Embracing Uncertainty for
Innovation
It has been said that
the purpose of organisation is to eliminate uncertainty. Is this stifling the
ability to innovate?
I
recently spoke with the innovation leaders at a major biopharmaceutical firm.
They were lamenting the challenges of designing an innovation program that
seemed overwhelming. No matter what they did, the organisation just kept
focusing on execution and narrow thinking rather than innovation and big
thinking. I reminded them that big companies are like slowly sinking ships
(sinking under the weight of their own execution orientation); efforts to
innovate will never be ideal, rather it’s a matter of pumping water out of the
hull to keep the ship afloat.
The
analogy resonates because it reminds us that our efforts to innovate will never
be, and can never be, perfect. Nor can they be optimal. This is due to a
fundamental principle which underpins all innovation – the uncertainty
principle. This idiom doesn’t refer to the quantum behaviour of particles
(although I do find it ironic that the one discipline that deals the most with
physical reality is the only discipline to have an uncertainty principle),
rather the simple fact that all innovation involves fundamental uncertainty,
the kind we often cannot foresee or predict. It is the type of uncertainty that
drives people and organisations crazy and, thus, leads us to try and stamp it
out. In fact, Herb Simon, an organisation theorist who won the Nobel Prize in
economics, once observed that the purpose of organisation is to eliminate
uncertainty.
Managing
uncertainty
If
you look around you, most organisations, including those that educated us and
those in which we work, try very hard to eliminate uncertainty because it is
inefficient and unpredictable. Indeed, all our lives we have been told to plan
for the unplannable and, in our organisations, to foresee the unforeseeable.
Which
leads me to the aforementioned uncertainty principle; where there's no
uncertainty, there's no innovation. Uncertainty is the soil out of which
innovation grows; it is the spark that can lead us to a future better than
the one we imagine for ourselves. For this reason, we need to embrace as well
as respect it. When I say embrace, I mean find the ways to allow uncertainty
into our lives and organisations. By respect, I mean look at how we manage the
uncertainty so it doesn't overwhelm us or derail us.
No
free rides
Obviously
there is much more to managing uncertainty than this simple principle, which is
one of my quests: to understand the personal, professional and organisational
tools that allow us to turn uncertainty into something beautiful, something
that solves real problems. Although I cannot share it all here, let me share
one observation. As soon as you engage uncertainty, you start to feel anxiety.
But anxiety does not mean you are failing. If you are pursuing a new
idea, new career, new business, new approach, whatever it may be, you will
experience this anxiety. Don't let it derail you. I'm not speaking about data –
if the data says something different, then take it into account and perhaps
change course. I'm talking about how
it feels. And when it comes to how it feels, remember, uncertainty feels crummy
while you are in it and beautiful when you cross to the other side, even if
that other side is different to what you expected. And it almost certainly will
be!
In
closing, I'm reminded of Ursula Le Guin who wrote, “Great artists make the
roads; good teachers and good companions can point them out. But there ain't no
free rides, baby. No hitchhiking. And if you want to strike out in any new
direction – you go alone. With a machete in your hand and the fear of God
in your heart.”
Nathan Furr is an
Assistant Professor of Strategy at INSEAD.
Read more at http://knowledge.insead.edu/blog/insead-blog/embracing-uncertainty-for-innovation-4776?utm_source=INSEAD+Knowledge&utm_campaign=1385bebf49-7_July_mailer7_7_2016&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_e079141ebb-1385bebf49-249840429#5pdbu92wyODGeOqo.99
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