More on my first question on Drucker’s creationist view of marketing

Today finally marked the end of Vermont Yankee’s 30^th refueling outage.  Although we were back on the grid on Friday, the Outage Control Center was operating until 3PM today and I was able to leave work at 10AM, since there were no more electrical issues to deal with.  I have a one hour commute each way from my home in Holyoke to work at Vermont Yankee.  Recently, I’ve been filling that time listening to audio books rather than switching between WEEI and Lazer 99.3.  The book I’m listening to now is “Decisive: How to Make Better Choices in Life and at Work” by Chip and Dan Heath.  On my way home from work this morning, they quoted Drucker about the need to prepare for unexpected success.  Specifically, Drucker warned that managers should be prepared for their innovations to be used for purposes other than what the “creators” had intended and to capitalize on that success.  Otherwise, you are just creating opportunities for your competitors to succeed using your innovation.  We talked a little about that with Apple.  From what I remember of the book “Imagine: How Creativity Works” by Jonah Lehrer, which I read last summer, most or a lot of successful products are not created by the original innovators, but by others who had a clearer vision of what the innovation could do and was worth.  So it seems Drucker was warning innovators to not have such a narrow view of their creations.  I highly recommend both books.  In fact, I think some of the tools in “Decisive” helped me with a few issues during our refueling outage, which, for engineering, finally ended today, even though the plant has been on line since Friday.  One, in particular, is what they call the WRAP process (Widen Your Opinions/Options, Reality-Test Your Assumptions, Attain Distance before Deciding, and Prepare to Be Wrong).

One of my favorite Drucker quotes is, "Your job as a business leader is not to provide the right answers. It is to provide the right questions."