Antarctica Thrives as Hub of New Thinking

Exactly 100 years ago December 17, an explorer found glory upon the Antarctic continent. One month later, his rival met a bitter, sad end. Yet, both share lessons in the power of innovation built on best practices – and the pitfalls borne of haste and poor planning.

Today, for those looking for rationales behind the need for innovation in pursuit of excellence, the race to the South Pole offers both cautionary tales and textbook examples of success and failure surrounding the innovation process for any business or mission.

Norwegian Roald Amundsen and Englishman Robert Falcon Scott shared a dream of being first to the South Pole. Though they both were able and famed explorers of their day, their tales revealed the power of intensive research, planning and best practices.

Yet where Scott decided to innovate on what he believed to be an ideal course of action, Amundsen – who, five years earlier, pioneered the Arctic’s Northwest Passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific – studied best practices of a culture half a word from his destination. In September, National Geographic marked the centennial of their explorations .

Their examples of innovation range from the fine details to the mundane. Scott’s provisions, supplies and transport included 19 horses, 33 dogs as back-up, traditional wide-body sleds, and woolen clothing – all suited, or so he thought, to wintry exploration. To the contrary, each introduced inherent risk of failure. Horses’ hooves were ill-suited to trodding across snow and ice, which led to exhaustion in the harsh conditions. The wide sleds bogged down. Woolen wear soaked up human perspiration, which then froze to ice.

Amundsen, on the other hand, invested more than a year planning his journey. He painstakingly researched life lived in extreme conditions. He lived with Eskimos and modeled his outerwear on the furs they wore. He innovated upon modern sleds by making them longer and narrower so as to spread their weight across a greater length. Knowing extreme conditions likely would lead to attrition of his dog teams, he brought 53 sled dogs.

For mooring, he chose the Bay of Wales, or Ross Ice Shelf. Stationary for 80 years, it would provide the best shelter for his ship and base camp from strong winds. He built and provisioned three camps along the route. This way, his team would be lightened from carrying provisions the entire route. It’s a practice used by many explorers to this day.

On December 17, 1911, Amundsen made it to – and a month later returned safely from – the South Pole. A month later, Scott arrived at the Pole, only to find Amundsen had beaten him there. With his horses having perished or been shot along the route, Scott and his men began the return trek by foot. Ultimately, they, too, perished in a blizzard within miles from their own base camp.

Today, Antarctica remains a hub of innovation. Engineers are designing robots to navigate amid the extreme conditions. Architects who design living quarters used by scientists on the continent constantly are developing new buildings to withstand wind speeds topping 200 miles per hours and temperatures that can drop to 40 below zero.

This month, a three-man team from Thomson Reuters will drive its revolutionary Polar Vehicle – outfitted with bio-fuel, solar panels, and the latest in real-time GPS satellite communications and tracking. Staged to beat the Guinness World Record South Pole overland journey of two days, 21 hours and 21 minutes, the effort also will mark the centennial of Roald Amundsen’s achievement.

For those in search of innovation’s leading edge, it would seem Antarctica remains one of its final frontiers. One hundred years ago, Roald Amundsen realized – and Robert Falcon Scott lost his life to – the poles of innovation. Where Scott pursued his own vision of innovation, Amundsen followed well-modeled best practices as an imperative of smart innovation. In the end, he proved that innovating atop best practices maximizes the strengths of both.

For more information on Amundsen see: http://www.visitnorway.com/en/What-to-do/Whats-on/Exhibitions/Nansen-Amundsen-Year-2011/

Or Race to the South Pole

Follow Amundsen’s Daily Log 100 years ago:

http://www.frammuseum.no/Blogs/Roald-Amundsen-s-blog.aspx

Robert F. Brands

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Nearly every attempt at success is met with failures along the way, and properly managing those failures can actually benefit the Innovation process. As an Innovation leader, do you celebrate failure and risk-taking in your organization? Doing so will broaden horizons and lead to more valuable ideas towards a culture of sustainable Innovation.

Innovation = Creativity x Risk-taking. And more likely than not, the bigger the innovation means the greater the chance of failure. In the pharmaceutical industry, 1 out of 1000 is considered a great success ratio. In the grocery business, the success rate for new product entries is 1 to 100.. Risk-taking will no doubt require failure management. In order to “manage failure,” an Innovation leader needs to define the risk and bandwidth that is OK to team members. Then if we fail, we make it a learning experience and praise people for it.

Failure management means never allowing an unsuccessful risk to hamper a team member’s opportunities and advancement. Let your people feel safe to fail, but empower them to do their best work. After all, failure is not what team members should be thinking about during the New Product Development process. Fear of failure can kill Innovation. Especially in a difficult economy where job security is in question, employees want to play it safe and are hesitant to take risks. In this type of environment the most important thing is to establish trust – so team members are willing to take the risks necessary to act, decide and move forward on the path to Innovation. An Innovation champion doesn’t just award successful ideas, but encourages a tolerance for failure and enthusiasm for risk-taking. Without risk, there can be no Innovation.

Here are a few tips for encouraging your team members.

1. Profiles in risk. Clearly communicate the risk profile you are asking your people to adopt and state why it is important to the organization’s success.

2. Key learnings process. Establish a formalized, non-accusatory process for harvesting key learnings from unsuccessful risks. Distribute these lessons learned.

3. Tools of the trade. Give your people the tools they need to help them improve their risk-taking decisions.

For more helpful tips, see “Robert’s Rules of Innovation: A 10-Step Program for Corporate Survival.”

Innovation rarely occurs by accident, but is the result of calculated effort, work and risk taking. In the face of failure, it requires one to try, try and try again.

Thomas Edison went back to the drawing board more than 6,000 times before finding the right material to create his incandescent light bulb.

Six thousand times. Do you have that kind of innovative stamina?

Innovation is an experiment of sorts. It requires a culture of risk, opportunity and challenge. Moreover, for an organization to benefit from innovation, leaders and team members alike must welcome – and grow from – failure.

Innovation can only be achieved by taking risks. It may mean failing more times than succeeding in order to reap the sweet fruits of your labor in the end.

Rather than view failure as inherently bad, successful innovation requires that executives and teams commit to learning from each experiment gone bad – and incorporate those teachings into the next endeavor.

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“If you’ve never failed… you’ve never lived” is a popular video on YouTube describing the failures of people like Thomas Edison, once called “too stupid to learn” by his teacher and Walt Disney, who was fired from a newspaper for “lacking imagination”. Not every idea succeeds, and indeed, some of America’s most triumphant inventors, artists and entrepreneurs have most likely failed at some point in their lives. But without risk and the possibility of failure, there can be no Innovation and no success. That is precisely one of “Robert’s Rules of Innovation” imperatives: No Risk, No Innovation.

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Thomas Alva Edison was a failure. It has been said that he “went back to the drawing board” more than 6,000 times before finding the right plant to produce a carbonized filament for his incandescent light bulb.

Six thousand times. Do you have that kind of innovative stamina?

Read the rest of this page »

Well-considered risk taking is critical, not just for the success of individual companies but also to enable a properly functioning economy. Companies that are too cautious for too long sometimes discover that they’ve made a significant mistake. To avoid swinging between excessive caution and over-exuberance, set a disciplined target for your desired investment outcomes.

Read the rest of this page »

Thomas Alva Edison was a failure. It has been said that he “went back to the drawing board” more than 6,000 times before finding the right plant to produce a carbonized filament for his incandescent light bulb.

Six thousand times. Do you have that kind of innovative stamina?

Read the rest of this page »