Working The Paradigm Shift

A solar powered plane currently flies round-the-world.

Its Swiss creators bemoan the airline industry’s doubt – verging on open hostility – towards their plans.

One of them, Bertrand Piccard, referred to this (clearly unfounded) criticism with a delicious line;

The people that made candles didn’t invent light bulbs.

If you want a paradigm shift you must have people from the outside.

The pilot’s wisdom reminded me of so many famous examples of this specific head-in-the-sand curse.

From the US telegraph monopolist’s disinterest in the telephone.

Through to the latter-day Kodak dismissal of digital photography.

I’ve also blogged before on how James Dyson was sent packing by every conventional vacuum cleaner makers, Hoover included.

And what about the long dark record of Big Oil, who notoriously stifle alternative energy efforts as a matter of routine.

There’s a clear link here with pitching any radically new product, concept or idea.

Are you talking to those who embrace breaking the ostrich mould?

Do they yearn to disrupt an established player, or make sure they as one themselves are not usurped?

Are you or they coming totally fresh to pastures new from a separate field?

If you’re selling anew and find a mind that thinks alike, one where they understand how the candlestick-maker erred, one seeking a paradigm shift, and get that such can only come from beyond the traditional boundaries of their space, then you are in.

Search them out, and use the pioneer Swiss solar story to uncover them.