Off White Papers

The Following is an excerpt from an Off White Paper published back on April 27, 2014. It was the final piece penned with our guiding light, the late Professor Clayton Christensen. This excerpt is part of a larger discussion of accountability that focuses on the role of religion as a set of accountability technologies. The Ten Commandment is one of the great moral technologies that probably covers 80% of the virtues needed for a just society– whether or not you are a believer or a non-believer in a higher power.

Ironically the Ten Commandments is also a great example of a disruptive religious innovation. It took the 600 plus laws (the mitzvot) of the Torah and reduced it down tot he Big Ten. Simpler and more accessible than the Old Testament, this innovation scaled magnificently particularly after Cecil B. De Mille came up with arguably the greatest marketing campaign ever– just ask Charleton Heston and Yul Brynner.

…There seems to be a more vexing problem that necessarily precedes the issue of accountability: do people clearly understand if or when they are doing something wrong?  In simpler times a good place to start learning how to behave was the Ten Commandments.  It seems we’ve gotten a little rusty on the content of those ten imperatives and prohibitions. While 62% of Americans know that pickles are one of the ingredients of a Big Mac, less than 60% know that “Thou shalt not kill” is one of the Ten Commandments.  (Then again, ten or so percent of the adults surveyed also believe that Joan of Arc was Noah’s wife.)  In fact, the majority of those surveyed could identify the seven individual ingredients in a Big Mac: two all-beef patties (80%), special sauce (66%), lettuce (76%), cheese (60%), pickles (62%), onions (54%) and sesame seed bun (75%).   “Thou shalt not kill” only beats out onions.  It’s enough to make you cry. “Two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, and onions on a sesame seed bun.” In one Big Mac promotion, the company gave customers a free soda if they could repeat the jingle in less than 4 seconds.

A catchy jingle undoubtedly made The Big Mac part of pop culture. Who could forget the 1975 launch of McDonald’s Big Mac?  That jingle-laden effort takes second place for “most clever marketing campaign” in advertising history. Yet it was the unsurpassed marketing genius of film producer extraordinaire Cecil B. De Mille that surely takes the cake.  De Mille gave the Ten Commandments a special place in contemporary American culture decades before they became fodder for the “culture wars” regarding separation of church and state.

In perhaps the greatest marketing coup in American history, De Mille ingeniously tapped into the angst of Justice E. J. Ruegemer, a Minnesota juvenile court judge who was deeply concerned with the moral foundation of the younger generation. Starting in the 1940s, Ruegemer had, along with the Boy Scouts’ Fraternal Order of Eagles, initiated a program to post the Ten Commandments in courtrooms and classrooms across the country as a non-sectarian “code of conduct” for troubled youth. But De Mille took us to the next level. In 1956 De Mille seized the opportunity to plug his costly epic film, The Ten Commandments.  He proposed to Ruegemer that they collectively erect granite monuments of the actual Ten Commandments in the public squares of 150 cities across the nation.  The unveiling of each monument was a press event typically featuring one of the film’s stars. “OMG!!! Isn’t that Yul Brynner?” or  ”that’s Charleton Heston!”  Absolutely brilliant!   Things remained copacetic until the 1970s as this public expression of a code of conduct was apparently non-controversial.  Then all hell broke loose leading to a firestorm that still burns to this day on the issue of separation of church and state.

  “Ten Commandments” as an expression didn’t even exist until the middle of the 16th century when it first appeared in the Geneva Bible that preceded by half a century the King James Bible, first published in 1604.  The Ten Commandments have the attributes of a disruptive innovation. They take the hundreds of laws in the bible and boil them down to ten fundamental pearls that are more accessible and usable for the masses. Obviously not covering all the bases they were clearly good enough to get the job done: to create a simple, accessible bedrock for moral and ethical behavior.  Serious biblical scholars of the Ten Commandments view the vastly oversimplified code as a synecdoche, or visual metaphor, for the much more complex set of laws and regulations.

With or without the Ten Commandments it seems that most people have internalized “Thou shalt not kill.” Cognitive scientist Steven Pinker points out that, as recently as 10,000 years ago, a hunter-gatherer had a 60% probability of being killed by another hunter-gatherer. At some point in history, the prohibition against murder became a conscious ethical innovation.  By the eighteenth century BCE the code of Hammurabi, our earliest surviving code of law, prohibited murder yet the prescribed punishment was based on the social status of the victim.  Over a period of several centuries, our moral horizon expanded once again.  The biblical commandment “Thou shalt not kill” evolved to eliminate any class distinction— clearly an upgrade.

Ethical innovations come in fits and starts.  Yet over the long run ethical and moral horizons of civilization widen. Today, according to Pinker, murder rates are at the lowest in history.   In the U.S. there were 13,000 murders in 2010. If our math is correct, that represents less than ½ of one-thousandth of one percent assuming no multiple murders and no suicides are included; about one person in 25,000 actually kills someone. While the numbers are less clear on adultery due to methodological challenges and interpretations (single incident versus multiple incidents, it takes two to tango, etc., etc., etc.), lowball estimates are 20-25% of adults are guilty.  Assuming 150 million adults, some tens of millions of Americans have committed adultery give or take a few.   It would seem not all commandments are created equal– or at least obeyed equally.

Morality has become more complicated.  In simple situations with a “one-to-one” correlation — one person murders another or someone steals a neighbor’s horse, or someone lies in court — we know what they have done is wrong and we hold them accountable. But we live in a society comprised of perpetual power imbalances, multiple stakeholders, ambiguous situations, and complex interdependent systems.  Is releasing classified documents as a response to questionable or inappropriate government surveillance heroic or traitorous? The July 10, 2103, Quinnipiac poll, 55% of Americans consider Edward Snowden a whistleblower/hero while 34% believe he is a traitor– a 20% shift in favor of Snowden since the earliest polls. Interestingly, normalized polarized Americans are uniting against the unified view of the nation’s political establishment.  The situation has become even more murky, now that Snowden’s activities have been indirectly validated through the Pulitzer Prize.   Determining what is right and wrong gets pretty dicey especially when we don’t know what we don’t know. What we do know is: a hell of a lot of Americans really don’t want Big Brother reading their emails. But what are they afraid of?

Does a banker taking advantage of asymmetric information or the sheer complexity of regulations, accounting and tax codes let alone multi-billion dollar obtuse securities constitute unconscionable behavior that deserves punishment? Who is responsible for lung cancer deaths– the smoker, the tobacco company, the tobacco worker or the FDA? Who is accountable for obesity-related deaths– McDonalds, corn subsidies, the overweight consumer or all of the above? Who is accountable for unsafe working conditions in the developing world– Apple, the Gap, Nike, Walmart, the local politicians, the builder– or the consumer who benefits from cheaper prices? Or are these just acceptable “costs of doing business?”

Perhaps we are undergoing the atomization of morality. Has morality has become subject to the “distributed network effect” such that every action can find a morally acceptable pathway of justification? When systems, stakeholders, and situations become complexes replete with interdependencies, conditionality and incalculable unintended consequences moral responsibility gets spread like peanut butter across a chain of activities, persons, corporations, partnerships, not-for-profit organizations, and government agencies. Complicating things further is that every agent has an obligation of loyalty to their principal. Peanut butter consists of a whole lot of peanuts, so which peanut or employee do we hold accountable for screwing up a batch of peanut butter? In like manner, one bad apple spoils the bunch but hard to know which one once it becomes applesauce. How should we parse accountability when there is a complex chain of activities where this atomization of morality allows every individual to avoid taking responsibility for the whole.  Often times we have only an intuition that something is amiss or doesn’t feel right even if we can’t exactly put our finger on it. Executive compensation feels like stealing, the selling of tobacco products feels like killing as does serving unhealthy food to the masses.  Are these moral intuitions, like Pope Francis’s about wasting food, actually expansions of our moral horizons or just plain silly?

A new awareness of what constitutes moral transgressions must come before accountability can be effectively scaled to help ensure enduring peace and prosperity.  This new moral awareness cannot arise without a great deal of civil discourse and yes, even uncivil discourse.  Slavery was okay until it wasn’t. Gay marriage was not okay until it was. Smoking in public places was permitted until it wasn’t.  Corporate polluters were acceptable until they weren’t. Changing the moral baseline is always painful.  Issues of accountability at scale are somewhat premature until we can collectively agree what constitutes right and wrong in an extended or networked chain of “values.”  It’s hard to build consensus when everything is so damn complicated with multiple stakeholders, complex systems, and ambiguous situations. Until there is an inflection point– that quantum moment– where enough people can be energized by the intuitions of early moral adopters to see something is terribly wrong and to take action there can be no wide spread accountability.

All this calls for a new breed of moral innovators.  It will be these early adopters– gifted with unusual charisma, empathy, and humility– who expand our moral horizon. They might even have to resort to civil disobedience. They will invariably face criticism and grave risks– financial, reputation, and even bodily harm– as they excite a new moral majority– many of whom will not believe in Hell but will embrace the possibility of better “Heaven” on earth.

by Craig Hatkoff, Rabbi Irwin Kula with Professor Clayton M. Christensen

(This is a previously unpublished article from August 2010 being released in memory of Clay’s passing in light of the emerging COVID19 crisis.)

When Risk Goes Asymmetric Strange Things Can Happen

About the culture at his previous gold trading firm, J. Aron, subsequently purchased by Goldman Sachs, former Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein, notoriously quipped,  “We didn’t have the word ‘client’ or ‘customer’ at the old J. Aron. We had counterparties…” That quote in our minds serves as a crease in time. Even as a joke, this little zinger sums up one of the great issues confronting capitalism: structural, asymmetric risk where information systems are dangerously skewed against the less informed. While not illegal, there is something borderline immoral or at least a bit creepy about the unchallenged feeder system between Goldman Sachs and the rest of the world’s power regimes populated with former high ranking Goldman alums. To dispel any notions of Pollyannaism, bacteria, rarely admired for is aesthetic qualities, is admittedly an essential part of any healthy, self-correcting systems in dynamic equilibrium. Try making yogurt without bacteria! Matt Taibbi’s epic article in Rolling Stone permanently etched the moniker for Goldman Sach as a giant vampire squid, sucking the blood out of America, Americans, and any other organism living or dead, into the world’s psyche. Let’s just face it, The Goldman Gangs are the smartest and best-informed guys/gals in the room. Just the way it is. Until…

But a larger storm arises in the midst of any good ole financial crisis, where the rich get richer for being smarter and better informed creating structural asymmetry where moral hazard, personal accountability, and outright humanity. When there is no face to a crisis it is hard to foment a communal empathic response. On July 25, 1985, Rock Hudson’s press secretary publicly confirmed he was suffering from HIV/AIDS; two months later he was dead. The announcement itself shook America out of its faceless indifference to a brewing storm: “Oh no! Rock Hudson has AIDS????” fretted an awakened citizenry. The AIDs epidemic was now real.

So far while many high profile celebs have contracted the COVID19 virus none have succumbed and emerges as a fatality statistic. This too shall change at some point. The demise of Tom Hanks, Idris Elba, Prince Charles or other similarly-ranked notables would quickly put a face on this novel coronavirus. This would become a psychological tipping point. One need only look to Kobe Bryant’s demise which led to a national depression and state of mourning.

Congressional testimony can be a hellish experience for bank titans.  In the aftermath of 2008 financial crisis, Goldman’s Blankfein gave a few bucks at the office after his Abacus went awry but he could do the math in his head that $500 million was a spit in the bucket to get back to the business of trying to wipe the calamari omelet off the firm’s face.  J.P. Morgan Chase’s Jamie Diamond emerged relatively unscathed but feeling like a bride betrayed left standing at the altar as a once-presumptive Secretary of the Treasury before the bar was lower to admit minors. 

Yet another lesson should not be forgotten from the Grand Overlord of finance and eponymous founder of the House of Morgan; J. P. Morgan himself barely survived his congressional testimony on the Panic of 1907.  Perhaps apocryphal, some historians have suggested that the stress from his Pujo Committee testimony (effectively ending the “money trust”) did in the already-ailing bulbous-nosed banker just three months after his appearance.  Morgan had served as the world’s lender of last resort long enough and was replaced by a new lender of last resort: the Federal Reserve.  Morgan had financed much more than just wars—he financed just about everything including unjust wars, banks, railroads, steel mills, and yachts.  Yet throughout his illustrious career, one principle was inviolate:  character and trust matter.  Consider Morgan’s famous exchange with Congressman Untermyer at the congressional hearings:

Congressman Untermyer: Is not commercial credit based primarily upon money or property?

Morgan: No, sir. The first thing is character.

Congressman Untermyer: Before money or property?

Morgan: Before money or anything else. Money cannot buy it … a man I do not trust could not get money from me on all the bonds in Christendom.

And while character determines trust so do consequences.  To paraphrase Sam Johnson: Nothing focuses the mind like a hanging.

So what roles do character, trust and consequences (the cauldron of morality) in the amoral framework and underpinnings of capitalism purportedly guided by self-interest, rational behavior and an invisible hand?  Remove consequences, trust, and character from the traditional banking relationship between borrowers and lenders and market behavior has all the predictability of Brownian motion.  Examining what happens when borrowers and lenders become decoupled from the risk of loss of capital through financial prestidigitation (aka financial innovation) could provide a provocative clue of what might happen when traditional combatants are also decoupled from the risk of loss.  A successful suicide bomber and death go hand-in-hand.  But a predator drone neatly eliminates the honor quotient inherent in hand-to-hand combat.  The risk relationship becomes inversely asymmetric and alters the nature of warfare itself.

As well he should, William Blake had a healthy fear of tigers, whose unsurpassed predatory skills had few, if any, rivals.  He certainly had a way with words but perhaps was a bit of a closet military strategist.  Remember the famous scene in the coming-of-nuclear-age film War Games, where WOPR (War Operation Plan Response), a slightly schizophrenic military uber-computer (and close relative to HAL from Kubrick’s 2001: Space Odyssey) has a truly senior moment and calculates that any nuclear scenario is completely unwinnable.  A frustrated WOPR blows a few fuses and whistles ultimately determining the only way to win is not to play; WOPR entreaties a peach-fuzzed Matthew Broderick with the classic “how about a nice game of chess?”

The lethal weapons of yesteryears’ military-industrial complex have simply too big to succeed resulting in deterrence as the only practical value.  Prophetically, War Games serves as a cautionary tale; today our most sophisticated aerial weapons and delivery systems are also over-powered, over-designed and over budget. Yet the UAV Predator Drone and its relatives are a stunningly disruptive military innovation that is a fraction of the cost; while a $4 million Predator, clearly cheaper and inferior to the $350 million F-22 is still good enough to get the job done: taking out troublesome non-state actors and other evil-doers around the globe.  Aquinas in Summa Theologica actual coins the phrase evil-doers in his exegesis on Just Wars.   The drone, not likely contemplated by Aquinas (who was no William of Ockham), is a construct of more modern, radical thinking.  Like the zany world of quantum physics and its wave-particle duality, disruptive innovation theory creates a paradoxymoron: less is more. 

Fast forward 25 years: meet the Volker Rule 2.0 for military engagement.  Hopefully, the oversight, safeguards, and regulations are more effective than our rating agencies and oil rig regulators. Now apply a fractured corollary to the Volker Rule (affectionately recapitulated as Volker Rule 2.0) to our arsenal of high-tech military technologies and massively damaging weapon systems: by and large, they are simply “too big to succeed.”  The capabilities of these feats of engineering supremacy and modern military miracle weapon systems have far outstripped the required response and resources to combat the true twenty-first-century threats: non-state actors. 

Now from the secluded safety of CENTCOM trailers outside Las Vegas at Nellis AFB, pilots in decal-decorated flight suits sit in front of Sony Play Station-like equipment, joysticks in hand, and take-out terrorists half-way around the world with.  The drone’s function is similar to a suicide bomber yet the drone pilot’s persona is antithetical to that of a successful suicide bomber who faces asymmetrical assured personal destruction (or at least a re-arrangement of genitalia for those less successful).  A drone pilot is an exact inverse: enjoying asymmetric personal risk i.e. no risk at all—at least physically.  Yes, there is the possibility of post-traumatic stress, but bodily harm is removed from the equation unless the pilot accidentally slips on the step or acquires a nasty case of carpal tunnel syndrome.  Joysticks do create an unavoidable occupational hazard.  Who can forget the searing imagery of Slim Pickens in Dr. Strangelove personally delivering rodeo-style Fat Boy and Little Man’s ancestor to its targeted destination on a nuclear bucking bronco; now that was honorable!

The drone is a perfect, but not the only, example of the infrequent disruptive military innovation: an intentionally inferior, cheaper, less complicated product that is good enough to get the job done.

Other disruptive military innovations have distanced the combatants’ risk but not eliminated entirely.  The inspiration for the Hundred Years War was the late 13th-century disruptive innovation known as the longbow.  With the dramatically increased range of these inexpensive bronze-penetrating missiles, the personal risk goal line was moved back a couple of hundred yards as English archers could now pierce the armor of French cavalry with their sky-blackening “rain of death” putting an end to the monopoly on fear where the French cavalry could literally steamroll opposing forces who were no match. 

But shock-mounted combat itself was enabled by an earlier disruptive military innovation–the stirrup–thought to have been invented as far back as 2500 B.C.  This one little innovation —a strap of leather or forged metal that could secure the rider to his steed– created the equivalent of a modern-day tank.  The horse and armor were not disruptive innovations themselves but this single inexpensive component of innovation, the stirrup, would knit together a complex linkage of capabilities enabling France to become complacent in its need for disruptive military innovation.  Sustaining innovations—better, stronger armor, jousting tournaments, a hinge or metallic do-hickey here or there.  But the invention of the longbow by the English would transform a smaller, poorer nation into a category killer; the raw trajectory power of this simple weapon could take out a knight and a horse in one shot.  A nation one fifth its size decimated the French with this incredibly less complicated weapon during the Hundred Years War. 

The reach of the longbow doubled the efficacy and power of the conventional bow and ended the monopoly of shock-mounted combat that debatably created the need for the feudal system itself:  horses, armored knights were an expensive proposition and economic evolution was needed to feed the beast.  Yet the product and the process of implementing the longbow strategy were inextricably linked.  All able-bodied Englishmen were required to practice archery on weekends if we can believe Froissart’s account, and no child was left behind.  Perhaps our national education system can take a page on working weekends to remain competitive in the global arena of economic warrior nation-states. 

But today’s pesky, invisible non-state warriors are not likely to show up at a modern-day equivalent of the Peace of Westphalia–even if we could figure out who to invite.  Westphalia was the recognition that gunpowder and guns would result in mutually assured destruction of Protestant and Catholic alike.  After all what’s the big deal about Protestants and Catholics getting along?  It was really economics and raison d’etat, not religious ideology, that was at the root of the struggle and balance of power politics.  Cardinal Richelieu had no problem backing Protestant forces when it served the interests of France. Nor did the flip-flopping Protestant-turned Catholic Henry IV who said, “Paris is well worth a mass.”  And the religiously checker-boarded Valtellines and Grison valley may have had more to do with Pope Urban VIII throwing his friend and beneficiary Galileo to the Inquisition than a disagreement between science and religion., Most scientist today understand Galileo’s Copernican proofs were rubbish as did the Jesuits at St. Ignatius’ Collegio Romano at the time. 

Shortly after September 11^th, an Army four-star general was asked at a private lunch: how can we end terrorism?  He responded. “The military can’t end terrorism.  We can just kill terrorists.  We will track ‘em down one by one. Knock on their door.  Drag ‘em outside and kill ‘em.  Put a bullet in their head and go knock on the next door.  Ending terrorism?  That’s not our job.  That is up to you.”

In 2002 things suddenly changed by the deployment of a truly disruptive military innovation, a modern-day longbow that quietly arrived in the scene: The Predator Drone.  But unlike the longbow that pushed the combatants’ danger back a few hundred, the drone would push it back halfway around the world.  No more of that messy business of knocking on doors; we were now technically able with low-end performance to deliver colonoscopies to would-be evil-doers without them even knowing.  Drones are not visible cruising at 15,000 feet, no rattle, no hum.  Just a hellfire missile up the butt.

According to the recent U.N. Special Rapporteur’s Report, in April 2002 the Russians armed forces took out “rebel warlord” Omar bin al Khattab in Chechnya. Then in November 2002 alleged al Qaeda leader Ali Qaed Senyan al-Harithi and five other men in Yemen were vaporized reportedly by a CIA-operated Predator drone using a Hellfire missile.

The efficacy of the drone as a disruptive innovation was captured in part by Captain Terry Pierce in 2005 in his book on disruptive military technologies. Pierce offers a glimpse as to the benefits as well as the difficulties associated of implementing wrenching change by resisting stakeholders, both inside and outside of the military.  Civilians and maverick officers play a critical role in innovation but only under certain very limited circumstances.  Disruptive innovations are scary business if you are a career military man, particularly during peaceful periods. 

But September 11^th changed things dramatically.  It was a “crease in time” according to the same four-star.  Today Defense Secretary Robert Gates seems to get the need for disruptive military innovation; Gates has urged his weapons buyers to rush out “75% percent solutions over a period of months” rather than waiting for ‘gold-plated’ solutions”.  The Predator drone and its unmanned relatives seem to fill that order; it is estimated that nearly 1/3 of the drone fleet has crashed.  But at $4 million a pop you can lose a lot of drones and still beat losing one F-22.  The math is pretty straight forward. As Voltaire said: perfection is the enemy of the good. Or, as we say in the parlance of disruptive innovation: the good enough!

In an influential 1998 manifesto-styled essay-metaphor on the open source movement (The Cathedral and the Bazaar) Eric Raymond offers an off-handed second derivative yet provocative observation: “distributed problems require distributed solutions”.  Drones may be the ultimate distributed military solution for a clearly distributed problem—non-state actors.  But the risks and issues are great.  The recent U.N. report lashes out against “targeted killing” and is not amused by the joy-stick nature of the new War Games. 

When combatants are completely removed from risk of injury something very strange can happen.  Like the sub-prime crisis and related contagion where CDOs and credit default swaps decoupled bankers and mortgage brokers from owning any risk, behavior becomes very distorted.  The sanctity of the borrower-lender relationship breaks down.  Alignment and incentive as the time tested governors of free-markets also breaks down.  Amoral if not immoral behavior of the rating agencies further exacerbates the systemic failure as investors, CEOs and regulators were lulled into a sense of complacency like the French cavalry.  How can something go from AAA to a total loss overnight?  How could Alan Greenspan have been so wrong about free markets and rational behavior by market participants who had every incentive to self-regulate, certainly at the margins of three standard deviations?  But when the Volker Rule confirmed that “too big to fail” was not an option, a terrifying realization became apparent: moral hazard where  “heads I win, tails you lose”  behavior was acknowledged as truly risky business. 

Our Volker Rule 2.0 reveals a paradox: our military might be too big to succeed.  Cheaper, inferior weapons like drones that are good enough to get the job done might be the answer.  But we should proceed with great caution.  The decision to invade Iraq was subject to the Pottery Barn principle of “you break it, you own it”.  When secluded combatants no longer own the risk, like bankers who no longer own the risk, bad behavior is hard to manage. 

As a thought experiment just imagine a drone pilot securely situated in Las Vegas sees Osama Bin Laden in his sights, perhaps somewhere in Iran.  And just imagine the unspoken national interest is best served by the current containment rather than Bin Laden’s capture where we would face a lengthy trial and possible execution.  One click of the joy stick and a Hellfire Martyr-Maker hits its target and earns legendary status for the gamer who took out OBL.  Remember that the chain of command for a drone is not exactly like dropping a nuclear weapon.  Rumor has it Hollywood is feverishly working on War Games III: Attack of the Drones coming to a theater near you.  Rent before you buy. 

Oh, by the way, just wait until our non-state adversaries assemble their own fleet of predator drones operated by a stripped-down free twitter app currently under development.  The good news: the app, with full command and control features, will undoubtedly be priced at $3.99.  Thank you Steve Jobs.

From Black Sholes to Black Holes: Paradigm Shift-Drift-Rift

As every MBA knows or should know, there are perhaps four bedrock analytical tools of modern finance: i) Net Present Value (NPV); ii) Internal Rate of Return (IRR); iii) Black Sholes Option Pricing Model (Black-Sholes); and, iv) the Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM). As global interest rates, risk-free and risk-adjusted, have approached zero globally, the problem of the zero lower bound has created a vexing challenge. As more and more anomalies in the financial markets become evident, the conditions precedent for a classic Kuhnian paradigm shift are upon us. Like the center, the anomalies cannot hold.

As Thomas Kuhn pronounced in his seminal work, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, within a given scientific field or domain, as anomalies, or deviations from the expected, are observed that are not predicted or explained by the existing paradigm a crisis begins to develop. When there is an emergent theory or model that can better explain or mitigate the anomalies this new and improved theory begins to resolve the crisis and there is a paradigm– new descriptive model– replaces the incumbent. However, a paradigm shift can only take place when a better theory is emergent. This begs the question when a plethora of anomalies present themselves but no better or alternate theory is in sight let alone on the distant horizon? We would posit that this paramount conditions precedent fails to present itself one of two descriptors will occur: i) a paradigm drift or ii) a paradigm rift.

America’s “Exorbitant Privilege”

“A professor, a rabbi and an entrepreneur walk into a bar….”  As it turns out, the professor doesn’t drink, and the “bar” is the Harvard Business School Faculty Dining Room. Otherwise, what has been a running joke for years, is a true story. The year was 2007 when we met with Professor Clay Christensen for a remarkable lunch.  The “we” is Irwin Kula (the Rabbi) and Craig Hatkoff (the Entrepreneur.) That lunch with Clay would change our lives.  We had been meeting regularly for years to discuss innovation, technology, and religion. A new player, larger than life, was about to join us in our sacred space. Enter the Professor.

The Entrepreneur and the Professor had established a relationship back in 2000 when Clay invested in Hatkoff’s start-up, Story Orbit, an online children’s publishing venture. Clay had come across the start-up reading the term paper of one of his students, and invited Craig up to Harvard to discuss what he saw as vast disruptive potential and what was one of the better examples of disruptive innovation he had come across. At the time, Craig was unfamiliar with Clay, his emerging theory and the growing influence in corporate boardrooms. Clay had appeared the year before on the cover of Forbes magazine with Intel CEO Andy Grove who is credited with turbo-charging Clay’s reputation and crediting him as the inspiration for the Celeron chip.

But in 2000, and a far cry from the stature of Andy Grove and the Celeron chip, Clay’s intellectual curiosity in this children’s publishing start-up had piqued his interest enough to invite an unknown entrepreneur to meet with him to discuss Story Orbit; it was quintessential Clay. It reflected not only his curiosity but his passion and generosity as well. Clay made a modest investment and offered to serve as senior adviser. Unfortunately, Story Orbit turned out to be too far ahead of its time: it was a broadband application when only 2 million Americans had hi-speed internet.  Though the venture never launched, considerable pre-development funds had been spent. Hatkoff returned Christensen’s investment plus a rate of return based on Christensen’s historical returns—a rather unconventional gesture but one that created an enduring relationship. “It just seemed like the right thing to do,” reflected the Entrepreneur.

Fast forward to June 2007. For some reason, inexplicable to either of them, the Entrepreneur gave the Rabbi a copy of the Professor’s magnum opus, The Innovators Dilemma, with the following inscription: “I am not sure why I am giving you this book… but you might find it interesting.”  The next morning Kula called Hatkoff and said, “OMG!  I was up all night reading the book. I finally know who I am and what I do. I am a disruptive spiritual innovator!” This led to the self-described occasionally devout atheo-agnostic Entrepreneur and the Disruptive Rabbi to develop a social enterprise initiative that applied Clay’s theory to the realm of religion and spirituality. Realizing we were taking some broad liberties with Clay’s “baby” we thought it would be both respectful and wise to at least run the idea by him. We sent the proposal to Clay.  His office confirmed receipt of the email but cautioned it might take several months to get a reply.

Twenty minutes later, Hatkoff got a surprise call from Clay. “Do you think you and your rabbi could come to meet me for lunch? Craig, I don’t know if ever told you this, but I am like an Archbishop of the Mormon Church. You and your Rabbi are onto something I’ve thought about for many years.  I’d like to be involved.”

So, there we were at lunch. It was like being at Hogwarts with Professor Dumbledore.  But Clay, with his gentleness, grace, and warmth quickly put us at ease.  Towards the end of an extraordinary conversation about disruptive innovation and religion, the likes of which had undoubtedly never happened before in the HBS dining room, or perhaps anywhere else on the planet, Irwin nonchalantly said to Clay “I assume Professor, you always viewed Mormonism itself as a disruptive innovation?”  For what seemed like an eternity, Clay was silent.  “By Golly isn’t that interesting! I never thought of it that way!”  Clay then reiterated his desire to be involved with us and help us in any way he could. 

By 2009, the three of us had formed the Disruptor Foundation dedicated to advancing disruptive innovation theory in society-critical domains. We were honored as Clay would casually refer to us as the theory’s “advance research and development arm.” We were his para-theorists exploring and thinking about applications of his theory to new frontiers.

One of Clay’s remarkable qualities was his openness and commitment to learning about any and all anomalies that his theory did not explain. As a profound theorist, he embodied the rare combination of brilliance and humility.  Clay was never defensive! Always smiling, he was intellectually curious, empathic, present, joyful, and engaged.

By 2010, the three of us launched the Tribeca Disruptive Innovation Awards, now known simply as the Disruptor Awards.  The unspoken objective of the awards was to curate and celebrate innovations that fit the theory but also to showcase those anomalies that the theory, in its original form, did not explain.  As a genuine scholar, Clay enjoyed these exceptions as much as those things that confirmed his theory.

Over a ten-year period, we identified and honored over 250 innovators—ranging from the usual suspects, (Twitter, Square, Wikipedia, Snapchat, Uber etc.) to Nobel Prize winners to Ed Snowden, from the Mayors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to a bevy of teen and pre-teen innovators.  Largely because of Clay’s reputation and endorsement we were able to create an ecosystem of some 400 plus fellows all of whom in some way were disrupting the status quo. Every year, the night before the awards would hold our annual Spaghetti and Meet-ball Dinner for all the Honorees and Fellows.

While he rarely knew who we were honoring in advance, one of the hallmarks of the awards was Clay’s closing reflections and commentary on that which he had just witnessed. Always delivered with great joy and gratitude, he would implore all of us to continue to search for innovations that would make him rethink his theory and challenge the community to keep disrupting the status quo for the public good.

By 2013, the fourth year of the Awards, we began to see an unexpected pattern that was a departure from the original theory’s focus on the core utility of technology and business models. It was something that intrigued Clay. As there was no existing platform to encourage such kinds of discussion, we decided to launch our own publishing platform, known as the Off White Papers.  Rather than serving as an academic or scholarly peer-reviewed platform, it was a space to provoke new thinking about Disruptive Innovation Theory liberated from the rigors, and yes, the stress and biases, attendant to more serious academic undertakings.

Our inaugural Off White Paper, which included Clay as an author, introduced the concept of identity-centric innovation where identity–people’s world views, values, and belief systems– i.e. culture writ large was a “formidable variable” in the successful diffusion of innovation. The essence of identity-centric innovation suggests that “…in those domains where stakeholders’ identities are being challenged the identity function can often overwhelm the more straightforward utility of the innovation.”  Clay’s closing quote represented a quiet sea change in his thinking about his theory: “If we are to develop profound theory to solve the intractable problems in our society-critical domains…we must learn to crawl into the life of what makes people tick.”What this meant to Clay is that in society-critical areas such as education, healthcare, government, capitalism, moral and ethical development etc., disruptive innovation would behave quite differently than in domains of pure utility-centric innovation. A bit of a stretch but Clay was comfortable using the playful analogy of Newtonian physics versus quantum mechanics. Indeed, the title of our first article was Disruptive Innovation Theory Revisited: Towards Quantum Innovation.  This notion of identity-centric innovation required refocusing on the role of culture and identity with a deep dive into the cultural ramifications, resistances, obstacles and rethinking the jobs-to-be-done framework altogether.  When there are multiple stakeholders with multiple jobs to get done, innovation behaves quite differently than just assessing whether new consumers would embrace the inferior MP3 file that clearly turned out to be good enough to get the job done.In Clay’s 2013 wrap-up of the Awards, he shocked the audience by stating that in his view three areas critical to our future desperately needed disruption: terrorism, parenting, and religion itself.  His concern was that strong moral underpinnings, largely absent in Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations, were fundamental to the success of capitalism and as institutional religion was eroding in America so was moral accountability.  This led to a more ambitious and provocative second installment of the Off White Paper penned with Clay– Disrupting Hell: Accountability for the Non-believer.

In 2016, at the last Awards he was able to attend, instead of his normal ten-minute wrap-up, a tearful Clay was particularly moved by the slate of honorees threw away his remarks and unexpectedly delivered a very ­­­­­emotional sixty-second reflection that our words can’t capture but anyone who wants to understand the man, needs to watch.

Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints believe that every individual has the opportunity to dwell with God after this life in a state of eternal joy. Clay’s untimely demise leaves us profoundly saddened.  The Entrepreneur and the Disruptive Rabbi are eternally indebted to the Professor who transformed our lives with his extraordinary mind, heart, and spirit.  We have no doubt that Clay Christensen is indeed in a state of eternal joy. Our job-to-be-done is to continue to support his legacy for the public good.

The expression paradigm shift first appeared in 1962 in Thomas Kuhn’s seminal work, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, one of the most important and cited works in all of academia. Kuhn examined the process of how, why and when the scientific establishment embraces new models or paradigms of how the world works. Kuhn claims that in normal science when there is an increasing number of “violations of expectation” i.e. more and more anomalies or aberrations appear that can no longer be explained by the theory, a crisis starts to emerge. When there is another competing model that can better explain these anomalies, then the crisis will turn into a revolution where the establishment will embrace a new theory. It is not a gentle or gradual process according to Kuhn. It has a tectonic effect and creates instability.

Premise: If no emergent theory or model is within grasp to replace the incumbent theory to resolve the crisis then the prevailing theory will either limp along or be destroyed as a bona fide paradigm shift will not be possible. The path of the crisis will progress and tranform into into one of two directions: either

i) a paradigm drift that can be thought of as “death by a thousand paper-cuts” which entails endless modifications of and/or bandaids on the incumbent theory or;

ii) a paradigm rift which in the words of Mark Zuckerberg results from “movng fast and breaking things.” The prevaliing theory will be abandonned with nothing as a replacement wreaking further anxiety and instability.

The timeframe for resolution of a drift will be considerable leaving the mounting anomalies unexplained and further gradual undermining of the prevailing model over time.

A rift on the other hand will tend to be more sudden and violent in the absense absent a any replacement theory or model. An expectation of an ongoing inability to control the crisis will ultimately lead to a completem loss of confidence with unintended consequences that will follow. The financial crisis of 2008 would be a quite realistic example of a paradigm drift.

Since the scientific revolution, scientists have attempted to describe and explain observable phenomena in the physical world works. The process of repeatable experimentation and observation is known as the scientific method. If an “experiment” is repeated, normal science accepted by the establishment should always predict the same result. But, a theory is nothing more than a model, or paradigm, that is the best prevailing explanation or description of how the natural world works.

When an unexpected, new or different result is observed that diverges from the expectation, rather than shouting “Eureka!” scientists might be better served by in words of Isaac Asimov, “gee, isn’t that funny?” When enough of these anomalies are observed, however, it is no longer a laughing matter and a real crisis emerges. If there happens to be is an alternative or competing model or paradigm that had not been accepted to date by the science establishment, but can better explain those annoying anomalies, the crisis blossoms into a full-blown revolution that results in the establishment embracing the new theory. This process of anomaly-crisis-revolution results in what Kuhn calls a paradigm shift.

In its simplest form, a paradigm shift is a wholesale change by the scientific community to a new model or description of reality, a paradigm, that better explains observable phenomena or better predicts behaviors. Initially applied to the hard sciences, over time the theory has been expanded to cover just about everything: sociology, politics, religion, psychology, art etc.

In Gladwellian terms, there will be a tipping point at which the crisis blossoms into a full-blown revolution. If there is an alternate theory that better explains or solves some of the unsolved puzzle-solution sets, the mainstream scientists who had embraced the old theory, the normal science, abandon ship and will begin to embrace or shift to the new theory which becomes the new normal.

What is often overlooked

Embracing Mizan: From the Grand Mosque to the Burke-Paine Great Debates to the Moody Blues and Koyaanisqatsi: balance is always the right problem-solution.

The famous African proverb tells us “if you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” For traditional cultures wrestling with the impact of the break-neck rate of technological change, this piece of ancient wisdom frames the dilemma: how to go far and fast at the same time?

The prevailing western narrative of technology–two guys in a garage– is fast and furious. Don’t ask for permission, ask for forgiveness. “Move fast and break things. Unless you are breaking things you are not moving fast enough,” famously said Mark Zuckerberg. From fake news to cyber terrorism to unsupportable valuations in the field of unicorns, the risks and challenges of unfettered innovation are beginning to feel existential. Life out of balance.

The limiting factors and constraints of both modern and traditional cultures (laws, norms, customs, mores, etc.) broadly-defined are frequently ignored. Build the plane as you fly. The current rate of technological change lies somewhere between geometric to exponential. But the ability of even modern culture to process the change is at best linear with fits and starts and bumps in the road. In the case of traditional cultures which will tend to be more conservative, the ability to absorb these jarring changes is even more problematic. If the technology curve is exponential and the culture curve is linear there will be an ever-widening gap: meet the techno-cultural divide. Bridging this divide will not be easy even under the best of circumstances.

Only recently is serious attention being paid to the role of culture in the successful diffusion of disruptive technologies and related innovation. To focus solely on the technology without a rigorous analysis and understanding of the cultural context can negatively impact outcomes, by missing pain points and resistances that, in hindsight, should have been relatively easy to identify. This paper examines the art of the possible. It seems neither technology that ignores culture nor culture that ignores technology end well. We are currently living in the former scenario while history amply confirms the latter. It all catches up in the end.

By techno-cultural divide, we mean the destabilizing and often messy tension between technology and culture, one might reasonably conclude that focus on one comes at the expense of the other. If technology were the only consideration, one might go fast. On the other hand, if a reactionary culture prevents or impedes technological progress, a tribe or society might be left behind. But with the proper balancing of technology and culture, as we move forward, we just might get farther faster. The proper mix is merely a question of balance. Optimization over maximization. We refer to this balancing act as bridging the techno-cultural divide.

From the outsider’s perspective, the principle of Mizan is perhaps one of the most sublime and beautiful elements of the Islamic religion. Loosely translated as “balance”, this principle offers a fascinating insight inviting us to reimagine the process and role of innovation, not only is Islamic culture but other tradition-rooted cultures as well. An intriguing question arises as to whether Mizan can be employed as a useful tool to better understand and manage the impact of “progress” and the process of change in identity-laden societies.

One might look at Godfrey Reggio’s 1982 experimental film, Kaayanosqatsi punctuated by Philip Glass’ meditative but unnerving score; the dazzling visuals of industrialization layered by Glass’ music overwhelms the viewer’s senses in a disturbingly profound cinematic experience. Inspired by the Native American Hopi tribe’s ancient word, koyaanisqatsi, the movie’s title translates as life out of balance. It begs us to consider the question: yes to progress but at what cost? In a holistic worldview unencumbered by political, social and economic realities of the western narrative of progress where intellectual rigidity and arrogance rule the roost, one must begin to contemplate and understand that progress in one dimension will always come at a cost in another. Optimization over maximization. The proper mix is merely a question of balance.

The trajectory of western civilization has experienced and absorbed epic disruptions from human progress as man learned to control or harness the environment and the material world. Over time, the dominant worldview and belief system of mankind evolved from the ancient God-centric sovereignty to the human-centric sovereignty of the Enlightenment to the modernity-centric materialism at its core. This materialism relegated the traditional anchors of the Divine and spiritual elements to secondary fiddle-dom: still part of the orchestra but not garnering the standing ovations. Materialism also began to overwhelm the critical inter-relationships among the divine, natural and human realms.

Starting with the introduction of the printing press followed by the manifold inventions of the industrial revolution, the misery index of daily life was measurably reduced by civilization’s increasing base of knowledge and man’s creative ingenuity. Inventions such as the cotton gin, the automobile, railways, the radio, television, and most recently the internet have had undeniable effects generally perceived in the western world as improving the quality of life with quantifiable benefits to humanity. The western narrative of progress, however often makes short shrift or ignores altogether the set of thorny issues and challenges arising from the unintended consequences of these disruptions, not the least of which is painful dislocations and destabilizing effects in society at all levels. This poses challenges as to whether and how technology and culture can best be balanced to minimize the attendant loss of tradition, virtues, and values. Technology moves at an ever-increasing rate of change– perhaps somewhere between a geometric and exponential rate. Culture increases in fits and starts at somewhere between a linear yet less-than-geometric rate. The gap between the rate of technological change and cultural change (adoption/absorption) is ever-widening under the current narrative of progress. Things seem to have run amok and life is out of balance. Without a fundamental change in this model, the gap will continue to expand until the two become completely disconnected. The necessary mediation is what we refer to as bridging the techno-cultural divide… before it is too late.

Bridging the techno-cultural divide.

Let us momentarily make a somewhat arbitrary but important distinction between invention and innovation for reasons that will become apparent. Mankind has become increasingly adept at developing life-altering inventions but it remains an often tedious, labor-intensive and lengthy process perhaps best characterized by the maxim: “invention is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.” Even inventions or discoveries made by accident (silly putty or stickies are classic examples) ofter were part of an alternate laborious pursuit. While the word invention is frequently used interchangeably with the word innovation, for our purposes, a helpful way to think of the dichotomy is that invention, broadly defined, is a new technology altogether; innovation, on the other hand, entails rearranging existing inventions or components thereof (i.e products, services, ideas) in novel or unusual ways. While there is a fuzzy invention-innovation continuum, for purposes of clarity this wave-particle-like duality is being held constant.

New inventions often can and do unleash a torrent of innovation on an exponential scale. It is precisely our concern regarding the rate of unfettered innovation and the ever-diminishing timeframes for culture, particularly traditional cultures, to process these innovations in a balanced and thoughtful manner. Customs, laws, norms, traditions, regulations, etc. evolve over longer timeframes while the technology-innovation regime is fast and furious that increasingly precludes sufficient time for the affected society to adjust responsibly taking into consideration the inability to understand the unknowable unintended consequences and impacts on all the constituents and stakeholders. The western narrative of “ask for forgiveness not for permission” or Mark Zuckerberg’s “move fast and break things” works until one day it doesn’t. A reactionary resistance to change has equally perilous consequences as change is will be the only constant; being left behind can also pose existential risks and predicaments. Does the concept of Mizan offer an acceptable, if not happy medium to navigate the choppy waters ahead?

In the life sciences, theoretical concepts such as stasis, entropy, equilibrium, disequilibrium, etc. are models or mental constructs of scientists’ best efforts to describe and predict the immanent laws of nature. History has repeatedly shown that from time to time these models become unreliable, outmoded or untenable as anomalies or aberrations appear in the observable phenomena that the prevailing theory cannot explain. At some boiling point this mounting “violation of expectations” leads to a crisis with a field of scientific endeavor. This crisis that leads to a painful and destabilizing shift uprooting the established wisdom. This crisis is what leads to the first phase of a paradigm shift. The violation of expectations is typically revolutionary and jarring, not the more gentle Burkian reformation of the existing order. Thus true scientific progress is radical in nature.

The concept of a paradigm shift was first identified by Thomas Kuhn in his 1962 monumental opus, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, one of the most influential and cited academic books in history. Classic examples of bona fide paradigm shifts include Heliocentrism, Newton’s Laws of Attraction, Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, Quantum Mechanics. Kuhn’s work has also been applied to many domains outside of the hard sciences: sociology, psychology, art, and religion to name a few such as Freud’s psychoanalysis, Picasso’s cubism Movement and Martin Luther’s Reformation.

The classic pattern of a paradigm shift takes place when aberrations or anomalies disturb the social, political and economic order of things, as they are known, cause us to search for a better model or description rather than to assume the underlying laws of nature have changed. In The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Thomas Kuhn introduced a ground-breaking concept of a paradigm shift that occurs when there is a “violation of expectations”; a crisis erupts within a field or domain (usually scientific) and when, and only when, an emergent theory mitigates or resolves the anomalies, then, and only then, will the stakeholders abandon the old crisis-riddled theory and embrace the new model. This is the essence of a legitimate paradigm shift.

The path to successful innovation in traditional cultures might lie in the application of four lenses or “tools of the trade” for innovation: (1) a simple-to-apply version of the Hegelian Dialectical method (thesis-antithesis-synthesis); (2) Mark Granovetter’s “Strength of Weak Ties (1973);” and (3) Thomas Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions and 4) the virtuous sensibilities of Mizan or balance.

While western sensibilities encourage and thrive on competitive instincts and zero sum outcomes, embedded in Mizan’s balancing principle are the virtues of civility and humility. This approach might enable us to mediate between two contradictory ideas, extract the non-conflicting elements and integrate the best of both positions: the synthesis. This process creates the conditions for establishing dynamic equilibrium, avoiding the contentious pitfalls of warring ideas.

History is replete with many well-known debates but to illustrate our case we have selected the “Great Debates” of Thomas Paine and Edmund Burke at the core of the liberal and conservative political philosophies. These two men engaged in a battle of ideas through an ongoing series of articles, essays, pamphlets over the last quarter of the eighteen century. The topic was: what was the best form of governmental structure to accommodate the inevitable progress unleashed by the industrial revolution.

In the left corner Paine, father of the liberal tradition favored radical change or outright revolution. In the right corner, Burke, father of the conservative movement, argued for much more measured reforms. In a nutshell: when it came to government Paine, the eternal optimist who supported and encouraged the American and French Revolutions, wanted to throw the baby out with the bathwater: to start anew. On the other hand, the more cautious Burke, a Monarchist argued strenuously to embrace the core principles and foundations of history, tradition, and precedent: keep the best and throw out the rest.

Contrary to the popular view that Burke was a reactionary he, in fact, embraced progress but believed in building upon the time tested institutional foundations and traditions. How to reconcile the optimism of Paine with the perceived skepticism of Burke is the true challenge at hand. Burkian ideas are unpalatable at the visceral level to the left but perhaps a little repackaging can go a long way to bridging the divide.

While not directly acknowledging Burke, in the market place of ideas, Frederick Hayek’s famous quote is instructive, “the curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.” This is Burke’s point precisely. Since the complexity of the modern world leads to a vast trove of unintended consequences, even the most competent policymakers need to recognize their own limitations on the resulting political rigidity under conditions of extreme uncertainty. The ideal model for the more flexible free-market approach of experiment-evaluate-evolve to solve problems has great merit but is encumbered by grand-scale political processes. It all comes down to centralization versus decentralization of information and decision making.

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“Thanks to our sullen resistance to innovation, thanks to the cold sluggishness of our national character, we still bear the stamp of our forefathers.” –Edmund Burke

As subsequent books by Christensen et. al. were published regarding the healthcare industry (Innovator’s Prescription 2009) and education (Disrupting Class 2008) the empirical results suggested that, in these domains, significant anomalies could be observed that were inconsistent with theory’s predictions and/or post-facto analytics. As more anomalies continue to emerge the serious question arises: what was it about these particular domains that would yield results unexplained by the core theory?

Our curiosity and subsequent anthropological investigations have led us to suggest a conjecture about something we refer to as the utility-identity function: that in domains where people’s world views, values, and belief systems- i.e. culture writ large- come into play, one should expect that the success and diffusion of innovations that impact people’s identity (identity-centric) will behave quite differently than innovations that perform more straightforward functions and tasks (utility-centric.)

It was reasonably clear that a 100% purity test would be oversimplistic and that all innovations contain both elements of identity and utility. An inexpensive Hyundai that will get from point A to point B largely exhibits utility characteristics, an electric Prius might make an environmental statement about the owner while a Ferrari suggests a different statement about economic status or stylishness. All three examples get you from A to B but exhibiting significantly different degrees of both utility and identity. A Hyundai might exhibit 90% utility, 10% identity but a Ferrari 10% utility, 90% identity.

While much work needs to be done, we have concluded that the utility-identity function could serve as a helpful lens in analyzing and predicting the likely success of innovations, particularly in identity-laden domains (such as health care, education, politics, ethics, religion, spirituality, music, fashion, etc.)

“The circumstances of the world are continually changing, and the opinions of men change also; and as government is for the living, and not for the dead, it is the living only that has any right in it. That which may be thought right and found convenient in one age may be thought wrong and found inconvenient in another. ” -Thomas Paine