What Evolution Can Teach Us About Innovation

Despite the persistent myth of the solitary genius, radical innovation is rarely the work of a single individual. It is a collective, iterative and lengthy process. In this article, the authors analyze the case of the Covid-19 vaccine developed by the Moderna laboratory. They show how the vaccine was the result of a long evolutionary process: trials, dead ends, successive reorientations. They contrast this approach with the philosophy of radical innovation shared by many companies, which they compare to a penalty shoot-out session: “You just have to multiply the projects, never mind the failures; statistically, a small number will come to fruition and will ensure the overall profitability of the innovation portfolio.” But this approach leads to a tremendous waste of resources—and to many ideas being abandoned too early. Instead of casting them aside, it would be preferable to evolve them to push them a step further.

An interesting point of view, and one that flies in the face of the currently dominant “fail fast” thinking.