A Secret Formula For Radical Innovation: Lessons From Silicon Valley

How Does Radical Innovation Come About? Last year, in researching my upcoming book, THE NEW SCIENCE OF RADICAL INNOVATION, I interviewed several executives from successful tech companies and discovered that they share a signature pattern in how they manage their organizations. I told one of those I interviewed, in watching the historic Go match between AlphaGo and Lee Sedol, I had been struck by how the artificial intelligence (AI) seemed to use the same principles many of these successful Silicon Valley tech giants were using to induce innovation--self-organization, simple rules, a generalist approach, diversity of input, speed of execution, and profuse experimentation (I gave a TEDx talk on this topic and wrote an article about it). I asked him if his company implemented these principles by design or coincidence. His reply was that it was not by design. However, "we very much preach focusing on data, and we try to make sure that people don't have inherent biases in their decision-making.