I just attended the Women President's Organization Annual Conference in Boston, where Malcolm was the opening keynote speaker. The focus of this year's conference was innovation.
Malcolm Gladwell is this very articulate guy with wild hair -- just to give you a visual. He's written Tipping Point and Blink, and has another book due out soon -- and he writes a column in the New Yorker magazine. Here are some of his thoughts about innovation:
When thinking about innovation, he recently read a book by David Galenson, called "Old Masters and Young Geniuses: The two life cycles of Artistic Creativity" -- and pulled some of his concepts from this book.
He asserted that innovation comes in two forms: Conceptual Innovators and Experimental Innovators. He likened the first (conceptual innovator) to Picasso, who had bold revolutionary ideas that he conceptualized, and then executed swiftly and efficiently. He likened the Experimental Innovators to Cezanne, they sort of poke around, can't really talk about what the end result will be, learns through trial and error, does lots of research, and gets better and better until becomes genius.
Picasso had moments of brilliance, while Cezanne never had moments of brilliance -- and their careers were profoundly different. Picasso produced his most famous (and now most expensive) work while in his twenties. The Cubist movement in art was accomplished within the 10 years following that. While Cezanne produced his most notable work (and most expensive) in his 50's, after toiling his entire life on his art.
Malcolm asserted that Innovation takes two forms -- as outlined by Picasso and Cezanne. He said that businesses and investors like the Conceptual Innovator because you can talk about and outline exactly what you are going to do, how it's going to turn out, etc., and then execute it. They don' like the Experimental Innovator, precisely because they have a vision of what's possible, but cannot really talk about it -- they don't really know what exactly it will look like when they get there, and they just start out experimenting and learning through trial and error.
He also said that is why some industries are in trouble today. There is value in recognizing the different forms of innovation. He spoke a little about his distaste for some of our educational methods that expect children are either good at math instantly or they never will be as discounting and in fact not even recognizing the possibility of the "late bloomer" (i.e. Cezanne).
He brought up Fleetwood Mac -- and their most famous album, Rumors. He asked us how many albums Fleetwood Mac produced before producing Rumors (which is the top all-time selling album in history)? Most of us thought it was their second, possibly third album -- nope -- it was their 16th! Then he took us through the Fleetwood Mac history - they started in the mid-1960's, it took them 10 years, they had 16 different people come and go from that band before they got it right. They switched genres many times. And they had someone in the industry that stood by them, who believed in them -- and that paid off BIG with Rumors. But that wouldn't happen in today's music industry; an artist gets ONE single -- it makes it or it doesn't, and if not, they are history. That industry only rewards the conceptual innovator.
Why are we so biased towards Picasso rather than Cezanne?
1. Picasso people can describe what they're doing before they start.
2. Cezanne people can never tell you what they're doing.
Then he related information about drug research and how this approach has impacted those endeavors: they discovered if you can understand the nature of something, you can describe the solution and then target your research efforts. This is how the pharmaceutical industry now does its research and that sounds like a good plan, except most things aren't that cut and dried. There are all kinds of stuff you discover that you never can predict. The best discoveries happen by accident.
Gladwell says we need patience to buckle down and do the tough work. Some of the very best innovation takes time. There are a certain class of problems that cannot be solved overnight, and that patience is sorely lacking in business today. While both types of innovation are necessary, you can't have a successful world when you're only following or allowing for one.
Which are you? Can you be a blend of both? Are Picasso and Cezanne two ends of the same "innovation" continuum? Which gets fostered more?
Visit Malcolm Gladwell's website at http://www.gladwell.com/ for links to his writings.
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