Comments about Steve Blank’s blog post on why innovation dies
“”””The “lets put together a committee” strategy fails for four reasons:
Online education is not an existing market. There just isn’t enough data to pick what is the correct “overarching strategy”.
Making a single bet on a single strategy, plan or company in a new market is a sure way to fail. After 50-years even the smartest VC firms haven’t figured out how to pick one company as the winner. That’s why they invest in a portfolio.
Committees protect the status quo. Everyone who has a reason to say “No” is represented.
Dealing with disruption is not solved by committee. New market problems call for visionary founders, not consensus committee members.””””
There’s more in the comments on this page, such as the value and necessity of complexity. I have some thoughts that LCPS will need a sort of “outside group” creating changes, as a committee formed by the staff will be inherently a problem.
Here’s one of the “comments” from the above blog entry:
“””””I suggest an important refinement.
“What you need is a process that reduces the complexity of the problem.”
No! This is deadly, an innovation killer. Maybe this is better:
“What’s needed are distributed activities that cultivate, correlate and coordinate our complex learning environments to deliver and realize the benefits and advantages of online education.”
The basic and key idea is to use the ‘complexity of the problem’ to great advantage.
Complexity is not a problem to be reduced; complexity is a key system property and advantage! For innovation, complexity must be embraced. Complexity delivers emergence, variation, self-organization, mutation, evolution, disruptive innovation and prosperity. These are hallmarks of successful startups.
We are probably saying or mean the same thing, just in a different way.
Remember, for startups and innovation processes do not reduce complexity. Quite to contrary, processes make things more complicated, harder, they increase problems, and inhibit change. Processes deliberately eliminate variation, fluidity, vicissitude, collaboration and emergence – among the essential foundations of startups and innovation.
Committees love processes because it allows for command and control. Both, committees and processes, are innovation killers.””””””