category archive: Innovation

October 6, 2016

Disruption Doesn’t Come from Where You Think It Does: A Practical Checklist of Sources of Disruptive Change

By . Filed Under: Decision making, Innovation, Marketing & Branding, Narrative and Cognition, Strategic Foresight.

Increasingly, I find myself having conversations with colleagues or potential clients spending significant energy trying to get ahead of technological change, that is, to avoid disruption. This is good news. It means that more businesses are working their long-term planning muscles. They are beginning to think about what it takes to thrive in an era of quickly moving technological change. Take for example, these challenges:

  • An IT security company has developed a strong business in cloud-based malware and other solutions, and has been able to grow through the demands of governments for enterprise wide installations and consulting solutions. Yet the firm is wondering whether artificial intelligence / machine learning solutions may overtake their current business.
  • Military organizations of the United States, which have long enjoyed technological superiority over their adversaries, recognize that the democratization of innovation means they no longer hold a monopoly. How can they maintain their position in a world in which the barriers to sophisticated technological development have lowered and democratized?
  • A medical research firm has in hand a viable new treatment that could save lives, but which is based on a medical paradigm that may be upended on the basis of current basic research, and shift the playing field as dramatically as Uber has altered the taxi business.

 

The Virtues of Holistic Thinking

The chief question in these conversations is: How should we think about these kinds of challenges? Specialists and experts in these various fields typically want to think deeply and narrowly in order to solve problems. This makes great sense: deep expertise is the trait that led them success in the first place. Like race car drivers in a competition to a fixed point, they want to know whether their car could go faster, and whether it will go faster than their competitor’s.

But this narrow focus becomes less useful off the track, in the real world of the unpredictable future. Technology is surrounded and enabled by its complex, dynamic human context. Examples are everywhere of how additional factors play a meaningful role in how deeply and when change occurs:

  • Accidents and Black Swans (unpredictable, high impact events) can shape public attitudes in meaningful ways. The Three Mile Island nuclear power plant accident in 1979 and the 1986 explosion at Cherynobl affected public acceptance of nuclear power (although experts have come to different, and nuanced, conclusions about the degree of change in people’s attitudes). Accidents and the unexpected can also have a strong effect on the legislative environment as policy makers seek to respond to their constituencies.
  • Cultural shifts matter. The introduction of hand washing in the late 19th century into hospitals was partly a function of scientific discovery, but its widespread adoption by doctors had as much or more to do with making the practice a part of their culture and workday. Today, biometric means of identification at airports requires acceptance in the general population as well as regulation to function.
  • Innovations that make a difference alter the rules of the game—they shift paradigms and ask us to see the world differently than we have. Foreseeing potential change has as much to do with the way that you see the world as it does with what is happening in it.The United States and its Coalition partners were not able to respond effectively to the use of IED’s (improvised explosive devices) in the Iraq War because long standing assumptions that military strength stems from advanced technology blinded them to other strategic frameworks. Firms such as Uber and AirBnB disrupted transportation and hospitality by envisioning the relationship of producer (or owner of an asset) and consumer in a new and different way.
The Hand Washing innovation: Cultural attitudes toward hand washing, as well as at the discovery that disease could be spread through physical contact

Disrupting Surgical Practice: Doctor’s attitudes toward hand hygeine were as critical as scientific discovery in changing the ways they worked

A Practical Checklist of Sources of Disruptive Technological Change

If you are in a technology-centric environment, or giving deep thought these days to how transformations could change or upend your industry, it can be worthwhile to consider these additional factors and how they will wider environment in which you function. In exploring what may happen in the next five to ten years, you will need to consider the dynamism and changes that could occur in these realms. Like technology, they will not stand still but are also evolving. This is not a completely exhaustive list, but it should be a good start for broadening thinking about the factors in technological disruption in the marketplace:

  • Regulatory environment
  • Legal environment
  • Major institutions that will use the technology [e.g. Educational systems, manufacturers, medical systems and hospitals, governments, agriculture, etc.]
  • Political issues, political system
  • Direct competitors
  • Indirect competitors [is there anyone outside of your domain seeking to solve the same problem in a very different way?]
  • Marketing possibilities [what is the likelihood of marketing failure or success]
  • Accidents and unintended events that may have an impact
  • Ethics and values [does your technology raise ethical issues that society and government will have to grapple with?]
  • Culture and society [how will people greet the news of this technology or invention, what do they want]

As you consider the ways in which events and activities in these domains may affect the threshold for your success, you may also discover opportunities and possibilities for expanding your domain. Maybe you are the disrupter, not the disrupted.

Posted in: Decision making, Innovation, Marketing & Branding, Narrative and Cognition, Strategic Foresight Tags: , , , ,
June 9, 2016

Book Review: Communities of the Future Could Flourish amid Technological Change. Here’s How.

By . Filed Under: Books & Films, Decision making, Innovation, Politics and Policy, Strategic Leadership.

Media headlines devote an increasing amount of attention to how governments and large corporations can plan for the future. We know change is coming: in climate, in demography, in the availability of natural resources, in the structure of economies.

Yet little attention—until now— has been given those who must live the effects of those changes: the community leaders and their constituents who battle floods and heat, deal with aging neighbors and their needs, find ways to educate children who were born digital, and not least match the newly jobless to new work, in a shifting economy that is likely to be further disrupted by automation in coming years.

Rick Smyre and Neil Richardson propose a new vision for the future of local communities

Rick Smyre and Neil Richardson propose a new vision for the future of local communities

In their new book, Preparing for a World that Doesn’t Exist—Yet: Framing a Second Enlightenment for Communities of the Future, Rick Smyre and Neil Richardson address that lacuna. They fill it with worthy insights for community leaders who want to think and plan now for a world being overturned by technology and its effects. The authors are persuasive in their reminder that since communities are where change is implemented and felt, it is in communities where a transformation in leadership and planning must take place. As they point out, reforms do not actually change systems, only transformations do.

A New World Requires a New Language

The book is not an easy read. It is overflowing with neologisms: Master Capacity builder, the Creative Molecular Economy, and Polycentric Democracy are just a few of many terms the authors use to describe their new concepts. But stick with them, and a method behind this lexical riot begins to come clear.

If we are in fact at the edge of a wholly new world, visible to us only through the weakest of signals on the horizon, we will need a new language to describe it. Smyre and Richardson call this a‘different kind of different’ understanding. The authors describe this new world through a set of discrete principles that repeatedly stress how we will shortly live in environments that are interconnected, interdependent and in which non-linear effects unfold.

What this means is that we need a new community strategic narrative: a way of talking about and living in communities in a way that we are not used to. Everyday life in a thriving future community may feel at its best like a constantly unfolding set of connections, opportunities and solutions. This is a far cry from a daily routine that, if it is routine, satisfies us with its orderliness and lack of surprise. We will all need to learn anew how to live in this kind of future. What Smyre and Richardson propose is that we can learn, and that our community leaders can help us to do so.

An Exhilarating Vision, A New Story for Local Communities

Preparing for a World that Doesn’t Exist Yet is ultimately exhilarating — it swings from provocative abstractions to concrete recommendations and ideas, including worksheets, to address communities’ educational, governance, economic and healthcare needs in the emergent future.

Take, for example,the future economic framework they envision.

The “Creative Molecular Economy,” as distinct from the industrial and knowledge economies before it, will be characterized by a constant state of disruption (thus it is ‘creative’) and by individual entrepreneurs who will co-create “products, service and ideas” through “interlocking networks” (thus, molecular).

After working through this idea, the authors turn to the concrete ways that communities can plan for and leverage this state of affairs. Does a community need, for example, concept papers to begin thinking about how to get more start-up capital for entrepreneurs in the door? Could a Futures Economy Council in the local chamber of commerce seed a network of future-minded citizens? What about pilot programs and events that begin to introduce citizens to this new economic structure? Yes, yes and yes, of course.

In these narrative swerves, Smyre and Richardson have created a book seems to resemble the future they envision: It overflows with connections and interconnections, big ideas and micro-plans, leaps and deep observations. The book isn’t linear, so you don’t have to read it in order to appreciate the authors’ vision of future communities that embrace technological change, while helping all of their citizens realize their best potential.

You can buy the book on Amazon here.

**Disclaimer. I know the authors and am mentioned in the book’s preface.

Posted in: Books & Films, Decision making, Innovation, Politics and Policy, Strategic Leadership Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,
May 4, 2016

If You Want to Generate Strategies for Future Success, Start with Narratives and Metaphors

By . Filed Under: Conferences, Decision making, Innovation, National Security, Strategic Communication, Strategic Leadership, War and Violent Conflict.

Terms like metaphor, myth, story and narrative are not necessarily the first that come to mind when considering how to develop a future-facing national strategy. But they should be. This point was made in brilliant ways by the participants at the Atlantic Council’s second annual Global Strategy Forum in Washington DC earlier this week.

Metaphors Shape how We Understand Reality

Our collective understanding of reality is shaped in profound ways by metaphors. A metaphor is a statement suggesting that something with which we are unfamiliar is like something with which we are familiar. New technologies often produce new metaphors for how we understand society writ large. The idea of the “networked organization,” for example, grows out of a comparison with computer networks. Being able to generate metaphors about the future can help strategists pave the way to creating the systems or processes that will be required for success in it.

I had the honor of sharing the opening session stage with DARPA Director Dr. Arathi Prabhakar and Rhodes College political scientist Jennifer Sciubba and our moderator Toffler Associates CEO Deborah Westphal to discuss Strategic Foresight.

Arathi talked about DARPA’s investments in artificial intelligence, Jennifer explored some of our myths about global demography, and I addressed our need for anticipatory metaphors (beginning at 44:21).

When Conditions Change, so Must Our Strategic Narratives

Despite our 3 different topics, we all stressed that changes in our global condition means that we must think in new ways about how to be successful. As the conditions of the industrial age fade away, so will our ability to define success in the terms of that era.

When global trends portend dramatic change, as ours do now, we must assess how we think about success, and rewrite the stories and myths that guide us in our quest to compete successfully. A hundred years ago, technological conditions privileged size—big tanks, and sizable armies could take territory and resources. Our guiding principle for success became: lets get big and control large spaces.

The rise of computer networks changed our social metaphors. We think in terms of networks now: social networks, networking, and everything from human bodies to neighborhoods as networks. We didn’t simply discover that all of these phenomena are arranged as networks, we applied a guiding metaphor to discover ways in which they are like networks.

My question is: what’s next? What will be the guiding metaphor of 25 years from now? The organization that can begin to frame an anticipatory metaphor-the future of our own imaginations- is preparing itself conceptually for the future. After that, structures, processes and systems will follow.

And while our conversation at the Atlantic Council was about the American role in the world, the basic takeaways for how to generate strong strategy apply to organizations everywhere.

To see the entire day’s sessions, go: here.

 

Posted in: Conferences, Decision making, Innovation, National Security, Strategic Communication, Strategic Leadership, War and Violent Conflict Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
April 19, 2016

Creating an Innovative Workforce in a Large Bureaucracy: Lessons from the U.S. Air Force

By . Filed Under: Decision making, Innovation, National Security, Strategic Communication, Strategic Leadership, Workforce strategy.
Strategic Narratives for innovationIn 1963, Air Force pilots were awarded NASA’s Project Mercury astronauts the Collier Trophy by President Kennedy for their pioneering work in spaceflight. Today, the Air Force seeks to innovate anew

The idea that bureaucracy inhibits innovation is far from new: Political scientists in the early 1960s were already making the charge that, “There is a growing feeling that modern organizations and particularly the large, bureaucratic business and government organizations, need to increase their capacity to innovate” (Victor Thompson, Administrative Science Quarterly, June 1965).

Fifty years later, this ‘feeling’ continues to grow, often in bureaucracies that have also grown in the interim. The US Air Force is one such institution. Yet, there are creative ways to advance, as my opportunity to spend a day earlier this month with the Air Force Chief of Staff and an advisory group of my peers made abundantly clear. A diverse group of us were gathered-technology entrepreneurs, corporate CEOs, government executives, futurists and Air Force officials—to share ideas and offer our recommendations.

Although we talked extensively about practical fixes that could begin to create new pockets of innovation across the Air Force, we all agreed that ultimately the United States government as a whole will need a new way of thinking about innovation and failure. This new strategic narrative will tell a story about the US government as innovative, respectful of necessary failures, and open to true diversity of thought.

The Challenges to Innovation Facing Large Bureaucracies are Formidable
The challenges opposing innovation are formidable.

Like other large bureaucracies, the Air Force has:

  • A globally distributed workforce-in this case it is over 300,000
  • Mission critical areas in which failure is not an option
  • Decision-making that lies beyond its ability to control: Congress and the White House have a strong say in how the Air Force allocates its resources and defines incentives for performance
  • A deeply embedded structure for performance and advancement
  • A budget that is static and set by others

The lack of control over much of their own destiny, coupled with a stringently defined mission, makes it difficult to incentivize innovation. As the Air Force officials explained to us, the Service can best reward new problem solving approaches only at the tactical level, over which it has authority. Strategic innovation is more complicated.

Yet, doing nothing is not an option, in the view of the Air Force. The need to innovate is pressing. While the United States Air Force once had a clear advantage among other nations, global power shifts and the democratization of technology have made it much simpler for states and non-state actors to advance. Like other elements of the United States government, there is palpable concern these days that without establishing the conditions for innovation, the United States will fall behind, with consequences that have not yet been contemplated by national leaders.

When Mission Failure is Not an Option, Incentivizing Failure as Part of Innovation is also Difficult

One of the key recommendations for organizations seeking to innovate is to permit, even encourage failure. At the Pentagon, we discussed corporate leaders in the technology sphere who encourage failure, knowing that it is a necessary part of successful innovation.

Yet unlike a private corporation, the Air Force must explain itself to Congress, which does not look kindly on resources or programs are anything but highly successful. Neither the mindset nor the way in which budgets and programs are evaluated currently support useful failure. Other government agency or corporate managers seeking to drive innovation from below may recognize this problem as well.

How to Introduce a Culture of Innovation

The ideas that my colleagues and I came up with over the course of an afternoon, although designed to serve the Air Fove, may hold value for the leaders of similarly large, bureaucratic or networked organizations.

  • Public private collaborations are essential to accelerate innovation. Opportunities to work on a project with colleagues from other institutions could be a reward for innovation as well
  • Develop an expectation that a certain amount of failure is not only tolerable, but productive. Identifying a threshold of expected failure (20%, for example) can be a useful metric to show that innovative ideas are being developed and tried. This kind of mindset can be introduced to those who hold the purse strings, like Congress.
  • Create rewards and incentives that are not financial when the budget is fixed. Millennials (and even non-millennials!) may appreciate a shorter workweek or the opportunity to work on projects of their choosing more than money.
  • Ensure better teamwork by “translating” different fields to one another. In order to accelerate productive collaborative work, interdisciplinary team members need to understand the values, norms and vocabularies of their colleagues. This kind of understanding can be encouraged organically by embedding team members with their counterparts, so they can absorb how others talk and work. It can also be productive to surface this need and hold workshops or other guided discussions in which teammates explicitly translate their work to others.
  • Develop teams in which diversity of thought is encouraged and nurtured. In many cases, external signs of diversity (race, ethnicity, gender) are markers of diversity of thought because different people experience the world differently, but sometimes there are no external markers. Seek people who think and create differently from one another, and encourage the conditions in which those differences are valued.

These are practical steps by which a large bureaucracy can begin to establish a collective narrative of innovation that resonates throughout the organization.

If you would like to discuss developing an innovation narrative in your organization, I’d be pleased to hear from you at [email protected]

Posted in: Decision making, Innovation, National Security, Strategic Communication, Strategic Leadership, Workforce strategy Tags: , , , , , , , ,