovations are often reduced to a single founder, CEO, scientist or political figure. This can obscure the collective work behind major advances and unfairly concentrate praise or blame – a case in point being King’s Rosalind Franklin, which never received a Nobel Prize despite being part of the team behind DNA’s original discovery.

For practitioners, the research highlights the reputational risks of becoming the public face of a new idea, product or reform. Once a person is attached to an innovation, they may be credited for its success, blamed for its failures, or judged by meanings that emerge long after their original involvement and may be disconnected from their actual engagement

The study argues that innovation stories are never neutral. They shape who gets remembered, who gets forgotten and how society understands progress itself.

Portrait of Joseph-Ignace Guillotin, Musée Carnavalet via Wikimedia  

Engraving of a guillotine from the Stanford University Library digital archive of images of the French Revolution from the collection of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France