Innovating Innovation. David Morey
and eternal God.
This convinced Galileo that the Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus had been correct some hundred years earlier, when he said the sun and not the earth was the center of what came to be called the solar system.
The shift to the view of the sun as the center of the solar system took many years and, as innovation so often does, questioned, eroded, and even destroyed old beliefs. Chipping away at cherished faiths requires fresh faith in the new belief. And there is often a price to pay. In 1633, many refused to believe they on earth were not the center of everything. They took steps to suppress the heretical idea that it was not the sun moving, but rather the earth itself. Galileo was summoned to the Inquisition and ultimately compelled to retract his Copernican view. In a formal allocution, he was forced to say aloud that, in God’s creation, the earth was stationary.
Aging and ill, Galileo did as he was told, denying that the earth orbited the sun. But legend has it that, after pronouncing the required allocution, he whispered more to himself than to those present, “E pur si muove”—“And yet it moves.”
If we all did the things we are capable of doing, we would literally astound ourselves.
—Thomas Edison
The Copernican Revolution, validated by Galileo’s “E pur si muove,” is a central example of what the controversial philosopher of science Thomas S. Kuhn calls a “paradigm shift” in his 1962 classic, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Here he details the history and process of innovation, challenging conventional thinking about the progress of what he calls “normal science,” arguing that scientific progress is more episodic than accumulative, with breakthroughs occurring during periods of “revolutionary science.” Kuhn holds that, in revolutionary times, anomalies lead to new “paradigms,” which make it possible to ask new questions of old data, thereby superseding the mere “puzzle-solving” of earlier paradigms.
Each new paradigm changes the rules. The paradigm shift is therefore the product less of linear thinking than an exponential or revolutionary displacement in thinking. When he proved Copernicus correct, Galileo set into motion revolutionary thinking that transformed the prevailing Ptolemaic paradigm—the geocentric universe. Viewed in retrospect, we may conclude that Copernicus led to Galileo, who led to Kepler’s cosmology, and then ushered in Newtonian physics—progress begetting progress in serial fashion. Kuhn, however, argues that this linear interpretation is an ex post facto fiction. He sees this process of change as the product of revolutionary or breakthrough thinking. For purposes of analysis, he divides the process into phases:
• Phase 1 is the “pre-paradigm phase,” wherein no consensus exists on any particular theory.
• Phase 2 begins the operation of “normal science,” which puzzle-solves within the context of the dominant paradigm.
• Phase 3 witnesses the erosion of the dominant paradigm, which is shown to be increasingly unable to account for mounting anomalies. At this phase, the scientific community enters a crisis period.
• Phase 4 is the paradigm shift. In this period of scientific revolution, underlying assumptions are re-examined, and the new paradigm or way of thinking takes hold.
• Phase 5 is the “post-revolution” period, during which scientists return to normal science and solve puzzles within this new and now-dominant paradigm.
Fifty-six years after its publication, Kuhn’s groundbreaking framework continues to prove durable. It applies to today’s struggle over innovation. In some ways, the way we now think about innovation is entering Kuhn’s Phase 3. That is, we are unable to account for mounting anomalies, which makes us feel we are entering a crisis period that demands a new approach, a new paradigm.
As Kuhn envisioned the process in the 1960s, true paradigm shifts are rare events. They may not even occur at the modest rate of one per century. This leaves you and your business plenty of room for puzzle-solving, incremental progress, and the accumulation of innovation that may someday reach the critical mass for a new, fresh Kuhnian paradigm shift. Kuhn further argues that the dominant paradigm so controls the agenda of thinking that it is sometimes impossible to break away from it, to “think different,” to even imagine that it is the earth that revolves around the sun. In other words, the incumbent status quo is easy, addictive, and comfortable.
In this, Kuhn echoes our approach to driving change leadership and innovation. First, if we are to innovate in our businesses, we must not restrict ourselves to approaches to innovation that are ruled by the status quo. Second, we must look for constant, though linear, progress rather than waiting for that lightning strike of revolutionary progress—which may not come for another hundred years. Third, innovation today requires “chunking”—breaking into manageable, doable steps that allow us to keep driving innovation ahead rather than waiting for revolution to happen. If we can keep moving along a linear pathway of progress, we can create value at regular intervals and enjoy incremental success.
Assuming we are in Phase 3, experiencing the erosion of the dominant paradigm, we have no way of knowing how close we are to Phase 4, the paradigm shift. The digital transformation, in itself a paradigm shift, is driving the pace of change so rapidly and the scope of change so broadly that we may have good reason to believe that Kuhn’s 1960s-based estimate of the relative rarity of paradigm shifts—once a century—is no longer accurate. While it is important to keep innovating rather than passively awaiting the revolution, we need to recognize that linear thinking will not suffice amidst a paradigm shift. As you push ahead, be prepared to spring at a moment’s notice.
Linear Innovation:
First—Commit to a Way of Thinking
Scientists Heather Barry Kappes of New York University and Gabriele Oettingen of the University of Hamburg argue that we humans need both to imagine and fantasize about the big things we are going to do and about how we are going to do them. It is not enough to simply imagine a desired future state. We must also fantasize about the steps to get there. In fact, Kappes and Oettingen conclude that both imagining and fantasizing about these steps help muster the energy required to succeed.
Sometimes, our challenge is that we don’t believe we belong on a bigger stage or that we can innovate any kind of breakthrough, big or small. For example, Tina Seelig, a Stanford professor specializing in creativity and innovation, quotes studies indicating that “Up to 70 percent of people experience impostor syndrome at some time in their lives.” They believe the stage on which they stand is too big and that they have no business being on it. Behavioral expert Olivia Fox Cabane goes further: “In the impostor syndrome, people feel that they don’t really know what they’re doing, and it’s just a matter of time before they’re found out and exposed as a fraud.” She argues that this syndrome takes hold even at the highest levels of business and education, concluding: “I’ve heard that every time the incoming class of Stanford Business School is asked, ‘How many of you feel you are the one mistake the admissions committee made?’ two-thirds of the students immediately raise their hands.”
In business, the flipside of the impostor syndrome is an existentially total belief in yourself as a bold leader and successful innovator. Again, this is the role Chris Robinson played on the soap opera General Hospital and later in a Vicks Formula 44 cough syrup commercial pitch: “I’m not a doctor, but I play one on TV.” Actor Robinson was no doctor, but he believed, as any good actor must, that he was no impostor but a bona fide MD. Thomas Edison, the inventor who declared genius to be 1 percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration, even if he often publicly denied it almost certainly believed he did possess that critical 1 percent.
Belief in your existential legitimacy must be steadily fueled by your imagination, the lifeblood of innovation. Consider Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech, delivered on August 28, 1963, before the Lincoln Memorial. King thoroughly imagined he had the legitimate right to dream that dream—and that was enough to persuade much of the world, opening a path to civil rights in the United States. Or think about Albert Einstein crediting his 1921 Nobel Prize and his development of the special theory of relativity to his own boyhood dreams about riding a light beam. He was confident that he had the right to dream