Jamie Dimon
Jamie Dimon says innovate
And cautions that with innovation, there is no guarantee of success.
And adds that failing to implement an innovation because of risk can be catastrophic—click the Xerox title below.
In sum: a leader must lead.
In a letter to JPMorgan shareholders, CEO Jamie Dimon stresses the need for major corporations to commit to societal-good innovation.
Societal innovation is the path to expedited societal advancement. Mr. Dimon emphasizes the civic obligation of Big Corp to serve society in this way.
However, people are people. Even if the world’s greatest innovation—societal or otherwise—is sitting on a CEO’s desk (as noted below in the Xerox example), the CEO may simply lack the “grit” to allow the company to implement it.
The case of the Xerox CEO who dodged a risk—but at what cost?
A stunning example (one of the world’s top companies suddenly free-falling from prominence) is the risk avoidance attributed to the Xerox CEO. Rather than taking the risk of implementing a radical innovation—a compact copier that could fit on a desk—he reportedly punted. He may have deemed the unknowable outcome of innovation—settled only through implementation—and the prerequisite manufacturing costs too great a risk. Despite being a highly successful and preeminent leader, his reported solution was to sell Xerox’s desktop-copier patents to another company.
The buyer? An aggressive Japanese company entering the copier business.
Remember, at the time, making copies often meant driving to a copy shop or standing in line at work to use an office copier. But rather than take the risk of introducing compact copiers—smaller and seemingly inferior to Xerox’s freezer-chest-sized machines that could print entire books—the Xerox CEO reportedly shocked his company’s engineers and marketers by announcing the sale of the desktop-copier patents.
But as can happen with the combination of innovation and implementation, the copying industry quickly began a dramatic transformation as the Japanese company brought the innovation to market. The Japanese company’s copier business soared, while the mighty Xerox experienced a devastating decline accompanied by massive layoffs.
That gut-wrenching moment: taking innovation into the real world
In the letter, CEO Dimon stresses the need for all major corporations, not just JP Morgan, to commit to dedicated societal innovation.
Dimon also addressed taking action, committing an unprecedented $30 billion to expand economic opportunity in underserved communities—particularly Black and Latinx communities.
A tenuous aside—and a reminder that everything affects everything else: Just months after announcing his $30 billion economic and societal initiative, the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank marked the second-largest bank failure in U.S. history at the time. In the federal response to the banking crisis, JPMorgan Chase acquired First Republic Bank, including valuable assets, through an FDIC-arranged transaction—an unexpected business opportunity in the broader context of the original $30 billion initiative.
Was societal good a commonality?
“A Calamity of Souls,” by David Baldacci
“A great nation can never realize its full potential until all its citizens are allowed to realize theirs.”
In the ongoing NAEP reality, a significant share of K–12 students remain below minimum proficiency in reading, writing, and math. Millions each year leave school without the skills needed to fully realize their potential.
There has been no rescue for too many of these students—often described as America’s “have-nots.”
Implement the HSe4Metrics platform—for all students
Left untested, the results of innovation remain “unknowable” (to use Dimon’s term).
The only way to know is to implement the innovation.
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