Innovation’s “Secret” Ingredient
How do you make hubs like ‘Silicon Valley’ or Cambridge? How do you replicate the centers of food, art, music, and fashion like a Paris, London, New York, Milan, or any other awesome place I left out?
We already know ad nauseam about the talent and money so we’re not going to talk about that. Today, we’re talking about culture. You may think you’ve already read about that: the endless and insane optimism or the crazy beyond the sky ambitions. Eh we’re not talking about that either even though that’s also crucial. What we are going to briefly talk about is the ignored, less often discussed cost for innovation. It’s a high price that many places, that aspire to become a Silicon Valley, refuse to pay: a culture of constant dissent and rebellion.
in·no·va·tion — the action or process of changing something established
dis·rup·tion — a disturbance that interrupts an established activity or process
rev·o·lu·tion — an overthrow of an existing system in favor of a new one
To create something new and worthy, you need a culture with a willingness to accept:
Rebellions against masters
How was Silicon Valley born? Eight employees had it. Their tyrannical boss, then freshly Nobel Prize minted William Shockley, was driving them insane with his paranoia resulting in lie detector tests, recorded phones calls, and other craziness. Instead of bowing their heads to suffer in obedience, in an act of defiance, they quit to form their own venture: Fairchild Semiconductor.
Fast forward a few decades, Fairchild Semiconductor eventually spawns a bunch of others. You may have heard of some of these other companies: Intel, AMD, & National Semiconductor to name a few.
Ken Kutaragi is the father of the Playstation. Playstation’s origin starts with Kutaragi’s realization that more sophisticated video game consoles will eventually become a huge global phenomena, so when Nintendo starts shopping for a new sound processor for their upcoming Super Famicom; Ken wanted Sony to jump at the opportunity. His bosses refused. Fortunately Ken didn’t care. He disobeyed and designed Nintendo’s sound chip in secret. When Kutaragi unveiled his chip design, his superiors were furious, but they had no choice but to offer the design to Nintendo, which Nintendo eventually accepted for the Super NES. The rest is history once Sony got involved in the video game industry.
“I always follow orders… when they make sense.”
John Paul Stapp, a US Air Force medical doctor, pioneered research into the effects of deceleration on the human body, which was crucial to the future of aviation at the time. At the start of his deceleration research, his superiors had forbidden human test subjects. So what does Stapp do when he first sees the human test dummies?
“We’re not going to use these. You can throw this away. I’m going to be the test subject.”
At the time, crash test dummies (formally anthropomorphic test devices), were in their infancy and they just didn’t compare to using live human subjects for data. To acquire this precious data, Dr. Stapp endured up to 48 Gs, repeated broken ribs, and even potential loss of sight. The pain would pay off. Human spaceflight would not be possible without his research and today much of the advances in aircraft and automobile safety would not be possible without his work.
Rebellions against established institutions
“I further my goals with technology. I build systems to disseminate information, commit digital piracy, synthesize drugs, maintain untrusted contacts, purchase anonymously and secure machines and homes.” — Bram Cohen
The above (now disavowed) quote is kind of interesting coming from the guy who created BitTorrent.
When chef Massimo Bottura visited the Venice Biennale art show with his wife, they saw lots of pigeons above the exhibits. Eventually they both realize that all of them were taxidermy and the birds were an exhibit themselves. What piqued the couple’s interest is that the artist painted bird poo all over the walls of the exhibit, and even on some of the displayed artwork below. Then Massimo has a revelation.
Those pigeons, that’s like me. I’m trying to change the Italian kitchen, but the only way I’m going to get noticed is if I kind of go up in the rafters and look from above and in a way… deface the generation that came before me.
Rebellion against parents
George Lucas’s father wanted his son to take over his successful stationery business. George Lucas adamantly refused. This father son conflict would eventually find its way into his most successful films.
Instead of becoming a salary man for a large respected Japanese company, Satoru Iwata choose his passion and joined a small unheard of video game startup instead. Satoru’s father disapproved of his career choice and they fought over the decision, which led to father and son not speaking for months. It took decades before Satoru was vindicated as the head of a company that everyone recognizes even outside of Japan.
Rebellion against institutional authority
“If you want to understand the entrepreneur, study the juvenile delinquent. The delinquent is saying with his actions, ‘This sucks. I’m going to do my own thing.’” — Yvon Chouinar, founder of Patagonia
Above is a monument in Poland’s Saxony Square, dedicated to Poles who were loyal to Russia. Every day a little Polish girl, who supported an independent Poland, would make a habit of spitting on this monument. Eventually this little girl would leave for France where she would conduct ground breaking, Nobel prize winning research on radioactivity.
Why is the internet decentralized by design? Aside from being more resilient to nuclear attacks, Robert Taylor, one of the ARPANET’s lead engineers and Xerox PARC’s most famous director, has this to say (from “The Innovators”):
My bias was always to build decentralization into the net. That way it would be hard for one group to gain control. I didn’t trust large central organizations. It was just in my nature to distrust them.
Rebellions against social norms
Any girl can be glamorous. All you have to do is stand still and look stupid.
In a time when women were only expected to be pretty, Hedy Lamar refused to play this role 100% of time. Instead she came up with a novel method for creating jamming resistant torpedoes which later became the foundation for various modern wireless technologies such as WiFi and certain cellular networks.
“We’re Apple. We don’t wear suits. We don’t even own suits.”
From prank calling the Pope to refusing to accept that electronics must be complicated, Apple and its founders are a poster child for rebellion. Their dress code is a physical reminder of this.
Rebel against everything
“I’ve never gotten a paycheck because, frankly, as a young kid, at 5 years old, I didn’t like my parents telling me what to do. I didn’t like teachers telling me what to do. I couldn’t imagine getting a job and thinking that because somebody’s paying me they get to tell me what to do”
While best known for inventing the Segway, Dean Kamen has made big contributions to the world of medical devices; from insulin pumps to better dialysis machines.
In Closing
The enemies of innovation are obedience, conformity, and acceptance. If you want innovation, you need a culture that‘s tolerant of people who don’t typically agree with the status quo, which isn’t easy because it means you can’t always have a harmonious and sterile society that’s free of dissent and free of protests.
If you can’t accept that, then you can’t have shiny, original, amazing, tasty new things; and you should get accustomed to being yet another one of these:
