Chess Strategy & Innovation

The game of chess has long been a synonymous with strategic thinking.  What insights into the path to successful strategic innovation can we learn from chess?  I asked myself this question after reading some posts on Ken Flowers’ Practical Leadership blog exploring management lessons that can be draw from everyday activity.  Here is my list of five key principles of chess that are highly valuable lessons for innovation.  What do you think?

Be active, not passive
In chess if you sit back and wait for the win to appear, you will usually lose.  Your opponent will be able to control the game and build a winning attack.  In the world of innovation, the same principle applies.

If you don’t take control of your innovation agenda, you have no hope of breaking the cycle of accidental innovation—not knowing when, or if, the next great innovation will come.  You will be doomed to wonder why the other guy came up with that great new concept that you missed (think Walkman-iPod).  Take charge of your innovation destiny.  Embraced systematic innovation discipline and develop innovation best practices.

Know your endgame
Each move takes you one step closer to the endgame.  Will you be able to win when you get there?  Chess players understand that you need to understand the principles of the endgame play to be successful.  Consider the position shown above.  Black has an advantage, but the path to converting the advantage to a win is subtle.  Do you see it?  Endgame knowledge not only helps you win in the end game, but this insight can help you pick the right moves along the way.

For innovators this means that you need to know where you want to go if you are going to get there.  Do you want to find a next generation product?  Do you want to find a new market for a core technology?  Do you want to find freedom to operation in the face of a competitive market barrier?  What are the criteria of success that will guide you as you consider alternative solution concepts?  Define you objectives and drive toward your goal.

Tactics are the tools to implement strategy
In chess, you need to consider your strategic goal and then figure out a way to make it happen.  The second part is the domain of tactics.  Chess players have a language of tactics: sacrifice, blockade, pin, diversion, etc.  There is a popular myth that suggests that great players can look at many more possible moves than normal people.  Research has shown this is not true.  The great players look at roughly the same number of moves.  However, their familiarity with tactics and their ability to recognize patterns in positions of the pieces allows them to eliminate many moves from consideration and focus on the more promising ones.

As innovators, we are faced with many different problems to solve.  Different problems yield to different techniques.  It is essential that innovators have a broad array of innovation best practices in their arsenal.  It is equally important that we use these tools for our daily small innovations.  Only in this way, will we have the experience to know which innovation technique will yield us the best result in the shortest time.

Never relax before the game is done
All too often, I have heard a chess player moaning about letting a won game slip away.  Taking the win for granted, the player relaxed and tried to coast to victory.  But their opponent did not want to accept defeat and kept fighting until the situation was reversed.

The same can be seen in the world of product or service innovation.  A company basking in the limelight of success believes they have no need to keep investing in innovation.  Suddenly, a new competitor looms on the horizon with a disruptive innovation that changes the rules of engagement.  The innovation game is never over.  You must always keep reassessing your strategies and reinventing your offerings.  Make yourself obsolete before someone else does it for you.

Be flexible, conditions can turn on a single move
You can’t foresee everything.  A well thought out strategic plan can unravel on a single move when your opponent plays a move you hadn’t considered.  When this happens, you can’t blindly move ahead with the same plan.  You need to step back and reconsider the situation and make appropriate adjustments.

The same is true for companies and innovators.  You must keep abreast of market and technology conditions both within your space and adjacent spaces.  This means you need efficient methods for accessing knowledge from outside of your organization and integrating it into your innovation practices.  Leverage this information to recognize early signs of a change in the tide so you can make course adjustments early.

Comments

[Jeff Lindsay]

Nice post. So, what is the winning move for black? N-KN6+ looks good to me, followed by planting the knight in the corner at KR8. I think it wins a tempo versus other approaches that look drawish.

[James Todhunter]

Yes Jeff, Ng6+ (or N-N6+ in descriptive notation) with the idea of Nh8 (N-R8) is the best move. All other moves draw at best for black with both sides queening. This is an example of positional tactics supporting an endgame strategy. Black is willing to sacrifice the knight as it will draw the white king onto the long diagonal creating a position where white's pawn is one square away from becoming a queen, but cannot because it is pinned by black's newly acquired queen. The rest is simple endgame technique.

[Selina Eun]

Nice post! Pls, wish me luck to win the competition between me and my classmmate.Thank you for this, I learn more...

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Only in this way, will we have the experience to know which innovation technique will yield us the best result in the shortest time.