The Curse of Knowledge

A recent article in the New York Times entitled "Innovative Minds Don’t Think Alike" by Janet Rae-Dupree really misses its mark. Instead of innovation, what Ms. Rae-Dupree seems to be referring to is market acceptance which is another subject entirely. Granted, the commercial world really has little value for innovation for innovation's sake, but describing a product as not being innovative because engineers can't describe it properly to consumers is just missing the whole concept of innovation.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm not a big fan of cool but useless technology, but an innovative idea is not necessarily a useful one. That being said, often times a "useless" technology will morph into something more useful and even commercial over time. Examples: too numerous to list.

Both collaboration between stakeholders and feed-back from the market are indispensable aids in guiding product development. But they can stop innovation dead in its tracks. The constant need for buy in from stakeholders and the market while the idea is developing will stymie its development and can reduce it to a merely incremental one.

An ever present danger in developing innovative technology solutions is that you become so entrenched with the solution that you can no longer talk about it in layman's terms. You think you are describing it in terms an eighth grader can understand when in fact most Ph.D.'s in the field think you're speaking in a language somewhere between ancient Etruscan and Klingon.

But this is actually a good thing as far as being innovative. If everyone understood your "innovative" product upon hearing about it for the first time how innovative could it really be? Either you've got your message down perfectly or it's just too obvious.

But Ms. Rae-Dupree's premise is that if laymen can't understand the product, even in the development stage that it is anti-innovative and you are definitely off track. Again, maybe a quick check with a definition would help. Real innovation happens in committees? If this were true the U.S. government would be the most innovative organization around.

Certainly one impediment to non-linear thinking is that you'll be met with a lot of skepticism and blank looks. Take this as a compliment; disruptive ideas are by their very nature unobvious and people are naturally resistant to ideas they don't understand. In fact they can be down right hostile.

There is no doubt that market acceptance is the goal for a commercial product whether innovative or not. But if you are developing a truly innovative product, a disruptive product that will introduce a new paradigm to the market, then don't expect everyone to understand it. The trick is to maintain just enough connection to the market to be real without corrupting the creative process.

Systems Biology Overview

In the cover story for the September issue of Bio-IT World John Russell has written on the current state of Systems Biology; Systems Biology's Awkward Adolescence. As the title implies, systems biology may not be fully cooked. Russell is a diehard SB advocate which causes him to ponder the slow rate of adoption of SB in the life-science industry. He has rounded up the usual cast of SB players to comment on current state of SB and its obstacles to adoption.

Consensus seems to point to the lack of any big wins for SB in pharma; although there are some successes they are primarily based on SB's ability to pick potential failures rather than predict winners. Gosh, sounds kind of like a disruptive technology doesn't it? Early versions are often low quality but they usually have some new market niche that sustains them. Maybe this is what Russell means by "awkward adolescence?"

So what is the new market niche that will lift SB? Pharmacogenomics, toxicity, pharmacodynamics? SB is gaining some ground in these and in other areas, it is not clear that it is indispensable for those areas. What will render SB indispensable is a healthy return on investment, and that is not yet proven.

A few big pharmas, Pfizer and Lilly to name two, have invested in internal SB initiatives. On the other hand, some early adopting pharmas have curtailed their internal initiatives; either to outsource them or take a different approach. But at least one smaller pharma, Merrimack Pharmaceuticals, is taking an SB centered approach to developing their own drugs. Perhaps dismayed by the lack of a market for SB tools, or the realization that there is greater return in developing the drugs, Merrimack feels that applying SB technology to the development of in-licensed compounds is a more viable business model.

Adoption of SB in big pharma may suffer from those factors that typically prevent adoption of disruptive technologies; entrenched systems that are threatened by the new technology. As Clayton Christensen has observed, the only way disruptive technologies can be nurtured by a large corporation is by removing the development group from the mainstream organization. Hence Lilly's establishment of their SB group in Singapore.

An alternative method for developing a disruptive technology by large corporations is to partner with independent companies, as may be the case with Merrimack. Although Merrimack does not disclose who their investors are, it would make sense that a large pharma would back them in order to gauge the effectiveness of SB. If and when Merrimack does prove to be successful, the large pharma would have access not only to their drug pipeline but to their development platform.

Having access to an SB drug development methodology does not mean ready adoption however. In fact SB may not achieve optimum value unless integrated throughout the drug development process, a daunting objective for a large pharma. This could indicate yet another case for outsourcing more drug development to smaller companies with large pharma in-licensing the results.

Blue Ocean Tide

Having heard the terms "Blue Ocean this, Red Ocean that," I thought I'd check to see what all the buzz is about and have been reading Kim and Mauborgne's "Blue Ocean Strategy." First, let me say that I am a confirmed believer in Clayton Christensen's excellent "The Innovator's" series and I think he's on to something. At least I haven't read anything previous to it that has explored the same area. But K&M are pitching essentially the same premise just with a different angle. One of their case studies even covers the same company.

The "Blue Ocean" K&M refer to is an uncontested, new market wide open to new entrants. Companies and entrepreneurs should seek out these Blue Oceans to introduce their products and services. But this is exactly what Christensen describes as a disruptive technology; one that enters an underserved market that currently has no other competitors. In fact, the "Blue Ocean" book is entering a "Red Ocean" market; a market already served by Christensen's books.

The secret to turning a dry academic tome into a best seller lies in engaging case studies; give the reader some real world examples that they can relate to. I'm a bit more forgiving of K&M since they did analyze a different set of companies although even here they duplicated Christensen by analyzing Southwest Airlines. If there is one differentiator between Christensen and K&M it's that Christensen seems to focus on U.S. companies and K&M have broadened their scope to include global companies.

Now the kicker: both Christensen's and K&M's books are published by the Harvard Business School Press. What's going on here? Is HBSP attempting to monopolize the world of innovation/new product books? Perhaps the market for these books is vastly underserved giving them a Blue Ocean to pump more books into?

The theories introduced by Christensen, even if they prove to be true, are not easily implemented and will take several management life-cycles to become accepted in the corporate world. Christensen's books will not appeal to everyone and even a great business book has a limited life span, therefore fresh approaches describing the same theories will be needed every year or so to spread the message. Nevertheless, the message is a valid one and does need to be conveyed to the business community.

Linear Thinking

One (simple) definition of linear thinking that I can agree with is to take information from one situation and use this information in another situation to make a conclusion about the later situation. We go to a new restaurant and look at the menu which we've never seen before and choose an entree that is a combination of something we like and are familiar with and what's described on the menu. If we order shrimp linguini in white sauce we would expect a few shrimp with linguini shaped noodles in a cream based sauce. If we were served a well-done T-bone steak this will exceed the constraints of our linear thought process (and deprive the waiter of a tip!).

We could go on to say that linear thinking involves sequential ordering of concepts between subdivisions but contains no loops linking in outside elements into the sequence. Although linear thinking works in many situations, i.e. the restaurant example, it may not encompass sufficient complexity to deal with more complicated situations. Linear thinking is relatively safe and conservative; it would be easier to describe a linear thought process to others than to describe a non-linear one.

So what is the counterpart to linear thinking? If we consider linear thinking to be "inside the box" then non-linear thinking may be considered "outside the box." One problem with working with the linear thought process is that you are always defining new systems in terms of systems you already are familiarity with. In some cases this is too great a limitation and it hinders the creative or developmental process. In The Innovator's Dilemma Clayton Christensen argues that following a linear development process will trap a company into simply improving existing technologies instead of finding new disruptive technologies that will eventually outpace existing ones. For the most part, our management and accounting systems are set up as linear systems; next year's budget is dependent upon this year's, our customers want to continue to use this year's products with only a few upgrades. The resistance to non-linear thinking is high, even to the point of supporting archaic processes.

But non-linear thinking in and of itself is not a solution. Nor is it even the framework of a solution; it is merely the lack of constraints imposed by linear thinking. It suggests that a solution to a problem may be beyond the types of solutions that have been used in the past. Ironically, what is considered non-linear thinking the first time through will be incorporated into the knowledge base and will be considered linear in subsequent usage.