Law of Double Negative
With the customer as the reference point, priorities become easier to set.
- Walton
Law of Double Negative states the following:
New Paradigm is the new physicality that resolves the Evolutionary Bottleneck and realizes the Ideal Vision that the limitation that created this Bottleneck doesn’t exist anymore; implementation of New Paradigm provides sufficient resources for Shift in Power in the industry Value Chain. These changes are provided by Double Negative: limitations disappear, but outcome is accomplished; old physicality is not used, but outcome is accomplished; and company stays in the Bottleneck position, but it acquires power over the entire Value Chain.
Even if one discovers the real culprit of industry-wide crisis, how it could be turned into the Breakthrough Opportunity? How to envision the emerging trends and way out of crisis?
First of all, one needs to imagine the condition under which the inherent limitation that halts improvement of outcome doesn’t exist anymore. This imaginative condition is called Ideal Vision. Idea Vision is created in two steps: first, one should negate the negative effect of limitation; then, one should suggest the way to provide the needed outcome.
To find out the New Paradigm, one should find out which new physicality can realize this Ideal Vision. This physicality “negates,” rejects the old physicality together with its limitation, but nonetheless produces needed outcome.
New Paradigm implementation inevitably changes all other outcomes involved in satisfaction of customers’ need. Since improvements of former Evolutionary Bottleneck now lead improvements in the entire Value Chain, the company that drives these improvements can turn the worst possible position in the Value Chain into the most influential, the most powerful one. This transformation, again, involves “double negative”: first, the company’s position in the Value Chain transforms from worst possible one to the most promising one, and then it further transforms into the most influential one.
Logically, all transformations stated by Law of Double Negative seem pretty straightforward: turn situation of aggravated crisis into limitation-free without changing its purpose; replace physicality with inherent limitation that caused the crisis with another one, free of this limitation, but capable of accomplishing the outcome; and transforming the worst possible position in the Value Chain into the Breakthrough Opportunity, and then into the most influential and powerful position.
However, these transformations look absolutely counterintuitive to everybody somehow involved in the realization of current paradigm. Beliefs of current paradigm that were true – and then unwittingly became false – produce a discrepancy between “what really happens” and “what was expected to happen” in minds of believers. This discrepancy manifests itself in form of unsolvable dilemma, “It should be this way because it always was, but it comes another way which is unthinkable.” As any dilemma, it could be resolved only by Double Negative: first, by inverting an unsolvable dilemma into the solvable problem, and then inverting the solvable problem into the solved one.
In detail, addressing the Dilemma through Double Negative approach is described Strategic Innovation: Train Yourself to OutCompete with Confidence. OutCompete Ensign. OutCompete Innovation Series, Vol. III, by Len Kaplan, ISBN 978-0-557-07217-0, Lulu, 2009.
Law of Limitations | FutureMapping: Fundamentals | Laws of Flawless Implementation