You may be familiar with Derek Sivers’ popular TED Talk about starting a movement. He uses the imagery of a dancing guy to illustrate the importance of leadership and followership in starting a new movement. However, there is another video that precedes this scene. This prequel illustrates the bumpy road leading up to the tipping point . The video helps expose the pitfalls that prevent your innovations from reaching the tipping point.
In this article I explain the pitfalls in innovation processes, using video as a comparison.
Pitfall 1. Your innovation is currently irrelevant (but you're too blind to see)
You can safely see the dancing guy as your R&D center , or another ideation stream in your company. His dance is then the metaphor for an innovation of your company. You see that the dancing guy is often rejected, even ridiculed, in the beginning of the video. This becomes clear at moments 1'34”, 1'50” and 2'07” in the video. It now apparently feels safer to openly distance yourself from the new phenomenon, than to go along with it.
So be wary of innovations from your company that have not passed social check before they are launched. Innovators, inside or outside your organization, often come up with the most brilliant ideas. But just as often these innovations come too early or too late and the social relevance is not (anymore) present. You and your colleagues (as in-crowd ) can hardly form a clear picture of that social relevance. Then you are simply too biased, or you do not even belong to the target group. But who can judge this?
Early adopters are always looking for a social opportunity. Are there novelties that have a lot of potential to score in their group? Then they are the first to test them out and convince the majority.
The early adopter in the video with the grey shirt, who starts at 2'30'', starts with full courage. He even drinks himself courage. He is going to publicly associate himself with this social outcast , not at all obvious. In order to limit the social risk, he tries to convince his friends to dance along (3'36'').
The innovator's product rigidity is striking. He hongkong cellphone number expects his follower to adopt his dance techniques identically (3'55''). What is striking is that the follower with the gray t-shirt tries to copy the innovator almost literally. He does not make the dance his own at all. He fails to add his own moves or variations. This would make the dance more socially digestible. This method does not work. Despite several attempts, he does not get his social followers on board with the story. He eventually gives up (4'23''). This early adopter is not assertive or pragmatic enough to change the innovator's rigidity.
A closed innovation culture is still more often the rule than the exception. Companies like LEGO have long since abandoned this path. Below you can see a letter from 1988 from their R&D center, in which they label outside input as undesirable. In the meantime, with Lego Ideas they are part of the frontrunners in integrating ideas from their fan base into the LEGO product range.
Pitfall 3. An opinion leader with assertiveness and pragmatism is missing
If you already work with early adopters in innovation processes, this is apparently no guarantee for broader adoption. You need a kind of super-early adopter, an opinion leader, who assertively makes the product his own. The following scene in the film makes this clear.