You've got a great idea. Now how do you get it adopted?

Original post:  Nov 13, 2013

I like to think that the world is logical. In this idealized version of reality, simply making the case for a good idea is enough. Everyone agrees that this new method is the right thing to do and it gains adoption. Unfortunately, that is rarely the case. Most of the time, the good idea itself is only the first step. Then comes the long slog of convincing those who are vested in the status quo that the change will be worth all of the disruption it takes to get there.

If you've ever sat in a monster traffic jam as they work to expand a freeway, you will know exactly what I am talking about.

Atul Gawande has another great article on this very subject in the New Yorker. "Slow Ideas" discusses how some (medical) innovations spread more rapidly than others. He opens with two clear-cut examples of revolutionary innovations in medicine:  anesthesia and infection control in surgery.

Anesthesia spread more quickly. Prior to its invention, surgeons were judged for their speed. Even minor procedures like tooth removal still required restraints and struggle. Once William Morton demonstrated the idea and Henry Jacob Bigelow published an account in a medical journal, the idea spread like wildfire. Within two months, the idea had already spread to London and Paris.

Despite this rapid uptake, there were still skeptics:

There were forces of resistance, to be sure. Some people criticized anesthesia as a “needless luxury”; clergymen deplored its use to reduce pain during childbirth as a frustration of the Almighty’s designs. James Miller, a nineteenth-century Scottish surgeon who chronicled the advent of anesthesia, observed the opposition of elderly surgeons: “They closed their ears, shut their eyes, and folded their hands. . . . They had quite made up their minds that pain was a necessary evil, and must be endured.” Yet soon even the obstructors, “with a run, mounted behind—hurrahing and shouting with the best.” Within seven years, virtually every hospital in America and Britain had adopted the new discovery.

Infection control took a more torturous path. It was the leading killer of surgical patients. It was so common that oozing pus was considered a sign of healing! Dr. Joseph Lister read a paper by Louis Pasteur about how microorganisms could cause fermentation and spoilage. He had an idea to use small amounts of carbolic acid to improve surgical infection rates. By 1867, he published the results of years of study showing that the common use of his method dramatically reduced the rates of sepsis and death. Despite these findings, his ideas faced a much colder reception than anesthesia. Gawande reports:

....The surgeon J. M. T. Finney recalled that, when he was a trainee at Massachusetts General Hospital two decades later, hand washing was still perfunctory. Surgeons soaked their instruments in carbolic acid, but they continued to operate in black frock coats stiffened with the blood and viscera of previous operations—the badge of a busy practice. Instead of using fresh gauze as sponges, they reused sea sponges without sterilizing them. It was a generation before Lister’s recommendations became routine and the next steps were taken toward the modern standard of asepsis—that is, entirely excluding germs from the surgical field, using heat-sterilized instruments and surgical teams clad in sterile gowns and gloves.

Why did one innovation have such an immediate impact while the other took decades to take root?

We'll discuss Gawande's insight into the answer tomorrow.
Here is a link to part two.

The link to the full article is in the title above and here:  http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2013/07/29/130729fa_fact_gawande

Why I blog

This blog will mirror the blog that I keep in our Jive PulseConnect area at work. I'll try to limit it to my favorite posts. This post was originally created on October 17, 2011.

My wife recently asked me why I blog. It's not as if I spend hours every day doing it to the detriment of the family. It usually takes just a few minutes to jot something down. The challenge (for me) is to do it at least once per work day.

I guess there are two key reasons from my perspective.

First, I remember reading a sobering statistic about blogs in general. Over 60% are abandoned in the first month and up to 95% are abandoned after 120 days. Nearly all of the people who read blogs never post or comment. This little blog is my own way to help populate PulseConnect with tiny bits of interesting things that may help keep people curious or interested. I find that committing myself to putting a thought down on electronic paper helps my own focus and makes me think. It's almost like mental exercise for me.

Second, I am also a firm believer in the "network effect." This is a phenomenon that establishes that the value of individual items increase as it becomes more pervasive. Think of a telephone. It's not valuable unless you can use it to call someone else. As you are able to call more and more people, it grows in value relative to the growth of the overall users and connections.

Perhaps it is simply hubris on my part, but I believe I have a lot of ideas. In and of themselves, ideas are not valuable. In my mind, ideas are like little seeds. If they remain in their safe, comfortable capsule, they will never amount to anything. They have to be digested and dispersed widely. If I am lucky, my little idea might grow into something more than just another thought. Maybe someone else will shepherd my idea and take it on. If it is fed and watered by others in the community, perhaps it can spark some kind of cross-pollination. As more and more of these ideas grow up and out, they generate a virtuous cycle of even newer ideas.

PulseConnect has the potential to become a microcosm of innovative activity within our company. It can only achieve that destiny if it is used and valued by the larger community.

And so I blog....