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INNOVATE OR ELSE…
“If you’re not moving you’re dead.
People love to use the shark survival analogy as a metaphor for business.
Yes, it’s true as a business analogy. But it’s not the entire game.
In today's marketplace, you either innovate or you die.
My old mentor used to say “if you don’t come up with the next big thing someone else will. Then that thing will eat your business alive.”
I started my career in Hollywood. Everyone in the story making / performing arts game knows you are only as good as your last big hit. There’s a need to always create the next big thing. That kind of pressure is enough to make people go mad, which they often do.
But this dispatch is not about going mad. It’s about how to win the future.
You can win it by harnessing the power behind the concept of the “adjacent possible”.
As a mindset.
As a practice.
Let’s dive in!
WTF IS THE ADJACENT POSSIBLE
The “adjacent possible” ties biological evolution with the concepts of ideas generation. With the evolution of ideas over time.
Stick with me here. :)
The adjacent possible was a concept originally generated by theoretical biologist Stuart A. Kauffman. Steven Johnson expanded on Stuart’s idea in the book WHERE GOOD IDEAS COME FROM.
“The phrase [ajacent possible] captures both the limits and the creative potential of change and innovation…the adjacent possible is a kind of shadow future, hovering on the edges of the present state of things, a map of all the ways in which the present can reinvent itself…each new combination ushers new combinations into the adjacent possible.”- Steven Johnson
The adjacent possible is the theoretical space that encompasses all the potential innovations and possibilities that are one step away from the current moment.
It represents the set of opportunities and combinations that become feasible when existing elements come together in new ways.
Stuart used this framework to explain the biology of genomic regulatory networks and the contemporary dynamics of complex adaptive systems. But Steven takes it a step further with the mental model of idea generation and how ideas want to evolve over time.
The poet and the engineeer (and the coral reef) may seem million miles apart in their particular form of expertise, but when they bring good ideas into the world, similiar patterns of development and collaboration shape that process. - Steven Johnson
You might be asking yourself, WTF does this have to do with business innovation or coming up with net-new creative ideas?
And I’d respond to that.
WHY IS THE “ADJACENT POSSIBLE” MINDSET CRUCIAL FOR BUSINESS LEADERS?
Because if you want to last the long term. If you want to increase market share. If you need a new hit, you need to innovate. Otherwise, the odds your business will survive the long-term are very low.
One fundamental truth (backed by data) and one fundamental economic concept.
Truth: The great Professor Aswath Damodaran explains that every company has 5 lifecycles in their life span. Whether you’re a new company or a mature business. You want to discover new ideas to find your next superpower product or service. If you can unlock that next great product, your business can generate amazing growth. And if not, you might cease to exist.
Of the companies that were on the Fortune 500 list in 1955 only 49 (9.8%) still exist today. The odds your business will last the long term are not in your favor.
Fundamental economic concept: In the 1940s Economist Joseph Schumpeter came up with the concept of “creative destruction.” In a capitalistic marketplace, the old mechanism of making money will die to make way for the new mechanisms. As time goes the world continues to produce disruptive forces that will challenge your business model.
The bottom line: Change. Is. Constant. Time is not your friend.
Here’s the good news: New opportunities are bountiful if you and your teams are geared to find them. And new ideas want you to discover them.
"Good ideas may not be free, but they do want to connect, fuse, recombine. They want to reinvent themselves by crossing conceptual borders." - Steven Johnson
HOW CAN THE “ADJACENT POSSIBLE” MINDSET CONTRIBUTE TO BUSINESS INNOVATION?
By gearing yourself and your teams for constant idea discovery. For a search of making new combinations. Combinations between base reality and what if.
Look at leveraging the concept in two ways: One, net-new ideas. Second, new improvements to an existing foundation. Net-new ideas are something that has never been done before. New improvements can be incremental concepts that expand on a core product or service that is currently delivering value.
Start with the fundamentals of your base reality. What are the strengths core to your product offering? Why do customers keep returning? In its most simplistic terms, what is the essence of your strong foundation? Where are you starting from and why is that of value? Then you can go from there.
Then consider what if...here lies the potential for new combinations to be made.
For example, the most famous innovation of our modern time, the iPhone. It's a computer in your hand. The foundational product innovation led by Steve Jobs, was uring his engineers & designers at Apple to create a keyboard-less communication device. The base reality was a telecommunication device with a screen. That part was known and foundational. The "what if" was "What if a device existed with no keyboard?” At the time, this was a huge what if. Ultimately, as we all now know, it led to total dominance of the smartphone marketplace. Does anyone remember Blackberry?
“The heart of the experiment is mystery. We cannot predict where a seed will lead or if it will take root. Remain open to the new and unknown. Begin with a question mark and embark on a journey of discovery.” - Rick Rubin
WHAT STRATEGIES CAN BUSINESS LEADERS & TEAMS EMPLOY TO CULTIVATE THE “ADJACENT POSSIBLE” IN PRACTICE?
There are a multitude of strategies that you can implement to find good ideas. Here are a few frameworks and filters to leverage.
Use the diverge to converge process. Start by being open-minded. There is no such thing as a stupid or dumb idea. Put as many pieces onto the table as possible. Then take a break. Go for a walk. Then come back and pick the most dynamic concepts. And then start building them into a package.
Build the package into something that can be bottled up and easily sold. Simplicity is key. Even though new combinations are plural you’re always looking for the most simple.
“Making the simple complicated is commonplace,” Charles Mingus once said. “Making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that’s creativity. (THE CREATIVE ACT: A WAY OF BEING)
Borrow from the genius innovator/creator Raymond Loewy’s powerful MAYA concept as a framework to guide your idea.
“People gravitate toward products that are bold, but instantly comprehensible: Most Advanced Yet Acceptable--MAYA.”
Raymond also stated the need for simplicity:
“The adult public's taste is not necessarily ready to accept the logical solutions to their requirements if the solution implies too vast a departure from what they have been conditioned into accepting as the norm.”
Deeply study the marketplace / Always be learning: See who is gaining traction fast in your vertical and ask probing questions. Dig deep into adjacent items in search of new combinations. Look far back into history.
Keep an open mind: Nothing new and interesting has come from anyone with all the answers. An openness to new possibilities is fundamental to discovering innovative concepts. Think like a kid who doesn’t know the rules yet.
High-trust teams increase the chances of doing innovative work: No one created the next best thing in a room full of sycophants agreeing with one person. The best work comes from lively debate and a culture of high trust. Typically from a team no bigger than 2 - 4 people. Committees are never great for innovation.
Research shows this: A 2015 study by Interaction Associates shows that high-trust companies “are more than 2½ times more likely to be high-performing revenue organizations” than low-trust companies. (Harvard Business Review)
One of the most successful CEOs of all time tells you how to create this culture: Jeff Bezos speaks about encouraging a “truth-telling organization” where “the most junior person can overrule the most senior person if they have data.” (Lex Friedman interview)
The magic is not in the analyzing or the understanding. The magic lives in the wonder of what we do not know. - Rick Rubin
IN CLOSING. SEARCH FOR NEW IDEAS. THEY ARE WAITING FOR YOU TO DISCOVER THEM.
What makes the adjacent possible so great is it applies to multiple possibilities at once.
It can be leveraged by you on a personal level.
It can be leveraged on a team level.
It can be applied to net-new opportunities.
It can be applied to incremental evolutionary wins.
Ideas want to be combined with other concepts to make something we have never seen before. Or at least to make something we thought we had seen before. This is excellently captured by Kirby Ferguson’s EVERYTHING IS A REMIX.
Keep in mind: Every innovation doesn’t have to be some disruptive technological advancement. Some of the innovations can come in small ways that turn into new big things.
An amazing example of a small win that turned into a big win, the F/X hit Always Sunny in Philadelphia. As legend is told, the pilot was shot for $200.00. 160 episodes and 16 seasons later, the rest is history. Little innovations can turn into big results.
If you accept that ideas want to be recombined to form original concepts. That ideas want to be free. That they want to evolve. Then you realize this: the next big thing is waiting for you to discover it. And what sits on the other side can be a power move that has huge returns for you and your team. Better yet, you might have a lot of fun on the journey as you go.
All that being said, finding innovative ideas is often just the start. Most of us have to find ways to sell them to get funded to produce. Or find ways to execute a vision to get to a functional product. But we will save that for another time. 😊🤙
IMAGES OF THE WEEK
This guy gets it. Congrats to Michigan on winning it all this year.
Go forth. Stay safe. Ride the wave.
-Mitch