Tag: mental model

entrepreneurship, innovation, Management, strategy

How innovators negotiate entrenched mental models. Lessons from Thomas Edison

Innovation, the driving force behind progress, often faces a formidable adversary: entrenched mental models. These cognitive frameworks shape our understanding of the world and can become barriers to the acceptance of breakthrough ideas. Managing the dynamic between innovation and prevailing mental models is the innovator’s challenge. Thomas Edison’s promotion of electric lighting over gas provides an example of how this challenge was successfully met.

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decision making, Management, strategy

Why mental models should be the key topic of your next executive seminar

The Covid-19 crisis completely disrupted the strategy of all organizations, reducing plans to nothing. Like any disruption, it corresponded to a process in development whose consequences unfolded, and continue to unfold, progressively on all levels: sanitary, social, economic, but also political and geo-political. It was followed two years later by another disruption, the invasion of Ukraine, which had a similar effect. For organizations, such disruptions impose a complete revision not only of their strategy, but of the way it is defined and of the fundamental beliefs on which the process is based, and in particular on how decisions are made in an organization. It requires a rethink of strategy, management and leadership.

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Economy and society, innovation

Why rich peoples’ whims are useful for innovation

What do rich people do when they are bored? They embark on an innovation project. Conquer Mars, cross the Atlantic, extend human life, invent fundamental artificial intelligence, create a robot, etc. As an expression of their promoters’ ego, these projects are often considered useless and qualified as whims, i.e. a capricious and unreasonable envy. But is it so sure? What if (some of) the whims of today were the useful innovations of tomorrow? What if we should be careful not to pass moral judgment on both what is being done (useless!) and on those who are doing it (the rich and their whims)?

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innovation, Management, transformation, Uncategorized

Rethinking Risk-Taking: Unblocking Innovation by Challenging Mental Models

In the quest for innovation, the encouragement of risk-taking by employees is often ineffective because of entrenched, counterproductive mental models. One example is a successful manufacturing company whose commitment to quality has morphed into a stifling perfectionism that impedes progress. While the organization advocates risk-taking for transformation, it struggles to create change. This article explores the core of this challenge-the ingrained mental models that foster resistance-and advocates a balanced approach that reconciles innovation and stability.

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entrepreneurship, innovation, Management, uncertainty

Is Meta the new Kodak? Eight history lessons on the necessity and risks of big innovation bets

Meta, the parent company of Facebook, is doing badly. The weakness of Facebook, its legacy business, and doubts about the relevance of the colossal investment made in the metaverse, a system for creating a virtual world, call into question the company’s strategy. The combination of the weakness of the legacy business and the difficulty of launching a new business is not unlike that of Kodak twenty years ago. A look at the history of major bets made by companies to launch or renew themselves is useful to better understand the issues facing meta and to avoid rash judgments.

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Management, transformation, Uncategorized

Do you need to build a cathedral to give meaning to your employees’ work?

The pursuit of employee engagement and meaning often centers on the idea of a grand vision, akin to building a cathedral of ambition. However, this narrative oversimplifies the complexity of meaningful work. A fuller understanding recognizes that meaning isn’t derived solely from external goals, but can come from the intrinsic fulfillment found in daily tasks, collaborative efforts, and the intrinsic value of contributions.

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Management, uncertainty

In uncertainty, be a vulnerable leader

Making decisions under uncertainty is a difficult art. One of the reasons is that the tools and concepts we use are largely designed for risk, for clearly defined and recurring situations. Such tools assume that uncertainty is something to be protected against. This mental model of protection, which seems so logical, is actually counterproductive. What if, on the contrary, we should not protect ourselves (too much) from uncertainty?

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Uncategorized

How crises disrupt our mental models and what that means

The Covid-19 epidemics constitutes a major event that completely disrupted world life, rendering all forecasts and plans based on them obsolete within a few weeks. The very nature of a surprise is to bring to light an element of our mental models and invalidate it. In short, crises disrupt our mental models. Because a disruption is a process, the effects unfold progressively, on many dimensions, and over a long period.

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