Creating a groundbreaking innovation for an industry (an industry-oriented innovation) is nearly impossibly difficult.
Almost as challenging is for a CEO to find the fortitude to implement it. After all, the outcomes of true innovation are “unknowable” until they are implemented (tested), which means financial r-i-s-k for the company and reputation risk for the CEO.
Yes, this also applies to societal-good innovation.
In a letter to JPMorgan shareholders, CEO Jamie Dimon stresses the need for major corporations to commit to societal-good innovation.
His point: Societal innovation is the path to expedited societal advancement.
He emphasizes the civic obligation of Big Corp to serve society in this way.
However, even if the world’s greatest innovation is sitting on a CEO’s desk, the CEO may simply lack the courage to allow the company to implement it.
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Without the fortitude to test an innovation through implementation, the results remain unknowable (Jamie Dimon).
One corporation might balk at $30 million, another at $300 million, but Jamie Dimon had the fortitude to commit $30 BILLION to implement what he refers to as a societal-good innovation—perhaps a sum that stunned his CEO peers.
Implementing an innovation requires courage, wit, and judgment—in a word, fortitude.
Look no further than the infamous Xerox CEO. No doubt, he performed well in general; however, rather than taking the risk to implement something radically new to the photocopying industry—and to the world—he punted. Instead of embracing the innovation, he sold what could have been Xerox’s golden goose: the desktop copier.
At the time, making copies meant driving to a copy shop or standing in line to use an office machine. But rather than take the risk of introducing compact copiers—smaller and seemingly inferior to the massive, freezer-chest-sized machines that could print entire books—he shocked Xerox engineers and marketers by announcing he had sold Xerox’s desktop copier patents. The buyer? A tiny upstart company in Japan that, according to Xerox’s smiling CEO, had overpaid.
But as is often the case with innovation, the industry changed overnight. The tiny Japanese company soared. The mighty Xerox began a dizzying financial collapse.
Within about a year, the Xerox CEO was escorted from the building.
A letter from Mr. Dimon to his shareholders
In the letter, CEO Dimon stresses the need for all major corporations, not just JP Morgan, to commit to dedicated societal-good innovation.
As noted above: Societal-good innovation is the path to expedited societal advancement.
Dimon took action: He committed to an unbelievably massive $30 BILLION “effort” to provide economic opportunity to underserved communities, especially the Black and Latinx communities.
The opposite of expedited societal innovation is the ongoing NAEP tragedy: 50% of all K-12 students are left unable to read, write, and do math.
Despite having the best public K-12 school system in the world, half of all U.S. K-12 students are NOT able to read, write, or do math at minimum NAEP proficiency.
K-12 student casualties increase by the millions each year.
Nothing has ever fixed this.
The ONLY solution is societal-good innovation—with a risk-offset for a Big Corp sponsor
Thinking like Dimon:
- Mr. Dimon stresses that true societal innovation (where astonishing results can have seismic consequences) is paramount for the advancement of our society.
- Sudden, breakthrough-like change is the province of innovation.
- Left untested, the results of innovation are “unknowable.”
- Absent societal innovation to recast the performance of K-12 students, 10s of millions of young people languish, unable to read, write, or do arithmetic at minimum NAEP proficiency. And yet the U.S. public K-12 education system and its teachers are arguably the best in the world.
- Dimon urges his fellow corporate giants to commit to a “societal-good” innovation effort—and implores them to have the fortitude to test the innovation by implementing it.
- Whether for industry or for a societal good, an innovation can be breakthrough (unrelated to anything before) or it can be related but disruptive. Dimon urges his fellow CEOs to follow his lead and innovate for societal good, a Big Corp duty that requires the risk of implementation. (He graciously does not mention the Xerox CEO in the heading above: “Without the fortitude to test . . .”)
- Dimon has the fortitude and leadership to test innovation, but notes: Success is not guaranteed.
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