On Pirates, Privateers And Innovation

Alex Osterwalder, best-selling author and inventor of the Business Model Canvas, hates it when innovators refer to themselves as pirates. This is because pirates originally operated outside the law and if they were ever caught they were killed. In one sense he is right. When you are working in a large company, innovation succeeds when intrapreneurs collaborate with other key functions. So operating like a true pirate is not really an option. But being a pirate is super cool and it seems such an apt description of innovators. Even Steve Jobs thought it was better to be a pirate than to join the navy. He raised the pirate flag for the Macintosh team and inspired them to do great things. I have often found it difficult to reconcile the need for innovators to be a bit rebellious and the importance of collaboration with others in the company for innovation to succeed. So how do we reconcile these two competing ideas? You Don’t Want To Be A Pirate, You Want To Be An Explorer I was struggling with this question until one day I was having dinner with Shachaf Snir , an Isreali innovator based in Tel Aviv. He […]

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