12: Shaping Perceptions
The chapter begins with an extended narrative about the way in which Tesla Motors won the investment and business of Daimler to build a fully electric version of the "smart" car. The Diamler team arrived looking dour, and seemed entirely unenthusiastic throughout the presentation - but when team members were given a ride in a prototype that Tesla had created on the sly, they became very enthusiastic and quickly invested in the venture.
The greatest challenge to the innovator is in changing peoples' mindsets - getting them to believe in your vision. Describing it is less effective than demonstrating it, as the opening narrative demonstrated.
As noted earlier, tradition is a trap - and it is very heavily loaded with hard evidence of past performance. Innovation has no such evidence: if it is a new idea, it has not yet been implemented and cannot show historical evidence. Innovation must be sold on the belief in what is possible to achieve.
Philosophers have posited that reality is a social construction - things are true because people believe them to be true. And people take convincing. When translated to business, the people you must convince are customers and investors. If they do not believe in your product, no-one will lend you the money to build it, and no-one will purchase it once it's been built.
A hands-on demonstration is the most powerful way of doing that: people believe in their sensory perception, and many people are simply not capable of the mental exercises required to imagine possibilities. But where that is not possible, you must articulate your vision, in a way that people can understand it and agree that it is plausible.
Particularly when innovation entails a radical departure from known realities, it takes quite some work to get people to understand and agree with a vision.
Those who do not "get" an idea will often attempt to distract from it by dwelling on nitnoid details, claiming the idea is impossible because of some small problem that can likely be overcome. (EN: This is usually an underhanded tactic to attempt to discredit an innovation and prevent further consideration because the finer details have not been fully worked out.)
In order to innovate, you must begin with broad strokes and sort out the finer details later - and it's very difficult to get non-innovative people to do so. The electric car, for example, was an idea that has been around for years - but the traditionalists have undermined it by treating minor details as insurmountable obstacles: the vehicle doesn't travel fast enough, or far enough, and there isn't a network of recharging stations.
The fundamental challenge is that all innovations start with an unconventional thought - and the greater the innovation, the more it departs from current reality. Successful innovators are able to convince a critical mass of people of the viability of an idea, so that it will actually become reality. They identify the key stakeholders, and develop a plan to convince each of them.
(EN: It is often for this reason that innovators and pitch-men are two distinct breeds. The innovator is often focused on an idea, and is so enthralled with it that he fails to see why anyone else wouldn't be instantly enchanted by its brilliance. The pitch-man knows better, recognizing that the people whose support for the idea is critical may not be instantaneously converted.)
Krippendorff suggests that the secret to persuasion is in realizing that people don't think - they merely react. As such, selling people on an idea isn't a matter of describing how it works, but merely making statements that trigger emotional responses.
(EN: The rest of the chapter is channel-surfing across some popular psychology and pseudo-science about subliminal methods of persuasion, which is largely poppycock. Other sources should be consulted for better advice on selling a novel idea to a hostile audience.)