Musings on Entrepreneurship and Innovation
Sunday, April 30, 2006Fear & Flawed Action Strategies
My EIP colleagues and I are trying to contribute to, and capitalize from, the theorized trend toward open innovation. In order to do so, we have positioned ourselves between individual inventors and branded manufacturers of consumer products. But, we'll need to address the fear on the part of inventors (as well as our own fear) in order to be effective over time.
Inventions as Hypotheses
I would like to propose that inventors create technologies, where technology means the contextual arrangement of people, ideas, and objects to accomplish a particular goal. In other words, an invention allows users do a specified job, the accomplishment of which can be measured, observed, or otherwise experienced in practice. Furthermore, for an invention to have sufficient value for users to adopt it (thus transforming the invention into an innovation), it should effectively address desired outcomes that are important to users and perceived as being under-served by existing solutions.
If the preceding is true, I would argue that an invention is a kind of hypothesis. That is, an invention is an assertion of a cause-and-effect relationship that says that the use of the invention in a given context will enable users to accomplish a job in a manner that measurably improves upon the achievement of important and previously under-served desired outcomes. By presenting an invention as a hypothesis, and by making underlying assumptions explict, uncertainty regarding the validity of the invention can be reduced. As Chris Argyris puts it:
To understand something is to be able to explain it. To explain it, it is necessary to state a causal relationship or mechanism that brings about whatever is supposed to have been understood. In other words, to be proven valid, understanding must be tested in the world of practice through the implementation of the causal claim(s) underlying it. That means the premises for any action must be made explicit, the inferences made explicit, and the conclusions put to as tough a test as possible.
We at EIP believe that by reducing such uncertainty, we can both increase the chances of commercialization and reduce time-to-market.
Fear of Threat or Embarassment
I believe that the preceding is rational and correct. However, neither the inventors I work with or I are entirely rational beings. I fear the embarassment of being wrong; inventors often fear the embarassment of seeing their inventions proved invalid or the threat of the theft of valid inventions. Chris Argyris argues that such fear can accentuate a tendency toward, what he calls, Model I behaviors. Furthermore, "Because effective learning depends on both the exchange of valid information and the public testing of attributions and assumptions, Model I tends to discourage it. Because long- term effectiveness depends on the possibility of such learning, Model I tends toward long-term ineffectiveness."
Argyris concludes that a different model of behavior - Model II - is more likely to lead to desired outcomes over time:
Model II couples articulateness and advocacy with an invitation to others to confront the views and emotions of both self and other. It seeks to alter views in order to base them on the most complete and valid information possible and construct positions to which the people involved can become internally committed…The behavioral strategies of Model II involve sharing power with anyone who has competence and is relevant to deciding about implementing the action in question.
This is why I believe that our skeptical embrace of the heretical will increase our success in "growing inventions into innovations."
