Scarcity and Adversity: The recipe for Innovation

 We are born as new characters in the ongoing story of our parents. In the story, throughout our growth, there is always someone between us and ‘unknowns’ whom we can rely upon and ask about these unknowns and how to deal with them. We become our own protagonists when we have surpassed the need for such people in between and face the unknowns ourselves. This is when we begin to pick and pick apart our challenges ourselves.

Scarcity 

A success story is always about the protagonist overcoming her challenges. It is inspiring to see how someone attained her success or wealth; inheritance or good luck is never celebrated because it’s just the continuation of the parent’s story and an ending that already existed. It is the attaining or creating of what did not exist, that inspires. True success lies in determining and then creating what was non-existent. What exists helps us determine the size and shape of the universe as it is, what does not exist helps us determine the size and shape of the dent we will leave in it.

 Though thirty spokes may form a wheel

It is the hole in the hub

Which gives the wheel utility

It is not the clay the potter throws,

Which gives the pot its usefulness,

But the space within the pot is made.

Without a door, the room cannot be entered,

And without its windows it is dark

Such is the utility of non-existence.

 -- Tao Te Ching

When our story begins, our success is non-existent; this leaves room for our story to flourish. Opportunities materialize in the form of challenges unique to our situation. We will all have our own struggles that in turn carve us our own mold, making us as unique as the challenges we have faced. This makes us and how we strive, different from anyone else. And life is a struggle. This dynamicity of life makes it livable. The contrast of dynamicity is stasis and in a constantly moving universe, that spells death.

 Adversity

 We need our challenges to be bigger than us so that we can grow bigger than them. Throughout this growth, we learn to appreciate those who were between us and the unknown and the value of that great teacher named ‘failure’. Our story is heroic not because we always succeed, but because we overcome our failure.

 Such a realization is evident in the history of Superman. In the 1940s Superman was the most powerful and invulnerable being in any action comics franchise, his evolution had made him undefeatable and capable of achieving any physical feat. As a side-effect, Superman comics kept getting boring, it was getting progressively difficult to write an interesting story that would captivate the reader’s imagination and attention. Worst of all: laziness on part of the creators and writers allowed Superman to “Deus” himself out of anything. “Deus” plots were plots where the reader would have to voluntarily suspend reasoning and accept the protagonist’s victory over the villain. This turned out to be annoying for any sensible reader. Unknowingly, the writers were writing scripts not to inspire human youth, but simply mythological pieces of a made-up deity. The ‘Superman’ franchise nearly died.

Responding to this problem from the 1940s and in consecutive reboots, Superman was made progressively weaker and vulnerable. He could no longer lift planets. The green Kryptonite made him go limp. The colour red caused him to behave strangely, he could no longer shrug off nuclear explosions, and most notably, he became dependent on our Sun, drawing energy from it like an inverse vampire. With these, introduced, limitations Superman became bound to our solar system and an exceedingly relatable ‘being’.

The result? within the same decade, Superman became the most popular comic franchise again, with copies flying (pun intended) off the shelves. This story models the idea that ‘being’ requires becoming, and to become is to become something different. Hold on to the word ‘different’ this comes back to us in a little while.

The limitations, just like his strengths, were specific to Superman. Discovering our limitations is a revelation, it’s getting to know who we are and what we need to do to overcome those limitations. We relate more to a vulnerable Superman because that is more similar to us humans. We have individual limitations which in turn determine what will be challenging for us. They push us and give us the drive to invoke the only superpower given to our species to overcome our limitations: The power to innovate.

Innovation - a behaviour

The dynamicity of life needs us to be in continuous motion and not be satisfied with milestones but agitated to proceed along the direction of life goals for each facet of our life. This is why the word we held on to earlier: ‘different’, cannot mean an arbitrary displacement from a previous norm. It has to be towards a pre-determined idealistic goal and that is where human innovation gets its purpose. Just being different is not enough, it’s not just the new idea that constitutes innovation but the actual positive impact, the step taken and the distance covered in the direction of our true north that can be called innovation.

Direction is just that!. It is not a destination it is a direction. Destinations are an illusion, we are just dealing with milestones, there is no destination. A destination would tell you when to stop; finding a place to stop is not the idea and ‘Excellence’ is just that!. It is not a stop. Its is the continuation in the right direction. We keep innovating ourselves and our environment to reach an idealistic goal and in a working organization, these idealistic goals are the organization’s vision.

In the work place:

Innovation by Management

From a Management point of view, there are five things needed for an organization to inculcate an environment for innovation:

1. The right direction: This is provided by the organization’s top leadership in the form of its vision and long term goals. The organization needs to keep communicating its vision and preaching its goals. There is no innovation in an organization unless it has a positive impact on achieving the organization’s vision and goals.
2.  Cultivating innovation: An environment that has an appetite for risk and allows for experiments.
3. Insulation from and to the core business: The organization's core operations need to be protected from innovative and dramatic changes. Innovation must be tested in compartmentalized sections before its processes affect the core operations and vice versa: processes that work in the core operation may not be most efficient for a small innovation effort.
4. Require in-depth risk assessments and due diligence for new processes and innovation efforts.
5. Award innovative behaviour. Having an environment congenial to innovation and employees taking innovating initiatives is a win itself. Any innovation project ends up being either a success or a lesson. There is no failure. The initiative, to innovate and perform due diligence should be rewarded regardless of the outcome.

Innovation by teams and departments

Constituent teams need to:

1. Develop economical ways to conduct experiments and fully understand risks with an innovative effort.
2. Devise tests and due diligence procedures for the positive impact of an innovative suggestion.
3. Tweaking and testing take time. Give the process time before taking the innovation from test to core operations. Announcing a win too early would be harmful.
4. Consider new ideas from individuals for experiment and make the ideas run the gauntlet of risk assessments and due diligence.

Innovation by Individuals

 Individuals need to:

1. Keep the organization’s vision in mind and try “different” behaviour. The ideas come easily, but by living them out and making them part of behaviour, the first step of due diligence and risk assessment begins. The new behaviour can be a small change in routine like checking your email before checking Facebook, physically meeting with your team members or line manager before the start of the workday.
2. Realize that failure is your friend. Analyse each failure, squeeze possible lesson from it.
3. Think with constraints. Look for a solution that would not require more resources. Constraints and scarcity give birth to innovation. Limitations and Adversity make the recipe for Innovation.

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Limitations and Adversity: the recipe for Innovation