Investing in innovation to stay competitive in uncertainty

To approach the present, the important thing is what you know, to approach the future, the important thing is what you know us – Nassim Taleb

There are many things that we are not able to predict, but that can change our lives completely. For example, the 11M attacks, the financial crisis, Brexit or the arrival of Trump to power. Not all of them have to be negative, we are also talking about the impact of the Internet, social technologies, the discovery of penicillin, or the fall of the Franco regime.

Let’s think about our own life, about the choice of career, for example; on how we have done financially, where we currently live or when we met our partner. How many really important events in our own existence occurred in a planned and programmed way, according to an established plan? In my personal case, the answer is very simple: most of the important events in my life have been what Nassim Taleb calls Black Swans. That is, highly unlikely events that have had a huge impact on my life

This beautiful metaphor of the Black Swan to address uncertainty is related to the fact that before the discovery of Australia, Europeans had no reason to think that a black swan could exist. Until we arrived in Australia, and the discovery of a single bird wiped out centuries of evidence. This shows a serious limitation of our learning from observation and experience. One of the most common mistakes in human beings when faced with complexity and uncertainty.

If we’ve lived in the Northern Hemisphere all our lives, we’ll think that all swans are white. The existence of a black swan seems impossible to us, because until that moment it was not part of our experience. The truth is that today, in a hyperconnected, complex and extreme world, in which information circulates at full speed and in all directions, it is increasingly possible that we will cross paths with a Black Swan on the road. And that can change our lives.

Hence the importance of asking ourselves in times of uncertainty, not: How can we identify a Black Swan, since they are unpredictable, but rather: What can we do to adapt to its existence? This requires a good dose of humility, to recognize that the territory has changed significantly, and that we urgently need new maps that allow us to explore an increasingly complex and unpredictable future.

Invest in innovation or limit yourself to exploiting old certainties?

In times of uncertainty, deciding what we are going to devote our attention to and the scarce resources we have is crucial. There are basically two alternatives: exploiting old certainties orinvesting in innovation to create new realities. The choice we make between these two options will determine whether this will be a year where we dedicate ourselves merely to survival or if it will be a year of profound changes in ourselves and in our lives.

When we use an exploitative logic, we usually see the future as a reality external to us, in front of which we have to take a position and to do so we try to predict it in order to plan it. And from here, we set the concrete objectives we want to achieve, draw up a plan and manipulate the current reality to achieve predetermined objectives. The premise that to the extent that we can predict the future, we can control it is particularly useful when the future is reasonably predictable, our environment is stable, and we are clear about the goals we want to achieve.

When we use an entrepreneurial logic to approach our future, we start from a different premise: we are the ones who create our own future. This is the natural way of reasoning in entrepreneurs and innovators. The entrepreneurial logic is particularly useful in complex and uncertain moments such as the current ones, since it moves us directly to action, to stop feeling victims of circumstances and encourage us to become true protagonists of our lives, convinced that to the extent that we are the ones who create our own future, we do not need to predict it to control it.

Many times we are convinced that we have to be in a certain way and it seems impossible to us that we can be different. We live trapped in a reality that others have built for us. The challenge is to leave our “survival zone” to move towards our “Innovation zone”; It is about experiencing changes as an opportunity to generate a new reality, exploring the future and taking advantage of it to renew our lives and ourselves. It’s time to create, not plan. Your future is yet to be made and it depends on you, instead of spending energy trying to predict it, turn it into creating it.

The importance of innovation consulting

To survive and thrive in the long term, the only way is to invest in innovation with continuity. To do so, it is important to be well advised and guided by expert professionals in the field. For this reason, it is important Investing in innovation consulting. If you want to have an ally in your innovation process,
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, we will be happy to advise you and guide you towards a process of constant innovation.