I recently read a post on LinkedIn from Jim Clifton (CEO of Gallup) titled "Wanted: America’s Entrepreneurial Freaks of Nature". Unfortunately my response was too long for LinkedIn so I am posting it to my blog.
For the purpose of context setting, go read Jim Clifton's post first then read my response here.
Feel free to comment.
Bernard of Chartres said "we are like dwarves perched on the shoulders of giants, and thus we are able to see more and farther than the latter. And this is not at all because of the acuteness of our sight or the stature of our body, but because we are carried aloft and elevated by the magnitude of the giants."
The premise of you post shows a lack of recognition that innovation is both evolutionary and recursive. Facebook represents nearly 30 years of evolution, dating back to the dial-up bulletin boards of the 1970’s which morphed along the way serving niche markets. If you looked at the history of the Internet (ARPANet, NSFNet, etc), you would see that much of the activities were around communities of interest. Facebook arrived at a time when the demand for these communities became more pervasive and the market looked for consolidation of these communities. The innovation of Facebook was in making the customer experience simple.
Apple never had the best technology. Steve Jobs’ greatest achievement was not technology innovation, but establishing a mindset on how the customer experience should be, in effect putting more power into the hands of the consumer. Jobs reset consumers’ expectations and forced competitors to raise their game. But remember that the iPhone was an evolution. Products such as General Magic and the Apple Newton may have been commercial failures, but laid a foundation for every smartphone and tablet that exists today.
I will not go into other foundational innovations, but one can’t overlook the achievements that came out of Xerox Parc or IBM Watson, among others.
You make a statement that there is too much innovation. I say we don’t have the right amount at the right levels. Conventional wisdom is that innovation happens within designated strategy groups. Yes those are needed, but never discount the potential of positive impact coming from the most unexpected source within your company.
Every person who works in a company has the ability to make small changes that, in aggregate can have a substantial positive impact. In teams I have led, I encouraged the team to casually think of ways to improve the workflow. The goal was to reduce their workload by 1 hour a week. With encouragement and mentoring, my teams achieved this consistently through a collaborative effort. We do not see this in most companies.
The last item you overlook is the power of organic innovation. Your suggestion of identifying these innovators though some kind of testing is something best left to science fiction writers. I highly doubt that anyone would have identified Steve Jobs as potentially having the impact that he did, particularly at an early age. Just remember the Scully period of Apple.
No, the answer doesn’t lie in testing, it lies in having a free society, one that encourages all people to think differently and listen to others. Dialogue and collaboration will enable the next generation to stand high on the shoulders of their predecessors.
