{"id":749,"date":"2011-04-21T16:56:51","date_gmt":"2011-04-21T16:56:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.saasoft.com\/blog\/?p=749"},"modified":"2011-04-21T16:56:51","modified_gmt":"2011-04-21T16:56:51","slug":"disruptive-innovation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/?p=749","title":{"rendered":"Disruptive Innovation"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Africa is a\u00a0fascinating place.\u00a0\u00a0According to a documentary that I saw last year we are\u00a0ALL descended from a small tribe who escaped from North East\u00a0Africa about 90,000 years ago. Our DNA carries clues to the story of our journey and it shows that\u00a0modern man (Africans, Europeans, Asians, Chinese,\u00a0Japanese, Australians,\u00a0Americans, Russians etc) – all come from a common stock. It is\u00a0salutory to\u00a0reflect\u00a0how short this time scale is,\u00a0how successful this tribe has been in replacing all the other branches of the human evolutionary tree, and how the\u00a0genetic differences between colours and creeds are almost insignificant.\u00a0 All the evolution that has happened in the last 90,000 years that has transformed the world and the way we live is learned behaviour. This means that, unlike our genes,\u00a0it is possible to\u00a0turn the clock backwards 90,000 years in just one generation. To avoid this we need to\u00a0observe how the descendents\u00a0of the original tribe\u00a0learned to do many new things – forced by their new surroundings to adapt or perish.\u00a0 This is essence of Improvement Science –\u00a0changing context continuously creates\u00a0new challenges\u00a0– from which we can learn, adapt\u00a0and flourish.<\/p>\n

To someone born in rural England a mobile phone appears to be\u00a0a relatively small step on a relentless technological evolution – to someone born in rural Africa it\u00a0is a radical and world-changing\u00a0paradigm shift – one that has already changed their lives.\u00a0 In some parts of Africa money is now managed using mobile phones and this holds the promise of bypassing the endemic bureaucratic and\u00a0corrupt practices that\u00a0so often strangle the greens shoots of innovation and improvement.\u00a0Information and communication is the lifeblood of improvement and to\u00a0introduce a communication\u00a0technology that is reliable, effective, and affordable into\u00a0a vast potential for cultural innovation is rather like introducing a match to the\u00a0touchpaper of a\u00a0firework. Once the fuse has started to fizz there is no going back. The\u00a0name given to this\u00a0destabilising phenomenon is “disruptive innovation” and fortunately it can work for the good of all\u00a0– so long as we steer\u00a0it in\u00a0a win-win-win direction. And that is a big challenge because our history suggests that we find exploitation easier than evolution and exploitation always leads to\u00a0lose-lose-lose outcomes.<\/p>\n

So while\u00a0our global tribe may have learned enough to create a\u00a0global\u00a0phone system we still have much to learn about how to create a global social system.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Africa is a\u00a0fascinating place.\u00a0\u00a0According to a documentary that I saw last year we are\u00a0ALL descended from a small tribe who escaped from North East\u00a0Africa about 90,000 years ago. Our DNA carries clues to the story of our journey and it shows that\u00a0modern man (Africans, Europeans, Asians, Chinese,\u00a0Japanese, Australians,\u00a0Americans, Russians etc) – all come from a … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Disruptive Innovation”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23,35,43],"tags":[59,71,95,107,120,143,168,273,281],"class_list":["post-749","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history","category-reflections","category-why","tag-behaviour","tag-communication","tag-disruptive","tag-evolution","tag-genetics","tag-innovation","tag-memetics","tag-systems","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/749","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=749"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/749\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=749"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=749"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=749"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}