Creating the Innovation Culture: Leveraging Visionaries, Dissenters and Other Useful Troublemakers

Chapter 17. Conclusions

Some concluding comments.

The Paradox of Our Times

I was watching a program on Britain in the Second World War. As youprobably know, Britain entered the war several years before the United States. Things were going badly. Hitler had conquered all of Europe. The British army had been pinned at Dunkirk and their heroic rescue from those beaches by hundreds of ordinary fishing boats couldn't hide the fact that it was a crushing military blow. The next obvious move was Germany's invasion of Britain. There were so few resources to defend the country that some British villages sharpened sticks to plant in the ground to stop German tanks. Britain was running out of equipment, fighting men, and food. The United States was holding secret talks with Canada (part of Britain's Commonwealth) to transfer the British Royal Navy to their side of the Atlantic when Britain was defeated. Winston Churchill was under intense pressure from his own Cabinet to give in to Hitler. But instead, he gave the world, "We shall fight them on the beaches...we shall fight them in the fields and in the streets....we shall never surrender."

Can you imagine where we would be today if Churchill had listened to those sincere and honest voices who told him what was as plain as the nose on his face—that it was time to surrender? How easy, sensible, and appropriate to sue for peace. How reckless, risky, and foolhardy to hold out. And yet he did.

Sometimes leaders do their countries great service by being ...