Efficiency Skills Are “Profoundly Different from” Innovation Skills

(p. A15) How do you deliver performance now while developing the products you’ll need in the future? The skills required to support established franchises, he argues, are profoundly different from those required to develop new ones. Management techniques such as Six Sigma, focused on efficiency and execution, tend to be bad for innovation, which is intrinsically messy and inefficient. Companies need a different approach to nurture the radically original projects, or “loonshots,” that are essential for long-term success.
. . .
In Mr. Bahcall’s view, the principal obstacle to innovation isn’t that there are too few creative ideas–indeed, there are plenty of artists, he says. The problem is that original proposals are both discomfiting and imperfect, hence reflexively rejected before they can develop enough to prove themselves in the field.
. . .
Organizations can miss innovation opportunities by accepting the conventional wisdom, Mr. Bahcall observes, a problem he describes as “false fails.” Consider the Facebook predecessor Friendster. Mr. Bahcall explains that while most investors decided that the failure of Friendster was evidence that social-network efforts weren’t sticky enough to retain customers, Peter Thiel’s investment team wasn’t so sure. They dug into the data and were “stunned by how long users stayed with the site,” despite the irritating crashes that dogged the platform. Hence Mr. Thiel’s fund was an early investor in Facebook, confident that, with appropriate attention to the underlying technology, the platform could succeed. Eight years later, he sold most of his Facebook stake and pocketed roughly $1 billion.

For the full review, see:
David A. Shaywitz. “BOOKSHELF; In Praise of Wild Ideas; Innovative proposals can be both imperfect and discomfiting–and are often rejected before they can develop enough to prove themselves viable.” The Wall Street Journal (Tuesday, March 19, 2019): A15.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the review has the date March 18, 2019, and has the title “BOOKSHELF; ‘Loonshots’ Review: In Praise of Wild Ideas; Innovative proposals can be both imperfect and discomfiting–and are often rejected before they can develop enough to prove themselves viable.”)

The book under review, is:
Bahcall, Safi. Loonshots: How to Nurture the Crazy Ideas That Win Wars, Cure Diseases, and Transform Industries. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2019.

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