The Power of Re-Arrangement

In a previous post, we equated innovation to re-arrangement. And, yes, we do believe that this is one of the simplest powerful ways to think about innovation.

Too often people get stuck on "how can we do something completely new?". Yet, not all consequential sets of innovation have to be extreme examples of 'disruption', or of 'move fast and break things'.

Note the following from the "Disruptive Innovation" Wikipedia Article:

Not all innovations are disruptive, even if they are revolutionary. For example, the first automobiles in the late 19th century were not a disruptive innovation, because early automobiles were expensive luxury items that did not disrupt the market for horse-drawn vehicles. The market for transportation essentially remained intact until the debut of the lower-priced Ford Model T in 1908. The mass-produced automobile was a disruptive innovation, because it changed the transportation market, whereas the first thirty years of automobiles did not.

It was the 're-arranging' of how to build vehicles (i.e. how to best arrange people and machines to be able to mass-produce) that was the real disruptive innovation. Yet, the automobile invention/innovation was a necessary pre-cursor.

Variations on a Theme

In music there is the concept of 'variations on a theme'. A melody (the theme) is taken as a starting point and this idea is then explored, elaborated-on and/or altered in different ways "including melody, rhythm, harmony, counterpoint, timbre, orchestration or any combination of these".

Examples are Brahms' "Variations on a Theme of Haydn" and Rachmaninoff's "Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini".

An example of creating variations on one's own ideas (i.e. tinkering, pivoting, etc.) is Bach's Goldberg Variations.

My personal favourite is Johnny Dyani's stupendous use of Enoch Sontonga's Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika - the first part of SA's national anthem. Dyani uses this hymn to powerfully express his longing for what he had to leave behind while being in exile from apartheid SA. As one YouTube user (@fredkhumalo3724) commented: "Man's crying, man is wailing! wants to go back home. ... Died in exile, the brother!".

(Listen from the start - for the double bass anthem variations - and from around 03:42 for the vocal 'wailing').

Music teaches us that we can innovate on the ideas of others (through variation and through musical development'). It teaches us that the results of such innovations can be just as sublime as the original ideas.

An Example

In our book, we used the example of the shipping container as being one of the most consequential innovations of the last few decades. In simple terms, someone looked at containers (to move goods around with) and asked the question whether it makes sense to have standardisation in size.

Before this question, many of the questions in logistics centered around conundrums such as how to load and pack different-sized and different-shaped containers. How can we fit them into trucks, trains, ships and aeroplanes? I.e., these questions were around how to best arrange physical goods.

Well, the answer to that question was simple. If everything you move has a standardised size, most of the questions around how to arrange them falls away. The impact of the shipping container innovation was so huge that, whenever someone refers to 'containers' these days, many of us assume a reference to a shipping container.

In short: Questions around 'how to arrange/pack well now' lead to an answer to the question of 'how to always be able to arrange/pack well'.

I'll start: IT architecture is about good arrangement. Innovation, there, is about re-arrangement. Now: How do these concepts translate into innovation in other fields too? Into your business?