Too often we are taken by the realization of our objectives and do not notice. Being projected towards the objective, the course becomes almost insignificant. Since we are focused on reaching our aims, all encounters and relations are used only to this end. We do not create connections, we do not build and do not make experiences, since we are used to a television with a speed that increases all the time, looking at our goals. A world made of cut & paste, made of repetitions and gestures that are increasingly rapid; speed for distracted people. Then talent has no sense, just stick to the rules: it is a loan we have never used, you do not even have to return it. Anyone who sets up an aim, must not let anybody come between him and the aim. And
he must not be afraid to make mistakes: each happy experience is the result of a big share of delusions.
In his praise of the "player", the great Dostoevskij gives his benediction to those who, despite their having no talent, have courage and therefore try and accept running the risk of failing.
As soon as I entered the gambling house (it was the first time in my life), I remained a while without deciding to play. And the crowd pushed me also. But if I had been alone, then, I think, I should have left immediately and I would not have started to play. I confess that my heart beated hard and that I had lost all my cold blood; I knew for sure, and had decided so since quite time, that I would not have left Roulettenburg like that, simply; something radical and definitive would happen to my fate. So it must be and so it shall be. […]
It is true that only one out of one hundred wins, but what do I care?
("Once upon a time in the West")
The screenplays of the first western films required only a few dead men during the progress of the plot. Often the only man to die was the evil man in the plot; he ho had challenged the law or, using his own ability in handling the gun, held the entire town as hostage. One dead, maybe two.
I go, I kill and then I return.("Once upon a time in the West")
The more film they produced, the higher number of dead men was necessary. It was also necessary to fill the screenplays with corpses, creating a sort of limitation to the imagination of screenwriters: duels and ambushes are all alike after a while! Faces changed (not always), there were a few variations of bangs or sbonks, but things were more or less the same.
Films were based on bangs and sbonks that were present throughout the film (apart from some sporadic smack) and it was important to find something to make the sounds be different. Quite soon, screenplays were filled with special effects: people could not just die, you had to tickle people´s fantasy with something different, something to give the scenes a special touch – special effects, obviously.
Was this slaughter really necessary? I only told you to scare them. He who dies is very scared.("Once upon a time in the West")
In new productions based on special effects, the classical final duel was outdated and they tried to find and exploit ways in which to kill people. Therefore, immerged in a continuous search for “more and more”, the screenwriters did not notice that these film did not have any more oxygen: the authors had more or less forgotten that the films needed an audience who perceived and experienced the films as a spectator and not according to the refined taste of people who aseptically studied and conceived death sitting in a completely equipped office, surrounded by a crowd of compliant collaborators.
The phenomenon is not limited to cinema production: one encounters it all the time when dealing with somebody who, from the height of his experience (and therefore acclaimed and recognized as an Expert), substitutes the client with himself with enormous arrogance, thinking that he can decide taste and preferences, making his own evaluations on his own idea about what is good and what is not.
It takes more than a rope to make a hanged man.("Once upon a time in the West")
It is a small step: you start from the availability of a technique or a product and by common and shared conventions, one establishes that it has a high quality and, independently from the evaluation of how it might be experienced by real clients, a decision is taken that they be administered. They often reason like those: “In the end, the better product will emerge on the market and be part of the client´s needs”. In cases like this, one usually talks about innovation, a very comfortable expression: in the case of failure (which often happens), the responsibility can in fact be blamed on the fact that the “innovation was too innovative” and that “the clients were not ready and prepared to understand..”. What do you know?!
You see, the world is divided into two categories: people with a loaded gun and people who dig. You dig.("Once upon a time in the West")
We try to understand the phenomenon well: innovation on the one hand suggests a new, updated navigation chart that can help us to orient
ourselves in the difficult journey towards the future, on the other hand it recalls that, since it is such – that is, an innovation – it implies the risk of failure
although it incites and spurs the continuation of the journey. A sort of endemic microbe to spread and transmit which often, before forming, has antibiotics (the market/clients) ready to bury it. The history of progress is full of negative events due to this
autoreferential approach of experts that erroneously are identified as better interpreters of the clients´ needs; the shelves are full of products that once were considered to be necessary and revolutionary, but then they were never sold and did not even pass the market test.
Some practical example for sceptical people: we all know VHS (which by now is almost prehistory for many who embrace the new technology) and we have used and “praised” it (previously), whereas other said (rightly) that the best product was Betamax; today we all use the TCP/IP protocol, despite the billion dollars spent to affirm ISO/OSI (doubtlessly better); since a long time we use and continue using the keyboard QWERT (born to delay and make the digitations phase more difficult), rather than an ergonomic version which is closer to a system that makes digitations easier and quicker. In the case of alternatives that have not been successful (Betamax, ISO/OSI, etc.), we are talking about exceptional technologies that, although they are the best, did not pass the market test and did not reach success with the final client.
Every time that we talk about a new innovation, we make bets on the future and every time we risk mortgaging it when trying to decide for others, but the future is no longer a space that can be conquered and colonized. Renaissance is born in the moment when the ruins of ancient Roman monuments stop being ruins and become history and art; their description supplies us with the presuppositions to bestow them with a new significance, make them alive and part of the present.
Innovation is born in the moment when we are willing to sacrifice ourselves for the benefit of the collective we are part of; it is generated in the moment when daily life has a value of continuous and constant search to do one´s job better using that which our clients suggest; it is generated in the moment when we take the requirements of various actors into consideration so that they perceive this “innovation” as a step forward to facilitate movements around the world.
And organizations? When are they innovative?Revolution? Revolution? Please do not talk to me about revolution. I know very well what it is and how they start: somebody knows who to read books and goes to people who do not know how to read books since they are poor and tell them: "Oh, oh, the moment to change everything has arrived" [...] I know what I talk of, I grew up among revolutions. Those who read books go to people who do not know how to read books since they are poor and they tell them: "A change is necessary!” and poor people change. And then the shrewdest of the book readers sit around a table and talk, talk and eat. They talk and eat! And what happens to the poor people at the end? They all die! That is your revolution! So please, do not talk to me about revolution... And holy shit, do you know what happens afterwards? Nothing... everything returns as before!
("Once upon a time in the West")
Once I thought I could stop sucking my thumb. Now I doubt I will be able to. I am trapped!
(Linus)
