Why breakthrough innovation often needs to start with rebellion

In the late 1920’s, Einstein and Bohr were engaged in a series of famous debates about the future of physics, in which Einstein insisted that “God does not play dice with the universe.” “Einstein, stop telling God what to do,” Bohr retorted. Einstein lost the argument and his career as a productive scientist was largely finished after that.

Ostensibly, the debate was about quantum mechanics and whether what we can know about subatomic particles is absolute or merely a function of probability. But at a deeper level it challenged a basic philosophical principle that had been around since before Plato or Aristotle: that essence precedes existence. 

If essence precedes existence, then there is a plan for us, we have a destiny. But if God plays dice with the universe—the possibility Einstein suggested—then we are free to make our own plans and pursue our own path. There is no order and no script waiting to be followed, no hidden blueprint. The only way forward is to rebel, to pursue new possibilities and create meaning in our own way.

The Stockdale Paradox And Confronting An Uncaring Universe

Admiral James Stockdale was undoubtedly an American hero. The highest-ranking United States military officer in the “Hanoi Hilton” prisoner-of-war camp during the height of the Vietnam War, he was brutally and repeatedly tortured. Yet he never broke the faith. Instead, he became a symbol of resistance and an inspiration to his men. 

When asked about the ones who faltered, Stockdale said: “The optimists. Oh, they were the ones who said, ‘We’re going to be out by Christmas.’ And Christmas would come, and Christmas would go. Then they’d say, ‘We’re going to be out by Easter.’ And Easter would come, and Easter would go. And then Thanksgiving, and then it would be Christmas again. And they died of a broken heart.”

That, in essence, is the Stockdale Paradox: you need to accept the underlying truth of an uncaring universe before you can assert your power over it. Once you fall into the trap of believing that some external force will come to save you or that destiny will somehow act in your favor, you’re cooked. 

Acceptance is not surrender. It’s how you begin to master and transcend your circumstances.

To wit, when asked about how he endured 27 years in prison, Nelson Mandela often cited the poem Invictus as his source of strength. The author, William Ernest Henley, wrote it while recuperating from having his leg amputated at the age of 16, placing his faith not in fate or providence, but in what he called “my unconquerable soul.”

That’s what the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre meant when he coined the phrase, “existence precedes essence.” We need to accept our circumstances as they are, but determine their meaning for ourselves. Or, as Mandela often quoted from Invictus: “I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul.”

Opening Yourself To  Possibility

Einstein was operating on faith. He firmly believed that there was an underlying order to the universe, that essence preceded existence. Bohr, on the other hand, was willing to follow the data wherever it led and accept it at face value. He didn’t really understand how it worked—nobody did at the time—but he accepted what the evidence suggested.

At issue were two ideas in particular. The first was quantum superposition, the principle that particles can exist in a strange combination of multiple states at the same time. The second was quantum entanglement, which holds that the behavior of one particle can be perfectly correlated with another, even when that behavior is inherently unpredictable, which Einstein dismissed as “spooky action at a distance.”

These are hard ideas to accept because they run counter to what we experience in normal life. Everyday physical objects don’t simply appear and disappear, or start jetting off in one direction for no particular reason. Einstein, who certainly did not lack imagination, could never accept them and devised an experiment, called the EPR paradox, to disprove them.

Yet before long these improbable ideas started showing up in practical technologies, such as transistors and lasers. Today, we live in a world of the visceral abstract, where ideas few understand govern our lives in ways we scarcely notice. The quantum effects of superposition and entanglement make possible everything from smartphones to grocery checkout systems. 

The EPR experiment, incidentally, was successfully carried out at IBM in 1993 and paved the way for a new era of quantum computing that’s only now beginning to unfold.

Existential Rebellion

Einstein believed in the essence of an ordered universe. As a scientific, but spiritual man, that’s what was primary for him. Bohr, on the other hand, embraced the world as he found it. Sure, a universe governed by probabilities rather than certainties was unsettling, but it’s where all of the evidence pointed. He established existence before trying to discern essence.  

That is the nature of what the French writer Albert Camus called existential rebellion. He compared the human condition to Sisyphus, the mythical Greek king condemned to roll a boulder uphill, only to see it roll back down, for eternity. Incredibly, Camus imagines Sisyphus, returning to his labors at the foot of the mountain, as happy, having found meaning in his task.

While Einstein began with certain assumptions about the universe, Bohr pursued truth without knowing in advance what it would imply. The practical breakthroughs that arose from his work, and that of his colleagues, were still decades away. Yet he persevered, continuing his journey regardless of where it would take him. 

Many great ventures begin inauspiciously. In the beginning, IBM was selling meat slicers and time clocks. Sony started out as a failed rice cooker manufacturer. Hewlett-Packard began by making quirky gadgets like automatic toilet flushers and a machine that shocked people to help them lose weight. 

Like Sisyphus, the founders of those companies needed to find meaning in the mundane. As Kevin Ashton, who came up with the idea for RFID chips, explained in How to Fly A Horse: “Creation is a long journey,” he wrote, “where most turns are wrong and most ends are dead. The most important thing creators do is work. The most important thing they don’t do is quit.”

Innovation Needs Exploration

When Steve Jobs came up with the idea for a device that would hold “a thousand songs in my pocket,” it wasn’t technically feasible. There was simply no hard drive available that could fit that much storage into that little space. Nevertheless, within a few years, a supplier developed the necessary technology and the iPod was born.

Notice how the bulk of the profits went to Apple, which designed the product and the experience, and relatively little to the supplier that developed the technology that made it possible. That’s because the technology for developing hard drives was very well understood. If it hadn’t been that supplier, another would have eventually developed what Jobs needed. The iPod, however, was something new, different, and uniquely suited to its time. 

To explore, you first need to come to terms with your own ignorance. It has little to do with intelligence or diligence. Einstein is revered today because he broke new ground. But he was diminished because of where he was not willing to go and became, in the words of Robert Oppenheimer, “a landmark, not a beacon.”

That is why innovation requires exploration. If you don’t explore, you won’t discover. If you don’t discover, you won’t invent. And if you don’t invent, you will be disrupted. But to be an effective explorer, you need to put your assumptions aside. Purpose isn’t something you start with, it’s what you find on your journey. 

And yet, to venture out, with no idea what you will find, requires existential rebellion, because without knowing what you will find, you need the journey itself to sustain you. Not all who wander are lost.