Large Scale Innovation: Grove's Dilemma

Andy Grove, the former Intel CEO and Chairman has taken an interest in the US health care crisis, and has developed a number of proposals to address the issues. Although he's been able to present his ideas to many leaders in Washington DC, he says he is not optimistic about having any of them enacted.

"Why the hell should I be optimistic about solving this problem? To solve a problem this big, you would need a a war or a depression or some other cataclysm." (Here's the full article.)

This is an interesting comment about how change happens on the large scale, and it is as relevant for innovation as it is for social issues. How does large scale innovation happen?

One way is that when the stakes get high enough someone figures out how to make it pay. For example, the accelerating development of non-fossil fuel sources is being driven largely by the increasing cost of oil, which makes other sources such as wind and solar economically competitive.

Another way is when technological breakthrough changes the basic economics of the situation. Ford's $400 Model T was a productivity enhancement that any farmer could understand; Ford understood its significance because he had been one of those farmers.

Business leaders can sometimes provoke change even when things seem to be going well. In the 1990s General Electric was transformed, largely because of the vision of Jack Welch. Formerly an industrial firm, Welch oversaw the transition of GE into a global banking powerhouse.

But what about issues, such as the massively complex health care system, that seem to be so deeply embedded in the organization of society? Will new technologies and entrepreneurial thinking be able to chip away at the massive scope of the problem? Will Congress intervene? Does it take a committed and powerful President? Is the system even comprehensible enough so that someone, or some team, could figure out what to do?

In many instances, difficult situations at this scale are successfully addressed only when many different elements converge: public awareness and intent; political will; innovations large and small; and financial capital must come together. Frequently their convergence is catalyzed by crisis, by a cataclysm of some sort. Roosevelt's response to the Depression and Johnson's response to the Civil Rights Movement are two examples.

So let's look at Grove's dilemma. Will the health care problem be addressed in the absence of a crisis? Perhaps not. As a visionary who can see some of the deeper hidden patterns in this crisis, it must be terribly frustrating to confront a system so deeply resistant to change. But crisis should not be underestimated as a source of creativity, and as the critical context for innovation. It's probably just be a matter of timing.

Grove's friend Gordon Moore articulated what we now know as Moore's Law, which describes the increasing power of computer chips. Perhaps Grove could now work out Grove's Law, which would describe the emergence and progressive worsening of a crisis as a catalyst for change.