Paradigm changes are rare – and when they occur, they can be very disruptive and threatening to those with a significant (financial or emotional) investment in the status quo.
They are also unexpected – almost by definition. ‘Normal’ thinking tends to be analytical and constructive – and we tend to get what we expect to get. Whoever comes up with paradigm-changing thought arrives somewhere he/she never expected to reach.
Change is a spectrum – with paradigm change at one end and the status quo at the other. Just ‘short’ of paradigm change is ‘disruptive innovation’ – often creating ‘winners’ and ‘losers’ by changing some important factor of a process or a whole industry.
If you want to avoid the signifiant disruptive threat that comes at this end of the spectrum, you’d better secure continuous innovation – to give you controlled, stepwise – though still radical – change.
