The Paradox of Pain

7/5/2007

Why are some innovations successful while most fail? Why do some innovators succeed multiple times while most people never succeed once? What can you do to improve your ability to generate, evaluate, or communicate innovative ideas?
     Those questions are at the heart of the book The Paradox of Pain.
     The premise of The Paradox Of Pain is that if you want to improve your ability to generate, evaluate, and communicate ideas for innovations, you must put at the center of the process the thing we fear the most.
     Pain.
     Only the existence of significant amounts of physical or psychological pain will ensure that people will overcome the pull of the status quo and change.
     I first put forth this idea in August of 1999 in an essay entitled What A Pain In The Ass and have kept working on it ever since.

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