I recently presented a paper at the Project Management Institute, North American Global Congress. My paper was titled the Job Shop Scheduling Problem, Mathematical Complexity Theory, and Non-Polynomial Time Algorithms. As you can imagine, a rather narrow swath of the PMI congregants found my topic compelling enough to part with an hour of their time. I joked with my single digit audience that I should have put the word Agile in the title, and the room would have been full. Another presenter at the same conference was Malcolm Gladwell. His topic was broader in nature. As his name recognition, accomplishments, presentation skills, and writing were somewhat superior to my own, he enjoyed an audience approximately 1000 times larger than I did. Gladwell is a compelling thinker and speaker. He talked about organizational culture and the role it has historically played in innovation. Having read all of his books, most of his articles, and listened, more than once, to his hilarious appearances on The Moth Story hour, I was rife with anxious anticipation at the thought of seeing him speak live. I was not disappointed.
Malcolm started with the statement: “We place such a premium on being first.” The entire patent system is predicated on the notion of being first and reaping huge rewards. But followers and borrowers, not leaders and inventors, are the ones who lead the way.
Innovative corporate cultures are created when people are allowed, encouraged, and incentified to follow emerging trends, to borrow from the thought leaders, and to tweak, tinker, and improve. Think Apple.
To prove his point, Gladwell told a story:
Bekaa Valley summer of 1982: Syria moved 22 surfaces to air missile systems to the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon. On June 9, 1982 Israel attacked, and in the first morning destroyed 19 of the 22 and shot down 22 Syrian planes at a loss of zero Israeli planes. On the second day, the Israelis destroyed the remaining two missile systems.
How did they do it? Did they invent a new way of warfare? Well, not invent…but really more of a hack (in the old sense of the word which is to tinker with and exploit functionality from existing technology).
Israel integrated and deployed existing technologies together to create a KILLER advantage with devastating results. The combination of these technologies is referred to as Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA). Israel was the first to make use of RMA and to prove these technologies would work together in concert.
Malcolm went on to describe how these technologies came to fruition. The USSR had intellectual research groups working intensely on the RMA issue in the1970s. The USSR developed much of the thinking and was prescient in its prognostication. I’ll call this “Innovations in Thinking.”
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The USA actually developed most of the actual products: airborn warning and control system (AWAC), precision guided missiles, and drones. I’ll call this “Innovation in Making.”
Israel put the whole package together and used it on the battlefield. I’ll call this “Innovation in Doing.”
Thinking, making, and doing are each necessary for innovation to be adopted, but as Malcolm explained, they are mutually exclusive organizational cultures. The USSR was monolithic and intellectual: the Soviets could focus and think. The USA had unlimited resources and a high degree of competition between branches of the military and large defense contractors. Americans could compete to develop and fund new technologies, but could not cooperate to get them to work together in concert.
Only Israelis, with a relatively limited budget, surrounded by enemies, and motivated by life and death problems, could cooperate enough to integrate existing technologies.
In what ways does your organizational culture fit within the USSR, USA, or Israeli model when it comes to innovation?