AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT...
Today, I've decided to try a new experiment by publishing my first post on LinkedIn's Pulse platform.
HERE is a link to that article. Enjoy.
UPDATE: Now that the article has been on LinkedIn for awhile, I've added it below:
10 LESSONS HUBBLE SPACE TELESCOPE TEACHES ABOUT INNOVATING BACK ON EARTH
The storyline of the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) is a perfect analogy for what it takes to be a successful innovator in the business world. For Hubble, that journey included being stuck in the ‘pre-launch’ stage for an extended period of time, having to deal with a potentially catastrophic mistake and eventually becoming recognized as one of the greatest scientific tools of all time.
Here are ten lessons Hubble has taught me about innovation.
1. Great ideas take time to be fully realized: The concept of a space telescope had been around since the 1920s, with Hubble being funded in the 1970s and not launched until 1990. While great business ideas will not take decades to be realized, there is typically some delay between having an idea and having the market, technology, costs curves and adoption curves all converge to make that idea viable on a large scale. The misperception of the overnight success prompts many good ideas to die due to unrealistic timelines, poorly planned funding or lack of commitment to a long-term plan.
2. It is important to do it right the first time: As more companies embrace the fail fast or MVP (minimum viable product) approach to innovation, many also become more accepting of mediocrity, with a “we’ll fix it later” rationalization. While it may be far easier to fix a product or service on earth than it is to fix a satellite in space, but the damage and opportunity cost can be just as significant. We are quickly creating a market that consists of an excessive number of flawed products and more scarce attention from less forgiving customers. Short attention spans, limited to no loyalty and perceptions of substitutability are narrowing the window to establish sustainable sales. Unlike Hubble’s repair mission, efforts to fix a product are far less likely to actually attract more awareness and interest. While companies can (and should) iterate and improve, they shouldn’t overlook opportunities to increase their odds of success by doing a better job to internally learn & test before they externally test & learn.
3. The smallest design details can dramatically change the end results: For Hubble, a flaw in the primary mirror of just 2,200 nanometers (a very, very small number) dramatically compromised the quality of the resulting images. While few business need to operate within such tight specs, many will tolerate seemingly minor flaws in strategy or product design or pricing or marketing message that can dramatically amplify to cripple their in-market performance. Great innovators recognize how these little details represent far more than just rounding error.
4. One can only see clearly when they get beyond the bubble of their own reality: The HST orbits less than 350 miles above the earth’s surface, a seemingly irrelevant difference when compared to the billions of light years it looks out to. Yet this relatively tiny distance makes all the difference. While earth’s atmosphere may sustain our life, it also creates distortions and blurring that severely limits the utility of ground based telescopes. In a similar manner, businesses fail to recognize how their environment limits how clearly they can see beyond it. Just a little change of perspective or having help to get outside one’s present-day reality can be extremely revealing…and a big advantage compared to competitors that are stuck in their own bubble.
5. Focusing on the obvious can blind us to new discoveries: In theory, the human eye can see just over 9,000 stars in the nighttime sky. Our understanding of the universe and our place in it has only advanced thanks to people that were not satisfied with just seeing the same sky and people that hoped there might be even more to see. People and companies that never get beyond what everyone else can see are unlikely to make new discoveries. Like astronomical discoveries, true innovation requires mastering the use of existing tools, creating new tools when necessary, and gaining the skill and patience that others don’t have, can’t acquire or won’t invest in.
6. Our filters have a huge impact on what we observe: Hubble uses several different instruments to see the universe at different wavelengths (from ultra-violet to visible light to near-infrared). Each of these can reveal new discoveries while painting a completely different picture of the exact same patch of sky. And combining all of these can produce the most complete perspective. In a similar manner, the filters applied to our own information or data can produce dramatically different understanding. Consider how difficult it is to create meaningful segmentation profiles for your business if you only focus on demographics when psychographics are actually driving key desires and behaviors. Or how standard operating procedures can cause you to miss dramatically different and better approaches.
7. New discoveries begin with data, but are only possible with the right interpretation of that data: Hubble is ultimately a very large, very expensive machine designed to acquire data. Great discoveries about the origins and evolution of the universe have come from having extremely smart people process, review and interpret the data produced by Hubble to find new meaning. In a similar manner, the proliferation of data in the business world does little by itself to drive innovation. In fact, more data can create more noise that just makes it more difficult to find that signal of new insight. It takes individuals with the right combination of skill, context, and curiosity to translate data into insight that can ultimately drive meaningful innovation.
8. Focus where others aren’t looking to find what others never new existed: Hubble eXtreme Deep Field is one of its better-known images. It was produced by focusing on a tiny dark spec in the sky (the image above, an area of the sky smaller than a tennis ball at 100 yards) for almost 2 million seconds. It revealed over 5,500 galaxies in an otherwise black dot, with some being one-ten-billionth the brightness of what the human eye can see. While some innovation is a discovery of the obvious, there is significant opportunity to stop following the crowds and focus on unlikely areas. Big ideas frequently exist where others concluded they would find nothing of value or where others simply didn’t take enough time to look close enough.
9. Visualization and storytelling are critical to creating engaged fans: Astronomers might seek to better understand the universe through complex formulas and mathematics that can explain or predict what we observe around us, but our society’s fascination (and support) of this science is driven by artificially colored images (like the Pillars of Creation image above) and CGI-heavy specials on the National Geographic channel. The ability to present complex concepts in an engaging and easily-digested medium is critical to getting casual observers (i.e. potential buyers) to appreciate how your product or service can benefit or enrich their life. Companies that tell a superior story, not companies that sell a superior product, are more likely to close the sale. Innovation is only valued to the extent that it is understood (or believed) to make life better or easier.
10. Big dreams can lead to big nightmares: The leap to put a telescope into orbit was a big, but necessary one. Ground-based telescopes already occupied some of the tallest mountains in the world. Because there was little remaining opportunity to place them incrementally closer to the edge of our atmosphere, jumping to a space-based platform was logical. In the pursuit of being innovative, some companies choose to skip obvious incremental steps in pursuit of more ambitious leaps. While incrementalism is not always the safer path, big innovations can come with significantly greater risk and demand significantly more resources than companies are able to support. Consider how incremental steps can serve as building blocks to arrive at the ultimate innovation you seek.
While few innovators work on projects that approach the scale of Hubble, these concepts will hopefully motivate you to continue the passionate pursuit of innovation within your own sphere.