It’s no secret that Google is one of the most innovative companies on the planet. Besides pioneering and then dominating the search industry, it has also become a leader in developing futuristic technologies such as artificial intelligence, driverless cars and quantum computing. It has even launched a life science company.
What makes Google so successful is not one particular process, but how it integrates multiple strategies into a seamless whole. For example, Google Brain started out as a 20% time project, then migrated out to its “X” Division to accelerate development and finally came back to the mothership, where it now collaborates closely with engineering teams to build new products.
Yet perhaps its most important strategy, in fact the one that makes much of the rest possible, is how it partners with top scientists in the academic world. This is no “quick hit,” but a well thought out, long-term game plan designed to establish deep relationships based on cutting edge science and embed that knowledge deeply into just about everything Google does.
In 1847, a young doctor named Ignaz Semmelweis had a major breakthrough. Working in a maternity ward, he discovered that a regime of hand washing could dramatically lower the incidence of childbed fever. Unfortunately, the medical establishment rejected his ideas and the germ theory of disease didn’t take hold until decades later.
The phenomenon is now known as the Semmelweis effect, the tendency for people to reject new knowledge that contradicts established beliefs. Whether you are a CEO trying to launch a new initiative, a political leader pushing for an important reform or a social activist advocating for a cause, you need more than a big idea to change the world.
The problem is that a new idea has to replace an old one and the status quo has inertia on its side. Even those who are easily convinced have to convince those around them and those, in turn, need to convince others still until the long chain of influence results in a change of the zeitgeist. That’s why to truly make an impact, you need small groups, loosely connected, but united by a shared purpose.
Think of just about any major challenge we will face over the next decade and materials are at the center of it. To build a new clean energy future, we need more efficient solar panels, wind turbines and batteries. Manufacturers need new materials to create more advanced products. We also need to replace materials subject to supply disruptions, like rare earth elements.
Traditionally, developing new materials has been a slow, painstaking process. To find the properties they’re looking for, researchers would often have to test hundreds — or even thousands — of materials one by one. That made materials research prohibitively expensive for most industries.
Yet today, we’re in the midst of a materials revolution. Scientists are using powerful simulation techniques, as well as machine learning algorithms, to propel innovation forward at blazing speed and even point them toward possibilities they had never considered. Over the next decade, the rapid advancement in materials science will have a massive impact.
Over the past few decades, we’ve come to glamorize the garage (or WeWork) startup. These days, parents take the same pride telling their neighbors that their progeny have gone to work for some fledgling enterprise that used to be reserved for a job at IBM or General Electric. Today’s celebrity CEOs tend to be founders.
We can expect that to change in the years to come. The end of Moore’s law will mean that the technologies of the future will be far more complex, less understood and more capital intensive. Large, well resourced organizations, including government entities, are much better positioned to develop these technologies than startups are.
However, this will be no return to the age of robber barons. One thing that past decades have taught us is that walled gardens are a fool’s errand and cloud computing has made them even less tenable. So it’s becoming increasingly important for large enterprises to partner with entrepreneurs and vice versa. Collaboration is quickly becoming a key competitive advantage.
2018 was a busy year. Due the the success of my first book, Mapping Innovation, I was inundated with speaking requests that took me not only across the country, but across the world, including Bahrain, Turkey and India. It was great to hear from so many who enjoyed the book and found it to be helpful.
I spent most of the year working on my new book, Cascades: How to Create a Movement that Drives Transformational Change, which will be published in April. It is the product of 15 years of research and it was an enormous task putting everything together, but I think all the effort was worth it. I’m extremely happy with how it all turned out!
And, of course, I’ve continued to post twice a week on Digital Tonto, no matter where I am and what else I have going on. As we move on from the digital revolution to new technologies, such as genomics, materials and robotics, I’m more excited about the future than ever. Here are the articles you most liked to read and share over the past year. I hope you enjoy them!
One of the things that I’ve found over the years is that innovation needs exploration. It’s a simple equation: If you don’t explore, you won’t discover, if you don’t discover you won’t invent and if you don’t invent you will be disrupted. No matter how smart or organized or successful you have been in the past, this basic rule hold true.
Of course, there are many ways to explore. You can seek out people at conferences whose focus is different than yours. You can watch TED talks and listen to podcasts. However, my favorite way to explore is to read. In my opinion, there is simply no other medium that offers the richness and depth of a good book.
That’s why every year I publish a list of books I have read and included in my articles. While I try to faithfully convey the insights I come across, there’s nothing quite like exploring for yourself. Also, not everything of value is directly quotable, so there are many books that I do not include in my articles, but you may find helpful. Here’s this year’s list. I hope you enjoy it!
We tend to think of innovation as a single event, but the truth is that it’s an extended process of discovery, engineering and transformation. First, a scientist discovers a new phenomenon, then others figure out to use that knowledge to create a viable solution to an existing problem and finally a particular industry or field is transformed.
This process usually takes about 30 years, mostly because of the time it takes for a true transformation takes place. A revolutionary new technology needs to build up an ecosystem of suppliers, build a standard set of tools and practices and develop markets that have learned to make productive use out of it.
It appears that genomics is hitting that point now. Although the cost to sequence a genome has been falling at a rate that far exceeds Moore’s law, for some time now, we’ve seen little effect in the marketplace. That’s beginning to change though. As we move beyond just reading genomes, to being able to actually write them, the genomics revolution is upon us.
I study innovators for a living. Every year, I interview dozens of men and women who’ve achieved remarkable things. For my own part, I publish about a hundred articles a year and my second book, Cascades, will come out this spring. While my achievements pale in comparison to many of those I interview, many believe my work to be original.
The most destructive myth about creativity is that there are innate traits that allow some people to be creative, while others, who lack these, cannot. The truth is that in decades of research on creativity, nobody has been able to identify any such traits. In my experience, great innovators come in all shapes and sizes.
Still, despite the diversity of original innovators themselves, there are some common principles in how they approach their work and these are things that anyone can apply. That doesn’t mean everyone can be world famous, but the evidence clearly shows that anyone can be creative and, even if it’s not a major breakthrough, make some contribution to the world.
Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates called General Stanley McChrystal “perhaps the finest warrior and leader of men in combat I had ever met.” Commanding troops in Iraq and later in Afghanistan, he built an unparalleled reputation for both getting results and earning unusual respect and loyalty from those who served under him.
Yet when he sat down to write his memoir, My Share of the Task, he began to realize that his role was not as central as he had once thought. “Successes credited to a decision I made felt less impressive once I recognized the myriad factors and players who often had far more to do with the result than I had,” he would later write.
In his new book, Leaders: Myth and Reality, McChrystal tells the stories of 13 leaders, ranging from Harriet Tubman and Robert E. Lee to Einstein and Coco Chanel to lift the veil on what makes a successful leader. What he finds is that success doesn’t come from any specific trait or action, but by forging a sense of connection between the leader and the led.
Every once in a while I get a comment from an audience member after a keynote speech or from someone who read my book, Mapping Innovation, about why so few women are included. Embarrassed, I try to explain that, as in many male dominated fields, women are woefully underrepresented in science and technology.
This has nothing to do with innate ability. In fact, you don’t have to look far to find women at the very apex of innovation, such as Jennifer Doudna, who pioneered CRISPR or Jocelyn Bell Burnell, who recently received the Breakthrough Prize for her discovery of pulsars. In earlier days, women like Grace Hopper and Marie Curie made outsized impacts.
The preponderance of evidence shows that women can vastly improve innovation efforts, but are often shunted aside. In fact, throughout history, men have taken credit for discoveries that were actually achieved by women. So, while giving women a larger role in innovation would be just and fair, even more importantly it would improve performance.
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