The words for the coming year are 'Innovation' and 'Speed'. From new government programs around the world designed to mitigate the effects of the current financial meltdown to investment in green technology to businesses doing more with less as they attempt to grow with smaller budgets, innovation will be key. We've seen the early stages already. Since the financial crisis hit, governments everywhere were put in the unexpected position of determining how best to improve liquidity and free up the credit markets. Because of the rapid-fire nature of the crisis, there wasn't the luxury of months or years to plan, making speed another key element. Decisions had to be made and signals had to be sent to nervous markets that governments would step-in to provide stability and reassurance. As obvious as these needs are, the sheer suddenness of the combined actions around the world (with the exception of Germany, which remains one of the few holdouts) compelled governments to act quickly, in the absence of complete information. While these are not ideal conditions to spur innovation, crisis often produces surprisingly positive side-effects, which we will hopefully see unfold in 2009 as governments focus on stabilizing the world economy.
In the U.S., innovation looks to take many forms as well, including Obama's plans to invest in new technologies designed to address multiple environmental and energy-related issues, development of a more cohesive national education structure emphasizing the critical stage of early childhood education, new healthcare initiatives, and domestic infrastructure projects. With most of these issues, the private sector is already reshaping itself to encourage additional innovation. Some venture capitalists in Silicon Valley (and elsewhere) are redirecting capital toward green innovation and education initiatives. Businesses are gearing up in anticipation of the domestic infrastructure investments. Regulators are focusing on designing better and more innovative approaches to oversight of financial markets. None of these innovations and potential changes will come easily. To succeed, the tendency of bureaucrats and business leaders to protect their territory needs to change, embracing open and honest discussion instead. New initiatives and plans need to be vetted by the passionate forces of debate. But the debate itself must not succumb to typical analysis/paralysis, otherwise innovation will stall, the economy will continue to suffer, and progress overall will halt. Just as the events from September 2008 forced leaders from government and the private sector to think and act with extraordinary rapidity (and yes, there were still patches of uneven response--but that is typical in innovation-driven situations), the effort to solve the many crises confronting us must be pursued with similar urgency. There will never be a perfect plan to solve each of the various challenges, so we should not wait for one. Instead, having a general sense of direction, an innate optimism, and rapid-fire execution, are the right combination of factors to get us going. To make this all happen will require an open dialog that encourages multiple points of view, each with an eye toward a future of transformation.
There is a painfully obvious and very recent lesson that should serve to guide government and private sector leaders in the months ahead: do not do what the former Big 3 automakers have done. As these companies teeter on the edge of failure, they have been neither innovative or speedy. Their recent problems are merely the manifestation of decades of bad decisions that have finally come back to haunt them. Their leaders have been stunningly blind to conditions around them, evidenced most egregiously by the CEOs' disastrous first meeting with Congress several weeks ago when each of them flew on corporate jets to beg for government loans-symbolic of their detachment from reality. And in this instance, perception was reality. The Big 3 automakers are perceived to be out of touch (and almost out of time) and lo and behold, their leaders reinforced this view. Almost comically, after being raked over the coals by Congress for their insensitivity (and lack of sensible turnaround plans) these same CEOs returned a couple of weeks later, each having driven from Detroit to Washington DC in a hybrid car, as if to say "now we get it". Unfortunately for them, the hybrid car gesture smacked of insincerity and it was clearly too little, too late. To make innovation and speed work to our advantage will require leaders in all sectors of society to actually 'get it' the first time. I am optimistic this will happen. But don't wait for perfection.