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WELL, even that's a good average, you'd agree. But why is it that it takes ages to finish the MBA project, eons to finish CA, years to get a product into market, decades to have a stable government, and many centuries to get an Oscar for our movie? "The journey from invention in the lab to impact in the living room can be maddeningly slow one, even for the most path-breaking of ideas," writes Bhaskar Chakravorti in The Slow Pace of Fast Change, published by Harvard Business School Press (www.HBSPress.org). But some innovations disappear without a trace. "They can reappear at a different time — sometimes a century or more later," so don't write them off. Such slowness of innovation's progress is because of "intense connectedness", and the links are not just `physical'. For the author, `players on an innovation's critical path' include "firms, consumers, and other parties involved in the decisions that precede an innovation's adoption and productive use."

An innovator has to "break out of the status quo's gravitational orbit", because there is a "mutually reinforcing equilibrium that binds" the current status. You need to "orchestrate a coordinated attack" on that! Why? Because "this is the ballast necessary to get the innovation to the point of a critical mass of adoption."

Don't forget: "Everybody loves the idea behind a good innovation, but embraces it only when others embrace it as well." So, apart from thinking innovation, you need to "think equilibrium".

Do you know that the healthcare system, which is "a highly information-intensive business", has been one of the slowest to adopt even the rudimentary forms of IT? "The effective cost of the inefficiencies of this information gap is an estimated $250 billion a year," says the book. This, in spite of "the tight relationship between healthcare and the scientific community and the high educational levels of practitioners."

In his company site, www.monitor.com, the author writes: "Gordon Moore's Law predicts that the processing power of microchips will double every 18 months." It is about technological progress ("made in the labs and the fabs, that is, wafer fabrication plants"), not market adoption, says Chakravorti. "Although the improved processing power of computers may be resetting expectations about what new technologies can do for us, it is the processing power of the market that determines how fast those expectations ultimately get realised." Therefore, here comes his `alternative mantra': "Technology's impact in the market will most likely proceed at only half the speed predicted by Moore." That's `demi-Moore's Law', for you!

Why does it take time for markets to wake up? Because of their two key features: One, decision-making is `fragmented', and two, initiative is personal "rather than some consideration of the collective good". Narrow interests can make shared resources inefficient. For example, when a company's employees hoard large volumes of data on the corporate server, the network becomes a laggard. An innovation, to make headway in the market, has to address "benefits in a limited, private context", else the past lingers, with "behaviours having congealed into equilibrium".

What is `equilibrium'? Apply the three tests that Chakravorti lays down: First, `demand-side best choice' — demand behaviour is "relatively stable and unchanging". Second, `supply-side best choice' — "any change in strategy by any single firm is too small to have an impact". And third, `believability' — "behaviour is consistent with data and hypotheses." But then, it may already be time for getting out of the equilibrium with another innovation!

Already, shelves are full and almost everything has been made, so why innovate? Because markets are imperfect, whispers the author, amidst the `loud noise' of the bazaar. "In silences or in the many pauses we have encountered is the mother of innovation." Moral, therefore, is simple: Hear the sounds of the birds singing. And, find your voice.

ManageMentor@TheHindu.co.in

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