Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 March 2009
There are situations where, for many reasons, an innovation considered revolutionary in several respects is widely accepted by those whose ways of doing things are transformed by it. The innovation represents a “winning combination” in that it combines such attractive elements that each party, for its own reasons, will desire its adoption and work toward that common goal. In France, and particularly in the Assistance Publique de Paris and in the Hospices Civils de Lyon, such has been the case with the German-made Dornier extracorporeal lithotriptor, an innovation that makes it possible to destroy kidney stones without surgery.