Are there lessons we can learn from the people who innovated before us? The Heritage of Innovation podcasts are a series of interviews I will be conducting with people who created killer innovations that changed the world. We will relive some great milestones in the history of technology and learn lessons on the nature of innovation from the people who were the driving force behind some of the world’s most important breakthroughs.
In the second part of my interview with Geoffrey Moore, we continue our discussion on innovation in the present day, co-innovation in an organization and much more. For those of you just joining us in the series, Geoffrey Moore is consultant and author of multiple books, including the best-seller Crossing the Chasm, which has been heralded as the bible for entrepreneurial marketing. I'd like to share some highlights from the second part of the interview.
A lot of things have changed in the US, and one of the biggest questions is how to reignite innovation.
“I think that the biggest ignition of innovation is fear. If you think about the Apollo program, Kennedy said on record that he didn’t care about space – he cared about the Russians. He cared about Sputnik. I think global warming is going to be the Apollo stimulus of these next several decades. I think this healthcare thing is another one. These are two forcing functions where you have to say – ‘look, on the current course and speed, we have a massive train wreck ahead of us.’ The human race has not been very good, frankly, about looking down the track. Sooner or later, we realize that train is getting close. What we seem to do as a race is ignore, ignore, ignore, then oh my god! And when we go ‘oh my God’ it creates this incredible opportunity for innovation.”
Although one of the biggest obstacles for many people is fear, the passion for innovation is there. In our interview, Geoffrey discusses another way to look at innovation.
“The world needs a lot of people. We have this metaphor called the inventors, deployers, and optimizers and then the orchestrators that try to keep all three of them effective. The world needs all three. In fact, if you don’t have a very strong optimization engine you can’t free up the resources to deploy the next generation of invention. So if somebody says I really am fearful – then don’t do it! Do what you’re good at. We used to work innovation as synonymous with invention, especially in [Silicon Valley]. But no: inventors innovate and so do deployers and optimizers. There’s a lot of innovation in optimizing things by taking an existing process and making it more efficient, and it’s very fulfilling. But if you want to be an inventor, which means ‘I want to do stuff that’s never been done before,’ you can’t be very fearful. You should be respectful because you can’t be cavalier. You break things when you invent, you always do. And you make mistakes and people do get hurt, so you have to be respectful and humble about it, but you can’t be fearful.”
You can download and listen to the second part of the interview here. For more information on Geoffrey and his thoughts on innovation, you can visit his blog. Be sure to check back again soon for more upcoming interviews with great thought leaders.
