A colleague once sent me a mocked-up invite to a Conference called ‘Using NLP for VUCA times in BRIC Markets.’ We had been talking about the trend for just about any idea of value or interest to quickly morph into a TLA. Perhaps like me, you feel obliged keep up to speed with these acronyms, not just in business life, but as an essential way of understanding a text message from your kids, who will only TTYL after their BFF, LOL.  As I write, the MSM are full of stories about a new craze for investing in NFTs, after a JPG file sold for $69million. IMHO, the world has gone mad.  So, it was with some wariness I approached a smart new business book called ALIEN Thinking.  

The authors, Cyril Bouquet, Jean-Louis Barsoux & Michael Wade are all Professors at IMD Business School and their aim in this entertaining and very accessible book, is to study people who have made “quantum leaps of creativity”.  They regard these rare individuals as ALIENS, as they exhibit five codified patterns of behaviour that lead to breakthrough ideas: Attention, Levitation, Imagination, Experimentation and Navigation.  Although this a book mainly about business innovation, the authors start with two stories; one about a critical care doctor volunteering amidst an Ebola outbreak in West Africa, and the other about an ex-prisoner pioneering re-employment solutions for other ex-offenders.   The attribution of the “ALIEN” framework to these two case studies seemed to me somewhat thinly made, but we are quickly off down a more familiar path of household entrepreneurs and innovative firms (James Dyson, Cambridge Analytica, Lego, etc).  The authors source some great stories and in looking at Experimentation, they feature British entrepreneur Lawrence Kemball-Cook, who invented a power-generating pavement (called ‘PaveGen’), a terrific example of an Imaginative leap, though since that first leap was installed in 2012, he remains deeply frustrated that his great idea has never really scaled. The authors have been proactive in trying to ignite such innovation and they describe some rather enviable “discovery tours” with executives heading to Bangalore, Seoul, Tokyo and Taipei; trips that that sound suitably ambitious in scope and, I guess these days, are somewhat nostalgically remembered.

The section on Levitation (“the act of stepping back to regain perspective”) reminded me of a senior colleague, advocating what he calls “curious wandering”.  It’s something that I think academics are actively encouraged to do; taking time out, working elsewhere, blocking distractions, a sabbatical from routine, but it is rarely the norm in corporate life, unless you’re an already exhausted Partner in a professional services firm. While we might not all have the time and scope for such Levitation, it made me think of the ‘What-If’ recommendation, that however busy you are, you should at least “take a different route to work” once in a while, or Cal Newport’s practical approach to carving distraction-free space for what he calls Deep Work.  

There is not room here to do justice to all the five dimensions, though I took most value from those that have the best stories attached, or where those stories were less familiar, for example, their take on What3Words or Swisscom.  The section on Navigation seems though the most important; that the spark of ideas (borne out of what other frameworks might label as curiosity, creativity and exploration) is important, but essential is navigation: actively drawing insights in from outside the normal frame and making things happen within the organisation, where inertia, internal opposition and scepticism abound.  If you are an ALIEN thinker with a great idea, it does not mean the organisation will be any more receptive or responsive; you still need strong personal and political skills, as well as huge amounts of resilience, to make anything actually happen.  To illustrate they revisit the familiar Kodak story, failing to execute a pivot to digital, but this time their spotlight shines on Steven Sasson, who made a breakthrough innovation he called “filmless photography’ (digital to you and me) but used a toxic combination of words within Kodak. Sasson won a Presidential award for innovation, but scored “nil point” for navigation.  Helpfully, the authors aid the ‘navigation’ of their own case with a series of re-caps, “key takeaways” and diagnostic sheets.  

ALIEN Thinking covers some familiar innovation territory, while making a compelling and distinctive case for leaders to particularly embrace levitation to engender creativity, and navigation, to make those ideas land. While the book has an ‘out of the world’ title, it is essentially grounded in dozens of interesting real-world stories that substantiate the framework. ALIEN Thinking should be of interest to anyone wanting to know more about the required mindset, organisational environment and sheer hard graft needed to bring breakthrough ideas to life.  

 John Dore

Some notes on acronyms used:

1. ‘Using Neuro-Linguistic Programming in Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous times in Brazilian, Russian, Indian and Chinese markets’.

2. TLA: “three letter acronym”, or contraction, such as IMD; International Institute for Management Development.

3. They will only talk to you later, after their best friend forever, laughing out loud.

4. A non-fungible token called “Everydays — The First 5000 Days,” by the artist known as Beeple, set a record for a digital artwork in a sale at Christie’s.