The Paradox of Pain
Nearly 100% of innovation — from business to politics — is
inspired not by "market analysis" but by people who are supremely
pissed off by the way things are.
- Tom Peters
 Why do some
innovations succeed while most fail? Why do some entrepreneurs
succeed multiple times while most never experience even a single
success? What role does creativity actually play when it comes to
successful entrepreneurs and innovators?
More generally, how do you come up with what former president
George H.W. Bush called, "The vision thing?"
Those questions are at the heart of The Paradox of Pain.
Drawing upon years of study of the biographies of successful
entrepreneurs and innovators, research into psychology and social
psychology, and real-world testing of the ideas contained in this
book, The Paradox of Pain makes the case that, if you want to improve your
personal or organizational capacity for innovation, you must
stop focusing on The Idea and instead put at the center of your
efforts the thing we fear the most.
Pain.
While focusing on pain admittedly makes many people
uncomfortable, the fact is that only the existence of significant
amounts of physical or psychological pain will provide the
customer with sufficient incentive to overcome the pull of the status quo and
actually change and adopt your innovation.
I first started exploring this idea in August of 1999 in a
essay entitled What a P.I.T.A. Since then, I have continued to explore,
work to understand, and
develop those ideas and am in the process of
developing a series of essays and a
book that explore that critical, but too often overlooked,
relationship between pain, change, and innovation.
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