The Great Plague of 1665 forced Cambridge to close. What happen next changed the World.

When the plague hit student Isaac Newton evacuated for home.  During his time in quarantine he was keenly attentive to the world around him.  His observations laid the groundwork for his innovations in both calculus and the laws of motion (gravity). Newton had time.

In 1440 a Goldsmith named Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press. 

But he didn’t start from a blank piece of paper, he tinkered with what was already in existence creating innovative improvements like movable type and a new more durable ink. Gutenberg tinkered.

Global troubles were brewing in 1938 at the outset of World War II.

This same year David Packard moved into a modest 3 room apartment in a Palo Alto home.  His business partner Bill Hewlett moved into the even more modest shed next to the house.  In the garage, they birthed Silicon Valley, just as the entire world was going from the frying pan into the fire of trouble.

The ingredients in the primordial soup of innovation have always been time, tinkering and trouble.

Great companies like HP, GE, GM, IBM, Microsoft, and more recently Google, Facebook and Salesforce all began during troubling financial periods.  

The Coming Innovation Exodus

The question isn’t, “Will there be innovation in these circumstances?”  In fact, we should expect a very healthy portion of innovation in this year’s soup.  The question really is, “Will it be dine-in or take out?”  In other words, can a company keep their best innovators, or lose them to competitors?

The key to preventing an exodus of value creators from your organization is in a few profound institutional dynamics.  

First: Is your organization “Smart”? meaning great technology, strategy, marketing, and finance.

If yes, this is likely the reason you attracted the innovators in the first place.  Smart is why people join companies in droves.

Second:  Is your organization “Healthy”? meaning minimal politics and minimal confusion.  Do people change what they say depending on who’s in the room?  Do people trust each other?  Data shows that when the health of an organization is poor, people can’t wait to leave and take their innovations with them.  Lack of Organizational Health is the major cause of an exodus.

“People don’t have money for old solutions to old problems. People do have money for new solutions to new problems.” Jen Waldman, a New York based speaker and thought leader 

How much money?  About $300 billion in venture capital is wooing your innovators every year.  

Right now, there are likely innovative solutions simmering in your own kitchen.

What are your value creating innovators thinking during this time?  Like The Clash they’re thinking, “Should I Stay, or Should I Go?”

Your best chance to keep innovators is Organizational Health.

The last words you want to hear as your most creative minds run out the door is: 

“No soup for you!”