Innovators seek to break with convention and “get out of the box.”
People who break with convention often imagine that they are navigating the wide world of possibilities.
However, the perimeter of an individual’s possibility-space usually doesn’t go far beyond the confines of the box. Try as you may, you are never going to be as far out as Richard Branson.
Continually pushing one’s comfort zone toward the edge is the pathway to success in tumultuous times.
7 comments ↓
Isn’t this more or less a warmed up version of Vygotsky’s ‘zone of proximal development’?
Ole, I don’t know Vygotsky’s work well enough to reply more that “I don’t think so.” I certainly didn’t warm up proximal development intentionally, although there are no new ideas under the sun.
What I had in mind was more of a mash-up of Albert Bandura’s concept of self-efficacy and Marty Seligman’s learned helplessness.
Virgil said it best: “Possunt quia posse videntur.” (They can because they think they can.)
Ole. Be gentle :-)
Sounds just like “you’ve got to speculate to accumulate”, to me at least. If you are not willing or able to stretch out and take a risk, you’ll never see massive returns.
Most of us are afraid of any kind of risk, hence the comfort zone …
There may be another dimension to this. The resistance of each frontier (box) becomes weaker as you continue your outward journey. Meaning that both the temptation to see what’s beyond the current comfort zone and the ability to make the leap become stronger.
It’s like language learning. Once you’ve mastered a foreign language, tackling a second one is much easier, but still requires courage, dedication . When you have two or three under your belt, you tend to breeze towards mastery of the next one. Part of the process is learning to understand that there always is a box but it isn’t necessarily confining.
There may be another dimension to this. The resistance of each frontier (box) becomes weaker as you continue your outward journey. Meaning that both the temptation to see what’s beyond the current comfort zone and the ability to make the leap become stronger.
It’s like language learning. Once you’ve mastered a foreign language, tackling a second one is much easier, but still requires courage, dedication and a fairly massive time investment. When you have two or three under your belt, you tend to breeze towards mastery of the next one. Part of the process is learning to understand (i.e. perceive) that there always is a box but it isn’t necessarily confining.
By the way, I agree that this isn’t directly related to Vygotsky, the major difference being one of point of view. Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development, as I understand it, is meant to define from an instructional point of view what learners are capable to doing next, which, when known, permits a teacher to predict what will or won’t work and to provide the appropriate “scaffolding” (not exactly what happens in informal learning). Jay’s concept is less about planning and executing the stages of learning than about how innovation, or existing and thinking within a wider horizon, can be achieved.
Correct me if I’m wrong (and please provide me with the appropriate scaffolding!).
I would suggest that there are often individuals within an organisation who are quite prepared to push the boundaries. However, if they don’t have enough clout within the organisation and/or if the management structure through whom they have to get budget approval has little appetite for risk, the wild-eyed ambition comes to nought.
Eventually those square pegs will either get worn down so that they fit into those holes, or they will move on. Sometimes, organisations know how to present themselves as being “out there” during the recruitment process, only to reveal their true “safe” colours once the person is on board (the whole campaign promises analogy again).
I have to agree with Karyn’s observation. I experienced that first-hand in a prior work environment almost 10 years ago. On the whole, though, it is an interesting perspective and does define a lot about what I do and don’t do. I concur with Peter’s point that it does require courage and a massive time investment.
My misfortune is I like to push outside the box, but I have difficulty choosing a direction. I find myself wanting to go in all different directions and pursue many different initiatives. As a result my efforts are diluted and I often get frustrated..
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