Business Exposed144
these practices have a tness level of their own. The u kills
many thousands of people every year, and at rst glance it seems
a slightly awed strategy of the virus to kill one’s host, yet it
persists. Why is that? That’s because it spreads quicker than it
kills. It doesn’t matter much, for a virus, that it reduces the tness
of its host, as long as it jumps to someone else before the host
snuffs it! And in a way that is what bad business practices do too.
They spread easily, and kill slowly and stealthily.
Firms don’t know that the practice is bad. Very bad practices are
easy to spot, so nobody adopts them, but not these ones! They’re
sneaky – you catch it before you realize it, and the negative
effects only become apparent in the long run, just like the eating
habits of the Fore people.
An example, you say? Well, I explained earlier how downsizing
takes its toll, yet remains popular. Similarly, a few pages ago I
discussed scientic ndings on the consequences of adopting ISO
9000, especially when applied in a very innovative industry. The
research I discussed – by Professors Benner from the University
of Pennsylvania and Tushman from the Harvard Business School
– showed that ISO 9000, in the long run, can have a severe
negative impact on a rm because it hampers innovation. Yet,
the short-term benets are clear; adopting ISO 9000 often comes
with some good reputational effects, an immediate increase in
customers, and satised stakeholders. However, the negative
effect on innovation, in the long run, may outweigh all of this.
Nevertheless, rms adopt practices because they see the
short-term benets, but are quite unaware of the long-run
detrimental stuff. To managers in charge of improving their
rms’ performance now, the practice seems attractive because
they noticed that companies in other industries (perhaps not so
reliant on innovation) beneted greatly at the time they adopted
it, many of the rm’s competitors are currently adopting it, and
they all see a surge in customer applications too! Of course it
looks attractive!
Moreover, once we start to suffer from a shortage of internal
innovation, many years will have passed, and no-one quite