How were 15th century explorers grilled before their expeditions were funded? What questions were they asked? What assurances were demanded?
If an enterprising 15th century bureaucrat had invented Colony Administration Certifications to protect investors from risk, the New World would still be undiscovered. But maybe the investors would have been just as happy with undeveloped Spanish beach real estate discovered and claimed in their names by Certified Explorers leveraging Six Sigma Exploration and Colonization Processes.
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“If the art of war were nothing but the art of avoiding risks, glory would become the prey of mediocre minds.” – Napoleon Bonaparte, two years before Waterloo
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“Executives often appear at Yves Béhar’s door, saying, We want to be the Apple of our industry. His response: Do you have the guts?” (Fast Company)
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We need a new word for innovation. The meaning of the word has been so shamelessly blurred in the universal desire to be thought of as innovative, that we now use it for just about anything. Every company that tries to improve through incremental refinements wants to place “innovation” at the center of its brand.
And similarly every business leader with an ambition and a plan and a desire to make incremental improvements has “vision”.
I’d love to see a non-innovative business led by a non-visionary. That would be so different and strange it boggles the imagination.
If every company is innovative and every leader has a vision, what do we call a company which exists to radically transform its industry and the world and actively risks itself in the pursuit of that goal? What do we call a leader who has come to see what he does from a completely new angle revealing new possibilities invisible to the industry-standard eye?
Can we say such a company is doubleplusinnovative and its leader possesses doubleplusvision?
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Do not honor the worthy,
So that the people will not contend with one another.
Do not value hard-to-get goods,
So that the people will not turn robbers.
Do not show objects of desire,
So that the people’s minds are not disturbed.