DAY 1 – Shift Happens

“Change is hot” says Dr. Anat Lechner, clinical associate professor of management and organizations at New York University’s Stern School of Business.

“Complexity and change keeps three of four CEOs up at night,” she added. That’s why we’re focusing this discussion on paradigm shifts. A paradigm is the way we organize a concept such that it becomes almost unconscious. We don’t challenge it anymore – so it CAN become a trap. When issues start piling up that can’t be explained by or solved by the old paradigm a paradigm shift is forced. The life cycle of the industry will shift how radical a shift is needed. In a declining industry – radical is needed. Everything is up in the air.

The rest of Dr. Lechner’s presentation (and a workshop that followed) focused on four questions that she invited us to ask ourselves so that we can better understand and prepare for a new paradigm:

­- Synergy – bundling resources in new ways (synergy is difficult to imitate)
­- Consumer involvement / customization – How do we involve consumers in creating the new paradigm?
- ­Connect / community – How can we bring consumers together in sharing community
- ­High tech / high touch – How can we leverage high tech and still deliver a strong emotional component?

Warning that the biggest challenges to paradigm shifts are denial, resistance and incompetence, she encouraged ToyCon attendees to choose “courage over inertia.” Courage, she said, is for those who choose to change from old paradigm to new paradigm early in its development.

So this blogger is left to summarize: When “shift happens” then “change is good.”