Missing Out

Large institutions often fail to make good decisions about disruptive innovation

The next "big thing" is most likely already out there in the church (you can pick your own "big thing" - revival, church forms, better discipleship, etc.).  It is most likely embryonic and we are not aware of it. It also could be that, like Luther, the protagonist has no intention of starting something new. Disruptive innovation is like that.

What if this breakthrough is germinating inside the bowels of your current ministry? Could that be happening? Yes, it is quite possible. Breakthroughs like this often go unheeded inside human institutions because most institutions are averse to them.

Everybody knows that Kodak once dominated the camera industry. Did you know that they also invented the digital camera? In 1975, Kodak engineer Steve Sasson created a camera you could hold in your hand and take digital pictures. Kodak, the institution, was not built to create and sell digital cameras. They were, in fact, a film company. They were fearful that a leap into digital photography would harm their film business. What did they do? They patented the new device and hid it from the industry so that nobody else would be able to create a digital camera.

This analysis is a bit simplistic. To be fair, it was 1975. Nobody had a personal computer or other digital tools that would display such photos. They would have to create a market for not only cameras, but the display system. It was an overwhelming concept that would have required incredible change. The executives at Kodak knew that this invention was a decade or more from commercial viability. Yet, they slow-walked it.  Kodak finally released a digital camera in 1991. The digital camera revolution had arrived. Unfortunately for Kodak, they were soon overtaken by Japanese adversaries despite their massive lead in technology at the beginning of the race. History may have been different had they understood what they had on their hands.

Another example of this sort of disruptive innovation getting submarined happened with the invention of the lithium battery. A researcher at Exxon (yes, the gas and oil company) created the prototypes for the first lithium-ion batteries (not exactly the batteries we have today, but it sent us in the right direction). When news of this got back to the executives, they wanted to know more. They decided, unlike Kodak, to invest in this idea and it grew into something viable. They put the battery into the first solar watch that went on sale in the 1970s. They patented the technology.

However, things changed at Exxon. With the oil crisis over in the latter half of the 1970s, they turned back to drilling. They sold off the rights to the lithium-ion battery. They just decided to stop working on rechargeable batteries. Why compete with yourself?

Today, lithium-ion technology is considered the future of electric cars. It is a huge, multibillion-dollar industry. Had Exxon kept at it, they would be fueling cars not only with oil, but also with electricity. Strange as it might seem, the future of rechargeable energy was invented, and then discarded, by one of the world's largest non-renewable energy companies.

Luther had no intention of kicking off the Reformation. He was an insider (a priest!) inside a much larger institution that worked against his disruptive message. Unlike the digital camera, the timing for Luther was ripe. The printing press was primed and ready to disseminate his message (by the way, I wonder if Gutenberg had any idea what his invention was going to lead to?).

This is a lesson for us who lead ministries. The inability to see and act upon innovative opportunities is an unfortunate attribute of our institutions. It is one reason why the big tech companies we see as innovative purchase their innovation. They buy smaller, more innovative companies.

Whenever I write something like this, somebody more spiritual than me writes something like, “We aren’t into chasing the next big thing.” I agree, chasing the next big thing is useless. What I am talking about here is creating a ministry culture in which we generously encourage innovation, experimentation, and research and development. We need to keep our institutional boundaries in check to facilitate this.

[image created by midjourney AI using the prompt “show a digital camera locked up in a prison”]