Disruptive innovation and breakthrough designs tend to flourish in hard times. So if our businesses have been staggering a little bit more than we are comfortable with, then maybe, just maybe as we dig down deep, we are looking to our experience to save the day – - and that might be the worst thing we can do. It’s counterintuitive to not look to what we have done best in the past. We tend to want to consolidate, retrench and go with our “core”. The problem is our past “core” no longer serves the present as it once did; it could actually exacerbate things.
Even as we see glimpses of hope in this global economy of ours, no one can doubt that in the last three years, we have gone through the worst dislocation since the Great Depression. Currency problems have only compounded the effect of tight money, manufacturing job deportation, and recessionary batten-down-the-hatches thinking. Yet we are witness to many companies putting out incredible results under some of the most trying conditions imaginable.
What do these companies know that others don’t? The ability to suffer, at least temporarily, in a personal, psychological business-hell and come out stronger. Turbulent times – - like these we have been living in – - are precisely the right time to explore the hard work of recognizing the brutal facts and moving forward to make big change.
Defaulting to caution and conservativism – - in other words doing more of the same but with less confidence and conviction than before – - more often than not is a precise formula for deadly business disaster. Turtling in turbulence only works for turtles. The world is not going back to the way it was, ever.
It’s easy to become conservative and risk-averse in our business decisions as we resist needed deep-seated change. In today’s business world we need to embrace change and to view our structural problems as more than the crisis they seem to be; if we see a crisis, then we need to look a little deeper to see the opportunity. As William C. Taylor (Inc. Magazine) put it, too many leaders are learning the wrong lessons and this is a terrible way to let a crisis go to waste. We all know crisis means opportunity but too many of us fail to run to the opportunity.
Economic trauma and the problems it brings is the exact prescription that can inspire creative responses that can reshape our markets for decades to come.
The radical shifts and new ways of looking at our markets are nothing but a simple direct challenge to convention, prevailing wisdom and breaking with the status quo. It is about seeing crying needs at the edges of our marketplace; it is about finally hearing the heartfelt wishes of our prospects and patrons; it is recognizing we are the ones, possibly the only ones, who can do something about those wishes and needs right now. This means becoming realists of the first order.
Creativity tends to thrive within limitations. Vastness tends to disperse while restriction promotes laser like focus not unlike the idiot savant we read about. We need to utilize the limitations within our company, within our colleagues and coworkers, and within ourselves. Within those limitations we truly can bring new ideas to life.
Radical shift means transforming our company, breaking up compromises within our industry, and challenging ourselves to place hope over our past business experience. Triumph means finally being able to see in new ways and then acting with courage to meet all the new emerging needs.
To dismiss innovation as reckless rebellion in pursuit of an esoteric dream is to completely write off our company’s future. So yes, in our pain and fear, many of us – - perhaps helplessly – - are beginning to acquiesce or even embrace the process of innovation. However, traditional innovation is itself heading for obsolescence. The parameters for innovation have completely changed and even unsuspecting companies with innovation programs may be swept away if they do not take a more expansive view of their markets and marketplace. Innovation is not hard, it just requires a different way of seeing and believing.
Jon Leatherbury of Hewitt Associates said “if a business can be destroyed, then eventually it will be destroyed. It is only a matter of whether you do it to yourself or a rival does it to you.”
Learning to do more with less – - for more people – - that is the innovator’s dream. It’s time to put on our thinking caps and see with the eyes of a child.