#0057: Anti-antibodies
Braingasm
Innovation is hard at the best of times, even when you’re in the unconstrained environment of a start-up, but it can be really hard when you are trying to innovate in a corporate or enterprise environment. All of the things that make large corporates so good at what they do — established markets, products, processes, cash flow — can create resistance to innovation. It’s almost like innovation is a foreign body entering the bloodstream of the corporate, and so it musters anti-innovation antibodies in response to resist the change.
I have seen six broadly different kinds of anti-innovation antibody in action:
- Project people vs BAU people (people): most corporates have vast swathes of people (business-as-usual people) whose job it is to make sure that nothing changes, that things keep running predictably, and what has worked in the past continues to be what works in the future. There is generally a much smaller group of people (project people) whose job it is to run projects that change the status quo. There is an obvious and inevitable tension between these groups of people. Depending on the culture, driven from the top, one will triumph over the other.
- Don’t screw with the revenue (business): Innovation, particularly of the kind that might result in the core business being attacked or disrupted can invoke a revenue antibody response. When senior execs, whose incentives are tied to revenues, hear about innovations that might change that revenue mix, they can be very effective at stonewalling or even shutting a project down.
- We can’t do that (product): When an innovation has the potential to move up or down the value chain, or even sideways, it can invoke a product antibody response, where the folks that own the existing product lines put up resistance and insist that the proposed innovation is outside the company’s comfort zone.
- They’re not our customers (customer): Similarly, a customer-oriented antibody response can occur when an innovation attempts to take the organisation towards new or different customer types. This is particularly apparent when B2C businesses try to innovate in B2B, or vice versa.
- The Oligopolists’ dilemma (market): In concentrated markets, innovation can be very tricky. Consider retail banking, which in most developed markets, is highly concentrated with a small number of large players holding the vast majority of market share between them. If one player innovates successfully and starts to draw customers away from the others, then their competitive response is to replicate the innovation to staunch the churn. At the end of this innovation cycle, all that really happened (at least from the perspective of the big players) is that the innovation ended up draining a bunch of profits out of the market. This is why the largest players in concentrated markets are often so bad at innovation (at least from the customer’s perspective) because it is basically not in their commercial interests to perturb the status-quo.
- The Trolley problem (incentives): Incentives can have a big impact on innovation, and can be responsible for an insidious kind of anti-body response. If you are not familiar with The Trolley Problem, it asks the question: is sacrificing one life to save the lives of many others the best possible outcome? Ethicists and philosophers have ruminated on this problem for many years. In terms of innovation, I relate it to the balance between the risk of doing something and failing, versus the risk of not doing anything and being disrupted. Humans have a tendency to be overweight loss avoidance in comparison to reward receipt when making decisions. This (generally) unconscious bias can lead organisations away from innovative decisions simply because they weight the risk of failure higher than they rate the rewards from potential success.
It’s not always possible to ameliorate these antibody responses, which is why corporate and enterprise innovation can be so difficult. Knowing their names and being able to recognise them in action is the first part of the battle.
Newsgasm
Getting the week off to a heartwarming start are two pieces of wonderful patent news: Farcebook has a new patent that allows it to determine a user’s social class. And Amazon has a patent for a wristband that tracks worker activity. How long before someone patents a personal robot that can wear your wristband and behave like you’re middle class? #facebook #amazon #social #workplace #whatcouldpossiblygowrong
Here’s an A16Z YouTube playlist on “The Autonomy Ecosystem: From Self-Driving Cars to Beyond!“. #autonomy #electric #selfdriving #cars
With a particularly contrarian perspective to the general narrative on autonomous trucks, this Uber report suggests that autonomous trucks will be good for truckers. Notwithstanding the source of the research, it does actually make sense that autonomous trucks will first run up and down highways (possibly in specially marked A-Lanes) and human drivers will take over to drive the non-highway components of the trips. #autonomy #electric #selfdriving #trucks
Why do the British (and most ex-British colonies) drive on the left? #driving
The General Data Protection Regulation comes into force on 25 May 2018. Here’s the UK Information Commissioner’s thoughts separating fact from fiction. #gdpr #data #privacy
This tweetstorm is about the best thing I’ve ever read about Bitcoin and Blockchain. For example: “It was invented by Satoshi Nakamoto, a developer at Nintendo who mysteriously disappeared in the 1990s. The multiplayer mode in Goldeneye N64, on which he was lead developer, uses a primitive form of Bitcoin to keep track of high scores.” #haha #bitcoin #blockchain #tongueincheek
Alternatively, here is a staggeringly useful set of Bitcoin and Blockchain links and other resources. Definitely bookmark this one. #bookmark #bitcoin #blockchain
More contrarian intuition: why hiring the ‘best’ people produces the least creative results. #team #people #hiring
It’s not April, is it? Study says: McDonald’s Fries Chemical May Cure Baldness. #baldness #hastobeajoke
This guy makes YouTube vids that explain a bunch of different topics in science, nature, and culture. Great fuel for a lazy Sunday afternoon YouTube vortex. #youtubevortex #knowledge
You thought quantum mechanics was weird? Check out entangled time. #science #physics #quantum
Silicon Valley visionary John Perry Barlow died this week. When he was 30 he drew up a list of 25 Principles of Human Behaviour. These are just great and well worth integrating into your outlook on life. #wordstoliveby
Only in Australia
Continuing the “everything in Australia is in murder-mode” theme, a two-meter brown snake has latched onto a man’s leg in Central Queensland. Luckily, the guy was able to escape. On a positive note, I learned a new word envenomation, which I hope I never, ever have to use. #onlyinaustralia
Regards,
M@
