🟢 Shifting from Zone 1 to Zone 2 Innovation in non-linear times

🟢 Shifting from Zone 1 to Zone 2 Innovation in non-linear times
Photo by Glitch Lab App / Unsplash

As much as we love talking about innovation, we all run on predictions at the end of the day. Even when bragging about disruption or rupture innovation, we expect some continuity. Things might accelerate spectacularly, but some linearity in how the market behaves is still expected.

Consider ChatGPT.

The technology currently reshuffles many cards, but we're still asking how we will search the internet and expect to watch videos, movies, and articles on a screen. Whether AI is operating behind the scenes or not, and whatever the new paradigms it will unlock, we still expect to go about our days in (mostly) the same way as a few years ago. Sure, soon enough, our car might get to talk back to us disturbingly intelligently to warn us that the grocery store we're driving to is now out of milk, but still, it's a car.

From the corporate perspective, most executives understand the strategic importance of challenging the status quo or going beyond the current market paradigm to catch the next wave of opportunities... but when it's time to get into it and invest resources to achieve such revolutions, we all need some level of comforting perspective. We have a "vision," we "see" an opportunity, and at worst, our "intuition" tells us that it's not unreasonable to expect things to work out.