One of my favourite models for navigating technological-driven change (and realising the opportunity of technology-driven innovation) is SAMR, which stands for Substitution, Augmentation, Modification, Redefinition. Drawn from education, the framework relates to the fundamental options for how new technology can enhance capability: it can be a direct substitute with no functional improvement; it can optimise and augment without changing the fundamental approach; it can modify processes, products and approaches in a more significant way; and it can be even more disruptive by redefining entirely new tasks, workflows or models.
Substitution and augmentation are both forms of enhancement or optimisation of existing approaches. Modification and redefinition are both examples of transformation. The difference is important because, as I’ve written about before, the latter two depend on new ways of thinking, breaking open existing assumptions, and avoiding looking at the new through the lens of the old. Which is hard.
What makes transformative thinking even harder is that it often challenges systems, structures and established norms that may have grown up, evolved and steadily been optimised over decades. Researchers Rebecca Henderson and Kim Clark write about this in their 1990 paper (Architectural Innovation: The Reconfiguration of Existing Product Technologies and The Failure of Established Firms). They have a similar framework to SAMR which this time relates to product or service innovation. Their four types of product innovation are incremental, modular, architectural, and radical which relates to both the components of a product and the way in which they are integrated into a system (set out here using an automotive example):
- Incremental innovation: this may strengthen the core components of the product but it also maintains the existing linkages between them (e.g. improving the performance of a car component like a driveshaft without impacting the way in which the car is put together)
- Modular innovation: which may change the fundamental technology of the component but still doesn’t change the way in which the system links together (like an automatic transmission)
- Architectural innovation: here the design of the system changes so whilst the components may not be significantly different the way in which they link together is (like front-wheel drive transmissions)
- Radical innovation: which is the most extreme, and involves changing both the technology of the components and also the way in which they link together (electric vehicles for example)
Architectural and radical innovation are much more difficult since they involve redesigning the system and the way in which it links together, not just the components themselves. The researchers give the example of how Architectural innovation destroys the usefulness of of the architectural knowledge of established businesses. Established organisations will therefore often ‘try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution’ (the ‘Shirky principle’) and are constrained to produce designs which are copies of their communications structures (Conway’s Law). When an organisational structure and information flow have grown up around the old system, it becomes very difficult for the company to fundamentally revise that. The structure and assumptions get in the way of change.
The inability to get beyond current assumptions in innovation is far from new. In World War One JFC Fuller, Chief Staff Officer of the Tank Corps, originated a bold plan to amass 5,000 of the new heavy and medium British tanks to strike a decisive blow to end the war. A main force of 3,000 tanks would punch through German lines along a 90 mile front, allowing a further 800 tanks to attack the German command structures miles behind enemy lines, and another 1,200 to follow on and advance far beyond that.
The lightning thrust plan was revolutionary. Up to that point tanks had only been used to open up gaps in the enemy trenches for foot infantry but this new form of mechanised warfare could potentially disorganise the enemy and end the long-standing stalemate. But Fuller was ignored and his plan became known as one of the most renowned unused plans in military history.
For years afterwards many nations continued to believe that tanks should be used in small pockets to support infantry, but Fuller had actually created an entirely new military strategy that would later be studied by Heinz Guderian in Germany and implemented to devastating effect in 1940.
Fuller had in fact invented Blitzkreig.
Image: James Vaughan
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