info suisse Summer 2016
Economy
Economy
August 2016
Breaking the Bad Rules!
(Elmar Mock)
Private George Lawrence Price holds the sad distinction of being the last Canadian and last Commonwealth soldier to die in the Great War that claimed more than 60,000 Canadians. On Nov. 11, 1918 Price was part of the Canadian advance through the outskirts of Mons in Belgium, where one of the earliest battles of the war had been fought in 1914 and where the first British soldier, John Parr, had been killed. Price, a 25-year-old farm labourer before he enlisted, was struck by a single sniper shot and killed two minutes before the 11 a.m. armistice went into effect. Price was a typical soldier except for the timing of his death. His supreme Commander was General Arthur Currie, a very untypical general, known for his innovative spirit and transformative leadership style. He dared to defy tradition leading his men into battle as an entrepreneur. Currie was not charismatic, but he understood the importance of prebattle preparation and studied carefully the lessons of recent fighting. He often disagreed with orders and suggested strategic changes to plans of attack, something his British Army superiors were totally unused to. He is widely considered to be among the most capable Commanders of the Western Front. His success was based on his ability to rapidly adapt tactics to the demands of trench warfare.
This story shows how innovative people are to be found on all fronts and at all times. Innovation for a General back in 1916 was as tough as it is today. But back then the words “Innovation” and “Creativity” were hardly ever heard. In 2016 they are commonplace, but do we really know what they actually mean? Do we really understand what making breakthrough innovation is all about? As with the challenges faced by Currie on the battlefield, Innovation demands that we break with tradition - Currie often argued with his superiors and discussed tactics with his junior officers. He took risks in the search of victory, doing everything in his power to reduce casualties. He succeeded often by listening to his staff, encouraging discussion and even dissent. Periods of war, crisis and times of recession push people to innovate.
Innovation is the engine of any modern society. Passionate, persistent innovators are a driving force in the Swiss economy. Switzerland’s penchant for innovation, also reflects a national character inclined toward problem solving. In 2016 the drive to invent is more powerful than ever, but repeating the process is not that simple. How do you go about making something new again and again? How many successful inventions are like popular songs, one-hit wonders?
A lot of iconic Swiss products are born from a single transformative idea of a solitary inventor who never reinvents anything else. So how do you become a successful professional inventor? To innovate you have to work out what makes the breakthrough in both concept and knowledge simultaneously. You have to marry ideas, intuition, findings and dreams together with a real technical feasibility of an invention. The Swatch was a dream but it was also engineering. The act of innovating implies the capacity to think in a space of concepts and in another one - that of knowledge- at the same time. This linking together of concept and knowledge is what is required to reveal the unknown and to modify the known. Creativity and knowledge have to work together. To innovate, you have to stop having ideas (concepts) and knowledge like everyone else! Breaking the Bad Rules! By Elmar Mock, Creaholic, Switzerland Private George Lawrence Price holds the sad distinction of being the last Canadian and last Commonwealth soldier to die in the Great War that claimed more than 60,000 Canadians. On Nov. 11, 1918 Price was part of the Canadian advance through the outskirts of Mons in Belgium, where one of the earliest battles of the war had been fought in 1914 and where the first British soldier, John Parr, had been killed. Price, a 25-year-old farm labourer before he enlisted, was struck by a single sniper shot and killed two minutes before the 11 a.m. armistice went into effect. Price was a typical soldier except for the timing of his death. His supreme Commander was General Arthur Currie, a very untypical general, known for his innovative spirit and transformative leadership style. He dared to defy tradition leading his men into battle as an entrepreneur. Currie was not charismatic, but he understood the importance of prebattle preparation and studied carefully the lessons of recent fighting. He often disagreed with orders and suggested strategic changes to plans of attack, something his British Army superiors were totally unused to. He is widely considered to be among the most capable Commanders of the Western Front. His success was based on his ability to rapidly adapt tactics to the demands of trench warfare.
In order to survive as an innovative company, you have to innovate over and over again, because you have to maintain margins and margins are the oxygen of the firm. The target of innovation is always about finding out how to make and keep those margins. Innovation requires both aptitude and attitude. But, in our modern world we push aptitude more than attitude. Aptitude is exploitation and attitude is exploration - Innovation is the joining of the two forces. Exploration combined with exploitation produces innovation. Innovators do not want tomorrow to be a continuation of today. So how do you go about changing the way you think in order to create new ideas that are considered impossible or unacceptable? How do you create new objects? Nobody goes truffle hunting on the highway. If you take the side-roads, the ones that nobody ever takes, you will finally end up innovating. It sounds simple enough but ending up on the right road is somewhat more complicated. And when your innovation finally hits the market, how do you build a new highway that allows you to go faster than everybody else, keeping ahead by continuously innovating? A lot of companies know they have to innovate to survive, but they are wary of innovation, as it always involves a certain amount of risk. This risk is not only a financial one but also a philosophical one of sorts because you have to accept a certain amount of uncertainty as well as the probability that the result will not correspond to the initial plan and everything might end in failure. Faced with these fears, renovation prevails over innovation. A lot of companies claim to ask for innovation but the overwhelming majority are in fact looking for renovation. The scientific, technical and managerial culture of the West is built on the improvement of the identity of objects. A lot of us dream of revolution, but we work towards evolution. When the weather is foggy on a ski slope and you have no clue where you are going, you follow the first people you see, as it is more reassuring to have them lead the way. But does that mean you are on the right path? Innovators try and find their way on their own! Innovation today is no longer about asking the client what he wants, but more about being the first to offer him what he might need. No design is possible without any knowledge and if you only have knowledge and no concept, all you can do is reproduce something. Innovation also requires creativity. In order to create, you need to be inspired. You could start by looking for the disturbing factor. You try to solve a problem, to make life easier. Brainstorming is an important part of the inspirational process but you have to choose the brains to be stormed carefully. It is so important to find the right people with character, competency, and compatibility. Finding the right people is vital to success - skills are needed, not necessarily in the same field, but you have to find people willing to take the plunge who possess motivation, trust, ambition, and experience. They have to learn how to play with concept and knowledge in an atmosphere of constructive conflict. In 2016, too many entrepreneurs, especially in start-ups are their own worst enemy, trying to do everything themselves. Concepts must evolve and new knowledge has to be added in a non-linear process. Too many of us were schooled by knowledge in a “linear” fashion. Innovation does need preparation and structure but not in a linear manner.
There are also non-technological forms of innovation, such as new business practices for organising procedures or changes to marketing concepts and strategies. Creaholic, an Innovation Factory, is an example of originality in management, an organizational model of breakthrough innovation. Managing creative people is difficult while keeping them is a real challenge. Is their passion for finding other ways, of being different, the anarchistic need to question established beliefs, their interest for revolution so rare? No, in fact, the capacity to innovate is a very common gift among humans. Most of us do not realize what our creative potential is, partly because we evolve in an environment that destroys any kind of creative motivation. Innovation is needed to create value for clients, consumers, the company and society. A big difficulty for the creator today is the incredible capacity that human society has of putting up with things that disturb or of simply being happy with insufficient solutions. Human society accepts mediocrity, because it is scared to change, to break the rules. The big difficulty for the entrepreneur, as was the case for the Canadian General, is finding the right people able to bend those bad rules and to make new ones.
Elmar Mock is the Company Founder and Managing Partner at Creaholic Switzerland. Elmar was also the co-founder of Swatch. Creaholic has a team of innovative experts from a variety of different fields. Together, we create new possibilities and work hard to transform them into profitable advantages for our clients and for ourselves. We help our clients innovate. www.creaholic.com
