WorldWide Drilling Resource

The Un-Comfort Zone II by Robert Evans Wilson, Jr. Nobody Wants You to be Creative Your boss, coworkers, friends, and even your fam- ily don’t want you to be creative. They resent your try- ing to change the methods, practices, systems, and rules they are comfortable with. They think you’re a fool for wasting your time and money. Innovation requires change, and change is threatening to many - especially if your idea will displace an established interest. Expect resistance. In 1942, economist, Joseph Schumpeter coined the term: “Creative Destruction” in his book Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy . It describes the process of transformation caused by innovation. The process begins when entrepreneurs, who generate new products or ways of doing things, destroy the value of older established companies who previously created new technologies which disrupted the companies that came before them. As an example, look at the history of recorded music: vinyl records and reel-to-reel tape were replaced by 8-track tape, which was replaced by cassette tape, which was replaced by compact disc, which has been replaced by MP3 players. Resistance is futile. If your idea is any good, those established interests will first try to discredit it. The better your idea, the more they will attempt to make it - or even you - look like a threat to society, children, or puppies. Alternative religions will be called cults. Al- ternative political systems will be condemned as the cause of chaos. Whether it is an established industry, government, or religion, the people who hold the power will fight to keep it. They get to choose the direction and will reward those who follow without question. Those who are in charge of established organizations control the resources which enable them to preserve their way of doing things. This is why major corporations love regulation. They can afford it, but newcomers and upstarts cannot. Those who wish to innovate or make changes must have their own re- sources to promote their idea; otherwise they’ll grind along, perhaps for years, before they succeed - if ever. People rarely give up power. For a company to embrace a culture of creativity, it means employees must be allowed to act in ways which work against the strategies that made the company successful in the first place. Not many can see the value of doing this. Creativity causes uncertainty, which in turn causes insecurity. Most people want to avoid it. In fact, they tend to attack things that are new to them. This is why there is so much pressure to conform. We’re comfortable doing things the way they have always been done. New- ness, however, is mystifying. We don’t know how it will work. Something might go “Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be ex- ceeded - here and there, now and then - are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty. This is known as ‘bad luck.’” ~ Robert Heinlein Wilson cont’d on page 40. 32 APRIL 2017 WorldWide Drilling Resource ®