Abstract
In this chapter, Ghez explains the difference between risk and uncertainty. While the first is quantifiable and can be dealt with easily by flexible and agile actors, the second is not quantifiable, and requires resilience. Ultimately, resilience comes with imagination, or the ability to envision a new model that makes architects of change more fit to survive in a transformed landscape, when yesterday’s world fell apart and when flexibility is not enough. The purpose of imagination is to be able to generate new ideas and new strategies in a chaotic world in which nothing is linear, and which requires full and complete reinvention on the part of architects of change.
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- 1.
This is an argument omnipresent in Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable, 1 edition (New York: Random House, 2007).
- 2.
Frank Knight, Risk, Uncertainty and Profit (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1921).
- 3.
“Despite Challenges, US Ties Prove to Be Resilient in 2010,” Today’s Zaman, December 25, 2010.
- 4.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder (Random House, 2012), https://www.amazon.com/Antifragile-Things-That-Disorder-Incerto/dp/1400067820/ref=sr_1_1?crid=16W3XT1K91FBD&keywords=antifragile+by+nassim+taleb&qid=1555080290&s=gateway&sprefix=antifragile%2Caps%2C191&sr=8-1.
- 5.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb and Mark Blyth, “The Black Swan of Cairo,” Foreign Affairs, May 2011, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/egypt/2011-04-15/black-swan-cairo.
- 6.
Source: Orchestrating Transformation: How to Deliver Winning Performance with a Connected Approach to Change. Wade, Macaulay, Noronha, Barbier, 2019.
- 7.
Michael Porter’s Competitive Advantage: Techniques for Analyzing Industries and Competitors became a bible of business thinkers in the late 1980s. Echoing the ideas of comparative advantage expounded by David Ricardo, a nineteenth-century economist, this book provided managers with a framework for strategic thinking about how to beat their rivals. Porter argued that competitive advantage is a function of either providing comparable buyer value more efficiently than competitors (low cost), or of performing activities at comparable cost but in unique ways that create more buyer value than competitors and, hence, command a premium price (differentiation). You win either by being cheaper or by being different (which means being perceived by the customer as better or more relevant). There are no other ways. Source: The Economist, 2008.
- 8.
While the average automotive industry operating margin (EBIT) was 5.9% over the last three years (2014–2016), Toyota had an average operating margin (EBIT) of 9.7%; Porsche AG operating margin (EBIT) was 16.3%, Source: Capital IQ, Cisco analysis.
- 9.
Source: Orchestrating Transformation: How to Deliver Winning Performance with a Connected Approach to Change. Wade, Macaulay, Noronha, Barbier, 2019.
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Ghez, J. (2019). The Purpose of Imagination. In: Architects of Change. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-20684-0_11
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-20684-0_11
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