3. Marshall McCluhan, Understanding Media:The Extensions of Man (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964; republished by Gingko Press, 2003).
4. Sumantra Ghoshal, “Bad Management Theories Are Destroying Good Management Practices,” Academy of Management Learning and Education 4, no. 1 (2005): 75–91.
5. Richard Nelson and Sidney Winter, An Evolutionary Theory of Economic Change (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982).
Chapter 6
1. Victoria Hale, in discussion with author in San Francisco, December 15, 2006.
2. See http://www.macfound.org/site/c.lkLXJ8MQKrH/b.959463/k .9D7D/Fellows_Program.htm.
3. Meg Whitman, in discussion at the Rotman School conference, Toronto, January 28, 2005.
4. Nandan Nilekani, in discussion with author at the Rotman School, Toronto, September, 16, 2002.
5. Jack Welch, in discussion with author at the Rotman School, Toronto, September 12, 2005.
6. Ramalinga Raju, in discussion with author at the Rotman School, Toronto, October 26, 2004.
7. Bruce Mau, in discussion with author at the Rotman School, Toronto, November 2, 2004.
8. The derivation of contented model defense is from the original work of Karl Popper on justificationism in Karl Popper, The Logic of Scientific Discovery (London: Hutchinson, 1959).
9. Nathan Houser and Christian Kloesel, eds., The Essential Peirce:Selected Philosophical Writings (1867–1893), vol. 1 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992), and Peirce Edition Project, eds., The Essential Peirce: Selected Philosophical Writings (1893–1913), vol. 2 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998). Later, Karl Popper developed the concept of falsificationism (also in The Logic of Scientific Discovery cited above). While apparently it was not based on Peirce’s work because Popper only came upon it later, it reinforces and builds on Peirce’s fallibilism. Later still, Imre Lakatos built further with the concept of sophisticated methodological falsificationism; see Imre Lakatos, “Falsification and the Logic of Scientific Research Programmes,” in Imre Lakatos and Alan Musgrave, Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1970). My optimistic model seeker construct is meant to combine the concepts of Peirce’s fallibilism and Lakatos’ sophisticated methodological falsificationism.
10. Bob Young, in discussion with author at the Rotman School, Toronto, September 23 and October 6, 2003.
11. Michael Lee-Chin, in discussion with author at the Rotman School, Toronto, February 28, 2001.
12. K. V. Kamath, in discussion with author at the Rotman School, Toronto, April 16, 2004.
13. Robert McEwen, in discussion with author at the Rotman School, Toronto, October 18, 2006.
14. Jan Rivkin, “Imitation of Complex Strategies,” Management Science 46, no. 6 (June 2000): 824–844; and Mihnea Moldoveanu and Robert Bauer, “On the Relationship Between Organizational Complexity and Organizational Structuration,” Organization Science 15, no. 1 (January 2004): 98–118.
Chapter 7
1. Taddy Blecher, in discussion with author at the Rotman School, Toronto, September 16, 2006.
2. Education in South Africa, see http://www.southafrica.info/ess_info/sa_glance/education/education.htm.
3. David White, “How to Build a University at Minimum Cost,” Financial Times, June 6, 2006.
4. Peirce, The Essential Peirce (vols. 1 and 2).
5. James March, Lee Sproull, and Michal Tamuz, “Learning from Samples of One or Fewer,” Organization Science 2 (1991): 1–13.
6. John Sterman, in discussion with author at the Rotman School, Toronto, March 24, 2003.
7. Jay Forrester, Industrial Dynamics (Cambridge: Pegasus Press, 1961).
8. George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Philosophy in the Flesh:The Embodied Mind and Challenge to Western Philosophy (New York: Basic Books, 1999).
9. His body of work includes books in which he describes this technique including: Chris Argyris, Knowledge for Action (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1993).
Chapter 8
1. A. G. Lafley, in discussion with author at the Rotman School, Toronto, November 21, 2005.
2. Procter & Gamble 2006 Annual Report, note 2, p. 49.
3. Moses Znaimer, in discussion with author at the Rotman School, Toronto, April 10, 2002.
4. Gerry Mabin, in discussions with author at the Rotman School, Toronto, February 16, 2001.
5. Amy Edmondson, in discussion with author at the Rotman School, Toronto, October 24, 2004.
6. Victoria Hale, in discussion with author in San Francisco, December 15, 2006.
7. A. G. Lafley, in discussion with author at the Rotman School, Toronto, November 21, 2005.
8. Peter Drucker, “Entrepreneurship in Business Enterprise,” speech presented at the University of Toronto, March 3, 1965; “Commercial Letter” (Head Office, Toronto: Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, March 1965, 11–12).
About the Author
Roger Martin has served since 1998 as Dean of the Joseph L. Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto, where he holds the Premier’s Research Chair in Competitiveness and Productivity. At Rotman, he also chairs the AIC Centre for Corporate Citizenship, the Desautels Centre for Integrative Thinking, the Collaborative for Health Sector Strategy, and the Institute for Competitiveness and Prosperity.
Martin holds an AB from Harvard University (1979) and an MBA from Harvard Business School (1981). He was a member of the group of HBS classmates who grew Monitor Company from a tiny start-up to one of the world’s leading strategy consulting firms, and served as co-head of the firm in 1995 and 1996. He continues to serve as an adviser to CEOs of large global companies.
His previous book, The Responsibility Virus (Basic Books), was published in 2002. Martin writes extensively for publications such as the Harvard Business Review, the Financial Times, Fast Company, and Barron’s and is a regular online columnist for BusinessWeek.
In 2004, Martin was awarded the Marshal McLuhan Award for Visionary Leadership. In 2005, he was named one of BusinessWeek ’s seven “Innovation Gurus.” In 2007, he was named a BusinessWeek“B-School All-Star” for being one of the ten most influential business professors in the world, based on the integrative thinking work that is the subject of this book.
Martin serves on the boards of Thomson Corporation, Research in Motion, the Skoll Foundation, the Canadian Credit Management Foundation, and Tennis Canada and is a Trustee of the Hospital for Sick Children. He is Chairman of the Ontario Task Force on Competitiveness, Productivity and Economic Progress.
An excerpt from the forthcoming
The Design of Business
Why do so many companies fall into the trap of choosing either exploration—the search for new knowledge—or exploitation—the maximization of payoff from existing knowledge—rather than balancing both? The reason is that as companies grow, they become more comfortable with the administration of business. They like and encourage analytical thinking. They embrace a very specific way of arguing and thinking that includes a narrow definition of what constitutes reasonable grounds for moving ahead with a project—a very narrow definition of proof. For analytical thinking, all proof emanates from the past—a general rule handed down, or a set of observations of earlier events or behaviors. The average manager has been trained and rewarded to look to the past for proof before making big decisions.
And to these analytically trained managers, the alternative—intuitive thinking, knowing without reasoning—appears quite frightening. It is no wonder that organizations almost inevitably shift their structures, processes, and cultures to be friendly to analytical thinking alone and, without realizing it, to exploitation only of existing knowledge. Their goal is not to drive out innovation but rather to protect the organization against the randomness of intuitive thinking. They do not realize that they worship at the altar of reliability. But drive out innovation they do. It is a trap, and a pernicious one.
The answer is not to try to get corporations to embrace the randomness of intuitive thinking
and eschew analytical thinking entirely. They just won’t do it: it is too scary. More to the point, it’s not possible—analytical thinking is absolutely essential to the exploitation of existing knowledge.
No, we cannot do without analytical thinking or intuitive thinking entirely.
The answer lies in embracing a third form of thinking—design thinking—which helps a company both continuously hone and refine within the existing knowledge stage and generate the leap from stage to stage, a process I call the design of business. At the heart of design thinking is abductive logic, a concept originated by turn-of-the-twentieth-century pragmatist philosopher C. S. Peirce. His important insight was that it is not possible to prove any new thought, concept, or idea in advance: all new ideas can be validated only through the unfolding of future events. To advance knowledge, we must turn away from our standard definitions of proof—and from the false certainty of the past—and instead stare into a mystery and ask what could be.
The Opposable Mind Page 18