Innovation Blog

Well-Planned Life?  Or Summoned Life? Innovator — Pick the Latter!

By Shlomo Maital

New York Times op-ed columnist David Brooks habitually tracks interesting academic articles and writes about them in his column.  In a recent column *  he discusses an article in Harvard Business Review by Prof. Clayton Christensen (author of The Innovator’s Dilemma). Harvard Business Review is not, frankly, a enormous fountain of deep fascinating thinking.  But Christensen’s article is an exception.

Christensen’s article is based on a commencement talk he gave recently.  As a Rhodes scholar, he describes devoting an hour every night, “reading, thinking and praying abouat why God put me on this earth”.

Brooks writes:   “Once you have come up with an overall purpose, [Christensen continues], you have to make decisions about allocating your time, energy and talent….   Christensen notes that people with a high need for achievement commonly misallocate their resources.”   A spare half-hour is usually devoted to things that yield tangible benefits.  But in contrast, investing time and energy in your relationship with your spouse and children doesn’t offer that same immediate sense of achievement.   Writes Christensen: “It’s not until 20 years down the road that you can say, ‘I raised a good son or good daughter’.  As a result, the things that are most important often get short shrift.”

We teach our kids to live the Well Planned Life.  Life is a project, conceived carefully, reviewed, adjusted and brought toward fruition.  What about, though, teaching them that life is not a project to be completed, but, in this uncertain world, an unknowable landscape to be explored.   Perhaps life is about commitment — which defies conventional cost-benefit calculations economists  love so much.

The Well Planned Life asks “what shall I do?”   The Summoned Life asks, “what are these circumstances I face now summoning me to do?  What is needed?  What is the most useful social role before me?”   The Well Planned Life asks, “how can I best leverage my skills and knowledge for personal gain?”  The Summoned Life asks, “what new skills do I need to learn, in order to fulfill my destiny to change the world?”

In lecturing at business schools all over the world, I frequently encounter young MBA students who are locked into The Well Planned Life — and sense there is something wrong, something missing, but do not know what, because they have never considered an alternative.  As a subversive, I pitch strongly for The Summoned Life.

For a handful, it works.

I believe those who seek to innovate, in order to change the world, need to pursue The Summoned Life.   “Create something new, so we can increase our margins” is what companies tell innovators.  What results are well-planned R&D projects.

“Create something new, so we can change the world” is what drives innovators to do extraordinary things against huge odds, in chaotic zig-zag poorly-planned adventures.

Choose the latter.

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* “The Summoned Self, Global New York Times, Wed. August 7, p. 7.  Based on Clayton Christensen, “How will you measure your life?”, Harvard Business Review, July-Aug. 2010.