The Upside of Uncertainty

Chapter 18

Activate and Unlock

When Nathan started this research years ago, he wanted to explore how innovators manage uncertainty. But when he talked to innovators, although they expressed enthusiasm about uncertainty, they disliked the word manage. It was only when we came across the work of Roberto Burle Marx that we stumbled upon the right word. Burle Marx was one of the leading modernist landscape architects, whose pivotal insight occurred when he was attending art school in Berlin. He was visiting an exhibit on plants from his native Brazil, and as he wandered through the iridescent tattoo flowers and giant water lilies bursting from their constricting containers, the question arose: What if the real power lies not in trying to manage ...