Growth in the Age of Complexity: Steering Your Company to Innovation, Productivity, and Profits in the New Era of Competition

CHAPTER 6

Explorers and Navigators

“Fear and discomfort are an essential part of strategy making.”

—ROGER L. MARTIN

With some notable exceptions, few executives would comfortably embrace the title of Explorer.*

For one, the word exploration still conjures up romantic notions and legendary figures from the nineteenth century and earlier, which may seem distant from today’s everyday realities. Secondly, even a light dusting of these same figures reveals deeply flawed individuals who, while driven to extraordinary achievements, would not today be held up as model citizens. For example, Henry Morton Stanley, of “Dr. Livingstone, I presume” fame, was at one time associated with King Leopold II’s brutal Congolese empire,¹ and considered by some to ...