Puzzles e mistérios

“Over the years, as I’ve exhorted companies and their leaders to embrace a richly defined values proposition rather than a dollars-and-cents value proposition, I’ve heard all kinds of warnings about the downside to thinking bigger and aiming higher. One common worry is the inevitable competitive backlash: If a braver, more clever, more forward-looking company succeeds at doing something new, the reasoning goes, then surely larger, richer, more established companies will decode that success, “mimic its logic, and upend the innovator who moved first. What’s the point of launching a whole new way to be in a business if you are inevitably going to be shot down by rivals with all the strategic firepower they need?...
No good deed goes unpunished.” In competitive strategy, the worry goes, “No good idea goes uncopied.
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I’m constantly amazed at how unwilling or unable most big, incumbent, long-established organizations are to learn from (let alone copy) the market makers in their field. Imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, but it’s among the rarest forms of competitive response. And it’s certainly no excuse for limiting, in advance, the scope of your strategic ambitions. What your competitors won’t do, despite how much they know about what you’re doing, may surprise you.
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the questions intelligence agencies faced were puzzles:
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Today, the most important questions are mysteries:
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What’s the difference between a puzzle and a mystery? Puzzles, Treverton explains, can be solved with better information and sharper calculations. Mysteries, however, can only be framed, not solved. “A mystery is an attempt to define ambiguities,” he writes. “Puzzles may be more satisfying, but the world increasingly offers us mysteries.” And treating mysteries like puzzles, he warns, can be dangerous and delusional—creating a false sense of confidence that crunching more information will clarify situations that can be understood only with more imagination.
Well, what’s true for intelligence gathering is also true for thinking intelligently about strategy and competition. As puzzles, the companies we’ve met don’t have many missing pieces.
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So the reason these companies are so distinctive is not because other companies lack the information to mount a challenge. It’s because they lack the imagination to match and respond to these “lighthouse” competitors, to summon their passion and patience for doing business their way."

Acham que o problema do SNS, por exemplo, é um puzzle? Acham que mais dinheiro é a solução?
Acham que ter sucesso no mercado é à custa da racionalidade e da ciência?


Trechos retirados de “Simply Brilliant: How Great Organizations Do Ordinary Things in Extraordinary Ways” de William C. Taylor.