Case Study essay paper

Drive Personal Reinvention

Tactics for Improving Your Skills as an Innovator in Tough Times

E x c e r p t e d f r o m

The Silver Lining:

An Innovation Playbook for Uncertain Times

B yCase Study

Scott D. Anthony

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For the exclusive use of c. tian, 2022.

This document is authorized for use only by caixuan tian in AD667 SB1 Innovation, Global Competitiveness, and National Economic Development taught by Esteban Lopez, Boston University from Jun 2022 to Aug 2022Case Study.

8

Drive Personal Reinvention

F. Scott Fitzgerald famously wrote, “The test of a first-rate

intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind

at the same time and still retain the ability to function.”

Unfortunately, most managers can’t pass this test. The Great

Disruption will require many managers to go to “innovation

school” to develop the skills to master paradox.

The word crisis was popular in 2008. At one point or another, pundits talked about the oil crisis, the global warming crisis, the sub-prime mortgage crisis, and, of course, the credit cri- sis. The hidden crisis emerging from the economic rubble of 2007–2008 is how corporate leaders have to deal with a chal- lenge for which they are completely unprepared. A genera- tion of corporate classical musicians who found success by following precise scores and furiously pounding keys now has to become expert at improvisation.

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This document is authorized for use only by caixuan tian in AD667 SB1 Innovation, Global Competitiveness, and National Economic Development taught by Esteban Lopez, Boston University from Jun 2022 to Aug 2022.

The Silver Lining

Existing systems, structures, and development programs that were sufficient for leaders to thrive in an era of ordered capitalism are proving to be inadequate in today’s increas- ingly turbulent times. Most leaders just aren’t ready to grap- ple with the paradoxes that will increasingly characterize their day-to-day lives. Hope is not lost, however. Research by development psychologists and business scholars provides practical pointers for the personal reinvention required in the Great Disruption.

Change as the New Constant

Standard & Poor’s index of leading U.S. companies goes back to 1923. Research by Innosight board member and longtime McKinsey director Richard Foster found that in the 1920s (when the list contained ninety companies), when a company got on that list, it would stay on for about seventy years. That meant that people who joined an S&P company might be joining the same company their parents worked for and might expect their children to work there as well.1

Today, a company that enters the S&P 500 index will stay on it for about fifteen years. That means if you join a S&P 500 company today, it most likely won’t be an S&P 500 company by the end of your career because it will have failed, shrunk, or been acquired. Increasingly, companies that buck the trend and last thirty or more years will do so only by mastering the kind of transformation described in this book. As Foster notes, “It’s an entirely different world where the balance be- tween continuity and change has moved to change.”

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This document is authorized for use only by caixuan tian in AD667 SB1 Innovation, Global Competitiveness, and National Economic Development taught by Esteban Lopez, Boston University from Jun 2022 to Aug 2022.

Drive Personal Reinvention

The Great Depression was about working hard, master- ing skills, and trying to find employment. The Great Dis- ruption is different. It is about developing the ability to be comfortable with constant change. To expect your business or function to be obsolete in a decade’s time. To be ready to transform not just your company, but yourself.

For generations, the United States had a culture that sup- ported entrepreneurialism and the creation of new growth businesses. Silicon Valley was the embodiment of this cul- ture. Today, individuals and the companies they work for have to develop this ability.

Think about the seemingly paradoxical requirements fac- ing leaders:

• I have to focus on running operations with laserlike precision without stifling creativity.

• I exist because of my big business, but “small saplings” are critical for long-term success.

• Data drives my decisions, but I have to trust intuition and judgment when data doesn’t exist or is vague.