Last week, Paul Broun, a US Congressman on the Science, Space and Technology Committee, asserted that evolution, embryology and big bang theory are “lies straight from the pit of hell.” A recent Gallup survey suggests that 46% of Americans agree with him.
Many would tend to give the Congressmen some slack. After all, what we can not observe is a matter of faith. However, while we tend to consider beliefs personal and beyond reproach, denial of observable facts is not faith, but ideology run amok.
In the modern world, the visceral abstract plays a central role. Without Darwin’s theory, there can be no modern medicine. No big bang, no iPhone either. Nearly every facet of our lives is governed by some strange notion that is far removed from everyday experience. Ideas matter. Those who deny science are, in fact, denying the modern world itself.
In the United States, with the political season in full swing, we hear a lot about outsourcing. Good jobs, the kind where people wear hardhats and safety glasses, are moving south and east, supposedly leaving a nation of hamburger flippers in their wake.
Politicians of all stripes say they will bring the jobs back. Some promise to batter China, while others pledge to create new industries that will provide honest work for millions of Rosie the Riveters and Bob the Builders.
But what if those jobs are replaced by robots? As The Economist reports, we are in the midst of a third industrial revolution. Whereas, before a factory could hire thousands of people, today most employ a small fraction of that number. When billions of dollars of output can be generated by just a few employees, the nature of work changes drastically.
I learned most of what I know about innovation during the 15 years I spent living and working in the former Eastern Bloc. People are surprised when I tell them that and I admit, it’s a strange thing to say.
After all, the Soviet Union failed miserably. It was a drab place, filled with heavy tractors and people with gray clothes and dour looks on their faces. Innovation isn’t the first word that comes to mind.
However, while the system was crumbling, people still had to get things done. They needed housing, food, electricity and means to entertain themselves. Officially, these things weren’t a priority and the power structure put forth little effort to provide them. When leadership fails, innovation goes underground and people learn to hack to get by.
Winston Churchill once wrote that “The empires of the future are the empires of the mind.” I think it’s clear that’s never been more true than today.
As old line industrial firms struggle to survive, web based startups less than two years old become billion dollar enterprises. While the past few decades have been characterized by offshoring to cheap labor markets, now manufacturing is coming back, albeit to factories that are largely ran by algorithms.
The underlying trend is the rise of informational content in the products and services that make up our economy and, increasingly, that information is managed by machines rather than humans. That is the essence of digital business and it’s changing everything we thought we knew about creating value. Here are 3 keys to understanding the new era.
Do you have a philosophy or an ideology? The answer to that question will very likely determine whether you will succeed or fail.
Philosophies ask questions (sometimes annoying ones, which is why they made Socrates drink hemlock). Ideologies, on the other hand, determine answers. That seemingly nuanced distinction makes all the difference in the world.
Most people prefer ideologies. They’re easier. You can believe in world peace or free markets, feel good about yourself and never have to think much about it. Philosophies are much harder. They provide a guide to the journey but don’t give us the destination. The advantage of philosophy is that it will get you where you want to go. Ideology won’t.
There is something intuitively immoral about free stuff. After all, we were raised to respect a good days work for a good day’s pay, so there is something about the concept of not paying for things that’s a bit unsettling.
On the other hand, we all like to be a little naughty, so when we hear that we can get something for nothing, our ears prick up. Not surprisingly, Wired editor Chris Anderson’s book, Free, which advocated a no-fee business model, became an instant bestseller.
Yet upon closer inspection, we find that nothing is really free. Somebody always pays. Even Anderson’s book never suggested that people wouldn’t pay, but merely observed that the onward march of technology creates a shift in value and that, in turn, transforms business models. In fact, “free” just means that there are more ways to get paid.
Are we really achieving anything? Or are we squandering the ingenuity of our predecessors on a trivial consumer culture of tweets and likes? Where is our moon landing, our theory of relativity, our decisive breakthrough that future generations will remember?
That’s the challenge that Justin Fox raised in a provocative HBR post. It’s a valid question, one that should be asked and answered. However, after thinking about it for a while, I realized that much of the hand wringing in this area has been misplaced.
Digital technology has become superficial because we’ve gotten so very good at it. It’s a 60 year-old paradigm that achieved little in its first few decades, then sprinted forward, devouring everything in its path and will soon come to an end. That’s what innovation theorists call the S-Curve and it’s how technology works. The future is bright.
Content can be confusing. It’s tough to get people to agree exactly what it is and isn’t. Much like an eminent jurist once said about pornography, you know it when you see it, but that is hardly a working definition.
To make things even more difficult, content requires intense integration of diverse capabilities. Creativity, storytelling, information technology, user experience, and other skills all must come together to build an effective product that touches hearts and minds.
The core challenge for any organization which seeks to build great content is that the capabilities and skills that need to be integrated come with people attached to them and those people tend to have varied perspectives and see things differently. In order to build a successful effort, it’s imperative to build common working principles. Here’s a start:
How can we “go with our gut” without basing every decision on what we had for lunch? How can we responsibly research the consequences of our decisions without falling prey to “paralysis by analysis?”
Ever since Malcolm Gladwell came out with his book Blink, many people have become familiar with our strange ability to know more than we can explain, but when does it make sense to act on impulse and when should we stop and think things through?
As I noted in an earlier post, Gladwell is not a researcher, but a journalist and therefore probably not the best one to guide us. However, two leaders in the field, Daniel Kahneman and Gary Klein, representing two opposing views, collaborated for eight years to find common ground. The result is an excellent guide to effective decision-making.
More specifically, he said that “Revolution has value, revolution has purpose — a direction and leaders… We don’t want ‘disruption,’ where we just move things around. We want a direction. We want a purpose.”
It would be easy to dismiss Dorsey as just another guy who, finding himself rich, wants to be smart as well. As Kafka noted about wise men, when they say “Go over,” they do not mean to an actual place, but some fabulous yonder that even they can’t designate, which doesn’t help us very much. Nevertheless, I think he was on to something important.
Or install manually
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, which advocated a no-fee business model, became an instant bestseller.
, many people have become familiar with our strange ability to know more than we can explain, but when does it make sense to act on impulse and when should we stop and think things through?
