Xiaohao's Knowledge on Innovation: Risks of Playing No Games and Being Off the Board

Critical Factors of Innovative Organisations No. 3

It is raining at the moment, and I like to share a story about the rain.

Once, I was having high tea at the Mandarin Singapore, which is along Orchard Road, when heavy rain clouds began rolling very quickly into the shopping belt. The restaurant was situated at level two of the hotel and the events on the street could be clearly seen from the windows. I saw three types of shopper behaviours on the street that Sunday.

The most obvious were the ones hurrying along, crossing the streets before the green man, rushing from shop to shop trying to complete their sightseeing and gift buying. There were those who just stopped their shopping and hopped into their cabs for home in anticipation of the rain. Finally, there were those who were oblivious of the weather condition, the darkening sky, rustling of the trees, and small whirlwinds of fallen leaves, and went on to walk pass the hotel.

I pointed these observations to my friend, and he told me that those who were calmed and poised were those who had found a risk mitigating instrument and, therefore, were not affected by the impeding weather change. The others, because they didn’t have such an instrument, either chose to risk the rain shopping or gave it up entirely.

‘So, what is this risk mitigating instrument?’, I asked curiously.

‘The umbrella and cab’, he replied, and went back to his bowl of noodles.

‘I see’, I concluded as I looked back towards the street as the clouds passed by without releasing a single drop of rain.

That may explains the phenomenal I saw on the street, and perhaps about life.

In the case of the umbrella bearers, the rain did not matter to them since they were safe. So, they continued their shopping calmly as if nothing was going to happen. They were not playing everyone’s game of hurrying along even though they were on the game board. They did nothing more and nothing less.

Those who decided to hop into their cabs also found their risk mitigation instrument. Just that they took themselves off the board, and went into the deficit behaviour of cursing the weather.

Only those who hurried about played the game fully by taking all the risks of the impending rain, lived their lives to the fullest.

We make decisions, which is an act of considering all options and deciding on the one that has the most risk mitigating instruments that return us the least amount of negative consequences. It is this need for such instruments that we never really make choices in life. As we fear the consequences we will never really live our lives on such a game board.

Innovative organisations lived their lives to the fullest and they encourage their employees to be the same as well.

Here are the links for the other critical factors of innovative organisations: