Saul Kaplan: Innovators Leverage the Deadwood

It’s time for me to come clean.  In today’s social media crazed world it will come out sooner or later anyway.  I have one high school varsity letter and it’s for bowling.  Yes, you heard right, bowling.  And it wasn’t ten-pin, but candlepin bowling.  Anyone who grew up in New England, with parents like mine who looked for ways to get the kids out of their hair on rainy Saturdays, knows exactly what I’m talking about.  Candlepin bowling rocks.

For those of you who aren’t from New England, candlepin bowling is a unique version of the sport invented in 1880 in Worcester, Massachusetts by a local bowling alley owner, Justin White.  Candlepin bowling is clearly evidence of New England as a regional innovation hot-spot. For the most part candlepin never caught on outside of New England and the Canadian Maritime provinces.  In the region candlepin bowling enjoyed a cult following including its own local television shows.  I remember Candlepins for Cash, which was a Saturday morning staple and may well have been the first reality television show.

The first noticeable difference from the more popular ten-pin variety of bowling is the small size of the balls.  Don’t look for holes for your fingers because there aren’t any.  The ball is 4 ½ ” in diameter weighing only 1.13 kg.  It fits in the palm of your hand and can literally be thrown rather than rolled down the alley at the pins.  I have seen many errant candlepin balls launched across lanes. Personal injury insurance is a must.  Back in the day I owned a set of balls (spare me the cajones jokes) and yes of course the required bowling ball bag.  The balls were a pearly white with wonderful lime green marble swirls throughout. Come to think of it I wonder where they went.  Most likely my wife sold them at a garage sale when I wasn’t paying attention.

Another difference in candlepin bowling is the size of the skinny pins (15 ¾ ” by 3″) which are harder to knock down so you get three tries in every frame versus the two attempts you get in ten-pin.  My favorite difference in candlepin bowling is that the deadwood between shots isn’t cleared.  In other words pins that are knocked down are left as they lie to either impede or aid the subsequent shot in each frame. You haven’t lived until clearing a 7-10 split which would be all but impossible without the help of well-placed deadwood.  I love this aspect of the sport and in this way candlepin bowling is like the innovation process and life.  There is always deadwood to deal with.  It is how you deal with and leverage the deadwood in your life that defines you.

Innovation is a better way to deliver value.  It isn’t an innovation until value is delivered to an end-user in the real world.  Innovators must figure out how to deal with deadwood.  This ability often marks the difference between an innovator and a non-innovator.  It isn’t the lack of ideas or technology that gets in the way it is stubborn humans and institutions that slow down or block experimenting with and scaling a better way.  Most give up when deadwood is either blocking the way forward or it seems insurmountable and not worth the personal effort or risk.  Innovators don’t give up and are never deterred.  They incessantly find ways to go around or through deadwood.  The most creative innovators find ways to leverage deadwood. They actually put it to use in exploring new and better ways to deliver value and solve problems. Innovators co-opt or repurpose people and capabilities to enable the innovation process.  What looks like deadwood to most is just part of the solution for an innovator.

This is the secret of how innovators confidently attempt 7-10 splits when no one believes a proposed innovation is even possible.  Innovators see ways to recombine capabilities in order to tackle the seemingly impossible.  They are relentless in trying new permutations until some new combination works.  Innovators have learned to leverage deadwood to find new ways to create, deliver, and capture value.  This innovation junkie is proud of his bowling varsity letter.  Bring on the deadwood.