Why Disruption Gets Ignored
by Miki Saxon
A few days ago CB insights shared a link to their collection of quotes about disruption from big name corporate leaders; they called it Foot In Mouth.
I sent it to my “list” with the following comment.
Ignorance? Idiocy? Arrogance?
All of the above?
The replies I received, one from my sister, a retired IT head, and the other from KG, were far more insightful than the queries I sent.
I thought both were worth sharing, so here they are.
From my sister.
Do you know of Joel Barker, the futurist? He’s been around since the mid-70s. I saw a video of his at a conference once, where he talked about paradigm shifts. His example then was Swiss watch makers. When two young kids brought the quartz watch to the Swiss watchmaking community for funding, the Swiss said, “No one will ever want a watch that doesn’t wind.” The kids went to the Japanese and the rest was history. Barker says that when humans have a paradigm, they automatically filter OUT anything that doesn’t support their paradigm. The Japanese had no watch paradigm and so could see the potential. I think those examples from CB are as much paradigm lock-in as stupidity. Or put another way, paradigms lead us to make dumb choices sometimes.
From KG
Upton Sinclair famously stated, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.” We may call it stupidity, but it really is vested interests. That’s why innovation comes from those who have little to lose or have no other alternative. No one thinks of vested interests when they work in our favor, only when (usually in hindsight) they are show to have caused loss are they called stupid.
In a time of proven global warming, the US has chosen, as the only nation in the world, to reject the potentially cataclysmic consequences of a warmer globe and have invested $4 trillion to develop the domestic oil & gas industry rather than investing these monies in future technologies that can save the planet. These vested interests are causing an existential crisis, and all the systems we’ve built.
There are so many areas that we are struggling with as a species due to vested interests — things that threaten our survival. These range from the ones that are commonly spoken about, like global warming and environmental destruction. They also include synthetic chemicals and nano materials that are giving us cancer and making us sterile, an economic system that ignores externalities and the tragedy of the commons, and our challenges with making sustainable decisions in an increasingly complex World.
What are your thoughts?
Image credit: Gerd Leonhard
