Ideas = Innovation

"For all the tolerance and enlightenment that modern society claims, Americans are losing hold of a fundamental right as citizens of a free country: the right to speak their minds and voice their opinions in public without fear of being shamed or shunned." - New York Times editorial , 18 March 2022

We all talk about falling into or finding procurement, but we don’t always talk about where we fell from.

I was going to be a librarian. For real. I was going to spend my days surrounded by books. I got so far as to earn a Masters Degree in Library and Information Science before the corporate world snatched me out of a corporate library and plopped me into procurement.

Despite the fact that I now only read Shakespeare when my high schooler needs a hand with her studies, books are still near and dear to my heart. You should see my office. Every square inch that isn’t kept Zoom-ready is a stack of books waiting to be read.?

Maybe that is why Banned Books Week, taking place this year from October 1 - 7, bothers me so much. You can take the librarian out of the library, but you can’t take the library out of the librarian.?

As I cover in this week’s Dial P for Procurement , books are a proxy for ideas, thoughts, and innovation. Disruptive innovation. We all act like we want it, but we aren’t necessarily prepared for the discomfort it may bring. The same goes for ideas - and therefore books.

Innovate Like Your Life Depends on It

One of the visuals that comes to mind when I think about ideas and innovation is a scene from the movie Apollo 13. The astronauts are stuck in orbit and everyone is worried about getting them home. I can picture the look on Tom Hanks’ face even though I haven’t seen the movie in years.

The CO2 levels are getting toxic and Ed Harris’ character says, “Well, I suggest you gentlemen invent a way to put a square peg in a round hole. Rapidly.”

The engineers dump boxes of parts out on the table. Everything the astronauts have available to them to fix their square-peg-round-hole-situation. They manage to pull it off, and while the solution isn't pretty, it works.

That is every day working in procurement and supply chain. Ladies and gentlemen: fix this brand new problem with nothing but this stuff. RAPIDLY.

This is why we need access to all ideas. Imagine if those engineers were given all of the parts except the hoses or duct tape. That's what selectively banning ideas does. It handcuffs every single one of us out of the gate. As we solve problems, we need everyone to dump all of their ideas on the table. Good ideas, bad ideas, wild ideas, new ideas.

That doesn't mean that all of those parts are going to end up in the final solution, or that all of them will be our favorite. They are raw material.

You never know when one piece of information or idea will spark another. We need to see every combination of possibilities, especially when the going gets tough.

The (Silenced) King of Insight

We live in a digital age, the era of STEM academics. A time of reason, logic, and science. And yet, as the quote from the New York Times editorial above points out, we have never been so susceptible to self-censorship and ‘cancellation’ as we are today.

It reminds me of Galileo. He spent the last decade of his life under house arrest because he dared to write that the earth rotates around the sun. Galileo had a newer, stronger telescope than most astronomers of his time, which meant that he had more information.?

Unfortunately, that information went against the prevailing mindset that the sun rotated around the earth. Galileo’s books were banned along with others that advocated for the Copernican system, which places the sun at the center of the universe - not the earth.

The problem, of course, is that Galileo was right.

It is easy for us to laugh at this now. We all know that the earth rotates around the sun. Those silly people 400 years ago didn't know any better. I won't be around to collect on this bet, but I would be willing to wager that 400 years from now, people are going to look back at something we do today and laugh and think about how archaic and closed minded we were. They're going to see us as backwards too.

There were enough people in positions of power that didn’t want anyone to read the teachings of Copernicus and Galileo to ban them. How might civilization be different today if disruptive ideas like heliocentrism were allowed to flourish, or at least to stand on their own merits?

Banned Books = Canceled Ideas

I can make the argument that public libraries should be full of all kinds of books that have offended people: To Kill a Mockingbird, Brave New World, The Color Purple, Fahrenheit 451, The Kite Runner, Lord of the Flies… but how does that belief apply to the challenges faced by procurement and supply chain professionals today?

Books are banned for the subject matter they contain. Maybe it is too edgy, too controversial, or too ugly. Depending on what you have to manage professionally, you may also be asked to address edginess, controversy, and ugliness in your company’s supply chain.

No one likes to talk about modern slavery, child labor, funding challenges faced by diverse-owned startups, or environmentally damaging materials and processes. And yet, all of those things are trying to creep into our supply chains. Many of them are already there. We have to call them out, shine a light on them, and refuse to look away. That takes courage. If we are afraid of being canceled or shamed because of how we address these challenges, we will never solve them. Period.

What can you do to support access to ideas?

• Read a banned book. The ones I listed above are among my personal favorites, but there are a lot more. Check out this list of classic banned books for additional inspiration.
• You can learn more about one of the topics threatening to rear its ugly head in the supply chain. Education leads to understanding, and sometimes vocabulary is the first step on the path to a solution.
• Be the backstop against cancellation in your company if someone is trying to do their job and steps on a sensitive issue. Grant them the benefit of the doubt, remain calm, and clarify. People almost always have good intentions even if you don’t agree with their point of view.
• Listen to this week’s Dial P for Procurement podcast for more on Banned Books Week and the importance of free thought and intellectual curiosity to innovation.

Explore other editions of the Dial P for Procurement newsletter here.