26 Apr
2010
by Wim Soens
When air travel was shut down due to the cloud of volcanic ash from Iceland, I was among the tens of thousands of stranded passengers. During my quest to get back home from Seville, I started to realize that the chaos caused by the volcanic eruption perfectly illustrated a core principle of our Jazz of Innovation philosophy, namely, that errors, randomness and the unexpected contribute very strongly to the success of collaborative creativity.
By sending a plume of ash into the atmosphere the volcano caused an unseen chaos in airports and railway stations. My travel companions and I ended up getting stuck in Barcelona without any chance to reach Brussels by plane, train, bus or car. Like many others, we were forced to step out of our comfort zone in order to find alternative ways to travel. However, not everyone responded to the new situation in the same way.
It occurred to me that the key principles of the technology adoption lifecycle – the well-known curve describing the five different groups in the uptake of innovations – also applied here.
In the Barcelona station, hundreds of people were standing in a depressingly long queue. Some of them (the ‘laggards’) stared at the sales counter and continuously checked their watch, still convinced that they would actually be able to get hold of a long distance ticket. Others (the ‘late majority’) probably understood that it didn’t make much sense to queue for tickets anymore, but they were just doing what everybody else did. They appeared to be more relax, talking about the ash cloud and waiting for what would happen next. The ‘early majority’ were also still queuing, but they were looking around nervously to see if any other possibility would emerge, prepared to leave the queue at the first sign.
We decided not to queue and jumped on a local train to Figueres up north. The first thing that struck me on that train was the positive and creative vibes among the travelers. People were looking at maps, sharing thoughts, discussing the options. Somehow it made perfect sense because most people on that train belonged to one of the leading adopter groups (innovators and early adopters). But it was only after we got off the train in Figueres that this really became clear to me. There was only one bus available to Perpignan, and most seats were already taken. So, we had to wait for the next bus which would arrive in an hour or two. Not surprisingly, only a minority settled for that ‘mainstream’ option and everybody else immediately started to look for alternatives. When somebody suggested grouping and sharing taxis to cross the border, almost everybody participated.
We continued our travel up north, but it still took another 24 hours before we got home. At some point, we even had to call in a ‘rescue team’ to drive down by car and pick us up. But we still arrived several days before the people who preferred waiting to get back by airplane or long distance train.
Finding alternative ways to travel was not the obvious choice, but the unexpected forced us to explore, collaborate, self-organize and adapt. Today, most companies understand the value of challenge or campaign based innovation, but few understand the dynamics of the adoption lifecycle. Make sure the innovators and the early adopters have the creative space to explore new solutions, experiment and fail. But don’t expect everybody to jump in right away. And certainly don’t force immediate participation by late adopters because they will stifle the innovators’ efforts.
