Everyone says they're in favor of innovation. Some organizations promote innovation with lots of publicity. Many organizations even have CIO's (Chief Innovation Officers) to make sure it gets done. But the reality is that resistance to innovation runs strong and deep in organizations; the larger the organization, the greater the resistance usually is. The reason is simple: innovation threatens the power and position of people who have it. They feel they have nothing to gain and much to lose.
It's not just psychology. Innovation resistance throws up barriers that are thick and high. See this for examples.
A good way to understand the resistance is look at sound technologies that have been proven in practice that could be more widely applied, but are ignored and/or actively resisted by the organizations that could benefit from them. I have called these In-Old-vations. Here is an innovation that is still waiting for its time in the sun, and here's one that's over 50 years old that is still being rolled out VERY slowly.
In this post I will illustrate the resistance to technology innovation in a little-known extreme example: the people in charge of Britain's war effort resisted innovations that could help them win the war. They were literally in war and losing and decided, in effect, that they'd rather lose. Sounds ridiculous, I know, but this is normal behavior of people in organizations of all kinds.
The Battle of Britain
Britain was at war, facing Hitler’s much larger, better-prepared military, who had already rolled over its adversaries. Life and death. Literally. The established departments did all they could do defend from attacks. The so-called Battle of Britain is well-known. What is not as widely known is the battle in the seas. German submarines were sinking British ships at an alarming rate. The Navy had no answers other than to do what they were already doing harder.
The situation was desperate. If there was ever a time to "think outside the box" it would seem this was it. The response of the Navy to new things? NO WAY. Amazing new weapons developed by uncertified people outside the normal departmental structures? NO WAY. Once those weapons are built and proven, use them to stop the submarines that were destroying boats and killing men by the thousands? NO WAY!!
Of course, you might think that someone would have known that the fairly recent great innovation in flying machines was achieved by "amateurs" flying in the face of the establishment and the acknowledged expert in flying as I describe here. You might think that Navy men would remember that perhaps the greatest innovation in naval history was invented by Navy-related people. But no. Protecting our power and the authority of our experts is FAR more important than a little thing like losing a war!
The story of the new way to fight submarines is told in this book:
Someone who was not part of the Navy establishment invented a whole new approach to fighting submarines. The person wasn't a certified, official expert. He was rejected by all relevant authorities and experts. Fortunately for the survival of England, Churchill made sure the concept was implemented and tested. The new devices were delivered to a ship.
This all took time and it was not until the spring of 1943 that the first Hedgehogs were being installed on Royal Navy vessels. When Commander Reginald Whinney took command of the HMS Wanderer, he was told to expect the arrival of a highly secret piece of equipment. ‘At more or less the last minute, the bits and pieces for an ahead-throwing anti-submarine mortar codenamed “hedgehog” arrived.’ As Whinney watched it being unpacked on the Devonport quayside, he was struck by its bizarre shape. ‘How does this thing work, sir?’ he asked, ‘and when are we supposed to use it?’ He was met with a shrug. ‘You’ll get full instructions.' Whinney glanced over the Hedgehog’s twenty-four mortars and was ‘mildly suspicious’ of this contraption that had been delivered in an unmarked van coming from an anonymous country house in Buckinghamshire. He was not alone in his scepticism. Many Royal Navy captains were ‘used to weapons which fired with a resounding bang’, as one put it, and were ‘not readily impressed with the performance of a contact bomb which exploded only on striking an unseen target’. They preferred to stick with the tried and tested depth charge when attacking U-boats, even though it had a hit rate of less than one in ten. Jefferis’s technology was too smart to be believed.
Here's what the new mortars looked like:
What happened? It was transformative:
Over the course of the next twelve days, Williamson achieved a record unbeaten in the history of naval warfare. He and his men sank a further five submarines, all destroyed by Hedgehogs. Each time.
If resistance to change to true technological innovation is so strong when you’re desperate, literally at death’s door, how do you think it’s going to be in everyday life? The rhetoric is that we all we love innovation! The reality is that anything that threatens anybody or anything about the status quo is to be ignored, shoved to the side and left to die. Anyone who makes noise about it obviously isn’t a team player and should find someplace to work where they’ll be happier. And so on.
Conclusion
Innovation happens. Often nothing "new" needs to be invented -- "just" a pathway through the resistance to make it happen. Here is a description of the main patterns followed by successful innovations. If you have an innovation or want to innovate, you should be aware of the deep-seated resistance to innovation and rather than meeting it head-on, craft a way to make it happen without head-on war. Go for it!
Comments