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Every enterprise engaged in business in the frenzied global
marketplace fights an hour-by-hour battle for viability.
Menacing competitors rapidly appear from domestic and international
environments, often wielding new and powerful technologies
that obviate the need for the special product, service,
or idea developed and long-nurtured by the company. As strategist
Gary Hamel noted, "Out there in some garage is an entrepreneur
who's forg-ing a bullet with your company's name on it.
You've got one option now—to shoot first. You've got
to out-innovate the innovators." Through intentional
organizational changes, staff training, and worldwide partnerships,
companies go to great lengths to develop acute "peripheral
vision" to detect competitors just beyond the horizon.
As Harvard University Professor George Day said, "Good
peripheral vision is much more than sensing; it is knowing
where to look more carefully, knowing how to interpret the
weak signals, and knowing how to act when the signals are
still ambiguous."
No matter how tightly woven the protection from outside
competitors, organizations often fail to consider an enemy
from within, usually referred to as an innovation antibody,
organizational antibody, or devil's advocate. Regardless
of the soundness of a corporate and its products, one well-placed
innovation antibody can quietly reinterpret corporate strategies
to co-workers and ultimately wreak havoc on the corporation's
future.
First, it is essential to emphasize that just because a
person, who has an unusual personality or disagrees with
company policies or methodologies, is not necessarily an
"innovation antibody." To encourage the innovation
that determines corporate viability, companies absolutely
need those employees. As Stanford University Professor Robert
Sutton noted, "Your company—or more likely parts
of it—needs to be a place that generates many disparate
ideas. It should be an arena, a constant and constructive
contest, where the best ideas win." British inventor
James Dyson extolled the necessity of thinking "differently":
"You are just as likely to solve a problem by being
unconventional and determined as by being brilliant. And
if you can't be unconventional, be obtuse. Be deliberately
obtuse, because there are five billion people out there
thinking in train tracks, and thinking that they have been
taught to think." Human resources expert Francis Horibe
showed that even traditionally staid IBM needed "unusual"
employees to succeed: "TJ Watson shows us the way.
He coined the term `wild ducks'—quirky, individualistic,
highly intelligent employees who ignore procedures, shun
set schedules, and resist attempts to make them more efficient.
Because they were often very creative, he warned against
taming them, for once tamed, they can never be made wild
again." Leadership expert Warren Bennis noted, "If
not out-and-out rebels, participants may lack traditional
credentials or exist on the margins of their professions,"
and, "Great Groups are probably more tolerant of personal
idiosyncrasies than are ordinary ones, if only because the
members are so intensely focused on the work itself."
As Horibe said, "On the one hand, we want innovators'
creativity and passion. On the other hand, innovators' inability
to build coalitions or even follow normally accepted rules
makes them a challenge to fit into an organization….The
very qualities that make for great innovation—passion,
drive, out-of-the-box thinking—are viewed as arrogance,
unreasonableness, and uncompromising behavior by organizations
bent on efficiency." Only by accepting and harnessing
the power of these divergent viewpoints may corporations
find the remarkable ideas so essential in the competitive
modern marketplace. As Nissan Design International CEO Jerry
Hirschberg said, "Rather than trying to reduce the
friction that naturally arises between people working together
by diluting or compromising positions, creative abrasion
calls for the development of leadership styles that focus
on first identifying and then incorporating polarized viewpoints."
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