Change Papers: A shared effort to change North Carolina's climate for innovation.

Jeffrey Phillips is a senior consultant with OVO Innovation, an innovation consulting firm in Raleigh, NC. Jeffrey has led innovation projects for a number of Fortune 500 firms and is responsible for the consulting and training services OVO offers its customers.  He is the author of Make us more Innovative, and blogs regularly about innovation at Innovate on Purpose.

By Jeffrey Phillips

One of my favorite strategic analogies is based on the concept of ships and castles. These two artifacts represent the extreme options for “offense” and “defense” in a war, but I think may also provide deeper insight into our focus for innovation in North Carolina.

Castles are defensive in nature, built to defend a specific piece of land – a harbor, or a crossing or a crossroads.  Castles are big, bulky places that project a threat over a specific area, and are meant to protect the people of the area in case of attack.  They are large, hard to build but easy to support and maintain, given enough water and food.  Attackers have to overcome immense obstacles to get what’s inside the castle, but can easily maneuver around the castle if there’s not much of value there.  Castles are fixed, permanent, immovable and anchored in a defensive strategy.  They are conservative in nature and rely on overwhelming power and the ability to resist attack and siege.  Basically the only way to make a castle stronger is to raise or thicken the walls.  The idea is to discourage those who you don’t want to interact with and to selectively choose those who you do want to interact with.

Ships, on the other hand, are aggressive in nature, meant to explore new places and conquer distant lands.  They project power over a far larger area than a castle, but can be defeated by a larger armada or a number of fixed positions.  Ships extend power from a base, and must return to a base periodically for refurbishment and refitting.  Ships require many more craftsmen to build and refit the ships and to sail the ships effectively.  Ships also encounter far more people and cultures than a castle does, so individuals who base their strategies on ships must be nimble and able to interact with a broad array of people.  Ships are by nature mercantile and provide numerous opportunities for interaction.