Common wisdom says that success breeds success, indeed this is how most VCs pick startups, businesses select talent, and singles search for dates. In contrast, the evidence from science to startups shows that only repeated failure breeds success.
In Disruption Games, futurist Trond Arne Undheim reveals how companies (and individuals) can build a successful, multi-faceted innovation portfolio and may experience deep learning from failed initiatives.
Over the next few years, successfully managing failure will become a necessary growth strategy for any individual, firm or collective. Are you prepared?
Disruption Games fulfills the need for actionable insight on whatâs truly driving change and how to become a change-maker, not just affected by it.
The book will:
-Transform your view of failureâit is highly valuable 21st century training
-Help you build an attractive innovation portfolio (as a person or a company)
-Share personal experience from taking risks, losing, winning, and recovering
Common wisdom says that success breeds success, indeed this is how most VCs pick startups, businesses select talent, and singles search for dates. In contrast, the evidence from science to startups shows that only repeated failure breeds success.
In Disruption Games, futurist Trond Arne Undheim reveals how companies (and individuals) can build a successful, multi-faceted innovation portfolio and may experience deep learning from failed initiatives.
Over the next few years, successfully managing failure will become a necessary growth strategy for any individual, firm or collective. Are you prepared?
Disruption Games fulfills the need for actionable insight on whatâs truly driving change and how to become a change-maker, not just affected by it.
The book will:
-Transform your view of failureâit is highly valuable 21st century training
-Help you build an attractive innovation portfolio (as a person or a company)
-Share personal experience from taking risks, losing, winning, and recovering
This book is written, in large part, to settle a misunderstanding. Tech startups are so alluring these days that everybody thinks they should be a founder, that they need to obsess about startups, and live and breathe technology. Far from it; in truth, many of us would be better off simply adapting the tech innovatorâs mindset and building an organizational repertoire that mimics, courts, and most importantly, deeply understands founders and everything that they do, including their frequent failures.
The good news is, this is very doable. As the evidence collected through interacting with thousands of founders, academics, policy makers, and executives will show, the tech entrepreneurâs mindset includes seven key behaviors that anyone can master: being focused, relentless, decisive, reliable, direct, vulnerable, and adaptive. Why is it so rare? Perhaps because we are not talking about teaching this to individuals but teaching them to teams and organizations as a whole. You donât need a degree in sociology to know that the complexity grows more than n+1 with each new individual added to the mix. But exactly how does that work? And, what about other factors, such as technologies? Innovation is sociotechnical in nature, and requires full awareness of how social and technical aspects interact.
In fact, these innovation attributes are more than traits, behaviors, or âmusclesâ you can train in isolation. What you need to do, as an innovation leader, is to develop life habits and hone them, and inspire others to practice them. Over time, these âinstinctsâ become commonplace, and you set yourself up for gleaning the kind of everyday insight and social sensitivity needed to detect and utilize possibilities in tech and apply them to your own life, work, and projects. Donât just train your body; train your mind. Practice behavior that just might lead to innovation. Be in the places where innovation occurs.
Top MIT faculty who find themselves as serial founders of tech companies exhibit these traits but exercise a restraint: they typically let their students or experienced CEOs run with their companies and continue to innovate exactly as before. Nobody thinks any less of them.
Silence is bad for corporateâstartup collaboration
There was no easy way to say it. Despite everyoneâs best efforts, the startup ventureâs efforts to get a trial contract with the large multinational corporation had failed. At least, that was going to be my message to them. We had tried everything. As the lead of the MIT Startup Exchange program, I had introduced them and then reintroduced them to the innovation scout. Andy, the founder, had then met with them. He had introduced them to several corporate business units. There had been several follow-up calls and emails, even two corporate visits with extensive demos and long dinners. Then, silence. Not the kind of silence that happens before a big transaction, but complete silence, the kind of absence of communication that only characterizes the worst of marriages gone wrong. The kind that means someone is actively ignoring you. This had gone on for months. In fact, it was approaching the year mark. I was about to call it.
Then, as I was about to conduct the postmortem together with Andy, the startupâs enthusiastic founder, over an unusually good office espresso (thank you NescafĂ©), an email ticks in, and soon he gets a phone call. It is the corporate innovation scout. He wants the founder on a plane across the worldâtomorrowâfor a meeting with the CTO. They are contemplating making the startup their preferred partner for artificial intelligence. The deal is consummated within weeks.
With Regina, founder of another MIT startup with a similar product, the story had been different. I had set up the meeting. The large financial services company had met her for an initial 20 minutes, and she had done the typical startup pitch (e.g., point out the customer pain): âDear old-fashioned prospective customer in the slow-moving financial services sector, here is my clever fintech solution that will save you a lot of headache and will put you ahead of your competitors.â The meeting had stretched to 45 minutes, upon which the Head of Innovation stormed out of the meeting to make a call. I briefly overheard phrases I later understood the meaning of: âJust plan a trip right away.â He had decided to start a pilot collaboration right then and there after only one face-to-face meeting. Was this company outstanding? Perhaps so, but not more outstanding than the one previously mentioned. Were the circumstances different? Yes, they were, because in this case the decision maker was in the meeting. But that does not explain everything. There was also something about the trust between me as the matchmaker and the innovation executive. But there were also other differences that matter. We will unbundle all these kinds of expectations later. Letâs look at a third example, again from MITâs corridors.
Clark, the innovation scout from the massive aerospace company I was helping to connect to MIT innovation, came over to me at a reception and suddenly said to tell my startups not to sell so much, have them stop pitching, the sale is already done. He was slightly annoyed that one of our startups had proceeded to present their entire slide deck of 30 slides to one of the EVPs in a strategic business unit even though, in Clarkâs mind, the decision was already made. âTrond,â he had said, âyou made the intro and said this was one of the top companies spun out of MIT with the type of manufacturing technology we have requested. Why is your startup still pitching? For us, the only decision from there would be, how should we structure the project?â I was thrilled. Innovation flow was at play.Â
Why should an executive never play bait and switch with a startup? Because rumor spreads that there is no follow-up. Such behavior contaminates public reports of that company being innovative. It is also bad manners and it is unhelpful.Â
The relationship between success and failure is often overlooked by many individuals and corporations. In Disruption Games, author Tronde Arne Undheim completely debunks the myth that success breeds success. Instead, the author delves (humorously at times) into the importance of understanding how individuals and companies can be innovative regardless of multiple failures.
I love the structure of the book. The overview at the beginning of the book gives readers all the information they need to decide if the book is worth reading. Further, the organization of the Contents section is brilliant. There are the major chapter headings along with subheadings that highlight pertinent sections of that chapter. The introduction and content sections will therefore satisfy the curiosity of any prospective reader. Tronde Arne Undheim also adds key takeaways and reflections to the end of each chapter. Individuals and groups can use the key takeaways and reflections as prompts for further discussion. The figures provided in some chapters are an additional goldmine for readers.
The book is packed with great information about innovation and the startup experience. The author uses real world experience to share the good, the bad, and the ugly about why companies thrive or fail. Entrepreneurs, startups, and large corporations can benefit from the author's experience. Tronde Arne Undheim packed a lot of information into this small volume. Readers can use this book as reference to consult at every stage of a project. I believe this book could be used as text for a Business or Entrepreneur course because of the valuable information it holds.
The main takeaway for me from this book was even near monopolies can be affected by disruptive conditions. The author delivers what he promised by providing actionable insights on how individuals and corporations can build an attractive innovation portfolio and transform their views of failure. Tronde Arne Undheim with his vast experience in startups, artificial intelligence, and entrepreneurship is highly qualified to make the recommendations he has made in this book. I highly recommend this book for business school libraries, individuals interested in startups, individuals and corporations struggling to understand how to manage failures, and anyone interested in building an attractive innovation portfolio.