The best ideas don't always win, but that doesn't stop people from believing they should. Most innovators were frustrated by how their ideas, clearly superior in their own minds, struggled for acceptance in the world. Pick from any field at any time and you'll discover tales of dismay, depression, and anger fueled by the innovators' faith that their better ideas not only should, but will win out over others. Of course, visionary innovators are rarely objective in these matters, as often these so-called best ideas are conveniently their own. [130] Ted Nelson, the man who coined the phrase hypertext, laments the limitations of the World Wide Web, and he continues to fight for big ideas that predate the web browsers by decades. Douglas Engelbart and Alan Kay, pioneers of the personal computer, have similar exasperations about the grand ideas they pioneered from the 1970s that have yet to be realized. [131] Even social and political innovators like Martin Luther King, Gandhi, and Thomas Jefferson voiced similar righteousness about their ideas and the faith that the best ones should prevail.
It's not news that innovators are often idealists, but the myth that the best ideas win should not be underestimated. Notice how few people run around arguing that the worst idea wins or that their own inventions are rubbish. People have beliefs about what the world is or should be, and why some ideas, inventions, or people win out over others. Even the notions of best, good, win, and lose are opinions, as is the obsession with framing things in binary terms. Good vs. bad, best vs. worst, happy vs. sad are all tenuous constructions, as the world never divides into two easy piles (e.g., happy vs. sad neglects the existence of the bittersweet). However, that doesn't stop people from trying.
It's clear at this point in the book that innovation is complex, has many meanings and factors, and can't be captured in the pithy quotes that make for good myths. As this chapter explains, there are many contributing factors, and it's impossible to remember them all, all the time. This is why the myth that the best idea wins is so dangerous. It plays possum, rolling on its back, looking cute and innocent, while it quietly reaches behind our backs, taps on our far shoulders with its furry little paw, and laughs as we turn away from the truth.
Fairy tales and hero stories follow similar patterns: good guys win, bad guys lose, and people who do the right thing get nice prizes. [132] These rules are pleasant, easy to remember, and have been with us as long as we've had stories to tell. In some cultures, including America, these stories of "goodness wins" extend to intellectual goodness and the making of good things. Americans hold ingenuity to be one of the best kinds of goodness, spotlighting it and projecting it into our local history: Benjamin Franklin's political inventiveness; the innovative tactics of Minutemen in the Revolutionary War (which weren't that innovative); and the industrial genius of Whitney, Fulton, Edison, Ford, Carnegie, and Steve Jobs. By the simplest definition, heroes are the best at what they do. America created Superman, not Second-place-man or Some-times-better-than-average-guy.
Meritocracy—the ideal that the best do or should win—is a deeply held belief among Americans, and in part comprises the American Dream. Combined with the hero model (good guys win), there's a natural tendency to nudge the telling of history toward stories that fit both ideals and to whitewash, or ignore, those that don't. Whenever we don't know the full story of why someone or something won, the default assumptions are:
The victory was deserved: "Edison made the first lightbulb."
The victory was heroic: "Gutenberg paved the way for the Internet."
Certainly most know that the best doesn't always win, but we don't go out of our way to uncover counterexamples either (much like the discussion in the section "Evolution and innovation" from Chapter 2). We accept stories that fit the patterns we know, as they provide happy feelings and encourage hope for how life should be. Victors of the past who won with dubious ethics or for questionable reasons—like Rockefeller, Carnegie, and Achilles—are remembered not for their flaws or unpopularity in their own time, but as heroes of achievement. Their victories and benevolent contributions, truths that fit the mythology, are the most popular stories we tell about their lives. [133] And should bad decisions be made, given enough time, the reasons for those judgments often fade, leaving only traditions of respect. Consider that the Liberty Bell, which cracked in half when first struck in 1753 and again decades later—clearly not well made or heroic in any way—is now a worshiped artifact of American history. [134] Or that Alfred Nobel, best known for founding the Nobel Peace Prize, made his fortune by inventing dynamite. [135]
The American pantheon of fictional legends includes MacGyver, James Bond, Indiana Jones, John McClane (from the film Die Hard), and Captain Kirk, invincible heroes who defeat evil at overwhelming odds by using good ideas, guile, and a healthy serving of gratuitous violence. They have better ideas, so they win. We're fond of creative idealism even at extremes, such as in stories like Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead, in which Howard Roark, a heroic architect, places his ideas above everything. Despite the complexity of the tale, the protagonist willingly sacrifices for his ideas. The simpler message often taken from this epic novel is that good should win over bad, and if a better idea is ignored, the world is to blame ("the hostility of second-hand souls"). This belief goes further than meritocracy; the world's sense of what is best is less important than the individual's.
Applied to business, the myth that goodness wins is best captured in the famous saying, "If you build a better mousetrap, the world will beat a path to your door." It's sometimes paraphrased as "If you build it, they will come," the iconic phrase from the baseball film Field of Dreams. Unfortunately, the quote is a misattribution to Ralph Waldo Emerson, a leading 19th-century intellectual. What he actually said was probably, "If a man has good corn, or wood, or boards, or pigs to sell, you will find a broad, hard-beaten road to his house." [136] I'm not sure when you last sold pigs or grew corn, but Emerson had something other in mind than rallying would-be entrepreneurs to get in the innovation game. The phrase was meant to be poetic, not instructional, and he'd be disappointed at how many people have taken his words literally.
The phrase has been used as the entrepreneur's motto, misguiding millions into entertaining the notion that a sufficiently good idea will sell itself. As nice as it would be for good ideas to take responsibility for themselves, perhaps using their goodness ID cards to cut ahead of stupid ideas in the popularity line, it's not going to happen. Even the (false) proverbial mousetrap, as historian John H. Lienhard notes, has about 400 patents for new designs filed annually in the U.S., and we can be certain that no one is beating down their doors. [137] More than 4000 mousetrap patents exist, yet only around 20 ever became profitable products. These days, the best equivalent to the metaphoric mousetrap is "to build a better web site," proven by the 30,000 software patents and 1 million web sites created annually. [138] Certainly not all of these efforts are motivated by wealth or wishful thinking, but many inventors still hope that the "If you build it, they will come" sentiment is alive and strong.
Lienhard, based on his study of innovations throughout history, challenges that faith:
Rarely if ever are the networks that surround an innovation in its earliest stages given the credit they are due…a better mousetrap, like anything else, will succeed only when those who envision the idea convince others to join in their new venture—as investors, suppliers, employees, retailers, customers, and even competitors.
The goodness or newness of an idea is only part of the system that determines which ideas win or lose. When we bemoan our favorite restaurant going out of business ("but they make the best cannelloni!") or why our favorite band can't sell albums ("they have the best lyrics!"), we're focusing on the small part of the picture that effects us personally, which is only one factor in the environment determining its fate. These environmental, or secondary, factors have as much influence as the quality of the idea, the talent, or the innovation itself.
[130] I've yet to find a solid reference for the relationship between egos, innovation, and achievement. One general reference is Greatness: Who Makes History and Why, by Dean Keith Simonton (The Guilford Press, 1994). However, as an anecdote, the wide majority of biographies I've read of great innovators includes great egos.
[131] Doug Engelbart has done many interviews about his perception on his place in history, as well as the state of computing today. One example that briefly mentions his opinion of the current state of computing can be found in this short essay: http://www.byte.com/art/9509/sec15/art1.htm Alan Kay has also offered many commentaries on the state on technology relative to better ideas being ignored; some of these ideas are touched on in this interview: http://www.educause.edu/ir/library/html/erm/erm99/erm99027.html.
[132] Of course, mythologies and fairy tales are numerous, and there are many patterns equally as prominent in various pantheons as wish fulfillment and hero quests. See The Uses of Enchantment, by Bruno Bettelheim (Penguin, 1991), or The Hero with a Thousand Faces, by Joseph Campbell (Princeton University Press, 1972).
[133] The robber barrons are easy targets. Despite their label, today we experience only their philanthropic works, universities, and foundations. Carnegie had several incidents regarding workers rights, including the Homestead Strike of 1892 in which Frick, a manager under Carnegie, led the lockout of employees with arms, resulting in a riot and a dozen deaths. The icing on the ironic cake is that the park next to Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh is named Frick Park, and most students know his name for this benevolent reason alone. See http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/carnegie/peopleevents/pande04.html.
[134] The Liberty Bell didn't get its name until 1835. It has quite a story of misfortunes, some of which are likely myths themselves. See http://www.libertybellmuseum.com/faqs.htm.
[135] Nobel was enigmatic, and not much is certain about his view of his own work. However, the creation of the Nobel prizes happened at his death as specified in his will. See http://www.britannica.com/nobel/micro/427_33.html.
[136] Jack Hope, A Better Mousetrap, American Heritage, October 1996, Vol. 47, issue 6 (online at http://www.americanheritage.com/articles/magazine/ah/1996/6/1996_6_90.shtml).
[137] Ibid.