Barkers Joel The New Business of
Paradigms: 21st Century Edition
Introduction
When you think about it, the last two
decades of the 20th century were amazing.
A series of revolutionary changes occurred
that have affected almost everyone on
planet Earth:
T he Space Shuttle making regular flights to
the International Space Station.
T he wide spread application of Total Quality
and Six Sigma Management.
T he birth of the Internet, the World Wide
Web and e-commerce.
T he dissolution of the second mightiest
nation on earth, the Soviet Union, without
having a war.
T he global commercialization of cellular
phones and pagers giving people around the
world access to communications that had
once only been a dream.
T he adoption of the Euro-dollar, by countries
who used to fight over the sanctity of their
own national money.
Even this building, The Weisman Museum at
the University of Minnesota, is a revolution in
design. Everywhere, across the world, there
have been revolutions in the way we do
things.
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Paradigm Shifts
My name is Joel Barker and I'm a futurist.
F or more than 25 years, Ive been helping
corporations and institutions prepare for
revolutionary change.
T hose changes I just listed have been called
10X change, radical innovation, disruptive
technology and sometimes out of the box
thinking.
But, all of those are just variations on a
much more powerful theme. All of those
changes were paradigm shifts.
T hat term was introduced to popular culture
in the 1980s. Yet, even now, in the 21st
century, many people do not understand
what a paradigm is or why paradigm
shifts are so important.
F rom my years of research, I can tell you
that if you want to enhance your ability to
innovate, be a better leader, run a more
competitive organizationif you want to
discover the future, you need to understand
the business of paradigms.
Paradigm Definitions
I first ran into the word PARADIGM in Thomas
Kuhns book, T he Structure of Scientific
Revolutions.
When you look up paradigm in the
dictionary, you find it means pattern or
model.
Let me offer you a more extended definition:
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A paradigm is a system of rules and
regulations that does two things:
F irst, some of the rules set limits or establish
boundariesjust like a pattern sets the edges.
T hen, the rest of the rules offer you guidance
on how to be successful by solving problems
that exist inside those boundariesin a
sense, they offer you a model for problem
solving.
So a paradigm is a problem-solving system.
And a paradigm shift is when you change from
one set of rules to another.
In his book, Thomas Kuhn explored how
paradigms affected scientists.
He discovered that scientific paradigms act
like filters that screen data coming into the
scientists minds. Data that agreed with the
scientists paradigms passed through those
filters easily. In fact, scientists saw
agreeable data amazingly well. That's
positive and valuable.
But Kuhn also discovered a startling negative
effect. Some kinds of data were very difficult
for the scientists to perceive.
What kind? Data that didnt match the
scientists expectations. In fact, the more
exceptional the data was, the more trouble
scientists had dealing with it.
It was as if their paradigms interfered with
their ability to clearly see the data.
Kuhn discovered, in some cases, that
scientists were literally physiologically
incapable of perceiving the exceptional data.
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F or all intents and purposes, that data was
invisible.
Now, let me put Kuhns findings in more
general terms: all human beings, not just
scientists, have paradigms that influence the
way we see the world. We all constantly select
that data that best fits our rules and try to
ignore the rest.
As a result, what may be perfectly obvious to
a person with one paradigm may be totally
imperceptible to someone with a different
paradigm. Because each paradigm filters the
world in a different way.
I call this filtering phenomenon the Paradigm
Effect.
And it is the Paradigm Effect that makes
dealing with change and anticipating the
future so difficult.
T he Paradigm Effect can prevent any one of
us, no matter how smart we are, no matter
what line of work we are in, from finding
breakthrough solutions to the problems in
our lives. No one is immune.
Now up to this point, weve only been talking
in abstractions. So lets take a look at some
concrete examples that demonstrate just
how powerfully our paradigms influence the
way we see and understand the world.
The Adding Problem
Ive set up a simple experiment to test your
adding paradigm. Im going to show you a
series of numbers, one at a time. And yes,
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they are in the base 10. I want you to add
them silently in your head.
Ready? Lets go:
1000
40
1000
30
1000
20
1000
10
Total
Please call out your total!
For those of you who got 5000, would you
please raise your hand?
Thats the answer most people get.
Unfortunately, it is not the right answer.
Lets look again.
1000, 2000, 3000, 4000. Right.
40 + 30 is 70 +20 is 90+10 is 100. Right?
4000 + 100 is 4100.
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Would those of you who got 5000 please
raise your hands again?
Dont feel bad. I once showed this problem
to 280 Certified Public Accountants. Almost
every one of them got it wrong. And these
are the guys who do our taxes!
But seriously, why did we mess up? Instead
of helping us, our adding paradigm actually
got in the way and kept us from seeing what
was really happening. We had to carry this
one somewhere, and it was obvious that
we should carry it to the four. Our adding
paradigm made us feel sure that what we
were doing was right and blinded us to the
correct answer. Thats the Paradigm Effect
in action.
Now, this may seem like a trivial example
and not connected to real life. So lets look at
some real life examples.
The MP3 Story
In the late 1970s, Sony created a new
paradigm in personal music access. They
called it the Walkman. It had a new set of
rules: portable, playback only, headphones,
cassette tapes with linear access to the
music. It was an immense success.
Ten years later, the Walkman was
challenged by another paradigm shift: the
portable CD player. A disk instead of tape.
Laser readout. The music put on that disk
only by the recording companies and access
to the music is nonlinearyou can start and
stop wherever you want.
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In 1998, it happened again. The CD
paradigm was challenged by the MP3
player. This time, no tape, no disks, no
moving parts at all. Instead memory chips
store the music that you transcribe from your
personal music inventory via computer or
download from the Internet. You erase and
replace to change your music.
Based on this pattern, I suppose we can
expect another paradigm shift in portable
music soon. But thats the way it works.
Notice, what was impossible to do in one
paradigm, was easy to do in the next. Thats
why paradigm shifts are so powerful.
The Frog Story
T his story illustrates how serendipity and
curiosity play an important part in discovering
new paradigms.
In connection with his research, Dr. Michael
Zasloff was performing surgery on frogs in his
laboratory.
Instead of killing them after the surgery-standard operating procedure--he sutured
them up and returned them to the aquarium.
Now get this: eight years into his research, it
dawned on him that not only were the frogs
surviving, but their incisions were healing
without infection or inflammation. Despite all
those nasty bacteria in the water!
Everything he knew about infection told him
that was not possible.
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So, he stopped doing his official research and
tried to find out why.
Dr. Zasloff found a new category of
biochemicals--antimicrobial peptides--that the
frog secrets to protect itself from pathogens.
These potent chemicals represent new
antiseptic a paradigm that could alter forever
the way we deal with infection.
By the way, Michael Zasloff wasnt planning to
discover these peptides. His specialty had
nothing to do with antibiotics.
But he was willing to get "out of his box" in
order to try to understand what was going on.
The Michael Dell Story
Personal computers. All sizes. All shapes.
Multiple colors. Portable. Rows of them in
retail stores.
What is conspicuously absent from all these
models is a computer from Dell, one of the
great computer makers in the world.
T o understand why, we need to go back to
1983. Imagine this: you are in your early
20s. You want to get into a new industry that
is dominated by one of the largest
companies in the world. You have almost no
money. So you decide you are going to get
your customers to give you their money
before you even begin to build the product
youre going to sell to them.
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Crazy, right? Thats exactly what everyone
told Michael Dell when he started his
company. Impossible! Ridiculous!
But he didnt stop there. He decided he
would sell his computers only over the
telephone. Then he and his team created a
manufacturing process so efficient that
ultimately, it required only five days of
inventory and could assemble the
customers computer in just 20 minutes.
T hese advantages were impossible for Dells
competitors to match.
What Michael Dell created was not just a
computer company, but a new paradigm of
how to do business and he and his company
have reaped the benefits for more than 15
years. All because he was unafraid to break
the rules.
Going Back to Zero Rule
T here is a crucial and profound truth hiding
behind the paradigm examples I've shown
you.
No matter how tall your skyscrapers, or how
big your market share, or how global your
organization
When a paradigm shifts, everyone goes back
to zero.
Your past success guarantees nothing in your
future.
T oyota put General Motors back to zero.
Dell did it to IBM.
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Wal*Mart did it to Sears.
Nokia did it to Motorola.
The Cell Phone Story
Motorola dominated the world of analog
cellular phones from the mid 1980s to 1994.
T hey were so good, they were able to gain
substantial market share in Japan, almost
unheard of in electronics.
In 1994, the cell phone paradigm
shiftedfrom analog to digital. In spite of
their leadership positionmaybe because of
itMotorola didnt seem to recognize what
was happening.
So dominant were they in the analog
paradigm that they decided not to enter the
digital market until they had a product that
sounded at least as good as their analog
phones.
But there was only one problem with that
strategy. Key customers wanted to enter the
digital arena as quickly as possibleAT&T
being one of them. When AT&T came to visit
Motorola, they discovered, much to their
dismay, that Motorola wasnt ready.
Meanwhile, 500 miles south of the Arctic
Circle, where long nights are common, a
F innish company named Nokia was lighting
up the landscape.
T hey had planned and designed for the
digital revolution. So when AT&T declared
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their need for a digital cell phone, Nokia was
ready with the 2110.
While the 2110 was not perfect in a Six
Sigma kind of way, it was perfectly
acceptable to AT&T and their customers.
Within a matter of months, Nokia became
AT&Ts lead digital phone provider.
In one bad decision, Motorola missed the
opening bell for the digital revolution.
F rom their position of world dominance in
1994, their market share fell steadily to less
than 13% by the year 2001.
And at exactly that same time, Nokia went
from a small, unknown Finnish company to
Global leadership with almost 40% of world
market share.
Please keep in mind that this is a story not
just about the Motorola and Nokia. It's about
you. Its about me. Its about any
organization, any culture, any nation that
assumes what has been successful in the
past must continue to be successful in the
future.
Let me remind you once again. When a
paradigm shifts, everyone, even the most
successful, goes back to zero.
Key Paradigm Observations
What I want you to remember here is that
paradigms dramatically affect our judgments
and our decision making by influencing our
perceptions.
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We must never forget: we see best what we're
supposed to see. And poorly, or not at all, that
data that doesn't fit our paradigm.
So if we want to make good judgments about
change, if we want to lead successfully to the
future, we must become aware of our present
paradigms, and then be unafraid to replace
them.
Now, let me share with you some key
observations about paradigms.
Observation Number 1. Paradigms are
common. We have many paradigms in almost
all aspects of our lives, whether it's personal
or professional, spiritual or social.
Observation Number 2. Paradigms are useful.
T hey help us identify what's important and
what's not. They focus our attention. They
give us invaluable guidance for solving
problems. That's good.
But, and this is Number 3, and it's a warning.
Sometimes your paradigm can become the
paradigm the only way to do something. And
when you're confronted with an alternative
idea, you reject it. This can lead to a nasty
disorder I call "Paradigm Paralysis."
Paradigm paralysis is a terminal disease of
certainty. It's easy to get and more than a few
institutions have been destroyed by it.
T his reminds me of a maxim: "Those who say
it cannot be done should get out of the way of
those who are doing it."
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Observation Number 4. The people who
discover new paradigms are usually outsiders,
like Michael Zasloff. They are not part of the
established paradigm community. Therefore,
they have nothing to lose by creating the new
one.
So, if you want to find the new paradigms
developing in your field, you must look beyond
the center, way out to the fringes.
Because almost always, the new rules are
written at the edge.
T hat's where Apple started. Thats where
micro-loans were invented. Thats where the
Green party began. That's where the
Women's Movement was born. All of them at
the edge.
Number 5. Those practitioners of the old
paradigm, who choose to change to the new
paradigm early in its development, have to be
very courageous.
Let me quote from Thomas Kuhn:
"The person who embraces a new paradigm
at an early stage must often do so in defiance
of the evidence provided by the problem
solving. A decision of that kind can only be
made on faith."
T he mark of these paradigm pioneers is great
courage and trust in their intuitive judgment.
Now, for the last point, and the most
important. You can choose to change your
paradigm. Perhaps the greatest strength
human beings have is that we are not
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genetically encoded for seeing the world only
one way. You can choose to shrug off your old
paradigm and adopt a new paradigm.
T hat's why I'm such an optimist about the
future.
Conclusion
Let me leave you with a couple of thoughts.
Even though that building represents a
recent paradigm shift, sooner or later, it will
become history and another paradigm of
design will replace it.
T hat kind of turnover scares some people.
T hey want the world to stop changing. But it
wont. It wont because the world is designed
to grow and change.
And if you think about it for a minute, that is
a wondrous thing. Its a kind of promise of
continuous opportunities for those of us
willing to seek them out.
T he great French novelist, Marcel Proust
said it this way: The real voyage of
discovery consists, not in seeking new lands,
but in seeing with new eyes.
T he new worlds are waiting. And so are the
new paradigms.
T he key to their discovery is your willingness
to open your eyes to the possibilities ahead.
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