When Your Moon Shots Don’t Take Off

最近，某知名工業(yè)巨頭的創(chuàng)新負(fù)責(zé)人組建10個(gè)跨部門團(tuán)隊(duì)，給它們布置了一項(xiàng)高難度任務(wù)：徹底重新構(gòu)想各自的業(yè)務(wù)。為鼓勵(lì)創(chuàng)新思路和方法，公司要求各團(tuán)隊(duì)運(yùn)用設(shè)計(jì)思維和精益創(chuàng)業(yè)方法，著手客戶研究和原型解決方案的工作。這位創(chuàng)新負(fù)責(zé)人原本期望收到10項(xiàng)變革提案，而提交上來的建議卻只是給一種工業(yè)工具添加聯(lián)網(wǎng)數(shù)據(jù)流，這讓他目瞪口呆。激進(jìn)的新理念在哪里？就沒人考慮打造數(shù)字平臺(tái)、翻轉(zhuǎn)商業(yè)模式或重新打造產(chǎn)品嗎？

Recently, the head of innovation?at a?major industrial conglomerate set up 10 cross-functional teams and gave them an audacious goal: to completely reimagine their businesses. To encourage fresh ideas and approaches, the company had the teams apply a design-thinking lens to customer research and prototype solutions using lean start-up techniques. The innovation leader expected 10 transformational proposals to come in. What he got instead were suggestions along the lines of adding a connected data stream to an industrial tool. He was dumbfounded. Where were the radical new concepts? Had no one even considered creating a digital platform, or flipping the business model, or reinventing products?

雖然我們掌握的創(chuàng)新工具日漸精細(xì)，但對(duì)漸進(jìn)思路的偏好，仍然是各類企業(yè)發(fā)展的障礙。漸進(jìn)式創(chuàng)新固然是可行的增長路徑，但它無法支撐企業(yè)的長期發(fā)展。企業(yè)如何構(gòu)想出更宏大、更有意義的東西？是什么在限制創(chuàng)造力？谷歌提出，“10倍創(chuàng)意”能帶來10倍而不是10%的改進(jìn)。為什么不是每家公司都能做到？

The tendency toward incremental thinking plagues companies of all sorts—in spite of our increasingly sophisticated arsenal of innovation tools. And though incremental innovations do have a place in a growth portfolio, they won’t sustain a business over the long term. How can firms come up with something bigger and more meaningful? What’s constraining creativity? Why can’t every company achieve what Google calls “10x thinking”—ideas that lead to 10-fold improvements rather than the more typical 10% ones?

人們很容易把原因歸結(jié)為技術(shù)、競(jìng)爭(zhēng)或監(jiān)管，但這些障礙比我們想象的更容易克服。想想看，大眾曾認(rèn)為登月不可能、即時(shí)攝影不切實(shí)際、可回收火箭匪夷所思等等。實(shí)際情況是，約翰·F·肯尼迪激勵(lì)了美國宇航事業(yè)，埃德溫·蘭德（Edwin Land）推出了寶麗來相機(jī)，埃隆·馬斯克（Elon Musk）創(chuàng)建了SpaceX。

It’s tempting to point to technology, competition, or regulation as the culprit, but those barriers are much more permeable than we imagine. After all, people once thought that a moon landing was impossible, that instant photography was impractical, and that reusable space rockets were simply insane. Then John F. Kennedy inspired a nation, Edwin Land introduced the Polaroid camera, and Elon Musk launched SpaceX.

真正限制“10倍創(chuàng)意”的，是一些認(rèn)知偏差。這些偏差扭曲我們的認(rèn)知，阻礙我們看到更多可能性。認(rèn)知科學(xué)已經(jīng)開始揭示這些偏差，并總結(jié)我們?nèi)绾巍坝幸?guī)律地陷入非理性”。在經(jīng)濟(jì)學(xué)、營銷和戰(zhàn)略等很多領(lǐng)域，行為學(xué)方法已經(jīng)顛覆了很多正統(tǒng)研究范式。但“行為學(xué)革命”尚未拓展到創(chuàng)新領(lǐng)域。在創(chuàng)新方面，我們尚未系統(tǒng)性采納能帶來重大跨越的視角和工具。

The real limits to 10x ideas are biases that distort our perceptions and prevent us from seeing possibilities. Cognitive science has started to unpack those biases and the ways that we are “predictably irrational,” and in many fields—such as economics, marketing, and strategy—a more behavioral approach has overturned the dominant paradigm. But the behavioral revolution hasn’t taken hold in the domain of innovation, where we’ve yet to systematically adopt the perspectives and tools that help us take big leaps.

在考慮創(chuàng)新路徑時(shí)，大多數(shù)人會(huì)陷入認(rèn)知陷阱。這些陷阱會(huì)強(qiáng)化研究者稱為“本地搜索”的行為：可得性偏差，即用可獲得數(shù)據(jù)代替典型數(shù)據(jù)的傾向；熟知性偏差，即高估已知事物價(jià)值的傾向；確證性偏差，即利用新信息證實(shí)已有結(jié)論的傾向。這些傾向會(huì)導(dǎo)致我們只看到與現(xiàn)狀相關(guān)的機(jī)會(huì)，而非視野之外的更好機(jī)會(huì)。本文的目標(biāo)是分享一些新方法，幫助企業(yè)避開上述認(rèn)知陷阱。常見的精益創(chuàng)業(yè)和敏捷開發(fā)等框架固然有價(jià)值，但出發(fā)點(diǎn)并非克服阻礙真正突破的認(rèn)知偏差。我們推薦的方法與之不同。在哈佛商學(xué)院進(jìn)行的一項(xiàng)現(xiàn)場(chǎng)實(shí)驗(yàn)中，研究者發(fā)現(xiàn)敏捷方法實(shí)際上削弱了發(fā)散思維。問問自己：客戶觀察、A/B測(cè)試、Sprint等方法，真能帶來可與晶體管、iPhone、SpaceX比肩的突破性創(chuàng)新嗎？可能很難。

When considering new avenues to pursue, most of us fall into cognitive traps that reinforce what researchers call local search, such as?availability bias,?the tendency to substitute available data for representative data;?familiarity bias,?the tendency to overvalue things we already know; and?confirmation bias,?the tendency to think new information proves our existing beliefs. As a result we see only the opportunities related to the status quo, rather than more-valuable opportunities just out of view. The purpose of this article is to share some approaches that are helping companies sidestep those traps. They differ from popular frameworks like lean start-up and agile development, which—while valuable—aren’t intended to combat biases that prevent true breakthroughs. In fact, in a recent field experiment at Harvard Business School, researchers found that agile methodologies actually reduced divergent thinking. Ask yourself: Will customer observation, A/B testing, or sprints really lead to the next transistor, iPhone, or SpaceX? Probably not.

下面介紹的策略和工具，都將挑戰(zhàn)我們規(guī)避風(fēng)險(xiǎn)、趨易避難的強(qiáng)大本能。我們?cè)\(yùn)用這些策略和工具幫助組織發(fā)現(xiàn)更大的機(jī)會(huì)，或在針對(duì)激進(jìn)創(chuàng)新者的研究中發(fā)現(xiàn)相關(guān)線索。有創(chuàng)造性的組織達(dá)成“10倍創(chuàng)意”的方式有很多，本文呈現(xiàn)的僅是其中幾種。我們的目的在于提示出一些可能性，幫助企業(yè)思考如何克服障礙，實(shí)現(xiàn)更大潛力。

The tactics and tools we’ll describe all challenge our powerful instinct to avoid risk and choose the easy path. We have either used them to get organizations to see bigger opportunities or come across them in our research on radical innovators. Our list is by no means exhaustive; it represents just some of the ways that creative organizations are reaching for 10x ideas. The intent here is simply to shine a light on how businesses can overcome the forces limiting their possibilities.

科幻

Science Fiction

已過世的小說家厄休拉·勒古恩（Ursula Le Guin）曾說，她寫科幻小說，是為了解放自己和讀者的頭腦，擺脫“我們現(xiàn)在的生活方式是唯一可能的生活方式”這種懶惰、膽怯的思維?？苹靡I(lǐng)我們踏上精神的時(shí)間旅程，讓我們暢想不同可能性?？苹米髌吩A(yù)見或啟發(fā)很多改變世界的突破性創(chuàng)新：《星際迷航》（Star Trek）中船長的通信工具相當(dāng)于手機(jī)、19世紀(jì)愛德華·貝拉米（Edward Bellamy）所著小說描述未來社會(huì)中的信用卡、20世紀(jì)初卡雷爾·恰佩克（Karel ?apek）的一部劇作描寫機(jī)器人、艾薩克·阿西莫夫（Isaac Asimov）預(yù)言自動(dòng)駕駛汽車、雷·布拉伯里（Ray Bradbury）構(gòu)想耳機(jī)、H·G·威爾斯（H.G. Wells）想象原子能等等。印象筆記（Evernote）前CEO菲爾·里賓（Phil Libin）指出，筆記軟件的概念直接來自小說《沙丘》（Dune）描述的增強(qiáng)智能。他說：“科幻能提供某種嚴(yán)謹(jǐn)?shù)臉酚^主義。這并非魔法，而只是靈感。你要做的就是根據(jù)這種靈感，制定嚴(yán)謹(jǐn)?shù)挠?jì)劃并努力實(shí)施。”

The late novelist Ursula Le Guin once said she wrote science fiction to dislodge her mind—and her reader’s mind—“from the lazy, timorous habit of thinking that the way we live now is the only way people can live.” Science fiction helps us engage in mental time travel and allows us to dream about what may be possible. Consider some life-changing breakthroughs science fiction has envisioned or inspired:?cell phones?(which were based on the officers’ communicators in?Star Trek),?credit cards?(a feature of a futuristic society in a 19th-century novel by Edward Bellamy), robots (conceived in one of Karel ?apek’s early-20th-century plays),?self-driving cars?(foreseen by Isaac Asimov),?earbuds?(a fictional invention of Ray Bradbury), and?atomic power?(imagined by H.G. Wells in 1914). Phil Libin, the former CEO of Evernote—who says the concept for that note-taking software came directly from augmented intelligence in the novel?Dune—puts it this way: “Science fiction can provide a kind of rigorous optimism….There’s no magic. Science fiction just provides the inspiration and then you make a rigorous plan and go for it.”

在咨詢工作中，我們?cè)娮C科幻工具啟發(fā)成熟大公司構(gòu)想新的業(yè)務(wù)前景。本文作者之一凱爾曾是Lowe’s的創(chuàng)新負(fù)責(zé)人，借助科幻手段，該公司管理層開始思考運(yùn)用增強(qiáng)現(xiàn)實(shí)、機(jī)器人等技術(shù)革新零售。

In our consulting work, we have seen science fiction help large, established companies visualize a new future for their businesses. Indeed, at Lowe’s, where Kyle was head of innovation, this approach got the executive team members to understand how they could revolutionize retail with augmented reality, robotics, and other technologies.

當(dāng)時(shí)是2012年，Oculus Rift和Pokémon Go尚未問世。我們的做法很簡單：把Lowe’s的客戶和技術(shù)數(shù)據(jù)發(fā)給一些科幻作家，請(qǐng)他們想象公司5到10年后的樣子。我們隨后匯總作家們的理念，找出重合和不同的地方，然后整合并完善各個(gè)故事。最后，我們以漫畫的形式，與公司高管分享最終完成的“預(yù)測(cè)小說”。

And that was back in 2012, before Oculus Rift or Pokémon Go even existed. The process simply involved giving customer and technology data to a panel of science fiction writers and asking them to imagine what Lowe’s might look like in five to 10 years. We then gathered their ideas, noted where their perspectives converged and diverged, and integrated and refined the stories. Finally, we shared our “speculative fiction” in comic book form with the Lowe’s executives.

項(xiàng)目最終的成果是，Lowe’s成為第一家將全自動(dòng)機(jī)器人用于客服和庫存管理的零售商，推出第一批3D打印服務(wù)，并參與國際空間站3D打印機(jī)（用于制造工具）的制造。公司還研制了可用于卡車卸貨和店內(nèi)貨物搬運(yùn)的機(jī)器人外部骨架，以及用于設(shè)計(jì)改建方案的增強(qiáng)現(xiàn)實(shí)手機(jī)（第一批在四天內(nèi)售罄）。Lowe’s不僅在財(cái)務(wù)上取得成功（3D成像能力推動(dòng)在線銷售額增長50%），2018年更在《財(cái)富》“最受尊敬公司”排行榜中零售創(chuàng)新方面位列第一，并在《快公司》“最佳創(chuàng)新公司”榜單中增強(qiáng)現(xiàn)實(shí)方面位列第一。

As a result of that project, Lowe’s became the first retailer to deploy fully autonomous robots for customer service and inventory, created some of the first 3-D printing services, and helped place a 3-D printer for making tools on the?International Space Station.?It also created exosuits (external robotic skeletons) for employees unloading trucks and moving goods onto the store floor, and came up with the first augmented-reality phone for planning remodeling work (which initially sold out in four days). Not only has Lowe’s achieved financial success (3-D imaging capabilities have boosted its online sales by up to 50%), but in 2018 it was named number one in retail innovation in?Fortune’s Most Admired Companies ranking and number one in augmented reality on?Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies list.

雖然Lowe’s案例突出的是技術(shù)，但創(chuàng)新并不一定與技術(shù)相關(guān)。在一些完全沒有技術(shù)背景的案例中，我們也曾應(yīng)用同樣的方法，例如幫助百事構(gòu)思有益健康的產(chǎn)品，以及幫助Funko思考如何在收藏品業(yè)務(wù)之外進(jìn)行拓展。

Although technology features heavily in the Lowe’s example, innovation isn’t about technology. We have used the same process even when no technology was involved—for example, to help Pepsi imagine how to create healthful products and Funko to envision how to expand beyond the collectibles business.

類比

Analogies

一天晚上，諾貝爾物理學(xué)獎(jiǎng)得主維爾納·海森堡（Werner Heisenberg） 走過哥本哈根的一個(gè)公園時(shí)，認(rèn)識(shí)到了能量的基本性質(zhì)。他當(dāng)時(shí)走的那條路很黑，只有零星的路燈亮光。前面的人走到路燈下時(shí)會(huì)被照亮，隨即又消失在黑暗中，如此反復(fù)。海森堡突然想到，質(zhì)量如此大的人還可以消失又重現(xiàn)，那么幾乎沒有質(zhì)量的電子在與某些物質(zhì)接觸前，是否也可能處于“消失”狀態(tài)呢？作家、物理學(xué)家卡洛·羅韋利（Carlo Rovelli）指出，海森堡之所以得到這一關(guān)于能量體如何相互作用的認(rèn)識(shí)（即著名的“測(cè)不準(zhǔn)原理”），是因?yàn)樗褂昧祟惐确?，將在路燈間行走的人比作電子。

One evening, as the Nobel Prize–winning physicist Werner Heisenberg was walking through a park in Copenhagen, a fundamental insight about the nature of energy dawned on him. The path he was on was very dark, save only for occasional circles of light cast by the street lamps. Ahead of him, a man appeared in a pool of light under one lamp and then disappeared into the night until he reemerged in the next pool. Suddenly, it came to Heisenberg: If a man, with so much mass, could seem to disappear and reappear, could an electron, with almost no mass at all, similarly “disappear” until it interacted with something else? According to the author and physicist Carlo Rovelli, that insight into how packets of energy interact—which later became Heisenberg’s famous “uncertainty principle”—struck him because he applied an analogy, comparing the man walking between lampposts to an electron.

在商業(yè)領(lǐng)域，類比同樣能帶來突破［見喬瓦尼·加維蒂（Giovanni Gavetti）和揚(yáng)·里夫金（Jan Rivkin）2005年發(fā)表于《哈佛商業(yè)評(píng)論》的文章《用類比法思考戰(zhàn)略》（“How Strategists Really Think: Tapping the Power of Analogy”）］。查理·梅里爾（Charlie Merrill）以超市類比券商，讓投資者從一系列產(chǎn)品和品牌中自由選擇，從而革新了證券經(jīng)紀(jì)業(yè)。20世紀(jì)70年代，電路城公司（Circuit City）在電子產(chǎn)品零售領(lǐng)域推出超級(jí)店鋪，后又采用相似邏輯（海量選擇、低固定費(fèi)用、不還價(jià)），推出了CarMax二手車零售服務(wù)。雖然電路城在電商時(shí)代破產(chǎn)，但CarMax現(xiàn)在是全球最大的二手車零售商。

Analogies have led to breakthroughs in business as well (as Giovanni Gavetti and Jan Rivkin noted in a 2005 HBR article,?“How Strategists Really Think: Tapping the Power of Analogy”). Charlie Merrill revolutionized the brokerage industry by applying the analogy of a supermarket, which lets shoppers choose among a host of products and brands. Circuit City, which introduced the superstore approach to electronics retailing in the 1970s, transformed the automotive industry by applying a similar logic (wide selection, low fixed prices with no haggling) to used-car sales, creating CarMax. Though Circuit City went bankrupt after the shift to online retailing, CarMax is now the largest used-car retailer in the world.

不同領(lǐng)域之間的類比，有時(shí)可以帶來重大突破。例如，優(yōu)步和愛彼迎的快速成長，無疑預(yù)告了類似“共享經(jīng)濟(jì)”公司的出現(xiàn)，如房車租賃平臺(tái)RVshare.com、儲(chǔ)物空間分享平臺(tái)Neighbor、雜貨配送服務(wù)商Instacart等。另一個(gè)拓寬思路的方法是，從否定的方向?qū)ふ翌惐龋汗雀杞^對(duì)不會(huì)做什么？你也可以從失敗案例中學(xué)到東西：某公司采用的什么方法導(dǎo)致失?。?/p>

Analogies from different domains can sometimes help us make big leaps. The rapid growth of Uber and Airbnb, for example, certainly foreshadowed the emergence of similar “sharing economy” businesses, from recreational vehicles (RVshare.com), to storage (Neighbor), to grocery delivery (Instacart). Another way to jog your thinking is to use an analogy involving how?not?to do something: How would Google never do it? You can also draw on lessons from failures: What approach did a company that missed the mark try?

第一原理

First Principles Logic

Regeneron Pharmaceuticals是一家知名醫(yī)藥公司，擅長以競(jìng)爭(zhēng)對(duì)手幾分之一的成本開發(fā)新療法。該公司創(chuàng)新流程的核心是“第一原理”方法：為挑戰(zhàn)現(xiàn)狀，創(chuàng)新者審視某件事情的基本原理，并從零開始重新構(gòu)想?！皬母拍畹娇茖W(xué)原理，我們質(zhì)疑每件事，并在團(tuán)隊(duì)內(nèi)部充分爭(zhēng)論?！惫究偛眉媸紫茖W(xué)官喬治·揚(yáng)科普洛斯（George Yancopoulos）說。例如，測(cè)試新療法的主流模式是先在老鼠身上測(cè)試，然后進(jìn)行人體測(cè)試，但由于老鼠和人類之間的巨大差異，失敗率很高。Regeneron對(duì)這種模式提出挑戰(zhàn)，嘗試將人類基因植入老鼠，以獲得更接近人類的反應(yīng)。開發(fā)新藥的平均成本高達(dá)43億美元，而對(duì)老鼠進(jìn)行基因改造的方法，已幫助公司將成本降至這一水平的20%以下。

Regeneron Pharmaceuticals is renowned for developing new treatments at a small fraction of its competitors’ costs. At the core of its innovation process is a “first principles” approach, which questions the status quo by reexamining the foundational principles about something and then redesigns it from the ground up. “We challenge everything—every concept, every scientific principle—and we argue about it amongst ourselves,” says George Yancopoulos, Regeneron’s president and chief science officer. For example, the firm questioned the dominant paradigm for testing new treatments—trying them first on mice and then on humans, which often leads to high failure rates because mice and people are so different. Yancopoulos and his team sought to reinvent the process by developing a mouse implanted with human genes to more closely simulate human reactions. The modified mouse has enabled Regeneron to develop new drugs for less than 20% of the average $4.3 billion cost of?developing new therapies.

SpaceX使用的可回收火箭，同樣來自第一原理方法。公司創(chuàng)始人馬斯克本想從俄羅斯購買廢棄的火箭，但遭到拒絕。阿什利·萬斯（Ashlee Vance）在《硅谷鋼鐵俠》中寫道，在從俄羅斯回國的飛機(jī)上，馬斯克怒氣沖沖地做了一些計(jì)算，對(duì)后來擔(dān)任NASA局長的麥克·格里芬（Mike Griffin）和SpaceX創(chuàng)始團(tuán)隊(duì)成員吉姆·坎特萊爾（Jim Cantrell）說：“我想我們可以自己造火箭?！笨蔡厝R爾回憶道：“我們?cè)谙耄骸前。愫湍睦锏能婈?duì)一塊造？’”但在研讀過推進(jìn)技術(shù)、空氣動(dòng)力學(xué)、熱力學(xué)和燃?xì)鉁u輪的基礎(chǔ)理論后，馬斯克總結(jié)出火箭的基本原理。根據(jù)他的分析成果，團(tuán)隊(duì)使用更簡易、較小號(hào)的商業(yè)級(jí)而非航天級(jí)部件，組裝出了低成本的可回收火箭。到今天，SpaceX已經(jīng)成功完成60多次發(fā)射和29次回收，幫助主要客戶NASA節(jié)省數(shù)億美元。“大多數(shù)情況下，人們會(huì)照搬現(xiàn)成的解決方案，只做一些微調(diào)，”馬斯克告訴我們，“我則尊崇物理學(xué)的第一原理分析，將某個(gè)領(lǐng)域的事物歸結(jié)到最基本的原理，然后再以此為基礎(chǔ)進(jìn)行擴(kuò)展?！?/p>

SpaceX’s reusable rocket emerged from a similar first principles approach. Founder Elon Musk wanted to buy castoff rockets from the Russians but was rebuffed. As Ashlee Vance recounts in?Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future,?Musk was furiously crunching numbers in a spreadsheet on a flight back from Russia when he turned to Mike Griffin, a future NASA administrator, and Jim Cantrell, a founding executive at SpaceX, and said, “I think we can build this rocket ourselves.” Cantrell recalls, “We’re thinking, ‘Yeah, you and whose army?’” But after reading up on the fundamentals of propulsion, aerodynamics, thermodynamics, and gas turbines, Musk had broken rockets down to their basic principles in his spreadsheet. With that analysis, his team came up with a way to develop affordable, reusable rockets by using simpler commercial-grade, rather than space-grade, components in a smaller architecture. Today SpaceX has performed more than 60 successful flights and 29 successful landings and saved NASA, its major customer, hundreds of millions of dollars. “In most cases people solve problems by copying what other people do with slight variations,” Musk told us. “I operate on the physics approach of analysis by first principles, where you boil things down to the most fundamental truths in a particular area and then you reason up from there.”

擴(kuò)展適應(yīng)

Exploring Adjacencies Using Exaptation

在尋找突破性創(chuàng)新機(jī)會(huì)時(shí)，你能找到的所有機(jī)會(huì)都是由起始要素決定的。生物學(xué)家斯圖爾特·考夫曼（Stuart Kauffman）在“鄰接可能性”理論中描述了這個(gè)規(guī)律。但我們通?？吹降?，只是顯而易見的要素的用途或組合方式。取得突破的關(guān)鍵，在于發(fā)現(xiàn)完全不同的用途。在進(jìn)化生物學(xué)中，這一過程即“擴(kuò)展適應(yīng)”：為實(shí)現(xiàn)某一目標(biāo)而進(jìn)化出的某種特性，經(jīng)過調(diào)適后應(yīng)用于另一種完全不同的目標(biāo)。例如，羽毛的功能最初可能是保暖和吸引配偶，后又成為飛行的關(guān)鍵。與此相似，早期魚類進(jìn)化為陸地生物后，原有的復(fù)雜下頜骨演變?yōu)槎?。在沒有人類干預(yù)的情況下，擴(kuò)展適應(yīng)尚且在生物界自然發(fā)生，那么在選擇與想象的世界中，它就具有無限可能性。

As you search for breakthroughs, the set of available opportunities is always determined by the elements you begin with—a concept that the biologist Stuart Kauffman described in his theory of “the adjacent possible.” But we tend to see only the uses or recombinations of those components that are obvious. The key is to discover completely different uses. In evolutionary biology, this happens in a process called?exaptation—in which a characteristic that evolved for one purpose is adapted laterally for another use entirely. For example, feathers, whose initial function may have been to provide warmth or attract mates, became the key to flight. Similarly, the complex jawbones of early fish evolved as those creatures became land dwellers, developing into ears. If exaptation works in the biological world without any human agency, then in a world of choice and imagination, its possibilities are infinite.

潛在創(chuàng)新者如何利用擴(kuò)展適應(yīng)的力量？可以從質(zhì)疑某物的特定用途開始。例如，范·菲利普斯（Van Phillips）在滑水事故中失去一條腿后，打算自己設(shè)計(jì)假肢，因此開始研究生物工程學(xué)。他很意外地發(fā)現(xiàn)，自二戰(zhàn)以來，假肢設(shè)計(jì)就幾乎沒有變化。進(jìn)一步研究之下，他發(fā)現(xiàn)設(shè)計(jì)者都在關(guān)注美學(xué)層面，即讓假肢看上去像腳。但菲利普斯想，為什么假肢一定要像腳？它只要像腳一樣發(fā)揮功能不就行了？他參考撐桿跳高、跳水板和獵豹足部，設(shè)計(jì)出刀鋒假肢。這種假肢外觀完全不像腳，但大大提高了使用者的自由度，現(xiàn)在大多數(shù)殘奧選手使用的都是這類假肢。通過重新思考假肢的用途，菲利普斯徹底革新了這一領(lǐng)域。

How can would-be innovators tap the power of exaptation? They can begin by asking why we use something for one purpose and not another. For example, after Van Phillips lost his leg in a waterskiing accident, he studied biomedical engineering to learn how to design prosthetics. He was surprised to discover that prosthetic design had changed little since World War II. When he explored why, he learned that designers focused on aesthetics—making the prosthesis look like a foot. But Phillips asked, Why does it have to look like a foot? What if instead it?acted?like a foot? Drawing ideas from pole vaulting, diving boards, and the feet of cheetahs, he created the Flex-Foot, a prosthetic that looks nothing like a foot but gives wearers far greater freedom of movement. (Most Paralympians use versions of it.) By reexamining the purpose of artificial limbs, Phillips revolutionized the field of prosthetics.

杰夫·貝索斯（Jeff Bezos）在亞馬遜也采用類似的思考方法，鼓勵(lì)團(tuán)隊(duì)尋找現(xiàn)有能力的更廣泛用途，或探索已有客戶問題的新解決方法。“關(guān)于如何決定進(jìn)入哪些相鄰領(lǐng)域，我們有兩種方式，”他說，“一種是從客戶需求倒推，一種是從自身能力正推?！眮嗰R遜最賺錢的業(yè)務(wù)之一AWS即源自后一種方式?！白鯝WS的時(shí)候，我們需要吸引一批新客戶，但團(tuán)隊(duì)具備分布式計(jì)算的卓越能力，”貝索斯說，“對(duì)于Kindle，雖然我們沒有硬件相關(guān)的經(jīng)驗(yàn)和能力，但有客戶需求?！?/p>

Jeff Bezos applies a similar kind of thinking at Amazon, where he encourages teams to look broadly for new uses of their existing capabilities or new ways to solve the problems of existing customers. “If you’re talking about how do you decide what adjacencies to move into, we do it two ways,” he says. “We do it customer-needs-backwards, and we do it skills-forward.” Amazon Web Services (AWS), one of the company’s most profitable businesses, emerged from the skills-forward method. “With AWS we had to recruit a new set of customers, but we had extraordinary skills inside the company on distributed computing,” says Bezos. The Kindle was the product of the other method. “With Kindle we had no hardware experience, so we didn’t have the skills,” says Bezos. “But we had a customer need.”

上述四項(xiàng)創(chuàng)新策略的目標(biāo)，在于打破思維慣性、擺脫固守已知的自然傾向，從而克服認(rèn)知偏差。當(dāng)然，除此之外也有其他方法。例如，亞馬遜要求員工撰寫關(guān)于假想新產(chǎn)品的新聞通稿，以此設(shè)想幾年后可能出現(xiàn)的產(chǎn)品。這一策略甚至?xí)?duì)個(gè)人的職業(yè)發(fā)展有幫助：你可以在1月提前給自己準(zhǔn)備一張圣誕卡片，寫下到12月將會(huì)完成的事情。還有一些工具也可以幫助你取得進(jìn)步。例如，你可以制作一幅“通關(guān)”圖，從當(dāng)下開始，通過實(shí)現(xiàn)一個(gè)個(gè)小目標(biāo)來達(dá)成愿景；也可以參考實(shí)驗(yàn)設(shè)計(jì)流程，檢驗(yàn)自己是否處于正確方向上。

The point of these four innovation approaches is to shake up our thinking and get us past our natural inclination to stick with what we know—to sidestep our cognitive biases. There are certainly other techniques. Amazon, for instance, asks employees to write press releases that introduce an imaginary new product to the market; this encourages them to envision what new offerings could be in a few years. That tactic can even help you with your career. In the month of January, you can write Christmas cards describing what you’ll have accomplished by December. There are also tools to help you make progress. For example, you can create an “artifact trail”—a set of small wins leading up to your vision, which you can begin acting on immediately—or apply experimental design processes to see whether you’re heading in the right direction.

無論采用哪些框架或方法，你都要聚焦于可能性。當(dāng)下存在的事物有其偶然性，潛在創(chuàng)新者卻經(jīng)常陷在這些事物的細(xì)節(jié)中，不敢去追尋看起來有點(diǎn)瘋狂的創(chuàng)意。但要想獲得“10倍創(chuàng)意”，我們就必須擺脫漸進(jìn)思維，克服對(duì)失敗的恐懼。你必須要敢想。

Whatever frameworks or approaches you use, the goal is to focus on what could be. Too often would-be innovators get bogged down in details of what happens to exist today and tone down ideas to make them sound more palatable. But to achieve 10x thinking we have to break free of incrementalism and face down the fear of failure. You need to dream big.

愛因斯坦在尋找廣義相對(duì)論的數(shù)學(xué)表達(dá)式時(shí)，優(yōu)秀數(shù)學(xué)家大衛(wèi)·希爾伯特（David Hilbert）也在做同樣的工作。愛因斯坦當(dāng)時(shí)進(jìn)展緩慢，每周的計(jì)算方式都不一樣。根據(jù)羅韋利的描述，對(duì)于愛因斯坦在細(xì)節(jié)方面的困難，希爾伯特很驚訝，并說：“哥廷根街上的每個(gè)孩子對(duì)四維幾何都比愛因斯坦懂得多?！比欢柌爻姓J(rèn)，愛因斯坦先解決了問題。為什么？在羅韋利看來：“因?yàn)閻垡蛩固咕邆洫?dú)特的能力，能想象世界如何被構(gòu)造，在自己腦中‘看到’它?！?/p>

Consider Einstein. While racing against David Hilbert, a brilliant mathematician, to articulate a general theory of relativity, Einstein struggled to frame up the specific mathematics to describe his theory. He presented his thinking every week, and every week the calculations were different. As Carlo Rovelli recounts it, Hilbert was struck by Einstein’s difficulties with the details, noting: “Every boy on the streets of G?ttingen understands more about four-dimensional geometry than Einstein.” Yet, as Hilbert himself pointed out, Einstein solved the problem first. Why? In Rovelli’s opinion: “Because Einstein had a unique capacity to imagine how the world might be constructed, to ‘see’ it in his mind.”

我們?cè)谶@里總結(jié)的創(chuàng)新方法，并未窮盡通向“10倍創(chuàng)意”的全部路徑。但我們相信，企業(yè)確實(shí)需要找到實(shí)現(xiàn)突破的新方式。本文描述的即是其中幾種。我們同樣認(rèn)為，創(chuàng)新領(lǐng)域需要一場(chǎng)行為學(xué)革命。借助行為學(xué)研究，我們能更好地突破限制視野的障礙。這非常重要，因?yàn)槲覀兊奈磥聿⒉皇强陀^決定好的，而是由我們自己創(chuàng)造的。

We don’t claim to have identified all the ways to generate 10x insights. But we do believe that firms need new approaches to reach such discoveries more effectively, and we’ve described several of them here. We also believe it’s time for a behavioral revolution in the field of innovation. By taking the cognitive sciences seriously, we can become better at breaking the bonds that limit our vision. Why is that so important? Because there is no objective future out there that we will arrive at one day. There is only the future that we create.

內(nèi)森·弗爾是英士國際商學(xué)院戰(zhàn)略學(xué)助理教授。杰弗瑞·戴爾是楊百翰大學(xué)萬豪商學(xué)院戰(zhàn)略學(xué)Horace Beesley教席教授。凱爾·奈爾是變革管理咨詢公司Uncommon Partners聯(lián)合創(chuàng)始人、CEO，曾任Lowe’s創(chuàng)新實(shí)驗(yàn)室執(zhí)行主任。弗爾和奈爾合著有《引領(lǐng)變革》（Leading Transformation: How to Take Charge of Your Company’s Future，哈佛商業(yè)評(píng)論出版社2018年出版）。