Raider or Creator? - May 10, 2008
Have you been to Chiptole recently? It started as a place that gave free drinks to students, really cheap prices and had a distinctly different attitude. Today, they're revoking the drink idea, scaling back how much food you get and trying to upsell you wherever they can. I think it's pretty obvious who is calling the shots now. The first approach created value, the second mines it. One is sustainable, the other is not.
One of the people I work for put it nicely - "we do innovation, not exploitation." The theory is that most of the big Boomer companies haven't done anything innovative in half a century. And their conservative, publicly traded leadership is incentivized to milk what they already have rather than create something new. But his logic, although it seems counterintuitive, is that it's actually a lot cheaper to be innovative than it is to pour over spreadsheets for extra pennies.
If you do your research, the 80's wasn't the bull market people think it was - mergers and buyouts were just burning off value for temporary stock jumps. Nobody way doing finance, they were just shuffling cards. The only growth came from massive fees which were debited from the accounts of - you guessed it - the innovators of the last generation.
I guess there are some economic explanations for why this is short-sighted and ultimately suicidal. Umair does an amazing job of it. But to me, the debate is deeper than that. Which person would you rather be? The raider or creator? Is that why you get up every morning, to pick up a few extra scraps from an inefficient entrepreneur? You studied six years in college to do someone else's paperwork?
The people who are writing their memoirs or teaching your college classes have a lot to gloss over. Mainly the fact that their entire way of thinking creating a smoke and mirrors bureaucracy that hasn't done much besides institutionalize mediocrity. That system is broken. I think you (I) know which person you want to be. It's also fairly obviously what slots the system wants you to fill. So, do you want to be the host or the parasite? Do you want to innovate or exploit?
Posted by ryanholiday at 12:55 PM
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Just finished "A Whole New Mind" by Daniel Pink, which this post reminded me of to some extent.
With outsourcing and technology erasing the demand for knowledge workers (left brain) here in the US, and with information becoming available to anyone...people are going to need to develop and use innovation and imagination (right brain) to get ahead. The innovators and creators will benefit big time in the future.
Posted by: Ronnie Nurss at May 10, 2008 11:18 AM
The Greatest Generation was mostly dirt poor as kids, so naturally they taught their Baby Booming kids the value of money. They took it to the extreme because they never had any obstacles to face outside of the suburbs.
This generation is hopefully learning to value other things. Social and environmental awareness, giving and collaborating and communicating--these are the things this generation is capable of. Providing value through relationships rather than money.
As for Chipotle...you have amazing tolerance for the shittiest foods.
Posted by: Avinash at May 11, 2008 01:58 AM
