underlying assumptions are re-examined, and the new paradigm or way of thinking takes hold.
• Phase 5 is the “post-revolution” period, during which scientists return to normal science and solve puzzles within this new and now-dominant paradigm.
Fifty-six years after its publication, Kuhn’s groundbreaking framework continues to prove durable. It applies to today’s struggle over innovation. In some ways, the way we now think about innovation is entering Kuhn’s Phase 3. That is, we are unable to account for mounting anomalies, which makes us feel we are entering a crisis period that demands a new approach, a new paradigm.
As Kuhn envisioned the process in the 1960s, true paradigm shifts are rare events. They may not even occur at the modest rate of one per century. This leaves you and your business plenty of room for puzzle-solving, incremental progress, and the accumulation of innovation that may someday reach the critical mass for a new, fresh Kuhnian paradigm shift. Kuhn further argues that the dominant paradigm so controls the agenda of thinking that it is sometimes impossible to break away from it, to “think different,” to even imagine that it is the earth that revolves around the sun. In other words, the incumbent status quo is easy, addictive, and comfortable.
In this, Kuhn echoes our approach to driving change leadership and innovation. First, if we are to innovate in our businesses, we must not restrict ourselves to approaches to innovation that are ruled by the status quo. Second, we must look for constant, though linear, progress rather than waiting for that lightning strike of revolutionary progress—which may not come for another hundred years. Third, innovation today requires “chunking”—breaking into manageable, doable steps that allow us to keep driving innovation ahead rather than waiting for revolution to happen. If we can keep moving along a linear pathway of progress, we can create value at regular intervals and enjoy incremental success.
Assuming we are in Phase 3, experiencing the erosion of the dominant paradigm, we have no way of knowing how close we are to Phase 4, the paradigm shift. The digital transformation, in itself a paradigm shift, is driving the pace of change so rapidly and the scope of change so broadly that we may have good reason to believe that Kuhn’s 1960s-based estimate of the relative rarity of paradigm shifts—once a century—is no longer accurate. While it is important to keep innovating rather than passively awaiting the revolution, we need to recognize that linear thinking will not suffice amidst a paradigm shift. As you push ahead, be prepared to spring at a moment’s notice.
Linear Innovation:
First—Commit to a Way of Thinking
Scientists Heather Barry Kappes of New York University and Gabriele Oettingen of the University of Hamburg argue that we humans need both to imagine and fantasize about the big things we are going to do and about how we are going to do them. It is not enough to simply imagine a desired future state. We must also fantasize about the steps to get there. In fact, Kappes and Oettingen conclude that both imagining and fantasizing about these steps help muster the energy required to succeed.
Sometimes, our challenge is that we don’t believe we belong on a bigger stage or that we can innovate any kind of breakthrough, big or small. For example, Tina Seelig, a Stanford professor specializing in creativity and innovation, quotes studies indicating that “Up to 70 percent of people experience impostor syndrome at some time in their lives.” They believe the stage on which they stand is too big and that they have no business being on it. Behavioral expert Olivia Fox Cabane goes further: “In the impostor syndrome, people feel that they don’t really know what they’re doing, and it’s just a matter of time before they’re found out and exposed as a fraud.” She argues that this syndrome takes hold even at the highest levels of business and education, concluding: “I’ve heard that every time the incoming class of Stanford Business School is asked, ‘How many of you feel you are the one mistake the admissions committee made?’ two-thirds of the students immediately raise their hands.”
In business, the flipside of the impostor syndrome is an existentially total belief in yourself as a bold leader and successful innovator. Again, this is the role Chris Robinson played on the soap opera General Hospital and later in a Vicks Formula 44 cough syrup commercial pitch: “I’m not a doctor, but I play one on TV.” Actor Robinson was no doctor, but he believed, as any good actor must, that he was no impostor but a bona fide MD. Thomas Edison, the inventor who declared genius to be 1 percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration, even if he often publicly denied it almost certainly believed he did possess that critical 1 percent.
Belief in your existential legitimacy must be steadily fueled by your imagination, the lifeblood of innovation. Consider Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech, delivered on August 28, 1963, before the Lincoln Memorial. King thoroughly imagined he had the legitimate right to dream that dream—and that was enough to persuade much of the world, opening a path to civil rights in the United States. Or think about Albert Einstein crediting his 1921 Nobel Prize and his development of the special theory of relativity to his own boyhood dreams about riding a light beam. He was confident that he had the right to dream such a thing—and he had the equation to prove it!
Or consider the iconic skier Jean-Claude Killy, who, in 1968, won all three Olympic alpine gold medals. He once told an interviewer about how, when he was recovering from a terrible downhill accident and was unable to ski, he continued to practice mentally. Was that a distant second best to being on the slopes? Common sense says yes. Yet Killy went from mental practice to delivering one of the best performances of his career.
Killy’s experience reminds me of Daley Thompson, who, like me, was a Decathlete. Unlike me, he won the Olympic Decathlon—twice. In 1984, he faced a high-drama athletic contest with his archrival, West Germany’s Juergen Hingsen, for the unofficial title of “world’s greatest athlete.” Each man had more than once traded world records, even if the UK’s Thompson had beaten Hingsen head-to-head on six consecutive occasions before entering the 1984 Olympics. When the competition for the gold, the 1984 Los Angeles Games, moved to the Decathlon’s seventh event, the discus, Thompson was keenly aware that this was his worst event and Hingsen’s best. Indeed, Thompson’s first two throws were well below even his normally weak measurement.
But on this day of all days, when it counted, Thompson drew on his imagination to visualize a winning throw. He imagined he had the right to be a great discus thrower, and he hurled the metal-and-wood plate to a personal best on his third and final throw, crushing the West German’s spirt and chance for gold.
“For that one moment,” Thompson explains, “I wasn’t interested in winning. Some people shy away from the high-pressure moments. It was what I had been looking for, a culmination of all I had trained for. Just to be faced with the situation in an Olympics—the feeling was incredible. And I’d faced it and overcome the thing I’m least competent in, the discus. I really hit the shit out of that discus.”
Jean-Claude Killy and Daley Thompson both practiced believing, visualizing each step toward success. When it counted most, their physical selves followed an internal belief and deep commitment they built from within. The truth is, it really does all begin with you. As a business leader, your own internal mindset and self-belief are your most powerful tools. Believing you are a bold and successful change leader and innovator is the first and fundamental step toward becoming…a bold and successful change leader and innovator.
Preparing internally to drive innovation breakthrough means taking yourself as seriously as you want others to take you. From working with top corporate CEOs and political leaders of many countries, I have discovered that each of them believes they are a top CEO or political leader. Their own affirmative self-image is a powerful driver, filter, and vision they aim at, move toward, and access. They take their leadership and their success earnestly, and this becomes a self-fulfilling element in leadership and success.
As business author and entrepreneur
