The design thinking movement
advocates creativity and imagination.
From a business perspective, we often
have an abundance of creative and
imaginative proposals for solving our
problems. How do we choose which
ones to pursue? How do we turn the
chosen ones into reality? It is all too
common that people who plunge into
creative design workshops are initially
exhilarated by the possibilities
they create, and then later frustrated
by the indifference others display toward
their designs and by the difficulties
of getting people to agree to adopt
them. Creativity and imagination are
important, but not enough.
Wait a minute. We are peppered with
stories of great inventors and geniuses
who changed the world. Do you mean
that their creativity and imagination
was not the reason for their success?
We are very skeptical that innovation
is caused by geniuses. We believe
innovations emerge at moments in
time when all the conditions are right.
The person we credit in retrospect
was an agent of history. We need to
understand the conditions that make
the time for an invention “ripe” and
the dispositions that enable an inventor
to sense the convergence and act
on it.
Consider Louis Pasteur, who gave
us a rabies vaccine in the 1890s. He
had a history of other major innovations
and was widely regarded as a
genius. Pasteur was a master chemist.
Two hundred years earlier, there was
no field of chemistry. Pasteur could
not have existed at that time. Similarly,
if he were born 50 years later, others in
the 1890s time period, who were also
working on vaccines, would in all likelihood
have discovered a rabies vaccine;
it would be a done deal in his new
time. The contribution we remember
him for was possible only at that moment
of time in France.
Come on. Pasteur clearly had something
to do with it. He was not just a
lucky bystander.
We agree. We think Pasteur had
a skill we call “surfing” that enabled
him to ride the waves of possibilities
swirling around him and find a path
that led to great value. An example
of Pasteur’s surfing skill arose in the
early 1880s, when he was searching
for an anthrax vaccine. After he discovered
the vaccine and verified in
his lab that it worked, he did not go
public, to the great frustration of his
colleagues and advisors. The right
moment showed up when a famous
veterinarian challenged him to a
public test of the vaccine. He accepted
the challenge. In the test, no vaccinated
animal got anthrax and every
unvaccinated animal perished. The
theatre of the test and its subsequent
publicity propelled Pasteur, his anthrax
vaccine, and his germ theory of
disease into public prominence and
earned him encomiums like “benefactor
of humanity.” His timing and
sense of drama were impeccable.
We argue that Pasteur was a genius
at surfing waves of possibilities. We
would also speculate that if Pasteur
lived in a different time or place, his
surfing skill would have helped him
make other achievements, but not anthrax
or rabies vaccines.
What about Thomas Edison? He is celebrated
for his creativity and imagination.
Was he a surfer?
Edison was recognized as a genius
and, yes, he was a virtuoso surfer as
well. Contrary to the popular story, he
did not invent the light bulb. A long
search for electric lighting had begun
in the early 1800s. He joined the
search in the 1870s because he saw
how to build an electrical distribution
system that would power lamps in
homes and shops. He performed hundreds
of experiments until he found
a lamp design that would last long
enough to be useful. He announced
his incandescent lamp in 1879. A year
later, he patented an electrical distribution
system and got one operating
in 1882 on Hudson Street in New York
City. He said lamps were useless without
electricity and he pledged to make
electricity so cheap that only the rich
would burn candles. He undertook
the lamp experiments only when he
believed that by the time he found
a robust lamp he would have a solution
for cheap electrical distribution.
He timed his entry onto the waves of
those possibilities and rode them to a
convergence. He set off an avalanche
of people moving to use electric rather
than gas lighting.