Unlearning 101

Unlearning Stabilization

John Seely Brown, John Hagel and Lang Davidson recently wrote an article entitled ”The New Reality: Constant Disruption.” The basic premise isn’t new to anyone who has read my book Jump the Curve or The Singularity is Near, and that is that society is now headed into a new era whereby change is a constant and accelerating reality. This is replacing an era where disruption was followed by periods of stabilization. In other words, in the past, people, businesses and society often had an opportunity to catch their breath and develop and orchestrate plans before the next new paradigm-shifting technological change arrived.

If you doubt this radical transformation is real, lets just use yesterday, March 31, 2009, as an example. To begin, Intel released its next generation computer chip, the Nehalem. According to this article it is a “major game changer” because of its powerful new capabilities and the fact that it uses significantly less energy than previous chips.

This announcement was followed by news that a new company, Tendril, is now using existing off-the-shelf technology to make “dumb” electrical meters “smart.” The new “smart meter” industry, which is itself only a few years old, thus finds its once promising business model already under attack.

There was then this article suggesting that Skype is about to enter the mobile cellular market. As it does, wireless carriers, which should have seen the writing on the wall for years, are about to come face-to-face with a technology that views phone calls as nothing but data and should therefore be priced no different than the information flowing over the Internet—which is to say nothing!

Elsewhere, in the field of farming and agriculture, there was this announcement that a researcher has figured out how to grow a number of different crops using only one-fifth the water and no soil. (If not using soil to grow crops isn’t disruptive, I don’t know what is.) And, in the field of robotics, there was this report announcing that Honda is now using human thoughts (via brain-computer interfaces) to control the action of robots.

Each of the aforementioned technologies is only going to get significantly better, they are going to require a great deal of unlearning. As they do, old ways of doing business will fall by the way-side and new business opportunities will emerge. This scenario is both frightening and exhilarating.

The first step is to act. As one of my favorite leaders of all-time, General George C. Marshall, once told his subordinates “get action where action is needed.” In other words, the primary responsibly of any leader is to act. In this era of accelerating change, it is easy to postpone action for want of perfect information or because “tomorrow things will be different.” It is true, things will be different tomorrow, but people will still need products and services and problems must still need to be addressed today. The bottom-line is that a less-than-perfect solution now is often better than a perfect solution later.

Secondly, leaders need to learn to embrace ambiguity, and perhaps the greatest such ambiguity is that failure can be a positive characteristic. To succeed in this new era, organizations must be willing to not only risk failure but actually reward it.

There is no possible way every organization is going to do everything right. To succeed boldly, organizations must be willing to fail boldly; and when those risks don’t work it is important to learn from the mistakes and not punish them.

The edge is a dangerous place and few people like to venture out there but that is where the future will take place. In order to encourage and cultivate employees who will venture out to the edge, leaders must encourage action and recognize that “failure is an option.” Why? Because if you don’t act and instead attempt to avoid failure, you are likely to fail anyways because the future is here—now! That’s the new reality and we must unlearn the old reality.

Unlearning Bubbles

The Internet, the real estate market, fuel cell technology, nanotechnology and, now, "clean tech" have all experienced an investing "bubble." In retrospect, it is easy to point to signs that the market was inflating to dangerous levels. It is even easier to suggest that such bubbles are a bad thing -- precisely because so many investors got burned and lost a great a deal of money.

Bob Metcalfe, an early and successful Internet entrepreneur, see bubbles differently. He sees bubbles as a good thing. Here's his quote: "From Internet history, we know that bubbles are normal. Bubbles are an accelerator of technology progress. Bubbles go against the status quo. We should encourage bubbles."

I suspect that such statements are much easier to make when you're already a billionaire; as opposed, say, to someone to just lost a large amount of money in the stock market. Nevertheless, there is a certain logic to his argument and we may want not to dismiss all bubbles as cases of irrational investors getting sucked up by the winds of "irrational exuberance." Instead we want to view them as "technology accelerators." (This might not ease the financial pain of those who lost money in the bubble, but it might at least make them feel a little bit better about themselves.)

A Watched Kettle Never Boils -- or Does It?

EcoGeek has an interesting article explaining how advances in nanotechnology can lead to the creation of a kettle that boils faster. The advance is significant not just because it could help consumers and businesses save money and time by bringing water to a boil faster, but because it suggests that a variety of other products—such as solar cells and catalysts—might also become radically more effective.

Of course, before many of these advances can be adopted people will need to unlearn the idea that a “watched pot never boils.”

The Iceberg Principle

It is common knowledge that only about 20 percent of an iceberg floats above the waterline. Yet, if you are a ship captain, you need to concern yourself with the remaining 80 percent. If you don't, you could end up sharing a fate similar to that of Edward John Smith, the captain of the Titanic.

This "iceberg principle" does not, however, just apply to the shipping industry. In many scientific and technical fields, information is doubling at an astounding rate -- approximately every seven years. This means that by the year 2015 everything we know today about a field such as biology or physics will represent just half of our future knowledge; and in 14 years time, what we know today will represent a mere 25 percent. This vast assortment of new future knowledge will likely rip apart certain industries and businesses with the same effectiveness of the iceberg that sliced through the Titanic and dropped it to the floor of the Atlantic Ocean.

If you hope to survive, one thing likely to help you is to unlearn the habit of focusing on that portion of the "iceberg" which is above the waterline and start concerning yourself more with what you don't know today -- but will need to know in the future.