Why You Should Get Into ‘Trouble’
A provocative quote from writer, mathematician, and pot-stirrer Nassim Nicholas Taleb:
How do you innovate? First, try to get in trouble. I mean serious, but not terminal, trouble. I hold—it is beyond speculation, rather a conviction—that innovation and sophistication spark from initial situations of necessity, in ways that go far beyond the satisfaction of such necessity (from the unintended side effects of, say, an initial invention or attempt at invention).
(from his book ‘Antifragile’)
Companies who desire innovation find that the above is extremely hard to do, because they are set up for the opposite: to avoid every bit of trouble.