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The first argument:

All too often businesses attempt to control the creative processes. That doesnt work. Creativity can be

allocated, it can be budgeted, it can be measured, it can be tracked and encouraged, but it cant be

dictated.i

To accomplish value creation through innovation a person has to remember the words of Francis Bacon,

who was, after all, the father of the scientific method: We must obey the forces we want to command.

Two and half centuries after Bacon, Charles Darwin describedthe evolution of life with his theory of

natural selection but was unable to come up with the mechanism of genetic variations that drove

evolution.ii Darwin initially believed in 1859 in The Origin of Speciesthat an offsprings new traits were

created by simply mixing the traits of its parents.

A decade later when The Variation of Animals and Plants

under Domesticationwas published he came up with yet

another mechanism based on cellular seeds but it was

Gregor Mendel who in 1866 managed to create modern

genetics through the laws of inheritance passed down by

genes from one generation to the next.

Had Darwin read about Mendels work, as Mendel had read

Darwins, Darwin would have been able to synthesize his

theory of natural selection with Mendels theory of random genetic inheritance. Unfortunately,

Mendels work existed in obscurity until the early 20th century when it was rediscovered.iii

As managers or as innovators we should not get in the way by discouraging ideas because we mustobey the forces we want to command since, in the long run, as with nature, the best ideas will win and

the others will fail.

In a Darwinian process for

weeding out the bad ideas, youwill do best by encouraging all of

them. The best will win and the

others will fail.

Rosenberg

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The second argument:

Descartes came up with the notion of splitting the mind and the body, to split problems into little pieces

to solve sub problems and then to recombine them.iv

While splitting is sometimes a good approach for problem solving, when it comes to realizing the

fullness of what is possible, we must obey the forces we want to command if we want to see and

understand a little further, to experience a bigger universe and not merely the circumstances of our

present storythen we have to try and see the way Francis Bacon did:

Special care is to be taken that it be of wide range and made to the measure of the universe. For

the world is not to be narrowed till it will go into the understanding (which has been done

hitherto), but the understanding is to be expanded and opened until it can take in the image of

the world.v

This is easier said than done. We take shots in the dark about our circumstances because living with

uncertainty is a hard struggle. Instead, since, we cant live in a state of perpetual doubt, we make upthe best story possible and we live as if the story were true.

vi

Nevertheless, if we want to grow and change in the decades that l ie ahead of

us, solving some interesting problems along the way, then the best way

forward is to approach uncertainty with excitement.

In order to do that it is helpful to think as Francis Bacon did and not shrink

our universe into separate disciplines, distinct from one another, but instead

to realize that the world is made up of science and history and philosophy and business and books and

nature and everything else combined.

We cant live in a state of

perpetual doubt, so we make

up the best story possible and

we live as if the story were

true.

Kahneman

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End Notes

iJonathan Rosenberg 42 Rules to Lead by from the Man Who Defined Googles Product Strategy

ii http://instruct.uwo.ca/anthro/222/darwin.htm.

iiihttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_selection

ivLuc de Brabandere On Strategy : What Managers Can Learn from Great Philosophers

vhttp://www.intratext.com/IXT/ENG1061/_P5.HTM

vi"Brilliant Blunders: From Darwin to Einstein. Colossal Mistakes by Great Scientists That Changed Our

Understanding of Life and the Universe. By Mario Livio."

http://instruct.uwo.ca/anthro/222/darwin.htmhttp://instruct.uwo.ca/anthro/222/darwin.htmhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_selectionhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_selectionhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_selectionhttp://www.intratext.com/IXT/ENG1061/_P5.HTMhttp://www.intratext.com/IXT/ENG1061/_P5.HTMhttp://www.intratext.com/IXT/ENG1061/_P5.HTMhttp://www.intratext.com/IXT/ENG1061/_P5.HTMhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_selectionhttp://instruct.uwo.ca/anthro/222/darwin.htm