The three characters that make innovation happen:
1. Explorers
2. Prospectors
3. Miners
The Explorer.
Someone who is looking for the next new thing, always wanting to improve or to make. Never satisfied with what they have.
The Explorer is comfortable with uncertainty, they know it will take them a long time to find what they are looking for and they know most who try fail.
Exploration is an inefficient and messy process, there’s lots of wasted time, lots of dead ends and failed attempts. Long periods of incubation may turn into something, or may become nothing.
It’s hard, but driven by purpose, they know someone has to do it (at least from time to time).
The Prospector.
Once the Explorer thinks they have found something promising, the Prospector knows how to find it, to refine it, to get at the thing of value.
The Prospector is driven by vision, they know what they are trying to find, they can see it and want everyone else to see it too.
Yes there is a chance of failure, but we can almost taste success. You can just feel it, can’t you?
The Miner.
These people aren’t wasting any time. Once the Prospector has refined it to the point of excitement, the Miner knows what they have to do to extract the most value from an idea.
They aren’t messing around, these are results driven people. Efficient, organised and they want everyone else to get on the same page or get out of their way.
We’ve got opportunities to seize here people, failure is not an option and to be honest, compared to the previous two roles, failure here is relatively unlikely.
We’re in the realm of small incremental improvements. Squeezing out efficiency gains and refining process. If you’re paying attention you should always succeed.
These are three different people, or three different hats worn by the same person. You can do them all or you can find people who are experts at each but I do find some people tend to be drawn to one.
If we map the roles to a typical development S-Curve, the Explorers are the slow build up, the long incubation and considerable time in the wilderness. The Prospector sees the largest period of development growth. They take something interesting and turn it into something promising. At which point the Miner can step in and really extract the value. They know how to get it over the line and start milking it.
In some circumstances there might even be a fourth role. The Conservationist or Preserver. Someone who wants to keep everything exactly as it is. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. I’m sure many of you will have worked with people like this. They don’t want anything to change even if it’s for the better.
Whilst this might not be a problem, it certainly invites competition. An organisation that doesn’t change, that stops improving itself or it’s offerings can’t last forever and the long it takes to change the longer change takes.
The challenge of continual innovation, of continual growth and progress is that you have to manage a clash. A paradox where inefficient failure prone Explorers co-exist alongside results driven ‘failure-is-not-an option’ Miners.
In exactly the same framing as Safi Bahcall’s Artists and Soldiers. You have to balance the dynamic equilibrium of information exchange with the phase separation between these different groups.
