Innovation dilemmas, poor statistics and chaos

I do not read enough. Back in my secondary school days I was enforced to read three books per quarter, one in each of the mandatory languages in the educational system. Long after school I found myself in a situation where I barely read books on my own initiative. I read a lot of technical papers, datasheets, patents and reports (I also write a fair share of those), so late last year I decided to change those habits and start reading again..

As a result I started the healthy habit of reading with the very same educational objective. Back in the day it was about learning and mastering languages, now it is more about helping me be better at my own job (project leader, wearable health technology). Now I find myself about 7 months later, having read 4 books in a row between evenings and weekends, and specially during my travelling hours on planes and trains. The message of this article is about how I see my own situations and experience (been there) but also my struggle in a daily basis on the messages from books I read. Additionally it is impressive (at least in my mind) how connected are the concepts and the topics across books and authors, which, at least a priori you would not see apparent connection.

So I started my journey with reading the innovators dilemma from Christensen. I am working for an R&D center where we foster open innovation, hence I thought it would be kind of relevant to read a book on the topic. You can read about it in the link I placed before, but the book is about a journey with detailed examples about how disruptive innovation patterns emerge instead of the evolutionary innovations (next generation of the same product). It is remarkable to see this happening in several industries and across different time spans, and it is incredible to realize that such disruption needs certain conditions to be met which are typically not enforced by companies. Companies typically fail in their struggle to be market leaders even when they believe they are doing the right things (maybe by the book would be the right expression). Also crazy to see (in hindsight) that the ideas that end up being disruptive are actually coming from within the company that will fail to keep the market position. I can see a lot of this happening in the technology market these days.

The ideas in the innovators dilemma you could say are complementary to those exposed in the chaos imperative by Brafman and Pollack, which I read following the recommendation in this post. I say they are complementary because in order for a disruptive innovation to happen, Brafman and Pollack claim that certain conditions need to meet, including a gap to be filled, unusual suspects and a controlled chaos. Funny enough, such factors are not (exactly) those highlighted in the innovators dilemma by Christensen but might be considered complementary. While Christensen is more objective and provides hard facts and statistics (some times way too many), Brafman and Pollack are more subjective and expose their theories on chaos (and provide limited, even sometimes you could argue biased example set) .

As a project leader in an R&D company you can already see the paradox of my work :research, some say, does not have strict timelines. So my default job is to constraint (project leader) the unconstrainable (research). Instinctively my background (engineer) and role (project leader) do reject the concept of chaos as part of an execution of a project which has tight deadlines, deliverables and particularly stakeholders awaiting them. It is even more disturbing to read that, even if you follow the right steps and do what you are supposed, you are not going to succeed in the innovation market with new technologies (the motto of Christensen's book is when new technologies cause great firms to fail). Brafman and Pollack even suggest that not measuring (in general) might be advantageous in some cases.

Of course, like all ideas, I take them with a grain of salt. I understand the messages and I do see the value and consequences exposed in the list of examples both books put forward but still it is good to take a healthy balance between the PMBoK methodology (the bible of project management, which by the way I read 2 years ago) and the disruptive and chaotic methodologies proposed.

Funny enough, in their incursion to chaos, the authors of the chaos imperative are establishing a link between the active time and the passive time of your brain. As a matter of fact they claim the brain needs some time off in order to process the ideas, and only when enough gaps are available the big leaps will happen. Here is where I found the link to the theory of Kahneman in his thinking fast and slow. Link in the sense that Kahneman calls the intuitive agent (reactive) System 1, and the conscious one System 2. Although thinking fast and slow will provide major other ideas, it is nice to associate how the identification of System 2 resembles Brafman's struggle to produce, and System 1 maps into the gaps needed for the chaos to trigger genius outcomes. It is funny to think that maybe the origin of both authors (Israelians) made them come to similar conclusions. Although maybe it is just me seeing this connection.

Kahneman's book deserves a deeper analysis (he is a Nobel Prize Laurate, so I am far from capable to even review his work ) but unfortunately I am running out of reader's patience at this point. It might be funny though to mention that I started reading the book because of my interest in pupillography, but it completely provided me with a different vision on many other items. Particularly it enforced my respect for the field of psychology, it made me realize that there are many unconscious decisions (priming, aversion, biases) most of us do everyday catastrophically wrong without even noticing about the mechanism that triggers them. Back to the application of the book to my daily life, I got from Kahneman that we humans suck big time at intuitive statistics, which made me rethink the way I estimate my tasks in projects and the way I see the results me and my team are getting in our research.

Definitely the three books linked and described above do change my view on my daily work and will change my overall strategies moving forward. I recently attended a talk where the audience was prompted not to get distracted chasing rabbits while hunting elephants (following one of Boone Pickens' quote). So I will definitely take learnings from the chaos, the two systems and the innovation dilemma while chasing my next elephants.

All in all, a lot of food for though from the books I read so far, and a lot of eager to learn more is still within. The more you learn the more you want to know, so I already have my next 4 books lined up. Just need to find the right time (and order) to read them.

This article presents my subjective view on a topic. This does not represent the thinking of my employer, previous employers, my customers or any other affiliation I might have or have had in the past.