I lived in
a villa in the Dubai Marina with an ICT system that was mind-boggling. Cameras,
sensors and screens allowed control and monitoring via the internet. Yet none
of it could be made to work. It was not even possible to adjust the temperature,
which was stuck at 17°C. That is what you tend to get when you go for cutting-edge
technology branded ‘smart’.
The term ‘innovation’
is used so much that it has practically become meaningless. At the same time,
it is billed as the Holy Grail for overcoming every modern challenge. Whenever
you hear innovation called for, it is worthwhile to question how, when and to
whom it is beneficial.
Innovation
is not just misrepresented in the consumer market. Consider the F-35 fighter
jet, with an estimated lifetime cost of $1,5tr (!). After seven years of continuous
delays, it is still not militarily operational. In short, the plane has simply
been made too complicated to work as it should. For example, there are 24 million lines of
computer code just to fly it. There are few systems in the world more complex
than this.
Both public
and private organisations can fall victim of engaging in initiatives and
routines either unrelated to or that directly impede their supposed end goal
and purpose. On all levels, employees are often compensated in a way to make
them neither care or acknowledge this disconnect between their mission and their
efforts towards achieving it.
Malcolm
Gladwell argued in ‘The Tipping Point’ that, when any division grows beyond the
approximate size of 30 people working together on a particular project, the
links between them become too complex for the minds of individual members to process
effectively, with efficiency suffering as a consequence.
In line
with this logic, I believe that, when an organisation grows beyond a certain
size, group belonging becomes too diffuse and diluted for members to relate to
and value. When shared interests and a sense of joint responsibility
disintegrate, we become willing to enrich ourselves at the expense of, and
corresponding harm to, the collective. As such, I would argue that the end
product of communism and capitalism is, ironically, similar in terms of the
effect on organisational behaviour.
Why we fall
down this slippery slope in the first place is, I believe, due to our
relentless pursuit of economies of scale. Somehow, how large organisations
adopt many disadvantages of scale is
usually suppressed. For instance, how there can be a sharply diminishing rate
of return for each additional employee once a certain threshold in size and
scope is passed. Look at recent innovation at Microsoft, Sony or Nokia. Though
many believe otherwise, it is not as simple as a case of not being hip enough
to attract the best people. They have attracted too many!
Nonetheless,
the determining success factor for increasing the wellbeing of both our lives
and businesses will depend on innovation that can solve actual needs and
increase efficiencies. This is different from innovation as a gimmick to fuel
commerce and be able to charge a premium.
Innovation
is about finding the inflection point of the greatest possible utility at the
highest possible simplicity. It is here where you can see the relationship
between seemingly disparate works of genius like Beethoven’s Ninth, the iPhone
or the T-Ford.
From waste management and debilitating traffic and air
pollution, all will no doubt require as much in terms of resolute determination
as technological innovation in order to overcome.
In aiming for the goal of as simple
as possible, but not simpler, it can be a challenge to resist the temptation of
this wrong sort of innovation. That
is, the type of innovation that allows the most resource-intense and
technologically-sophisticated organizations to unlearn even the most basic
abilities, such as how to make an airplane fly or how to control a thermostat. While
today’s problems are ever
more complex, their solutions will remain focused on simplification.
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