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Working title: Complex Adaptive Systems, Heroism & Disruptive Innovation in Multinational Corporations
Tony Salvador

Abstract
This paper reframes innovation practice within large multinational corporations through a merged lens of systems theory with mythology. There are several reasons for this reframing: First: the structure of innovation in a large corporation is theoretically and practically the same as the structure of heroism across mythology – the monomyth -- as outlined in Campbell’s The Hero With A Thousand Faces. In both cases, the Hero must escape his/her current system, enter into, create and/or operate within another, and eventually establish a resolution with the old system. Second, both journeys happen within the greater context of extant social structures that infuse the respective systems. Third, societies and corporations are usefully and revealingly well described as complex adaptive systems, whereby the innovation applies tension to the stability & balance (homeostasis) of the extant, often profitable, reigning (corporate) system. The monomyth illuminates the stages of the hero’s journey and the resources needed at each stage, respectively; from our work and experiences we can re-interpret these resources in the context of systems theory for today’s corporate environment. Based on three years of experience with a business unit tasked with disruptive innovation (though implicitly), we examine the nature of Christensen’s notion of innovation in the joined context of complex adaptive systems and mythology. We offer an early explanation for why disruptive innovation is so hard -- it threatens the existing system, it does not account for the distribution of power in the social structure and innovators fail to secure the appropriate resources that are only apparent by considering the context of systems and social structures. We propose that for disruptive innovation to be more probable, it must become an explicitly designed part of the system.


Corporations as Systems
People still do the work in corporations. Even when machines are doing some of the actual labor, at least for now, it is the people who tell the machines what to do. It is the people who are accountable. It is people who identify problems, think of solutions and make decisions under uncertainty. It’s the people who do the work.

Perhaps as obvious, but less often highlighted, people comprise corporations. People fill out the organizational structures of various hierarchies. In setting policies, making decisions, answering calls, arguing with their colleagues, people are engaging is various ritual practices that reflect the social structure of the corporation. That is, corporations of people are usefully viewed as social structures comprised of people who happen be organized in a particular way, following particular policies, adhering to particular internal and external strictures, etc.

A social structure is an analytical frame that describes the culture of the corporation and any one corporation may be usefully described by different social structures as warranted. Social structures, therefore, provide the framing context of the peoples’ interactions. Different social structures can be used to highlight or reveal different elements of the complexity of a corporate culture. I will return to this later. At this juncture, however, what’s relevant is that corporations operate in an inherently social context. I will argue that the context of the organization, and especially the social structure itself, strongly affects the peoples’ individual and collective responses to events, especially innovative events.

Corporations are also complex (sometimes adaptive) systems. A complex system can be described as a set of entities and rules such that given some input, there’s some output. That output may have a highly probable output. Corporations strive for highly probably outputs. However, more often, outputs are less probably predictable. A complex adaptive system responds to the output and adjusts the input in a continuous attempt to increase the predictability of the output given the input.

Complex (adaptive) systems also seek stability, what’s technically referred to as homeostasis, which is a measure of balance between inputs and outputs. the system, that is the corporation, strives to maintain homeostasis in all its endeavors.

A final relevant point here is that corporations are complex (adaptive) systems each with a level of “fitness” relative to other corporations in its landscape, or, in its value network. For example, the corporation with the highest profit margins may be the most fit corporation and you can bet your boots that the corporation is going to a. want to remain at the highest level of fitness with highly predictable inputs and outputs c. at a high degree of homeostasis.

Thus, a corporation is a complex (adaptive) system at some level of fitness at some level of homeostasis, comprised of people characterized by one or more prevailing social structures. Furthermore, no one corporation is the same as another. Although there are clearly shared characteristics, just as clearly is the fact that corporations differ in their “corporate culture”, which, in this paper is reflected in their systemic constructs. The point of differentiation will be very important at a later point.

Whipped by market forces, corporations must continuous expel the damned spot of inefficiency at every turn and strive with all their might to maintain or improve their position on the fitness landscape through ruthless optimization of their production and delivery of goods and services. Indeed, a good corporation will continuously innovate to keep the corporation on track, maintain fitness and homeostasis.

However, there are not one, but two types of innovation. A first is what we just discussed: innovations that further optimize the efficiency of the corporation along its current trajectory. This type of innovation, let’s call it continuous innovation, can be of immense value to the corporation, increasing productivity, reducing costs, etc., overall increasing its general fitness.

A second type of innovation offers alternative trajectories or challenges or threatens the current trajectory either directly or indirectly. This second type, let’s call it discontinuous innovation, offers possibilities less clear in how they propel the corporation up the fitness landscape, or how they otherwise maintain or improve stability and predictability of the corporation. Rather, these second types of innovations may suggest new entrants to the fitness landscape or new fitness landscapes all together. These types of innovations also suggest changes in the technical or social (or both) structures of the system defining the corporation; moreover, these types of innovations may be very difficult to comprehend in the context of the extant system and social structure – a system & structure that’s been highly evolved for a particular purpose, within a particular landscape – a system and structure relentlessly seeking homeostasis.

Both types of innovation can be of immense valuable to the corporation. Continuous innovations lift or at least maintain the corporation’s position on the current fitness landscape. They do not disrupt, or minimally disrupt corporate homeostasis. The suggestions are comprehensible; they fit within the frameworks and “black boxes” of the people making the decisions. They are recognizable for what they will achieve – and importantly, also for negative effects, if any, they would have. Therefore, continuous innovations are a part of the system, dependent on clever people and an amenable social structure, to be sure, but overall, happen within the context of the extant system. There is no conflict here, nothing particularly challenging and we shall spend no more time on continuous innovation.

On the other hand, discontinuous innovations do challenge the corporation’s fitness, and this is where our interest lies. We suggest the general notion that whilst we value discontinuous innovation as individuals and as expressed in corporate rhetoric systems and social structures abhor innovation by default. That is, complex adaptive systems continuously seek homeostasis at higher and higher levels of fitness, challenges to either (homeostasis or fitness) are increasingly less tolerated. We propose, therefore, that the hidden strength of the system and social structure of the corporation exceeds the strength of explicit individual and corporate statements. As a result, discontinuous innovation from within is so nearly impossible that successful innovations are nothing short of heroic.

But not impossible. It would however seem nearly insurmountable for all the books, advice, rules and research on innovation in general and discontinuous innovation in particular. In all of this work, the emphasis has been on the nature of the business environment in which innovation takes place, the skills sets requires, the location within the organizational structure, the sorts of actions required, e.g., lots of planning, and how all this differs from the standard business. We suggest the problem is not with the business environment at all, but with the system environment and the social structure embedded within and constitutive of that system.

We’ve been participant observers for three years in the Emerging Markets Platforms Group, a business unit of Intel Corporation. The stated charter of this group is to increase the total available market for Intel Architecture in emerging markets with new platforms. In English: Grow new markets with new products in developing countries. More translation: Grow new businesses for Intel microprocessors by creating new, sustainable markets in developing countries and emerging market countries across the globe with new products and new kinds of products that Intel’s not made before. On the face of it, it also doesn’t seem like anything other than reasonable, if not challenging.

But in reality, it doesn’t get much more disruptive than this. What’s not stated in the charter are the hidden caveats discovered over the past 3 years.

• Thou must not conflict with any of our current business endeavors anywhere in the world or undercut any of our current products.
• Thou must not conflict with any of our current customer’s business endeavors or undercut any of their current products.
• Thou must embark on something Intel can do uniquely and that Intel should do uniquely.
• Thou must be more profitable than anything anyone else at Intel is doing for the same investment in the same amount of time – regardless of future possible growth.
• Thou must be relevant on a global scale, not just regional or national.

Taken together the innovator working under this charter can not now be seen as nothing less than heroic. The innovator is “fighting the system”, even as the system is articulating friendship and cooperation. There is no enemy; the enemy is us – but not “us” as individuals or even us as a group of individuals, it’s “us” transformed as “the system”. We comprise the social structure. We give life to the system. In turn, the system animates us.

First, “We the system” assume a non-trivial and increasingly strong measure of control correlating to our position on the fitness landscape and the energy required to maintain homeostasis. Innovation endeavors threaten those positions. Discontinuous innovations endeavors apply pressure and inject tension within the otherwise stable social structure(s) that defines the extant (corporate) systems, often suggesting if not resulting out right in the creation of new systems – meaningfully apart from the extant system, the submission of the innovation to the extant system or cessation of the innovative attempt. We apply Bateson’s general notion of schisomogenesis in this regard. The foundational point is that successfully accommodating innovations in the context of a strong, homeostatic system is very unlikely if one fails to recognize the power of the system. Indeed, heroically unlikely. It is then left to answer the question of how one innovates within a systems-based conceptual framework of innovation.

In Joseph Campbell’s influential work, The Hero With A Thousand Faces, he outlines the general structure of the hero’s journey. More interesting (to me) than the remarkable analysis of global historical mythology, is that Campbell talks about the hero’s journey as transitioning between two systems – the common-day and the unfamiliar. As the hero journeys, he/she draw on different internal and external resources, acts under different rules, relies on different “colleagues”. The resources, rules and colleagues are, handily structured not only in terms of two distinct systems, but also in terms of time – as related to the journey. The structure over time is useful to innovation as it outline what’s needed when.

The Hero


The mythological hero, setting forth from his common-day hut or castle, is lured, carried away, or else voluntarily proceeds, to the threshold of adventure. There he encounters a shadow presence that guards the passage. The hero may defeat or conciliate this power and go alive into the kingdom of the dark (brother-battle, dragon battle; offering, charm), or be slain by the opponent and descend into death (dismemberment, crucifixion). Beyond the threshold, then, the hero journeys through a world of unfamiliar yet strangely intimate forces, some of which severely threaten him (tests), some of which give magical aid (helpers). When he arrives at the nadir of the mythological round, he undergoes a supreme ordeal and gains his reward. The triumph may be represented as the hero’s sexual union with the goddess-mother of the world (sacred marriage), his recognition of the father-creator (father atonement), his own divination (apotheosis), or again – if the powers have remained unfriendly to him – his theft of the boon he came to gain (bride theft, fire theft); intrinsically, it is an expansion of consciousness and therewith of being (illumination, transfiguration, freedom). The final work is that of the return. If the powers have blessed the hero, he now sets forth under their protection (emissary); if not, he flees and is pursued (transformation flight, obstacle flight). At the return threshold, the transcendental powers must remain behind; the hero re-emerges from the kingdom of the dead (return, resurrection). The boon that he brings restores the world (elixir), p 211.

The prolific inventor Thomas Edison suggested that “Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.” I’d rather like to adapt his phrase to propose that innovation is one percent ideation and ninety-nine percent preparation.” If innovation is about the nature of systems and system power and social structure and power within these systems, then it’s clearly in the beginning and end where the system pointed. Campbell talks about three main parts of the hero’s journey: Departure, Initiation & Return. It’s in the preparation that innovation in won or lost and it’s these brackets where context is set and it’s getting the context right that sets the Hero on the right path. In this paper, I want to focus on the beginning (Departure) and the end (Return) of the Hero’s journey as it’s where I think we have the most to offer in the framework of this paper, although I will have a few words about the middle bit (Initiation).

Departure
Call To Adventure
How does the call happen. The call comes in context. It’s not random. Campbell’s analysis is Freudian – that it represents the deepest parts of our collective unconscious. Too often innovators think that what’s happening is random. In a corporation, the “insight” can be seen to represent the collective unconscious, the deep seated fears of the corporation – the competitor, a source of angst. The competitor threatens the system directly. The system has built systemic defenses for just this purpose. Continuous innovation maintains the fitness of the corporation. The system must survive. The “insight” is a call to adventure, can be seen as a discontinuous means to beat the competitor tomorrow by going outside the system today.

Too often, for entrepreneurs and innovators, it’s a chance event… something happens. In myth it surely does. However, if we consider the systems…it needs to be intentional. At least, that’s what we’ve found. There needs to be intentionality about it. It needs to be adaptive, surely. But it needs to be intentional. Chance can catalyze. But intentionality must set in. Answering the call must be intentional. I discuss some specific elements of intentionality below.

Refusal
Not everyone responds to the call. Some actually refuse. What’s revealing is the reason for the refusal. Campbell: “The myths and folktales of the whole world make clear that the refusal is essentially a refusal to give up what one takes to be one’s own interest…The future is regarded…as though one’s present system of ideal, virtues, goals and advantages were to be fixed and made secure,” p 49.

This is what the system is expressly designed to do – to seek its own interest, privilege the current virtues, advantages and goals, and to make them secure! The non-hero, refusing the call is hearing the call of virtue, advantage and security. In a corporation, the social structure rewards a response to the system’s siren call. The social structure rarely rewards the innovator answering the call of disruption. Campbell points out that should one hear the call to innovation, but not embark, the result is “Walled in boredom, hard work, or “culture”, the subject loses the power of significant affirmative action and becomes a victim to be saved, p49.

In our own work, we note informally two types of cynic, the one who tried and failed and the one who never tried. We’ll see about tried and failed below. Never tried, or had the chance and refused the call, are those that refuse, and they become the inertia in the system, to be avoided by the innovator.

Supernatural Aid
At some point after answering the call, the hero is presented with some “surprise” assistance. In mythology, it’s always a bit of supernatural, magical aid – a charm, an old woman or man. The charm protects the hero as he/she enters the new system. Moreover, at this point, the “charm” is a sense of peace, “…a benign, protecting power of destiny. In innovation or entrepreneurial discussions, there is some reference to this “charm” being a “mentor”. I don’t think it’s a mentor; that’s different. Thinking systemically and heroically, what we find works is less a mentor and more someone with relatively immense power who doesn’t have to use it. Someone removed from the day to day of the current system, but whose power can be used, especially benignly, in the system. Someone like the CEO or Chairman of the Board.

In our work, we’ve seen two specific examples of this related to the creation and establishment of two new business units, The Digital Health Group and the Emerging Markets Platforms Group. Andy Grove, Chairman emeritus, was the “supernatural” with the former, and Craig Barrett was “supernatural” of the latter. In both cases, the nature of their aid was based on personal relationships with the hero of the story. Yes, they acted as to some limited extent as mentors to the hero, but it was less of what they said and more of who they are that matters. Moreover, that others knew of the special relationship also mattered significantly. Finally, the two also acted on their own to incorporate the interests of the two new groups into their daily activities and into their relationships outside of the each group that also mattered. Finally, the “charm” of their presence, relationship and extra-group actions continues and must continue throughout establishment of the group. Therefore, one might well imagine that discontinuous innovation should seek (I daresay requires) the presence of and relationship with this sort of benign, but power systemic presence.

Crossing the First Threshold
Gandhi had a series of phrases: First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. For disruptive innovation, the first threshold is when they fight you, for that is the point at which the disruption threatens the current system balance and homeostasis. Prior to this, there is little threat to the system, and the system does not respond as its fitness is not threatened. As was said of one GM: “They’re [executives] are not afraid you won’t do something; they’re afraid you will.”

In mythology, there’s a keeper to the first threshold at which the hero crosses, amulet/charm in hand, from the regular world into the “…zone of magnified power,” p. 64. When embarking on a disruptive innovation, the hero and his/her group is entering a zone of magnified power – power bestowed on the group by the system itself; i.e., the hero now has the power to disrupt the system, which is not perceived as benign, nor is it perceived as weak. The goal of the innovator/hero is to mitigate the relative challenge of the threat such the system does not perceive the endeavor as significant (accurately or inaccurately). That is, the system will respond according to the threat to its fitness on the landscape. The challenge for the hero in the corporate system is to dissipate the impact of the challenge to the system, such that the threat to the system is only mildly perceived.

In general it is right that the system responds to threats to its fitness. In mythology, the hero’s adventure begins when the society is ready for the teachings/change/adaptations the hero will bring. Corporations must also adapt, or they will perish as has been shown repeatedly, most convincingly, perhaps by Christensen. Therefore, the innovator/hero is embarking not only from one system of power (the current system), to a zone of magnified power, but he/she is also embarking in time, at the cusp of system change that would otherwise be driven from the landscape, and not by the corporation, which could change its relative fitness, even if this point is not clear in the beginning. Therefore, the hero must account for both a sense of power in the form of threat as well as a sense of time. Too often, the innovator talks about the “strength” of his/her business or innovation. Rather, it might behoove the innovator to play it down, to be less bold rather than more bold, to rely on the amulet as a sign of hidden strength.

Intel is a multinational corporation optimized to make and sell high complexity, high volume microprocessors. At the formation of our group three years ago, we did actually mitigate the threat to the system, albeit not intentionally. Rather than set out with a grand global vision (commensurate with Intel’s extant system) we initially set out to establish four different design centers in Bangalore, Cairo, Sao Paulo & Shanghai, each chartered for innovation in its own region. Thus, there was no central challenge anywhere, and the system didn’t perceive any significant threat. The result is, arguably, rather different. A point to which we will return.

The Belly of the Whale
Crossing the threshold is simply a step; passing into the new system requires a passage. In mythology, the hero sojourns in bellies of whales, elephants, monsters, wolves, other entities, and “…undergoes a metamorphosis. “…The passage of the magical threshold is a transit into a sphere of rebirth…,” p 74. The hero’s former self is demolished, “annihilated”, and “ceases to exist”. In our corporation, the hero must cease to be a part of the corporate system and represent the new system. This is the point at which a new system is forming, the beginning of Bateson’s conception of schismogenesis or the start of seeking autonomy, as Govindarajan & Trimble suggest is necessary.

In our business, what’s relevant is to recognize two key points: first that the disruptive endeavor has reached the point of forming the new system and second, that one must be intentional about it. In this case, Thurston (2008, personal communication), argues for an explicit inventory of the attributes available to the new system, through an exhaustive RPP analysis in advance of the endeavor. (See Table 1). If, following Bateson, the disruptive innovation calves-off a new system, then the chances of its success can only be aided by not proceeding randomly, but by considering explicitly the boundary conditions possible around the new system to be formed.

These boundary conditions, shown in Table 1, express the possible nature of the formal systemic relationship between the extant and new systems. However useful it is, it does not address the nature of power and social structure overlaying the two systems. As such, it’s sufficient to plan the ideal case, but insufficient to assess the probability of reducing systemic resistance to the innovation. We return to this point in the Implications section.

Initiation – Ultimate Boon
Feeling all refreshed from the belly of the whale, our hero is finally ready to slay some dragons and achieve some boon. Put another way, after significant preparation, the innovator is able to navigate both the old system and the new, to begin the long, tough propulsion of his/her endeavor up the fitness landscape. The preparation is crucial, as in mythology, the earliest stages set the course of the hero’s adventure through hardships and perils of every sort. In terms of innovation practice, much has been written, and there’s little more I can add except to make some simple points about the relevance of the departure phase. The 10 Rules for Strategic Innovation (Govindarajan & Trimble) is quite a handy guide that we’ve found rather useful for navigating this phase of the hero’s journey.

In our endeavors, we’ve found this to be quite more difficult than imagined it would be. The ubiquitous phrase we used was: “We need to fight Intel at every turn”. It was all the more frustrating in that in our naiveté, we imagined it was the company that should be helping us, not fighting us. It’s only by understanding the systems nature of the two entities that company’s “resistance” is entirely sensible.

Govindarajan & Trimble (and others) argue that the new endeavor requires autonomy. However, while some autonomy is necessary, what this paper suggests is rather a notion for how the systems will coexist, and what parts of the existing system will yield to the new endeavor, and vice versa. It’s not autonomy that’s sought, it’s adaptation that’s forced upon the highly fit system. Hence, the preparation – intentionality, release of cynicism, secure supernatural aid, etc.

In some work we did in Egypt, it because clear that a high publicity introduction of Classmate PC’s directly into a couple classrooms in the school provoked more negative backlash regarding questions of utility, teacher rules, student work, the timing of student work, administrative control, parental control, etc., than it did inject excitement and enthusiasm. Indeed, whenever any “important” people came to see the classroom, the classroom “put on the show” for the visitors, such was the reception of the machines. On the other hand, in some subsequent work looking specifically at the education system and more importantly, the power distribution and meaning of each element of the overall social structure, it became clear that we went about this pilot all wrong. We should have secured the quiet support of Suzanne Mubarak, wife of the current president. And we should have rolled-out the pilot very quietly, not with fanfare. And we should have determined the system and social structure adaptations necessary to incorporate the Classmate PCs into the classroom. In other places, a highly visible pilot reveals the adaptations. In Egypt, a sensitively silent pilot would have worked to the advantage of the endeavor.

In a separate case, we worked with Sri Satyan Mishra, from Delhi, the founder of Drishtee in India. Here’s a case where the local entrepreneur was quite capable of understanding the power distribution in the social network that infused the government systems at the District level. At the time, Drishtee was an information kiosk company – one of the first – that provided government services to rural villagers through an arrangement with the District Offices in the small cities that served as the headquarters for the District which is administered by a District Collector, the chief of the district. Drishtee not only helped the villagers, but it also helped the District Collector serve his/her rural constituents. However, many constituents also are served directly through the district office, in person, through which flourishes a small but significant informal economy. Drishtee’s activities were a minor adaptation to the current system without being (too) threatening. Mr. Mishra was quite clear that the two most intensive elements of initiating his business in the villages was finding the right information kiosk entrepreneur and securing support (ultimately with a handshake) from the relevant District Office.

In both cases, the labor of the endeavor was severely impacted – negatively and positively, respectively – by the preparation, or by the hero’s “departure” phase. The hero passes through various trials, meets with and is exalted by various key roles along the way. Much of the work and the resources for achieving that work have been discussed elsewhere. One last point, however, is that the work that’s done, while it must be done in the context of highly adaptive complexity, is done with the goal of creating a new sustainable system. This new system is the “ultimate boon” of the hero’s adventure – and we know how difficult that is.

In terms of this paper’s contribution, securing the ultimate boon is an exercise in understanding the nature of complex adaptive systems and social structures as much or, perhaps more than it is about understanding the business tools and technique to enact the innovation. However, it’s the latter that remains the focus of the vast amount of work on innovation. Securing the boon of a new “system” is the goal, however, we will see now that in the Hero’s journey, the return is as important as the departure in terms of the extant system that is the corporation.

Return
“The full round…requires that the hero shall now begin the labor of bringing the runes of wisdom, the Golden Fleece, or his sleeping princess back into the kingdom of humanity, where the boon may redound to the renewing of the community, the nation, the planet or the ten thousand worlds,” p167

The innovation needs to offer hope to the extant system and to the people in the extant social structure. So even as we begin the return, we return to the beginning where preparation is required to arrange for, to plan for hope to the system. That is, how will the extant system learn, grow, develop – become stronger – as a result of the innovation endeavor regardless of outcome? The only way heroes will not refuse the call is if there is some good he/she can do – however reluctant the hero may be.

Often new endeavors have an “exit strategy” and business people talk explicitly about the exist strategy from the beginning. But this is too confined a purview. For a venture capitalist, the exit strategy might be only about the business; but in the context of a multinational corporation (a large complex adaptive system) the endeavor must also be of concern to the system and its extant social structure. To be sure, the caricature of the hardnosed businessman [sic] would demure (if hardnosed businessmen can demure) at the thought of new ventures being about anything other than the financial return. But the presence of one hard-nose is no match for the power of the system to squelch that which diminishes.

In both mythology and business, the hero’s journey is intended to bring back a boon greater than what can be gained through the regular day to day world of the extant system. The hero knows it; as innovators, we forget it. It’s crucial to plan for the return from the beginning – whether the innovation endeavor is a financial success or not: “The myths of failure touch us with the tragedy of life, but those of success, only with their own incredibility. And yet, if the monomyth is to fulfill its promise, not human failure or superhuman success but human success is what we shall have to be shown,” p. 178.

There are two several ways to return…willingly or unwillingly, with the support of the “goddess” or against her will.

Magic Flight
The hero/innovator leaves the “real world” to embark on the adventure in the “other world”. At some point, the hero/innovator has reached his/her goal. Or, perhaps the goal has been reached. The hero is faced with return. For any innovator, the adventure reveals much about themselves and the world than was previously apparent. One path for the innovator is to return to the corporate system. The question is how.

Many entrepreneurs must “run away” from their creation…the cliché is that their temperament is not suited to “running the business”, only to starting it. (They work better in the highly adaptive phase, not the stable/homeostatic phase.) But how do they come back? What, if anything, do they bring back to the organization? Do they leave a trial of destruction, carnage?

Jason absconded with the golden fleece due to his collaboration with Medea, King Aeëtes’s daughter, who had fallen in love with Jason. As they were sailing away, the king’s ship was gaining. To delay the king, Medea convinced Jason to hack her brother to bits and throw his parts into the sea so Aeëtes would need to collect them for burial, and thus escaped to return with the fleece.

A multinational corporation is if nothing else a large adaptive system. The innovator/hero needs to plan for and bring back to the corporation that which he/she has learned. The learnings need to become a part of the “society”, to prepare for the next adventure. In our work, we’ve found it constructive to consider our innovation activities as both businesses and experiments. By being “scientists”, we take a critical eye toward both the old and new systems. We’ve not been nearly as explicit as we should be, but are improving.

Rescue From Without
Sometimes the hero doesn’t want return: “Who, having cast off the world would desire to return again? He would only be there. [original italics] And yet, in so far as one is alive, life will call. Society is jealous of those who remain away from it, and will come knocking at the door,” p. 178. Here Campbell talks about the society as an entity, society as a “force”, a force

One significant recent innovation endeavor at Intel was stopped rather abruptly. The GM, by his own admission, was fairly disaffected with the “whole thing” and considered leaving Intel. He was “rescued” by his mentor. Though the innovation was not a financial success, the hero/innovator was brought back into the system, to strengthen it.

In another example of an innovation of some years ago, of which Intel divested, the key innovator/hero did return to the larger system, willingly, but he also brought with him new social structures, new perspectives and has for several years now begun collecting others with similar experience and begun infiltrating the extant system, like a virus, moving the behemoth that is Intel slowly, inexorably. It may not be enough, or fast enough, but that’s a landscape question.

The system needs to keep an eye on its heroes. The system needs to hold the hero accountable to it – not just for the financial success, but also for the impact to the extant system. The hero’s journey is an expensive endeavor, its risk can be mitigated, and thus far more palatable to the extant powerful system, by actively considering how the system can benefit independent of the financial risk and probability of success.

Crossing of the Return Threshold
At this point, the hero crosses back to the real world. Campbell so uncannily, presciently and perhaps a bit dramatically, captures the experience of the innovator returning to the system, that I quote the entire passage:

Many failures attest to the difficulties of this life-affirmative threshold. The first problem of the returning hero is to accept as real, after an experience of the soul-satisfying vision of fulfillment, the passing joys and sorrow, banalities and noisy obscenities of life. Why re-enter such a world? Why attempt to make plausible, or even interesting, to men and women consumed with passion, the experience of transcendental bliss? As dreams that were momentous by night may seem simply silly in the light of day, so the poet and the prophet can discover themselves playing the idiot before a jury of sober eyes. The easy thing is to commit the whole community to the devil and retire again into the heavenly rock dwelling, close the door and make it fast. But if some spiritual obstetrician has meanwhile drawn the shimenawa across the retreat, then the work of representing eternity in time, and perceiving in time eternity, cannot be avoided. p. 189.

The innovator, returning, finds that he/she comes with experience, knowledge, purview and capabilities foreign to most of corporate individuals but moreover, to the system as a whole. The innovator must find his/her way; and must find a way to “…teach again…what has been taught correctly and incorrectly learned a thousand times…”, p. 188. The goal of the innovation is not to diminish the system, but to raise it higher on the fitness landscape. This vital point is often lost or missing in the innovation endeavor, and hence sets the innovation more at odds with the system than perhaps is warranted, increasing the system’s negative response while demanding ever more of the innovator and the innovator’s supernatural help.

“There must remain however…a certain baffling inconsistency between the wisdom brought forth from the deep, and the prudence usually found to be effective in the light world.”, p. 188. In the end, the system must do everything it can to survive the onslaught of innovation from within as well as from without. In the end, the system must act prudently to maintain its fitness, stability and social structure. It must. It can act no other way; it would defy its own nature as a complex adaptive system. The hero/innovator must bring the boon – the capabilities and outlook – from the innovation to the system. In the end, the innovator becomes a master of the two worlds , possesses the ability and “…freedom to pass back and forth across the world division [from the day to day to the extraordinary] not contaminating the principles of the one with those of the other, yet permitting the mind to know the one by virtue of the other.”, p. 196.

The cycle is now complete and the foundation laid to establish a culture of (disruptive) innovation, of actively embarking on a path of schismogenesis, of learning, establishing and returning.

In Closure, Two Implications
First, we can define innovation as creating new systems and/or new landscapes within a shared social structure. Furthermore, we can refine Christensens’ notion of disruptive innovation more specifically as creating new systems at lower fitness on existing landscapes or new landscapes challenging existing landscapes within a shared social structure.

Clearly, innovation is hard. But this analysis suggests that it’s hard not because ideation is hard, or necessarily because we lack business skills. Rather, our work suggests that collectively, we’ve failed to recognize the innovation necessarily increases tension in an extant, often powerful system – as system designed explicitly to reduce and eliminate tensions due to uncertainties. Thus, innovation is antithetical to the survival of the system, even if individuals recognize the value of the innovation. All things being equal, the probability of success of any disruptive innovation within a large multinational corporation is at least as much about the system as it is about the idea – if not more so.

Disruptive innovations must recognize the tension they are injecting into the extant system. They must also recognize that the system will resist, even if individuals are “on your side”. There disruptive innovation must spend as much or more effort on the “context” as on “the idea”. A systems focus shifts the context from the “idea” and the “strategy” to the landscape and to the competing systems on that (or the new) landscape. In this paper, we explored the various elements of context – the system attributes expected to be available to the new innovation – for example, the need for supernatural aid, the strong need to provide tangible value back to the system as a result of engaging in the innovation journey, etc.

Second, the innovator is on a hero’s journey. The hero’s “job” is to embark on journey for the express purpose of bringing value back to the society from whence he/she came, whether the society was aware of the need or not. As such, the innovator requires the tools and resources of the mythological hero of Campbell’s monomyth. This is especially the case in the context of a large multinational corporation where the innovator is defacto challenging the supremacy of the extant system by creating a new system on an existing landscape, or by creating new landscapes. The system will resist. The hero, by careful preparation, by securing all the tools and resources and actively managing them, will address the system through its social structure.

Addressing the social structure means understanding the nature of power distributed through the system and using it. It means understanding the personal proclivities and interests of specific individuals, but also their role in the system, and the nature of their power – both positive power as well as resistive power. Put another way, the innovator needs to understand how the innovation is good for the system, much the way the hero needs to understand how the prize of his/her journey would aid society.

We return now to Table 1. These conditions are the “business tools” available to the innovator that attempt to identify the relationship systemic between the old and new system. However, unless there is collective – that is, systemic – agreement to the character of this relationship, individuals or groups in the extant system can easily energize the standard system response to any threat. Supernatural aid may not be enough. In this way, disruptive innovation requires a significant manipulation of – not expression of – power to limit the systemic response.

My hypothesis is that if we were to review successful disruptive innovations that occurred within corporations, we’d see that the innovator successfully manipulated the power distribution in the organization. This may be a significant reason innovation is so heroic (and therefore so hard). It’s exceptionally difficult to manage a social structure to support purposes for which it was not defined. It’s requires a spectacular individual to achieve such ends.

Closure
Just as the hero/innovator must be intentional about the innovation journey, the system also can and should be intentional about how it will react to disruptive innovations. That is, the social structure of the corporation/system can choose the extent to which disruptive innovation is tolerated by the system. That is, disruptive innovation must be designed into the system. Low tolerance requires both the good idea as well as the truly exceptional person to drive the idea through the corporation; it will be a continuous, heroic fight, as it has been for nearly all disruptive innovations at Intel. A system with high tolerance can institutionalize (i.e., systematize) the system response by gaining collective acceptance to specific formal relationships tolerable to the organization, pre-managing the power through the social structure and making the whole engagement just a little less heroic. Disruptive innovation, often sought, much lamented for its difficulty, valued for its rarity and preciousness, must become a part of the system to have any greater chance of success than currently reported in the literature.