If we want to seriously address the climate crisis, then we need to encourage foolish business ideas.

When it comes to seemingly impossible problems like the climate crisis, Professor William Barnett says we need to reach for equally impossible solutions — ideas so crazy, they just might work. “Foolishness,” he says, “is the price of genius.”

A professor of organizational behavior at Stanford Graduate School of Business and a professor at the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability, Barnett is equally interested in how organizations produce innovation. According to him, organizations need to embrace failure as a stepping stone to big breakthroughs and create cultures that encourage unconventional and even "foolish" ideas. “Ideas might well be foolish, but if they're right, they're going to be genius. Organizations that create lots of foolishness also create a lot of genius.”

In this episode of If/Then: Business, Leadership, Society, Barnett unpacks how farfetched thinking could be the key to addressing climate change, and how organizations can foster the cultures necessary to fail forward and find innovative solutions.

Key Takeaways:

• Failure is a stepping stone to innovation: Each unsuccessful attempt provides an opportunity to learn, grow, and redirect.
• Foolishness is the price of genius: Organizations need to promote non-consensus thinking and risk-taking, even if that means pursuing ideas that initially seem "foolish."
• Minimize the effects of failure: Give crazy ideas a shot, but do so at a small scale to keep failures quick and inexpensive.

More Resources: 

William P. Barnett, The Thomas M. Siebel Professor of Business Leadership, Strategy, and Organizations at Stanford Graduate School of Business and professor at the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability.

• The Red Queen Among Organizations: How Competitiveness Evolves, by William P. Barnett
• Voices of Stanford GSB faculty, William P. Barnett

If/Then is a podcast from Stanford Graduate School of Business that examines research findings that can help us navigate the complex issues we face in business, leadership, and society.

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