How do you see what others miss?

When good management is bad

Large corporates are not where groundbreaking innovation happens. Following standard accepted good management practice, maximising short- term profits, and avoiding risks does not work.

When it comes to creating disruptive innovations that transform how we work and do business, these will come from struggling entrepreneurs, the inventors on the unseen periphery.

This is the ‘Innovator's Dilemma’ that Clayton Christensen identified. Business as usual – is making incremental improvements to existing products and services, driven by a need to maintain or grow market share, maximise profits, and meet the evolving demands of customers.

Catch is that by following good MBA management practice it makes managers blind to innovative products. Often disruptive innovations serve a tiny market, may be expensive, and not work as well as expected.

But gradually these bugs get sorted out, disruptive products work their way up the value chain, gaining traction, markets and profitability, and eventually transforming entire industries.

Established players, the once arrogant market leaders, struggle to adapt and gradually fade from the scene. Just look at progression of disruptive innovations, for instance, computers, phones, AI, quantum computing, electric vehicles and platform business models, it’s a long list.

So, how does one escape the innovators dilemma? With an awareness the problem, leading edge corporates like, for instance, BMW, Apple, FedEx set up separate business units with different systems, ways of doing things, populated with mindsets, with unique ways of thinking about problems. Other way is acquiring the technology and skills wizardry of the founders.

Google has a policy initiative that is still alive, with staff encouraged to spend a small portion of time on pursuing their own bright ideas, fostering innovation. Question is: Does this liberal approach really pay off? Google Maps, AdSense and g mail are just some of results.

Genesis of innovation

Where does innovation come from?

Helps to begin by making the distinction between the brain, mind and consciousness – a discussion that dates back at least 2,300 years to Aristotle and Ancient Greece.

“Human brain, the most complex organ in the human body, is the central command centre of the nervous system. A three-pound mass of tissue, primarily composed of fat, water, protein, carbohydrates, and salts, and is protected within the skull.”

Read: Innovative thinking: Are you doing the identical and expecting different?

You can touch the brain, in contrast, the [conscious and subconscious] mind is not physical. It’s what is constantly chattering to you right now, sending this non-stop stream of thoughts.

The minds’ purpose is to have you survive, to work and play another day. Human consciousness, that awareness of being alive remains a mystery.

Observing without labels

Innovation begins with seeing the common, in an uncommon way. It begins with Steve Job’s maxim: Think different. Helps to notice the chattering, the voice in your head and perhaps give it a name, after all it is very real. That voice is your reality, or is it? Helps to recognise the needless chattering for what it is – and ask are you the voice in your head? Maybe not?

Innovation begins with seeing customers’ problems. Meeting pressing needs, understanding what is going on the customers heads. What do they really want and value? Innovators don’t begin with coming up with a product or service in isolation.

Innovation begins with design thinking, co-creating the product with customer, and constantly adapting, recognising you won’t get it right first, second or third time.

Do you remember seeing a brilliant sunset for the first time? Somehow one has to make the distinction about how to see with words, and labels, preconceived opinions -- and just observing what is happening, without adding any value judgements. If one can just observe, not adding any other stuff, that’s where innovative, original thought begins.

What is the new colonialism in your pocket?

Innovative original thinker, the historian of change, Noah Yuval Harari, age 49, points out that the new colonialism may be a seductive dependence on the data and digital systems, over which one has no control.

“In the sixteenth century, when Spanish, Portuguese and Dutch conquistadors were building the first global empires in history, they came with sailing ships, horses and gunpowder. When the British, Russians and Japanese made their bids for hegemony in the 19th and 20th centuries, they relied on steamships, locomotives and machine guns. In the 21st century, to dominate a colony, you no longer need to send in the gunboats. You need to take out the data. A few corporations or governments harvesting the world’s data could transform the rest of the globe into data colonies – territories they control not with overt military force but with information.”

Arrive where we started. ‘To become different from what we are, we must have some awareness of what we are,’ advised Eric Hoffer.

David is a director at aCatalyst Consulting.