Episode 53: Innovation Through Conflict

"In Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love - they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock".

That's Orson Welles as Harry Lime in the 1949 classic, The Third Man. The subtext is clear; conflict breeds innovation. And yet conflict that is not constructively channelled can be deeply destructive. How do you harness conflict and use it to drive innovation?

Mind your manners. Don't talk back. Respect your elders. Much of our collective upbringing is based on avoiding conflict. We are taught that conflict is inherently wrong because for every winner there is a loser. It is often destructive and hurtful. And yet without it we stagnate. Preserving the status quo only benefits those in positions of authority or dominance. And it is these authority figures that have the greatest reason to fear conflict and her second cousin, chaos. But to quote Littlefinger from HBO's masterly series Game of Thrones, "chaos is a ladder". Chaos breeds opportunity for the hungry, the ambitious, the disenfranchised. And chaos needs conflict in order to happen.