Great post. This reminds me of a New Yorker article, Groupthink, from a couple of years ago[0]. Essentially, disagreement fosters creativity, not brainstorming platitudes like 'there are no wrong ideas'.
An excerpt:
...dissent stimulates new ideas because it encourages
us to engage more fully with the work of others and to
reassess our viewpoints. “There’s this Pollyannaish
notion that the most important thing to do when working
together is stay positive and get along, to not hurt
anyone’s feelings,” she says. “Well, that’s just wrong.
Maybe debate is going to be less pleasant, but it will
always be more productive. True creativity requires
some trade-offs.”
The article is terrific and I'm mentally made note of 3 techniques that I've used over the past few years:
1. Thinking on your own can lead to more solutions than thinking in a group.
2. Dissent and constraints stimulate creativity.
3. Insane, off-the-wall, unproductive ideas can stimulate creativity in everyone else.
I dunno, I'm not totally sold... Often times I've worked with people who I pretty much thought were bad engineers and they were the most boisterous. I'm not saying being boisterous in itself is bad, but it's like it was there primary weapon to make EVERYTHING an issue.
Healthy debate is good, but... I dunno. I hate giving bad engineers more ammo to act crazy.
I believe that the article was talking about disagreement, critique, and debate. Being "noisy" and "boisterous" sounds like something else entirely. Productive debate ought to be calm, civil, rational, and without inflated egos.
I think one of the main reasons I've failed to innovate inside a large company, while succeeding at building new things at startups, is because I find it so hard to maintain a positive attitude inside a corporate environment. However, at a startup, when I'm starving, I find optimism in everything and build nonstop.
So far this is a bit of a horrifying conundrum where I am a technical startup failure, but in good spirits or a corporate success and in bad mood all the time.
I've found when I'm at a startup there is enormous willingness to believe that my crazy ideas might create an opportunity -- likely because C-suite has nothing to lose and everything to gain. While I'm in a corp environment at the top of the market, VP's have everything to lose and very little they can imagine that can get better (other than competitive catchup scenarios).
This leads to a really deadly cycle, where large companies shun real innovation because of the perceived risk being 100,000,000x higher than at a startup since one has 0 to lose, and the other has billions.
The net-net result here is that big corps never end up being first movers, since they need to see opportunity illustrated by a competitor before they move on it. This sets up the corp team for failure though, as they are assigned to catch up to a competitor already established and building a product on a good foundation and likely years ahead in thinking.
Would you say that, for this reason, large companies should maintain small insulated "Google X"-style incubation divisions to attempt to get the best of both worlds (stability of the big company with the risk-taking of the small)?
There has to be someone, or some group, to translate crazy cool ideas into viable products that match a market need.
Ideas and inventions on their own are not enough.
I know plenty of corps have a skunkworks R&D division. But - with the possible exception of Steve Jobs - I've never seen an equivalent elite skunkinnovation marketing division which exists solely to turn brilliant original ideas into brilliant marketable products for new customer groups.
I think creating separate quasi-elite innovation groups ruins the spirit of innovation for the overall corp culture.
It should be emphasized that everyone has "Google X"-like responsibility, and managers especially need to be trained to listen, accept, and support suggested projects by their reports.
The goal generally is to split the company into "exploitation" and "exploration" divisions, as in the types of innovations that the divisions pursue.
So, the traditional group still innovates, but focuses on product or incremental innovations. The 'innovation group' then is one that has free rein to pursue 'radical innovations.'
In general - exploitation requires homogeneity and consensus, while exploration benefits from heterogeneity and episodes of conflict. This still focuses everyone on innovative effort, but if management can identify how people fit in / which kinds of innovations they can do best, then this 'ambidexterous' organizational structure can work well.
Additionally, the 'elite' language is pretty bad - you're right, we should encourage everyone to innovate, and should encourage incremental improvements, which certainly have great value as well. It's easier to see the value of a radical innovation, but also the risk as well.
I would argue that everyone wants to be in the "innovation group"—it's where all the challenge is, it's where all the stuff that looks good on their resume is, and it's just plain inherently more interesting subject matter—and that those who end up "exploiting" rather than "exploring" feel like they've lost out because of this. Plus, R&D engineers frequently have less oversight and better pay.
The real problem is that the decision-process for who ends up in R&D—and who ends up handling dumb production bugs their whole life—looks more like the military officer/enlisted split than like a single career track. We have extremely talented, extremely experienced engineers who are 20-year "Non-Commissioned Officers", still stuck in the bullpen, while some of the newbies mysteriously end up fluttering away to be Ensigns.
I was working with some larger companies that ran internal hackathons to see if they could create smaller product improvements or advantageous changes to internal processes.
One of the "prizes" that the teams one was having their product funded and getting to take the time to build it.
R&D employees seemed to get a large boost of energy and optimism from trying these events while the company harvested innovation and efficiency.
I think the large majority of startups are still in the same paradigm of "sane, good ideas", with founders who are perfectly normal, just smart and usually very optimistic. All of that doesn't qualify as "crazy" as Steve Blank means it, as I read it. But true, crazy visionaries with ideas that most dismiss can build startups (extremely high potential ones), though I can't think of very many that fit that criteria, in part because by dentition (being crazy - in a good way here) has to be very rare.
Slack's founder said something along the lines of "The only unusual thing about me is a slightly better then average ability to predict what people's reaction will be."
What're a few good examples of "true, crazy visionaries"? The only ones I can think of were academics: Ted Nelson with Project Xanadu, Douglas Engelbart with his Mother of All Demos, etc.
You could say Jobs and Wozniak had to be "true, crazy visionaries" to implement Xerox PARC's research in the form of a relatively-cheap desktop microcomputer, but I don't think that's quite right; seeing the potential in a working prototype is a lot easier than having the vision required to build that prototype in the first place.
I like this concept, now how does one tell the difference between a tenacious insider with a crazy idea that just might work, and a tenacious insider with a horrible idea that they just won't let go of?
Good crazy ideas revolve around solving one or a handful of extremely hard engineering tasks, which make everything else easier "assuming the crazy thing works."
Bad crazy ideas break any part of that description. The single hard thing is new science/research instead of engineering, or the new hard thing won't make the rest easier, or the new hard thing is supposed to get rid of all the other problems.
"Luckily Houbolt got to make his case, and when Wernher Von Braun changed his mind and endorsed this truly insane idea, the rest of NASA followed."
If one can take this literally (and it wouldn't surprise me at all, but who knows for sure), it shows how even the cream of the crop smart people are subject to either group-think or fear of rocking the boat they are sitting in - now imagine if your workplace of relatively average people are subject to or engage in similar behavior.
The tenacity of the engineer to stand up to that culture is extremely admirable.
I've always thought an interesting idea for trying to curing cancer would be to put the world's best physicists, mathematicians, economists, and software engineers in a room together and see what happens.
(Conversely, it would be interesting to see what ideas the world's best medical researchers and biologists come up with for particle physics and software development.)
> If you invite the economists, you will end up concluding that, in order to stop cancer, you'll need to stop the Demand for [whatever it is that] cancer [-ous cells like].
I was hoping that the article would explain the fractions it so arbitrarily threw out. Did I miss a derivation of the numbers or a reference to supporting evidence? Does anyone else have any studies/proofs about such team demographics, etc?
Reminds me a bit of the 10th man idea from World War Z. Basically, if all 9 members of a council unanimously agreed on something, it was the 10th man's duty to act as if that thing was a certainty and prepare for it.
This all really plays into argumentative theory [0], which is the basic idea that human reason developed as an argumentative tool. Its main function isn't "true" or "logical" ideas, but rather persuasion and defense thereof. One major conclusion is that reason often works to reinforce existent ideals against external challenge, regardless of the merit of those ideas.
It's not that you have to be crazy, it's that most people around you are actually the crazy ones who push conformance on you because they can't hack it.
Innovating is difficult due to many people being so very risk averse. Ideally you have a balance between caution and boldness, however, people lose the will to take chances when the "bottom" line is at risk.
Of course, when it comes to what NASA does, the bottom line also involves human lives. Although, then NASA's existence would have and probably is still considered crazy by some number of people.
I remember when I created my first company. Being young I was so idealistic and did bet everything on it.
My parents believed I was nuts: "With no real world experience you should not create a company", they said, "first work for someone else, get experience, and then make a company if you want".
My girlfriend thought I was also nuts, she blackmailed me: My (stupid) idea or she. I chose my stupid idea. She wanted to get back a week later but it was too late.
My friends could not understand either why take "pies on the sky" when I had good options on a "real work".
After creating my company everything took way longer than expected, I started believing it was not a good idea after all, you only have the energy you have after it is depleted.
But one day I read a document I wrote when I started my company and was incredibly shocked that everything I wrote down in the past was becoming real in the present!!
Things started to roll, I got more confident...in the end it was a huge success precisely because it was such a crazy idea.
Had I followed my parents' advice, I would never have never done what I did, "experience in the past" would have blocked the possibilities of the future and the beginners mind.
I suspect this is why "collect the best and brightest and lavishly fund them" star-power startups tend to fizzle. The best and the brightest are that way by yesterday's metrics.
as a life long contrarian, reading this article gives me relief. 1/3 is definitely crazy, such as dedicating 4 years of my life to a software developed in complete social isolation full time with about 9 customers, mostly mom and pops small businesses paying $19.99/month
43 comments
[ 15.7 ms ] story [ 848 ms ] threadAn excerpt:
The article is terrific and I'm mentally made note of 3 techniques that I've used over the past few years:1. Thinking on your own can lead to more solutions than thinking in a group.
2. Dissent and constraints stimulate creativity.
3. Insane, off-the-wall, unproductive ideas can stimulate creativity in everyone else.
[0] http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/01/30/groupthink
Healthy debate is good, but... I dunno. I hate giving bad engineers more ammo to act crazy.
Re dissent:
If you're in an environment that values 'useful' dissent, that's great.
If not, you're 'that guy who argues about everything', 'hard to work with' etc.
So far this is a bit of a horrifying conundrum where I am a technical startup failure, but in good spirits or a corporate success and in bad mood all the time.
I've found when I'm at a startup there is enormous willingness to believe that my crazy ideas might create an opportunity -- likely because C-suite has nothing to lose and everything to gain. While I'm in a corp environment at the top of the market, VP's have everything to lose and very little they can imagine that can get better (other than competitive catchup scenarios).
This leads to a really deadly cycle, where large companies shun real innovation because of the perceived risk being 100,000,000x higher than at a startup since one has 0 to lose, and the other has billions.
The net-net result here is that big corps never end up being first movers, since they need to see opportunity illustrated by a competitor before they move on it. This sets up the corp team for failure though, as they are assigned to catch up to a competitor already established and building a product on a good foundation and likely years ahead in thinking.
Ideas and inventions on their own are not enough.
I know plenty of corps have a skunkworks R&D division. But - with the possible exception of Steve Jobs - I've never seen an equivalent elite skunkinnovation marketing division which exists solely to turn brilliant original ideas into brilliant marketable products for new customer groups.
It should be emphasized that everyone has "Google X"-like responsibility, and managers especially need to be trained to listen, accept, and support suggested projects by their reports.
So, the traditional group still innovates, but focuses on product or incremental innovations. The 'innovation group' then is one that has free rein to pursue 'radical innovations.'
In general - exploitation requires homogeneity and consensus, while exploration benefits from heterogeneity and episodes of conflict. This still focuses everyone on innovative effort, but if management can identify how people fit in / which kinds of innovations they can do best, then this 'ambidexterous' organizational structure can work well.
Additionally, the 'elite' language is pretty bad - you're right, we should encourage everyone to innovate, and should encourage incremental improvements, which certainly have great value as well. It's easier to see the value of a radical innovation, but also the risk as well.
The real problem is that the decision-process for who ends up in R&D—and who ends up handling dumb production bugs their whole life—looks more like the military officer/enlisted split than like a single career track. We have extremely talented, extremely experienced engineers who are 20-year "Non-Commissioned Officers", still stuck in the bullpen, while some of the newbies mysteriously end up fluttering away to be Ensigns.
R&D employees seemed to get a large boost of energy and optimism from trying these events while the company harvested innovation and efficiency.
You could say Jobs and Wozniak had to be "true, crazy visionaries" to implement Xerox PARC's research in the form of a relatively-cheap desktop microcomputer, but I don't think that's quite right; seeing the potential in a working prototype is a lot easier than having the vision required to build that prototype in the first place.
http://steveblank.com/2015/03/11/fear-of-failure-and-lack-of...
I don't know, but I agree with you that this is a good question.
Bad crazy ideas break any part of that description. The single hard thing is new science/research instead of engineering, or the new hard thing won't make the rest easier, or the new hard thing is supposed to get rid of all the other problems.
If one can take this literally (and it wouldn't surprise me at all, but who knows for sure), it shows how even the cream of the crop smart people are subject to either group-think or fear of rocking the boat they are sitting in - now imagine if your workplace of relatively average people are subject to or engage in similar behavior.
The tenacity of the engineer to stand up to that culture is extremely admirable.
(Conversely, it would be interesting to see what ideas the world's best medical researchers and biologists come up with for particle physics and software development.)
I think we're on to something...
This all really plays into argumentative theory [0], which is the basic idea that human reason developed as an argumentative tool. Its main function isn't "true" or "logical" ideas, but rather persuasion and defense thereof. One major conclusion is that reason often works to reinforce existent ideals against external challenge, regardless of the merit of those ideas.
[0] http://evolution.binghamton.edu/evos/wp-content/uploads/2011...
Another SF writer (name escapes me) posited a Ministry of Sabotage, in charge of making government less omnipotent ...
It's not that you have to be crazy, it's that most people around you are actually the crazy ones who push conformance on you because they can't hack it.
Innovating is difficult due to many people being so very risk averse. Ideally you have a balance between caution and boldness, however, people lose the will to take chances when the "bottom" line is at risk.
Of course, when it comes to what NASA does, the bottom line also involves human lives. Although, then NASA's existence would have and probably is still considered crazy by some number of people.
We landed on the moon on July 20th 1969."
'Chapeau' (hats off).
Been paying attention to space and SF for way too many moons, had never read this story.
My parents believed I was nuts: "With no real world experience you should not create a company", they said, "first work for someone else, get experience, and then make a company if you want".
My girlfriend thought I was also nuts, she blackmailed me: My (stupid) idea or she. I chose my stupid idea. She wanted to get back a week later but it was too late.
My friends could not understand either why take "pies on the sky" when I had good options on a "real work".
After creating my company everything took way longer than expected, I started believing it was not a good idea after all, you only have the energy you have after it is depleted.
But one day I read a document I wrote when I started my company and was incredibly shocked that everything I wrote down in the past was becoming real in the present!!
Things started to roll, I got more confident...in the end it was a huge success precisely because it was such a crazy idea.
Had I followed my parents' advice, I would never have never done what I did, "experience in the past" would have blocked the possibilities of the future and the beginners mind.