Things & Thinks V
Innovation-to-Implementation special
In the topsy-turvy world of 2020, need for new thinking in almost all walks of life has taken a new urgency. However at the same time, its getting clearer that just having shiny ideas is not enough. Crisis situations bring out blind spots in the innovation-to-implementation journey never seen before. This newsletter edition focuses on some such thoughts!
Taiwan and Operational Competence
There has been a lot of debate about whether or not COVID-19 can be considered as a ‘black swan event’. The ‘black swan’ concept, developed by renowned scholar Nassim Taleb, describes events characterized as outliers with extreme impact, that in hindsight are totally explainable. While for a large section of general public, Covid-19 may fit the definition, several experts incl Bill Gates, Seth Godin and others had always warned about high possibility of pandemics ravaging the world.
Several south-east Asian countries also faced similar situations at a localized level during the SARS outbreak between 2002–2004. Naturally, global health experts followed keenly the approach taken by these countries during the Covid-19 outbreak. As pointed out in this excellent longread by Steven Weber and Nils Gilman-‘The Long Shadow Of The Future’, the case of Taiwan stands out.
In 2004, the year after the SARS epidemic, which was widely seen to have been mishandled, the Taiwanese government established the National Health Command Center as “a disaster management center that focuses on large-outbreak response and acts as the operational command point for direct communications among central, regional and local authorities.” Five years later, Taiwanese health officials staged simulated drills as a capability exercise. Simulations revealed the tensions and miscommunications between different levels of government and agencies during a crisis, allowing officials to develop heuristics for overcoming such problems in advance.
The authors draw some excellent lessons, and my take-aways are-
- Just having an innovative idea is not enough and we need operational excellence to bring about the impact of that idea in reality. All of us know this.
- However even this rational thinking falls short for long drawn problems. Mere strategic planning is not enough esp for the kind of challenges we face in ‘black swan’ish situations-they are either too complex to fit a straight narrative, too unpredictable to fit usual planning timelines or a combination of both.
- Finally, such challenge can’t be fixed by short term fixes.
As the authors deftly conclude-
What will matter going forward, is the capacity of political leadership to frame a long-term narrative and stick to it over time…Shifting how we think about social risk and about the importance of operational competence, and maintaining those new syntheses for a long time, should be the project of this generation.
Moving into the shadows
Matt Beane brings an important perspective for ideas getting into reality in a WIRED article -‘To Adapt to Tech, We’re Heading Into the Shadows’. The framework is quite intuitive- ‘critical innovation and adaptation is mostly achieved in the gray areas near the edges of what’s normal or appropriate.’
Matt says that we have started foregoing the usual learning pathway of ‘see, do, teach’ and ‘grey areas’ are shrinking due to our ever-increasing focus on productivity, metrics and trackings in corporate culture. This gets worse further with our adaption to technology that helps us ‘observe, analyze, judge, and control’ every step of almost any process. How can we overcome this? Matt suggests the following tips-
- In the zeal to track and metricize, don’t destroy unobservable spaces where people feel free to experiment, fail, and think through a problem.
- Reduce the feeling of pressure from compliance activities.
- This sounds clichéd but help increase trust in teams and organizations so that it becomes easy to experiment (and fail!)
Journey of a medical innovation in India
I really liked this story of a ventilator start-up in India by Huffpost : there is a lot in it to read-politics, crisis management, vested interests and so on but from healthcare innovation perspective, few points stand out for me-
- Having an idea (in this case low cost device that assists in breathing), turning it into a physical product and then trying to find a market in India is quite a tortuous journey everywhere, but especially in India. You have to find early adaptors who may like your product solely on the basis of costing but will continue to ask for top-notch quality and services.
- Pivoting is a great idea that’s often sold time and again in tech innovation. But it most probably will not be as straightforward as it may look on paper. In this case, pivoting from low-cost breathing assisting devices to full-fledged mechanical ventilators seems to have been messy to say the least!
- Role of government procurement can play a fantastic boost for any start-up but will almost certainly bring in additional scrutiny on product standards, possible conflicts of interests as well as financing.
Tidbits
- DARPA is the famed US agency for its role in such innovations as compute networking, internet and GUI; Verne Lynn, DARPA’s director from 1995 to 1998, says he successfully lobbied Congress to shrink his budget after the Clinton administration had boosted it to “dangerous levels.” (Source h/t @Ben_Reinhardt)
- ‘I think this crisis is the worst thing that could have happened to Ed tech. People can now see just how impractical and inferior it is to face to face classrooms. It can’t pretend anymore to be the next big thing. The world tried it, for months. Game over.’ Tom Bennett, ResearchEd, @tombennett71
- This great tip, amongst many others, to appear smart in meetings-
As usual, happy to hear your feedback, comments, (and ‘claps’ and likes!)…
