An article last week in the Wall Street Journal (March 18, 2008) about how drivers are beginning to blindly trust GPS devices caught my eye. The article reports that by letting the devices overrun common sense, these drivers are “getting lost, hitting dead ends, and even swerving into oncoming traffic.” This reminded me of my growing up years in India, a time when my grandparents used to complain about how “digital watches” were not letting us kids learn how to tell the time.

The problem of overtrusting technology, and becoming inflexibly attached to devices and technologies is an old one. Dorothy Leonard in her Wellsprings of Knowledge wrote more than ten years ago about “core rigidities” which are the twin side of “core capabilities”, arguing that the core strengths of the organization are simultaneously core weaknesses. An organization derives competitive advantage from its core capabilities now, but is unable to extract itself from them and do other things when there is a need.

An innovative organization must recognize this need to remain flexible, which is why I argue that ISmarts is essential to develop and sustain in any organization that seeks to be innovative.