You may have created something, but you didn’t innovate anything

Agassiz, the innovative biologist and scholar of earth’s natural history, is famous for his quip about innovation.

Back in the nineteenth century, he said that there were three stages of truth through which all scientific discoveries have to pass.

Stage one, the people say, it’s not true.
Stage two, the people say, if it is true, then it’s not very important.
And stage three, the people say, we knew it all along.

In fact, many scientists have added a fourth stage to his framework.

People say, yes, but we call it something else.

Wow, isn’t that just like humanity to behave that way? Perfectly on brand as a species, as usual.

This wisdom should be painted on every artist’s studio wall and every company’s conference room. Because when you’re in the business of innovating, that is, creating value by producing novel solutions to meaningful problems, you also have to fight numerous forms of resistance to your ideas.

People ignoring you, markets rejecting you, competitors undermining you, colleagues imploring you, customers attacking you, the industry accusing you of being heretical, and so on.

As if the creative process wasn’t hard enough, now you have to do battle with the dark world of people’s stupid opinions? Blech. Can’t we just outsource that?

My friend, an intellectual property attorney, loves lecturing me about something called novelty requirement. This is the inspection inventions must meet to qualify for patents. If the ideas are not new, the law states, and contemporaries in the field would not consider it to be nonobvious, you lose. You get nothing. Good day sir.

You might have created something, but you didn’t innovate anything.

And so, my question is, since all innovation apparently has to pass through these various stages of truth, exactly how much time does that take? How long do you have to actually stay in the game? Five years? Five decades? Your entire life?

Yes, the ethos of outliving the critics and still being around when the world is finally ready for you is optimistic and quite romantic. But it just takes forever.

Nolan, one of my favorite philosophers disguised as a filmmaker, had an idea for a war film back in the early nineties. He wrote an innovative screenplay told from three perspectives, land, sea and air; and also from three time sequences, one week, one day and one hour. The film would incorporate the snowball effect, allowing all three perspectives and sequences to converge in the final moment of the film.

Sadly, the filmmaker knew this project would demand a large scale production to be put on screen. And so, he decided to postpone making the movie until he had acquired sufficient experience directing large scale action films. Twenty years later, once he had built an impressive career of making numerous blockbuster movies, he finally decided to execute on his war film idea.

Dunkirk eventually became the highest grossing world war film of all time earning over a half a billion dollars and receiving four academy awards. Nolan stayed in the game for twenty years, and it paid off in every possible way. Hollywood executives were probably laughing to themselves, we knew it all along.

Lesson learned, the most valuable tool in the innovator’s kit is patience. If there was one thing personal creativity management can teach you, it’s learning how to hustle while you wait.

Ghandi once said that just because you’re the lone voice in the wilderness, doesn’t mean you’re wrong. The question is if you’re willing to wait long enough until the rest of the world catches with to you.

How long will it take for your ideas to pass through the stages of truth?