Three innovation metaphors from Jardin des Plantes in Paris

On a quiet Sunday afternoon, I roam the gardens and exhibition halls of Jardin des Plantes in Paris. In the glasshouses, I stumble on three statements about the evolution of ancient forests and life in today’s ones, which instantly resound in my ears as three innovation metaphors.

1. As plants first emerged from the sea in the Silurian and Devonian periods (440 to 350 million years ago) and started to spread on land, which by definition was desert at the time, they had to develop a strategy to resist the over exposure to sun and heat, and avoid dessication. Such strategy consisted in the development of:

The innovation path must run away from the old before heading towards the new

In these times of financial crunch and flat growth, there will inevitably be advocates of a return to old Keynesian economics. However successful Keynes’ ideas may have been in their time, I somehow doubt that the same recipes that brought the world back from the Great Depression would work just the same. And it may well be that Keynes himself would also be looking for new ideas if he, rather than his economics, were to return:

“The difficulty lies not so much in developing new ideas as in escaping from old ones.”

John Maynard Keynes

Transformers are no decliners

Italy has been at the forefront of the doom-and-gloom world news of late. And with it, the whole of Europe. And generally speaking, the West. And also, manufacturing output is slowing down in China. And reform bills fail one after the other in India. And then there is global warming. And all the rest. Even those who don’t believe in 2012 end-of-the-world prophecies can’t help prophecize the end of civilisation as we know it. Look at the Roman Empire, they say, once the beacon of the world, now swept away!