Urgency with innovation

“Urgency with innovation”

Darrell Velegol, PhD

2023dec15

Does this story give you any sense of urgency?

My friend and mentor Jack Matson showed me an exercise once in which he gathered a class of students into groups of 5. He gave each a tennis ball, and then asked them to toss it around among the 5 of them. They did. Then he asked them to time the cycle time, which they did. “About 10 seconds.” “About 8 seconds.” “About 11 seconds.” He prompted them to the next step: “Reduce the time as much as you can.” So they passed the ball around with greater fervor and focus. “3 seconds!” “2.7 seconds, averaged over 5 cycles.” “4 seconds.”

Now came his real exercise: “OK, next step: Cut your time by 10x.” They tried. “We can’t. It won’t go below 2 seconds.” As Elon Musk said once, “If conventional thinking makes your mission impossible, then unconventional thinking is necessary.” And while this was 25 years ago -- long before Isaacson’s biography -- Jack said something similar to his class. So they tried various schemes, some which perhaps “bent the unspoken rules” a bit. One team dropped the ball, and had their hands below in order, and on the descent to the floor, the ball touched everyone’s hand. Others tried touching the ball simultaneously. Etc.

The teams showed each other their results, and some were accepted as “Yes they did it,” while others were not deemed successful “in the marketplace”.

CONCLUSION: With unconventional thinking, all teams who originally thought they couldn’t improve by 10x, DID. And … while some did not pass the test “in the marketplace”, some SUCCEEDED.

If you are CONTENT with where you stand today in innovation, be aware that somewhere, someone is working to 10x you with unconventional thinking. While most of these attempts will fail, one will likely SUCCEED at some point, and that changes your position. Ask Sears, ask Palm, ask Kodak. I hope many of you feel urgency about this. Urgency without being frantic, because there are philosophies, skills, and concepts that can help you innovate faster and better.

To learn more, contact me or check out the book “Design of Innovation Processes” at

https://www.linkedin.com/smart-links/AQGNZoNL8sivaA