On Porter's Sacred Power of Business Innovation
PROFESSOR PORTER'S SACRED POWER OF INNOVATION
BY
DAVID ARTHUR WALTERS
Paralyzed executives might hang the sign INNOVATE! all over the place. Of course that commonplace sign, just like the Ten Commandments posted on the walls, will eventual be completely ignored.
Harvard professor Michael Porter worships the idol Competition with his book, On Competition, a popular self-help business-success book designed for members of the dominant minority who lack the innovative powers of the active creative minority who established private capitalism. Professor Porter's collaboration with businessmen on practical projects has been fruitful; however, given the disjunction between words and deeds that plagues the race, it is doubtful whether Porter's book will have many positive results.
The founding fathers of the first great businesses in America were men of deeds, not words. They certainly were not university professors. One or two of them had college degrees and a few were illiterate. Those who can, do; those who can't, teach. That is not to say that teachers are useless - quite to the contrary. But innovative businessmen who created the myth of self-help and competition seldom listened to business professors. Since then, the growth of large commercial modes of action has fostered the rise of the cult of masters of business administration. The MBA cult is derived from the Jesuit order of self-examination and -denial and blind obedience to the system; the Jesuit regimen was abstracted and adopted by European military academies and was eventually passed on to today's highly regarded business schools.
The fundamental function of today's pragmatic professor, in contrast to the professor of liberal education whose obligation was to buck systems, is to reinforce the current myth of reality in vogue. Students are solitary, autonomous individuals who can succeed providing they take the hardheaded, realistic approach, and compete to fit into the system. Conforming to the "reality" of "how things actually work" as defined by received authority is the practical thing to do. The illusion of democratic individuality actually divides the mass into units, to conquer them while conforming them to mass production and consumption of the standard models. Competition organizes the mass into a few winners and many losers, creating the illusion that only winning and losing count and not the persons themselves. Furthermore, the cult of competition fosters the fear of failure and provokes guilt feelings, further reinforcing conformity to external quantitative standards, rendering useless qualitative concepts of internal integrity and human dignity.
The professional system is in fact a trap or box that encourages adjustment to its parameters as professed by "impartial" or "value-neutral" civic leaders, who are in fact political ideologues hence exemplars of bad faith. The "objective" system preached tends to stifle human creativity and innovation. Therefore it is not surprising that people inside the box are anxious, including the human engineers who have lost their ability to innovate because they too have been engineered. Individuals inside the system exhibit the sort of behavior we see in crabs when put into a basket without a lid to restrain them. They compete with each other, try to tear each other apart, instead of simply climbing out of the basket; the wasteful competition creates a great deal of wealth for the crabmasters. A few crabby individuals sense something is profoundly wrong with the system; they proceed to point out the fact that the cage has no lid. Others begin to question the symbols embedded in the trap. The challenge must be met lest everyone crawls out of the box and production falters.
The suidae philosophers know how to respond to the challenge: they learned a very importantly lesson during their hog-farming days. Piglets tend to bite each others tails and ears off and otherwise damage the stock. A hog farmer found a diversionary occupation. He picked up some discarded broken bowling balls and put them in the pens for the piglets to play with - the problem was solved. In human society, books help to allay the anxiety and reinforce the current myth of reality, especially self-help books - help-others books are unpopular in our self-help culture for that would contradict the illusion.
Now if business leaders would write down two or three of Professor Porter's suggestions and practice them, his book might be influential. If only they would innovate by first disillusioning themselves of the trap they are in!
Professor Porter's ideology, or rather the pragmatic anti-ideology he professes, is exceedingly familiar. Ideology does not matter, he says, when it comes to seizing competitive advantage. What matters is What Works; those who want to succeed must find out what works, then do it. The right information is crucial to success and can be found by those who are not blinded by conventional thinking. The professor looked around and discovered what really works if one wants to take advantage of competition: innovation. Who would have guessed it in our regressive neoconservative state? Thank you!
Professor Porter's notion reminds us of the advice from people in cubicles to "think outside of the box." That is very difficult thing to do when one has been boxed-up all one's life, especially if the box is comfortable. After all, a CEO who rises to the office on the top of the box and who is paid multi-million dollar salaries often gets a high grade for conformity - there are exceptions. Innovation is a product of curiosity, and too much curiosity killed the cat. The chief role of institutional leaders is to provide symbolic reassurance that all is well with the institution; to that end they appear to be working very hard, to be on top of things or in control. That process is not conducive to productive innovation although a leader might develop excellent acting skills and apply them innovatively.
In any case, a coffin plushily lined with conventional thinking might be very cozy indeed. Success makes many "winners" arrogant and dismissive, makes them believe they are invincible geniuses lording it over a superior civilization. They are mistaken; their once glorious civilization has become exceedingly superficial and one-dimensional; their shallow personalities do not compare favorably with the average personality of "undeveloped" countries. In America, an innovative self-educated man who ran away from home at an early age and grew up on the streets because he did not want live in the trap might do a better and more innovative job than the highly paid CEO and the university professor. Of course he might wind up in jail if he believed and practiced the innovation preached but not practiced by those conservatives who would conserve at least the vestiges of good old principles of piracy on the high seas and the innovation required for those ventures.
However that may be, Porter's thinking is hardly innovative. But neither are the ideas of many of today's business, political, and education leaders. That is the very problem alleged. They are apparently in sore need of a reminder to innovate in order to take advantage of their competitors, even if they already have an enormous advantage. No matter how big the fish are, they should not rest on their oars in shark-infested waters, but should upgrade, upgrade, upgrade.... Apparently the upgrading should take place no matter whether the user wants the upgrade handed down from the engineers or not; for without the upgrades, there is no turnover; without turnover, the water stagnates; - wherefore let customers welcome change, let them be the door mat for other people's changes, or else lose their jobs producing things they do not really need so they can pay rent and interest. Heaven forbid that they produce and distribute plenty of what everyone needs and only work twenty hours a week for other people.
No, ma'am, I do not believe Porter's book boosting the competitive myth will help much in itself; but some of its suggestions might be reinforced with good effect. Paralyzed executives might hang the sign INNOVATE! all over the place. Of course that commonplace sign, just like the Ten Commandments posted on the walls, will eventual be completely ignored. Therefore leaders should take advantage of subliminal techniques, and have inaudible positive suggestions to innovate pumped over the corporate PA systems. Self-suggestions to innovate should be chanted before having sex and once again before going to sleep, and again in the morning, and again before lunch.
Professor Porter's anti-ideology ideology of What Works smacks of the old jungle-law maxim of zoological ethics based on the mistaken identification of man as an animal. Might makes right. So let's fight. Let us admit that the success formulas are all platitudes. The author, Porter, a highly credentialed authority and spokesman for the ruling minority, has decked out the platitudes in fashionable clothes and is replicating them for emulation below. Other than his special spin, his book, like all such books, is plagiary pure and simple. But he is clever enough. His borrowed anti-ideological ideology makes the whole affair more appealing since it allows an intellectual to make the most absurd anti-intellectual claims with impunity while prevaricating for the ruling side - long live the plutocracy!
In fact, the anti-ideological authority can promise something for everybody no matter what their ideology might be. Hitler was a genius at prevarication and ambiguity; he admired not only Luther's nationalism but his genius for ambiguity and his resort to "god's mysteries" to justify absurdities. A good bible can be used to justify or condemn anything, or so I was advised by a prominent Moody Bible School graduate.
Porter repudiates commercial catholicism in favor of parochial nationalism, but he lacks Hitler's and Luther's vulgar powers of persuasion. I do not mean to imply that Michael Porter is a neo-Nazi or a neoconservative 'fascist' ( loosely speaking, someone who believes in right-wing authoritarian government). Fascism and Red Communism in my opinion was a phase of the modern scientific-industrial revolution. The prevailing myth of the old order was no longer suitable; the lag resulted in a tectonic shift, to revolution and war. No doubt Professor Porter, proponent of competition for the sake of progress, knows that his good empire has much to thank the evil empires for. The modern tools and techniques resorted to grew out of technological advances, hence were not "fascist" instruments per se. It is not fair to associate today's corporate executives with the evil doers of historical death-camp fascism. Still, the similarities should be at least alluded lest liberal promises are broken and the train of thought winds up in a concentration camp.
Like Professor Porter, Italian Fascists. German Nazis, Russian Reds and American Pragmatists renounced metaphysical ideology for the sake of what positively works at the time in quantitative, productive terms. Hitler laughed at the pessimists in 1942, and said, Where would we be now if we had listened to them? An attempt was made by an Italian philosopher and educator to formulate a suitable fascist philosophy of action. Machiavelli was favored by German professors. Professor Max Weber, whose sociology is lauded today, popularized the notion of the world-power-state a few years after Bismark unified Germany. Machiavelli of course wanted a final peace: he believed that devious and brutal means to the final end are justifiable only when necessary; if not, one should at least maintain the appearance of ethical propriety.
Napoleon, the German National Socialists and Nazis, the Italian Fascists and others believed that national competition would lead to world domination by the best nation after the people of the world were freed to submit. Germany was out to save the world for the best culture in the world. Leftist professors familiar with fascism at the time observed that fascism is the perfection of capitalism - fascism did not renounce the profit principle or private property - provided that big corporations produced both profit and property for the national benefit. General staffs and boards of directors alike take advantage of technological innovations to compete with and to smash the competition. Of course good generals and CEOs would like the competition to surrender short of all-out war, for what is wanted is victory, not the costly destruction of resources. In that context, Professor Porter seems to want perpetual economic conflict rather than a final solution of perpetual peace.
The final cause of competition is to eliminate competition. Competition is a great thing when we feel we want a piece of the action, but when competitors move in next door after our store is established, we might not care for competition very much. Now Professor Porter advocates "ruthless improvement", unusual effort, dogged determination in the face of harsh criticism - some of his devotees in the Heart of America adhere to the 'Ignore Naysayers Doctrine.' Improvement requires a challenge, adversity, pressure, he writes, and if none of the above are at hand, a strong competitor must be found to compete with, a fight must be picked, a pre-emptive strike made which will make innovative competition necessary, and so on, because that is what really works. Parochial differences must be exploited and sustained locally. National differences are the most important of all differences to be exploited.
Again, we find nothing new, novel, or innovative in the concepts dished up by Porter. Ruthless fanaticism is nothing new, and it tends to stifle creativity and cultivate ignorance by ignoring questions and criticism: curiosity, the drive to question, is the source of innovation. Indeed, the professor's model is the parochial European model. European civilization is Faustian in its attempt to manipulate nature, isolate and atomize individuals under the pretext of freedom, foster local loyalties and rivalries via parochial nationalism. Anti-cosmopolitan, anti-Catholic, anti-humanist, parochial European civilization takes violence for granted, even relishes it to resolve "moral log jams", and resists international functional alliance - for instance, international labor organization. However, each nation is an empire frustrated: nationalism would substitute a particular nation for the empire, the best nation being, of course, a culture; namely the Anglo-Saxon culture which is the mythical culture of many of Professor Porter's symbols.
For Professor Porter, competition, not cooperation, is the key word. Vice poses as virtue. Cooperation in the form of corporate mergers, strategic alliances, collaborations and the like, no matter what their rational end might be, are anathema. We have just cause to sympathize with his apparent antipathy, but we suspect his motives as we hear politicians advocate small business while providing contracts, incentives, and handouts to huge corporations. Allegedly, supranational cooperation, cosmopolitanism, globalization are the worst of all cooperative evils. Cooperation, according to Professor Porter, is simply a pervasive global fad, something to be "sharply limited" by government. Competition should be deregulated, but there must be stringent anti-cooperation or anti-trust laws in place. It is a mistake to think competition is wasteful and that efficient cooperation creates economies of scale.
Compete! Do not cooperate! If you do cooperate, strictly limit your cooperation to relatively unimportant matters and do not assign your top talent to cooperative tasks.
Therefore Professor Porter seems leery of Totalitaria as the end of political and economic competition. After all, the end of competition would end the cause of innovation and the obsession with the growth of gross national production. We recall that President Clinton's Surgeon General defined mental illness as the failure to lead a productive life. Well, if production does not increase exponentially and even faster than population growth, people will go mad and run amuk if not starve to death - never mind the fact that much of America's productive powers are wasted on wants rather than fulfilling needs.
The vested interests want compound growth ad infinitum. Their executives and other power elite must always strive for dynamic, "innovative productiveness", or "sustained productive growth", and not static products. Forget the durable product that lasts a life time, the 'Union Made' or 'Made in the USA' product. Upgrade, upgrade, and upgrade to the nth power. The constant struggle for "competitive advantage" must be the moving end in itself. Well, then, we hope that the geometric progression is in those intangibles which are conducive to mental health, lest people run amuk or the world becomes buried in garbage, trash and junk.
Professor Porter does advocate the maintenance of environmental standards as he defines them. But he does not regard infrastructure, general education, and health care as the crucial factors for the realization of competitive advantage. Of course special technical education, apprenticeship programs, university research connected to trade and industry, trade associations, and private investment are important factors.
We see nothing innovative in Professor Porter's education department. Universities are now led by persons who promote the myth of tools and techniques, that the culture may be structured to suit the wants of the political-economic system of the military industrial complex, not the complex internal needs of the human being. Thanks to Harvard, education is now seen as an outside-in process. The university is a sort of brain, and the brain is a general tool which, in humans, grew large through the invention and constant use of tools. The university is an economic tool. All students must be linked to the machine. And they should not mind that, for money speaks louder than words: they are interested in material success, hence economic institutions have a higher immediate influence on the young than do educational institutions. Students therefore are education to adjust to the system; which means to specialize, to mirror the analytical activities and skills needed for science, technology, industry, and for that the educational discipline, designed to preclude whatever might disturb the process, dulls the faculties Porter allegedly promotes: innovation, creativity, crucial activities rooted in curiosity, dissent, skepticism, questioning, fantasy and the like. In the holy name of objectivity, the student must ignore inner experience: subjectivity, soul, spirit, romance, myth, contemplation, daydreaming and the like. Yet, corporate recruiters insist that these recruits, trained to competitive obedience are "the brightest, most creative and talented people." Many of them care less about their courses of study, and got their credentials just to be a success. The credential proves they can obey long enough to "get it." Of course competitive sports spectacles and heavy drinking relieves the stress, therefore plenty of entertainment must be provided once they are hired - entertainment districts with sports bars, restaurants, preferably next to a sports arena, lofts and office buildings.
So much for specialization. We need it, but we go overboard with it, and stifle innovation. Nevertheless, we can safely leave the general thinking cultivated by general education up to the vested interests and their executives, politicians, business professors, newspaper editors and the like. Incidentally, when it comes to innovative productiveness, Professor Porter has a low regard for the importance of such factors as national endowments, relative currency valuations, interest rates, and, of course, at last, the labor pool. The government, he says, should know that both the hands-off and the hands-on approaches are mistaken; yet when we examine the specifics he provides, he obviously favors the hands-off approach. Generally speaking, the government should serve as a catalyst and challenger, he says. How? Do not intervene in factors such as currency and markets. Reject managed trade. Deregulate. Promote sustained investment in business. Promote specialization. Enforce strict product safety, environment standards, and anti-trust laws.
What should business leaders do? Innovate and upgrade, seek rivals and strong competition, believe in change, and locate the best home base for your Diamond of National Advantages.
What? diamond? Every pragmatic business book must have some sort of geometric figure drawn around a few simple points. In fine, the business leader should discover what his resources are, what the demand for his product is, what industries are related to and might support his business, who is rivals are, and he should know how is business is structured and what his strategy is.
Of course that is not all. I leave the rest up to the innovative student of the American Way.
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