Time to ditch the overalls

Sometimes it is too easy to look backwards for answers to difficult questions that appear to have no answer in the present. How do industrial businesses thrive in a post-industrial world economy? The answer could be to remember not what happened in the past, but why it happened.

During and immediately after the industrial revolution, large businesses grew and became established. Mostly, these where in the developed western world because that is where the revolution happened. Many of the most successful and enduring ones were founded by individuals trying out innovative technology, new ideas that created markets, non-existent before the technological advance allowed. A suitable example is Thomas Alva Edison.

Edison formed his light company in 1878 and produced the world's first commercial incandescent light bulb, but not without a steep learning curve. When asked how it felt to make 2,000 "wrong" bulbs before getting it right (Edison was rumoured to have made this many experimental versions before settling on the final design), Edison famously replied "I didn't fail to make a light bulb 2,000 times, I simply discovered 1,999 ways NOT to make a light bulb". The point to this is that Edison wasn't bothered by the fact he kept getting it wrong because he knew he would get it right, and when he did it would change the world. It would also make him quite rich and famous.

If Edison were around today, and starting from scratch, would he try to make another light bulb?

Or would he recognise a new world where industrial technology is ubiquitous and endlessly "innovating" the same old technology over and over is a fool's game.

In this recent TechCrunch post "When innovation stops making sense" a good example of the folly in rethinking the same idea over and over is apparent. TiVo is a US set-top box maker, know in the UK for it's Virgin Media boxes which rival Sky TV and others. TiVo was one of the early innovators with multiple tuner boxes meaning you could watch one channel whilst recording another, but it failed to keep up with it's competition and has now been sold to entertainment tech company Rovi. Rovi is a metadata company with IP and media it's focus. Now it owns a manufacturer of set top boxes. What will it do with it?

For the purpose of this blog post the question above does not need an answer; the important message is that the industrial age, the age of overalls and white coats, has been well and truly overtaken by the age of posh jeans and fancy shirts.

Thinking about why innovations work and not how they do is the key.

tim.meehan@horizonscitech.co.uk

Strategy is about truth

Identifying and targeting the truth at the heart of a organisation is a part of strategic planning so many people overlook. Concentrating on the structural side of strategic planning, operations, processes etc. most likely is more appealing to the majority of business leaders because they like what they know. Don't we all?

The truth is that successful strategies generally (and it is a generalisation) work because people get engaged with them and that is usually because the author of the plan is engaged with it in the truest sense. What do we mean by this? Well, people can be difficult to convince when changes are suggested, especially in their ways of work. And even more so when their behaviours and culture is threatened with change. So here is the crux; the more a new strategy challenges the culture, values and beliefs of a business, the more value it can potentially add, but also the more resistance it will probably meet. Hence the need for true conviction from the one trying to implement it. 

There is of course more to this than simply liking your own ideas enough to convince others they are good. Good ideas (even yours) must be tested rigorously before they should be written into a full strategy.

The most important thing of all though is to achieve alignment between the culture, values and behaviours in a business and the structural and operational side of it and to consider this as fundamental to a successful strategy for change. Being a leader is about managing the territory between the two side of this equation; softer side things like cultures and more rigorous side things like ways of working and structures.

"the first principle is not to fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool"  - Richard Feynman

tim.meehan@horizonscitech.co.uk