Progress and Breakthroughs: Why Not a Breakthrough?

It’s been said that evolution should not be thought of as a steady, linear progression of biology, but rather as a series of disruptions over time. Much the same can be said about technology, that progress is not measured by slowly changing incremental improvements; but instead by great and profound changes, whether you call them disruptive changes or chasms being crossed or whatever.

There’s no question that this is true. The PC of course was such a disruptive change; as was the internet, big data, smartphones and so on. It almost seems like one day there weren’t there; and the next, they were; and the world changed as a consequence.

Yet our natural instincts day to day are to do something very different. In so many efforts we do version 2.1, then 2.2, then 2.21, and so on, while somewhere, someone completely changes the game forever.

In my career I’ve been lucky enough to be part of some of these disruptive changes – I’ll call them “breakthroughs,”  because they really do remove barriers and break us through into new places. Let me tell you about them.

We often think of breakthroughs as reserved for the ultra-smart, and of them only those who take the big risks, spend the big bucks, and so on.

I don’t think so.

To me creating a breakthrough culture is all about a mindset. In fact, in my experience, a breakthrough culture is not any more expensive, time-consuming or costly than one of incremental progress. Check this graphic out:

If you look at the chart, you’ll see a breakthrough requires about the same amount of effort as stepwise progress. This has been my experience, having lived through both "modalities."

So why not choose a breakthrough?

Before you answer know that, of course, there is a difference. Breakthroughs lack what we humans crave, namely, predictability and thus the ability to be controlled. When you’re doing (say) Release 2.21a of some product, you usually have a very clear and precise idea at the beginning of what will be in it, how well it will work, how much it will cost, how many resources, blah, blah, blah.

Breakthroughs – well, you don’t have that level of certainty, and for those folks who need it, that’s a very scary proposition indeed.

So how do you build a mindset for breakthroughs?

I don't have all the answers but perhaps this will help. My old friend and coach Steve Rosenthal of Gap International once said something that changed my entire outlook on life. “Conversations,” he told me, “change the world.” Then he paused for effect. “What else does?”

It was like a lightning bolt struck. What else indeed?

Think about it: it’s true, isn’t it! Innovation is a remarkably social activity when you think about it.

So, if conversations change the world, and breakthroughs are as cheap as incremental improvements, why not have conversations for breakthroughs?

I’ll have more to say about this in a future post.