18,99 €
Mehr erfahren.
- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Wissenschaft und neue Technologien
- Sprache: Englisch
Is Innovation just an overused buzzword? A waste of time? A mere marketing ploy? Author Alex Goryachev has a simple, resounding response to such questions: No! The Fourth Industrial Revolution is driving change at an unprecedented pace, level, and intensity that is impacting businesses across industries, not to mention our everyday lives. We are rapidly blurring the physical and the digital, transforming the way we live and, in some sense, what it even means to be human. Whether we run a startup or multinational, a nonprofit or academic institution, a city or a whole country, we need to embrace this change to not just survive but thrive under these new realities. In Fearless Innovation, Cisco's Managing Director of Innovation Strategy and Programs explores how, no matter their function, leaders and managers can cut through the noise to understand change and deliver real results. Goryachev's actionable, consistent, and timeless innovation principles offer a blueprint to driving growth, enacting change, increasing the bottom line, and creating clear measurable value. Featuring diverse case studies of some of today's most innovative organizations, historical observations, first-hand experience, and a look at where innovation is thriving, and why, this down-to-earth guide provides advice and clear steps on how to: * Get teams to embrace innovation beyond empty slogans * Focus on execution of innovation through leadership and strategy * Measure the real effects of innovation to showcase ROI and attract investment * Break down org silos by empowering effective, diverse, and inclusive teams * Drive co-innovation through win-win ecosystem-wide partnerships * Organize innovation teams and orchestrate outcomes by leveraging organizational DNA * Communicate the value of innovation to differentiate ourselves from competition Written for any organization that wants to stay relevant in the 21st Century, and even beyond, Fearless Innovation offers a step-by-step guide for getting past the confusion, overcoming fear, and getting down to business to create an environment of true innovation.
Sie lesen das E-Book in den Legimi-Apps auf:
Seitenzahl: 307
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020
Ähnliche
INNOVATION
GOING BEYOND THE BUZZWORDTO CONTINUOUSLY DRIVE GROWTH,IMPROVE THE BOTTOM LINE,AND ENACT CHANGE
Copyright © 2020 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.
Published simultaneously in Canada.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the Publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, Inc., 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, (978) 750–8400, fax (978) 646–8600, or on the Web at www.copyright.com. Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, (201) 748–6011, fax (201) 748–6008, or online at http://www.wiley.com/go/permissions.
Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: While the publisher and author have used their best efforts in preparing this book, they make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this book and specifically disclaim any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty may be created or extended by sales representatives or written sales materials. The advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for your situation. You should consult with a professional where appropriate. Neither the publisher nor author shall be liable for any loss of profit or any other commercial damages, including but not limited to special, incidental, consequential, or other damages.
For general information on our other products and services or for technical support, please contact our Customer Care Department within the United States at (800) 762–2974, outside the United States at (317) 572–3993 or fax (317) 572–4002.
Wiley publishes in a variety of print and electronic formats and by print-on-demand. Some material included with standard print versions of this book may not be included in e-books or in print-on-demand. If this book refers to media such as a CD or DVD that is not included in the version you purchased, you may download this material at http://booksupport.wiley.com. For more information about Wiley products, visit www.wiley.com.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Goryachev, Alex, 1975- author.Title: Fearless innovation : going beyond the buzzword to continuously drive growth, improve the bottom line, and enact change / Alex Goryachev.Description: Hoboken, New Jersey : Wiley, 2020. | Includes index.Identifiers: LCCN 2019036622 (print) | LCCN 2019036623 (ebook) | ISBN 9781119579526 (hardback) | ISBN 9781119579618 (adobe pdf) | ISBN 9781119579588 (epub)Subjects: LCSH: Disruptive technologies. | Success in business.Classification: LCC HD45 .G59 2020 (print) | LCC HD45 (ebook) | DDC 658.4/063–dc23LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019036622LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019036623
Cover design: Wiley
To my son Matthew.I hope you’ll always be as fearless and innovative as you are today.I love you with all my heart.
Guide
Cover
Table of Contents
Preface
Pages
iii
iv
v
ix
x
xi
xii
xiii
xiv
xv
xvi
xvii
xviii
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
177
178
179
181
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
Acknowledgments
Many people helped make Fearless Innovation a reality. I could never have made it on my own this far without the support of my mentors and “co-conspirators” who pushed me to accomplish more than I have ever imagined.
Throughout my career, I’ve worked for truly unique leaders, such as Gerald T. Halpin, Chris Thompson, Paul Stark, Ronald Acra, Hina Patel, Brent Wahl, Venkat Narayanan, David Ward, and Gene Hall. I want to thank all of them for supporting my aspirations, and helping me discover and develop my true potential. I owe a special debt of gratitude to Maciej Kranz for encouraging me to pursue what’s possible, including writing this book.
When it comes to changing culture, most of my work would be impossible without the courage, leadership, and perseverance of Mathilde Durvy, who partnered with me to take employee innovation programs to new levels and to then establish them as the best in the industry. I am also fortunate to be surrounded by fearless trailblazers who always inspire me to change the status quo. I am indebted to Jenn Loftin, who always proved that innovation can indeed blossom when supported by the right structure, discipline, and governance. My special gratitude goes to Anna Gnatyuk and Jenny Agustin for believing in me and joining me on this innovation adventure. I am lucky to have amazing friends and co-workers who have supported me through my journey-thank you Olga Beregovaya, Lindy Bartell, Miroslav Sarbaev, John Parello, Michael Maltese, Wayne Cuervo, Andrey Kozlov, Gulia Trombini, Marc Musgrove, Simon Gladin, Masha Finkelstein, Dave Maslana, Chris Melching, Mikhail Pakhomov, Roman Kostin, Alex Hills, Irina Kosinovsky, Zhenya Kurts, Flora Freitas, Tatyana Rudchenko, Yuri Naumov, Guillaume De Saint Marc, Marina Velednitsky, Tom Kneen, Elena Ropaeva, Nick Chrissos, Yelena Denisova, Peter Shearman, Vadim Stepanchenko, Boris Fomitchev, Oseas Ramirez Assad and Cayla Young.
Wendy Khentigan and Marla Flores Reves deserve special recognition for helping me focus on what’s important in my life, which made writing this book much more joyful and rewarding.
Finally, none of this would have possible without the help of my family, most importantly my wife, Maria, and my son, Matthew. Words cannot express how much I appreciate Maria’s and Matthew’s encouragement, understanding, support, and pure unconditional love. I am also grateful to my parents, Yuri and Tamara, and my sister, Julia, who has always inspired me to seek change and adventure over safety and comfort.
The task of turning this book into reality is shared by so many people, which includes tremendous support from Mark Nelson, Mat Miller, and Zachary Schisgal, Vicki Adang, Amy Handy, Jocelyn Kwiatkowski, and Jenny Douglas. Scott Kirsner, cofounder and editor of Innovation Leader magazine, graciously provided invaluable guidance and archival resources that were essential in researching this book.
And last, but not least, I am grateful to Zach Gajewski, the most amazing editor in the world, who spent countless hours with me bringing this book to life.
Introduction: From Buzzword to Reality
Innovation is a horrible word.
The term has become so buzzy, it seems to have lost all practical meaning. Ask a hundred people to define it and you’ll receive just as many different answers. And, you know what? All of these answers might be right—or they might be wrong.
This is, in part, due to the fact that discussions about the topic are everywhere today. If you actually google “What is innovation?” you will receive nearly half a million results, and according to Google Trends, the number of search requests for news related to “innovation” tripled between 2014 and 2019.1 Not a day goes by without another dozen articles, blog posts, or think pieces on the concept, highlighting how we all need to be more innovative and showcasing the latest process and methodology that should be immediately adopted. We read, listen, and try to keep up, looking for clarity and some type of real-world application of what is seen as a squishy subject with no end.
Today, 63 percent of companies are hiring chief innovation officers, and more than 90 percent of companies are implementing new tech to support innovation processes.2 Sure, that’s great, but there’s a problem here: despite the obvious growth of demand for “innovation,” we remain utterly confused about the concept. In the meantime, most leaders believe that dropping the word into a shareholder letter from time to time or mentioning it at a quarterly employee all-hands meeting is enough to prove that they’re on top of the trend. Let me let you in on a little secret: they’re not.
Many of these organizations relegate innovation to one very special team somewhere in the “hip” part of the office, featuring free snacks and “edgy” motivational posters, and they think they’ve done their job—innovation is enabled; time to celebrate! It’s understandable. With so much information out there on the topic, it’s hard to know where to start, let alone with what goal and for what purpose, even for the “practitioners” themselves. Leaders are enthusiastic about encouraging everyone to be innovative, yet vague about what this means in practical terms. In return, employees have little interest in something that their bosses don’t know what to do with or can’t even describe.
But why does this matter? If “innovation” is such a buzzword, what’s the point? And why in the hell are you reading another book on the topic? Why not stick to business as usual and just ask marketing and PR to make your company appear more innovative? Innovation is an amorphous concept anyhow, the business jargon du jour, the latest flavor of the month. In short, a bunch of bullshit. Right?
Well, I’m here to tell you that though innovation can be confusing, misunderstood, and even pull-your-hair-out frustrating at times (just take a look at my author photo), it is, in fact, far from bullshit. Throughout the centuries, it has been at the core of human aspirations and essential to the world’s most successful companies, organizations, cities, and countries. Innovation is the only proven path to business growth and societal impact, whether measured in money or happiness. It’s not a “nice-to-have”—it’s a necessity.
If leaders refuse innovation, then it disappears in the cracks, left without clear purpose, unmeasured and unaccountable. Even if they give it lip service, without action and reinforcement, it goes nowhere and actually sets organizations on a dangerous and eventually self-destructive path. But when leaders embrace innovation and welcome change, well, that’s another story.
Living with Change
I’m no stranger when it comes to dealing with change. After all, I was born in a place that no longer exists—the USSR. When I was sixteen years old, I witnessed my home country, one of the most powerful in the world at the time, collapse practically overnight, affecting nearly 300 million people and generating sudden economic and societal shifts that will continue to have an impact for generations to come.
Later in my teens, I was transplanted to the United States. Suddenly, I was exposed to shockingly different societal and economic norms than those I had been used to, and I felt a little lost, uncertain where I fit in. I longed for some type of purpose, meaningful connection, and freedom of self-expression that I couldn’t find at first. My English and overall social skills weren’t the greatest, so I invested my time in teaching myself the Linux operating system, hung out with a local hacking community of fellow weird outcasts, and became a supporter of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a groundbreaking nonprofit that was the first to understand the importance of civil liberties and personal privacy in cyberspace. These were the best choices I’ve ever made.
During the early dot-com days, I was lucky to experience the community spirit of Silicon Valley before the boom. I was warmly welcomed in California by a diverse group of free-thinking technology professionals from around the world, and I invested my days and nights in projects that came to define and shape the future of digital entertainment and the music industry.
In addition to co-founding and launching a music touring and production company, I found my tribe and worked nonstop at Liquid Audio, a startup that pioneered a new business model for the music industry, allowing consumers to purchase high-quality music content online, while ensuring artists and labels still got paid. Later, I went to the “dark side” and practically moved in to Napster’s offices, the largest and most controversial online music service of the early 2000s. They were being sued by Metallica, one of my favorite bands at the time, as well as the Record Industry Association of America (RIAA), which was worth billions of dollars, and I was there to help Napster change their technology architecture and business model while they raced against the clock to survive.
Fast forward a decade, and I landed at Cisco, leading the company’s Co-Innovation Centers, setting strategy, and, more importantly, driving co-innovation with startups, key customers, and channel partners, as well as with cities and governments in fourteen countries. These award-winning innovation programs also provide employees, at all levels, with the opportunity to share and implement their biggest and brightest ideas. Even better, they ensure that the rest of the company actively supports these employees in these endeavors.
Besides leading the overall co-innovation strategy at Cisco in the Corporate Development and Strategy team, I’ve worked in numerous areas of the company, contributing to its success and helping to shape its approach to innovation throughout the enterprise. Starting in sales, I worked on ecosystem enablement, then moved to global marketing in an effort to streamline global operations. Among other departments, I also held positions in corporate finance, working on business transformation, and in engineering, developing new emerging technologies and business models. These experiences have provided me with a 360-degree view of how the World’s #1 Workplace operates, innovates, and succeeds.3
Having given hundreds of presentations on innovation and spoken with thousands of people about the topic, I’ve had the chance to regularly share my experiences and learn from my peers around the world. Those with less hands-on experience with the topic, however, tend to ask me the same questions over and over again: Is innovation real, or is it a load of BS? If it is real, how should we innovate? How do we overcome our fear of missing out on trends or failing? Where should we focus our attention? And wait, what’s innovation again?
When I answer these questions, I feel like I’m a part of a support group, and I am often the “innovation therapist.” Because really, that’s what most people I’ve spoken with need (no, not therapy, though some of us certainly do need that), but a clear, pragmatic guide—relaxed, jargon-free, and unpretentious—that will help them get over their confusion and start innovating with a sense of purpose.
Okay, But WTF Is Innovation?
I’m glad you asked.
Innovation isn’t a thing, it’s a mindset and attitude made of up clear principles—those discussed throughout this book—that help individuals, organizations, and societies adapt to change, survive and grow, progress and prosper. As the world continues to evolve, innovation enables our communities, businesses, and selves to evolve with it. Innovation is more art than science, but its principles can easily be put into practice.
When truly baked into a company’s culture, innovation is a constant, whether the company is working on large initiatives or small projects. Yet, keeping it alive requires focused effort—innovation is not a one-time event. It drives the survival of the fittest and, whether it is Darwinian evolution or God’s plan, it is a continuous process. The only way for a company’s business strategy to evolve, then, is by embracing innovation.
Change happens naturally; innovation doesn’t. It can’t be “checked in on” from time to time; it has to be central to any organization and understood by employees from top to bottom—nothing short of a culture of constant, conscious awareness and transformation. Otherwise, innovation will not be prioritized, meaning organizations, and their leaders, will be stuck in the present, which will quickly become the past.
Speaking of the past, innovation’s nothing new either: it has been taking place since the first humans began walking upright on two feet. What’s changed over millions of years, though—and what is always changing—is the environment we’re innovating in, and how the concept is applied. There are now more tools than ever for innovation, but there is also more pressure from consumers, citizens, shareholders, employees, leaders, and business owners to “innovate” by any means possible. Progression is the way of the world, and organizations exist only when they serve human ambitions, meeting the demands of progress.
We’ve entered the Fourth Industrial Revolution, a time in which we’re experiencing rapid technological, social, and cultural change. Such revolutions always shift the balance of power and create winners and losers—those businesses that can’t keep up will languish and perish. For example, in 2018 the innovation consulting firm Innosight found that between 1964 and 2016, the average tenure of companies on the S&P 500 narrowed from thirty-three years to twenty-four years.4 This tenure is forecasted to continue to shrink, down to twelve years by 2027, by which time more than three-quarters of the S&P 500 will consist of new companies that we have not yet heard of.5
Still, most companies don’t seem that concerned. As the author and social commentator Scott Adams, of Dilbert fame, pointed out, “Large corporations welcome innovation and individualism in the same way the dinosaurs welcomed large meteors.”6 We can toss the word around as much as we want, but unless the concept is given the attention it deserves, we, too, will end up extinct. Most leaders, particularly middle managers, feel that they have enough to worry about as it is and tend to focus on what’s in front of them at the moment. Keep the shareholders happy and the business profitable, and whoever’s next in line can worry about the future. They look at innovation as something that isn’t essential to their business or job, failing to realize that innovation is actually essential to everyone’s job. Sadly, they’re missing out on the new reality that foresight for the long-term is just as important as insight into the short-term.
Instead of producing a real impact, talk of innovation generates way more slogans than clear, actionable results. It also causes many leaders to enter anxiety mode. They deny the need to evolve, or they grasp at straws for a concept of innovation that either doesn’t exist or is completely irrelevant for their organizations. In response, like so many of us, they turn a blind eye to what’s right there in front of them, ignoring the current pace of change we’re experiencing and placing their attention elsewhere. We do this in our personal and professional lives all the time, getting trapped in tactical issues, tangible problems we must address immediately, without understanding the underlying purpose, the bigger picture, or even our full potential.
Fearless Innovation
It’s time to take a breath, step back, and truly begin to understand what innovation is and what it isn’t; how it can make a difference between surviving and thriving; and how it can be applied to more than just our day-to-day jobs, but also to the transformation of our businesses, our personal and professional success, and the improved conditions of our society and planet.
The principles outlined in this book aim to do just that. They’re straightforward, timely, and actionable, no matter the size of your company or organization. Whether executing innovation through leadership and strategy; measuring innovation efforts or outcomes; building cross-functional, diverse teams; working with the entire ecosystem to capture bigger opportunities; or communicating the value of innovation to employees, partners, and beyond, such principles offer a blueprint to driving growth, creating clear measurable value, and enacting change. I have little interest in brainwashing you with innovation as a theoretical concept and prefer to explore the practical whys and hows. Throughout my life I’ve learned to question conventional wisdom, challenge authority, quickly adapt to my surroundings, and shape my own future. One might say that in the process, I’ve developed a highly functioning BS meter, which comes in quite handy when innovation is concerned. So all of the advice in this book is backed by experience, and when skepticism is necessary, you’ll see plenty of it.
This material is not scripted in line with the “innovation management” gospel or theoretical “methodologies,” those marketing phrases and complicated flowcharts that sound and look good but provide little practical substance. In many ways, I consider this guide an “antimethodology” methodology, an open process to get to the heart of innovation and show the immense impact it can have in any setting; so you won’t find any flowcharts here. What we need is to see through the BS, acknowledge the reality of unending disruption, and present innovation for what it really is.
Since my early days, I’ve learned that change happens no matter what. We have an option of embracing it through innovation or resisting it through our own denial. It’s our choice, but without open minds and focus, our attempts to create some type of meaningful impact on the world—whether in our city, communities, families, or where we work—will fall short. The only way to create a truly positive, lasting effect is by embracing change, and using it to our advantage. We all know that any lasting transformation within an organization doesn’t happen quickly, as it requires a leap of faith in addition to discipline, commitment, and creativity. It won’t always be easy, but that’s not the point: innovation is a journey, and there is simply no future without it.
Notes
1
Google Trends, Search Term: Innovation,
https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&gprop =news&q=innovation
.
2
Forbes Coaches Council, “What Can Your Organization Do to Become More Innovative?”
Forbes
, July 13, 2017,
https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbescoachescouncil/2017/07/13/what-can-your-organization-do-to-become-more-innovative
.
3
Rola Dagher, “#1 Best Place to Work,”
Cisco Canada Blog
, October 4, 2019,
https://gblogs.cisco.com/ca/2019/10/04/1-best-place-to-work/
4
Scott D. Anthony, S. Patrick Viguerie, Evan I. Schwartz, and John Van Landeghem, “2018 Corporate Longevity Forecast: Creative Destruction is Accelerating,”
Innosight Executive Briefing
, February 2018,
https://www.innosight.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Innosight-Corporate-Longevity-2018.pdf
5
Ibid.
6
B.R., “An A–Z of Business Quotations: Innovation,”
Economist
, August 17, 2012,
https://www.economist.com/schumpeter/2012/08/17/innovation
.
Chapter 1Innovation Is Now or Never
Let’s talk unicorns. No, not the mythical horse-like creature with one horn that was used as a symbol for Jesus Christ in medieval times, and depending on who you ask, poops rainbows (thanks, Squatty Potty). The unicorns I’m referring to are those privately owned startups valued at a billion dollars or more that are currently taking over the world. As recently as 2015 there were only eighty-two such companies; as of 2018 there were more than 295.1 Fast forward just a year, and by April of 2019 there were 326, with a collective worth of almost $1.1 trillion.2 Many of those were household names, such as 23andMe, Stripe, and SpaceX, along with Uber and Pinterest, which have since gone public. Others you may never have heard of, like the real estate broker Lianjia, the Bitcoin mining application company Bitmain Technologies, or the ByteDance Internet and AI technology company, all three of which happen to be Chinese firms.3
Unicorns are here because of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, which is transforming the way we live, work, and learn, unlike any changes seen before. As a modern society, we’ve come a long way since Britain’s technological advancements in the mid-eighteenth century that led to the First Industrial Revolution, a time that may seem very quaint in comparison to today. Within a hundred years, the world would experience the start of the Second Industrial Revolution, the birth of the assembly line and mass production, not to mention the widespread use of electricity. The Third Industrial Revolution, which seems like just yesterday to many, was another leap forward, with digital manufacturing, automated production, and global Internet connectivity. Organizations had to keep up with technological progress to stay relevant. Those who particularly understood the changes around them were able to shape the world that we live in today.
We have now entered the Fourth Industrial Revolution and are experiencing change at an unprecedented pace, level, and intensity. From augmented reality to genomics, our society is becoming infused with new technologies embedded not just within our homes and workplaces, but even our bodies. We are rapidly blurring the physical and the digital, transforming the way we live and, in some sense, what it even means to be human. This transformation is just in its infancy, as business models will continue to be disrupted and access to technology will increase, along with the ability to develop, launch, and scale new products and services in an ever-shorter time span.
From the cotton spun by the British in the 1760s to the digitization of the twenty-first century, continuous innovation has been necessary for the unicorns of their day to emerge, spearhead change, and prosper. As human societies move forward, so do their businesses. Change always creates opportunities. There’s no telling exactly where this hyper speed of exponential change will lead us, but if we don’t act now, we’ll miss out on the greatest opportunities of our lifetime.
Innovation is urgent, time sensitive, and always present. It’s how we’ve adapted to change and succeeded over the past two and a half centuries, and long before. As with every era behind us, there are new business, social, and economic issues that must be tackled in the Fourth Industrial Revolution, and just as the challenges and opportunities of the past had to be met, so do those of today. If you want your organization to survive, remain competitive, and prosper, then you can’t wait to start taking action. Otherwise, you’ll be forgotten, passed up by the next in line, or blindsided by disruption, because today’s unicorns could be gone tomorrow. In short, innovation never sleeps, and we can’t sleep on it.
Still, despite the obvious need, many organizations lack a clear focus when it comes to innovation or fail to align their efforts with market realities. They “kind of” know that they “must innovate,” yet they are not sure “where” and “why.” Sadly, leadership is missing the big picture as well; most executives don’t even know where their innovation priorities should lie, and by some accounts only 14 percent of executives feel “highly confident” that their organizations are prepared for the changes taking place in the Fourth Industrial Revolution.4 Many of us simply don’t know what to do.
So where do we begin?
Don’t Join the Dying Breeds
You’re probably thinking that, as a rule, “don’t join the dying breeds” is pretty much self-evident. Who would want to be a casualty of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, and wouldn’t most leaders do all they could to avoid such a fate? It’s a good point, but the truth is it doesn’t always play out that way in reality, no matter our best intentions. Let me give you a simple example: We all know that exercise is key to living longer—no one would deny that. Yet the US weight-loss industry is currently valued at $72 billion and growing.5 If we actually followed the advice of our doctors and exercised diligently, we wouldn’t be spending so much on meal replacement programs, pills, and the latest, greatest diets. The US is one of the most educated nations on earth,6 but this hasn’t protected it from an obesity epidemic.7 Despite knowledge about the benefits of exercise, and an overall desire to live longer, nearly 40 percent of Americans are obese.8 Even though we know better, we can’t seem to help ourselves; many companies that have receded into oblivion are no different. Maybe they made the effort, maybe they didn’t, but one thing is for sure—they have gone extinct, some along with their entire industries, even when they, too, “knew better.”
The ever-growing list of recent former industry pioneers that have quickly disappeared in this new era is well-known and well-trodden: AOL, BlackBerry, Kodak, Myspace, Motorola, Nokia, Polaroid, Sears, Toys “R” Us, Xerox, Blockbuster—it continues on and on. You can still visit the last remaining Blockbuster in the world, in Bend, Oregon, which has become a popular tourist attraction, but that’s it for what was once the world’s largest video rental chain.9 This fate could have been avoided had the company’s focus been on innovation, allowing leaders to see what was happening right in front of them and what was to come. In 2008, Jim Keyes, the CEO of Blockbuster at the time, told the Motley Fool, “Neither RedBox nor Netflix are even on the radar screen in terms of competition.”10 Of course, Keyes is not alone.
Many years ago, a recruiter asked me to consider interviewing for a small Palo Alto startup called Facebook. I laughed it off. The concept of social media already existed, and Myspace—a popular social media network at the time that once surpassed Google as the most visited website in the United States—seemed to be doing incredibly well and meeting all its customers’ needs. Friggin’ Myspace! When the platform ended up losing most, if not all, of the music that its users uploaded in the twelve years between 2003 and 2015 (which amounted to 53 million songs from 14.2 million artists), it was almost like nothing happened.11 That was because by 2015, Myspace had fallen so far into obscurity, no one seemed to notice the loss of so much un-backed-up data—this was the company that I thought would make startups like Facebook completely hopeless.
Shortsightedness stifles our ability to stay relevant and contributes to a mindset that lulls us into believing that as long as everything is generally fine now, it’ll be fine in the near, or distant, future as well. When it comes to the business environment, today almost always gets in front of tomorrow. Part of human nature is that as we grow older, we may be wiser (though maybe not always), but we also become self-centered and pay less attention to the changes happening around us. The same idea applies to most leaders: even when change is on the horizon, they resist it or brush it off, as if they will find shelter in this “proven” strategy that has failed so many companies before. We often don’t take the time to ask “Is change coming?” let alone to answer this question. Instead, when a major shift takes place, we tend to respond in one of three ways.
The Three (Worst) Responses to Change
The first response is to ignore it, the good ol’ “stick your head in the sand and hope for the best.” Perhaps no better example illustrates this tactic than the lack of timely response from brick-and-mortar retailers to online commerce. As online sales took off, the days of “hanging out” at the mall, casually shopping from store to store with a quick bite at the food court, started to fade quite quickly. Mall and department store shopping, once seen as quintessentially American pastimes, became two of the earliest casualties of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Some stores that still inhabit these cavernous pieces of antiquity have diversified with online sales, but many retailers don’t have a long-term transformation plan outside of this move, which may already be too little, too late. The retail apocalypse is only beginning: a 2019 report from the investment bank UBS found that with each 1 percent increase in online retail, up to 8,500 physical stores will need to close, leading to 75,000 stores being shuttered by 2026.12 Sadly, instead of investing in new business models and capabilities, many retailers are just praying they aren’t one of those 75,000.
The second response to change is another classic: shame it. Instead of actually doing something when change is afoot, many of us invest our efforts in resisting it by saying “it’s only temporary,” “it will never work,” or that any unproven initiative, idea, or endeavor will be as dead as a doornail in no time. We poke fun or call its validity into question. We even ridicule it or try to laugh it off. In fact, if it’s innovative, expect people to put it down.
For generations, groundbreaking innovations in music that challenge the norms have been targets of this negative, shortsighted response. Take jazz, for example. Known as “devil’s music” when it first started to gain popularity and notoriety in the 1920s, its critics included Henry Ford, the New York Times, and Thomas Edison, who said the music sounded better when played backward.13 As the ’20s came to a close, sixty communities throughout the US had laws in place barring jazz from being played at public dances.14 Of course, jazz’s popularity only increased over time and it is now respected as one of America’s most cherished art forms.
