Fish Food: Episode 618
Tanks and transformative thinking, how AI will transform society, how GenAI is actually being used now, AI planners, the Nike swoosh and the Downing Street grid.
This week’s provocation: tanks, innovation and transformative thinking
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.
Photo: James Vaughan
If you do one thing this week…
Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, has written something of an epic essay on how AI could transform the world for the better. I’m not always a fan of expositions from tech founders - they can be overly positive in a self-interested way. But this is a pretty detailed look at how AI could accelerate progress over the next 10-20 years in a broad range of areas including economic development and poverty, peace and governance, neuroscience, work and health. It’s long, challenging and far sighted and so it makes for a fascinating read. Andrew Maynard did a good write up of it here.
Links of the week
A new longitudinal study on GenAI adoption conducted by the Wharton AI & Analytics Initiative (based on a survey of 800 large company senior managers) has just come out and reveals that usage of GenAI tools has doubled in a year - 73% use GenAI at least once a week (up from 37% last year). The report contains some interesting stats on how GenAI is being used across businesses.
Meanwhile Meta have released an open version of Google’s Notebook LM audio overview feature that people were getting excited about a few weeks back. Except it’s apparently not quite as good (sidenote: surely the most boring form of innovation is simply copying the latest thing from your competitor?).
It’s interesting that more bespoke Gen AI tools are emerging around strategic planning. The latest one I came across this week is Magnolia, a ‘generative strategic planning and brief writing tool, built exclusively for agencies’. I’ve not seen a demo (as I have for Springboards) so can’t comment on how good it is but the fact that multiple tools are launching says a lot about how strategic, creative and planning processes are already changing.
More hyper-realistic AI ads, this time for beauty. They are amazingly done. There’s an important question behind this about how Generative AI tools perceive ‘beauty’ - Dove did a good job bringing attention to this earlier this year.
An interesting view on turning loyalty from ‘points and promos’ to membership from the founding partner of Uncommon Experience Studio
The Nike Swoosh was designed by graphic designer Carolyn Davidson in 1971, and she was paid $35 for the design. But then Nike gave her some stock which she still hasn’t sold and which is now worth over $5 million. (HT Do Lectures)
Quote of the week
‘I have come to understand that the muscle of the imagination is strengthened through resistance, discipline, and order. These institutional bonds ultimately become a form of liberation where our dreams, alert and concentrated, can find their focus and run truly free.’ Nick Cave, from his Red Hand Files
And finally…
This week I’ve been working with a big PR agency and we began talking about Alistair Campbell’s Downing Street Grid. The grid was introduced to UK government over 20 years ago during Tony Blair’s tenure as a way to coordinate comms across departments and ministers who might be out doing the media rounds. It explicitly sets out what the main talking points should be, other statistics and news that may come up, and what’s happening across some consistent themes. It’s not quite a content calendar but is a fascinating approach to aligning comms, messaging and focus.
Weeknotes
This week I’ve been working with said PR agency and I’ll be doing a bit more of the same next week. I’m also deep into the writing of a report on evolving marketing operating models which has proved a fascinating topic. Working on London’s Southbank this week I walked past the Undercroft at the Southbank Centre several times - an area of concrete ledges, pillars and steps left open by the architects when the Queen Elizabeth Hall was built in the 1960s. Fun fact - it was adopted by skateboarders in the early 1970s when the sport first came to the UK and now lays claim to being the world’s oldest continually used skate spot.
Thanks for subscribing to and reading Only Dead Fish. It means a lot. If you liked this episode please do like, share and pass it on. If you’d like more from me my blog is over here and my personal site is here, and do get in touch if you’d like me to give a talk to your team or talk about working together.
My favourite quote captures what I try to do every day, and it’s from renowned Creative Director Paul Arden: ‘Do not covet your ideas. Give away all you know, and more will come back to you’.