The Death of Innovation and Why We Stay Stuck in Place

A theme, or a conversation topic, that almost always comes up when friends in Padang meet up with friends returning from the diaspora is, “why is Padang still stuck the same way,” or in another form, “Padang hasn’t changed, even after xx years.”

Usually this remark comes from people who have seen the outside world and then compare it with Padang, which perhaps feels like it has stayed the same. No skyscrapers, no jaw-dropping flyovers, and a whole list of other things that might leave you in awe. Yes, it really has stayed the same.

Over the past month I have been digging into references on Organizational Stagnation, and this is where I think the answer lies for why we stay stuck, or why a country or an institution stays stuck.

In the context of why Padang stays stuck, or even why our country stays stuck, there are a few common threads we can look at together.

Comfort Zone and Status Quo

Of course people enjoy being in a comfort zone. It is, after all, comfortable, pleasant, calm, peaceful. But the comfort-zone phase can sometimes lull you into complacency.

Most of those who stay in the comfort zone do so because they do not want that comfort to be taken away by some innovation, or even by simply trying out new things.

By nature, most of us are like this: we tend to avoid trying new things because they come with so much discomfort and uncertainty.

Without trying new things, there is no innovation, and so here we are, stuck in place.

Lack of Psychological Safety

In Padang, the culture that erodes psychological safety is the culture of cimeeh (mockery, ridicule). This is incredibly common in our society: whenever someone tries to do something new or something different, they immediately become the target of mockery and ridicule.

When there is no sense of safety around trying new things, this is where people start to be afraid to create, afraid to put their ideas forward, and in the end innovation grinds to a halt.

This also answers why creative workers from Padang, or West Sumatra in general, or even in the context of the country at large, are more successful elsewhere: because the environment there is supportive.

In the context of Padang, if you tried to list these people, the list could get really long 😌.

Busy Exploiting, Forgetting to Explore

I have come across this factor in the context of business and enterprise in Padang and West Sumatra. So many entrepreneurs get trapped in the comfort zone, feeling like they have already made it, with decent revenue, forgetting to explore new things, and in the end their businesses get disrupted.

The most recent example we can still recall is the uproar of calls to shut down TikTok Shop, brought on by the many traders who were late to adopt the technology.

When the technology first appeared they were too lazy to try exploring it, and then once they were hit by the impact they started trying, but by then it was all too late, because it was the ones who tried early on who captured the traffic.

This also happened to me back when I was at infoSumbar. Here, starting from government agencies, their adoption of social media was low; they were comfortable with the old ways, which had proven to work, and they forgot to explore.

infoSumbar came in bringing disruption, Citizen Journalism, which made the process of getting information or news about events faster because it came straight from the source, sent through social media, verified, and then posted.

Success/Competency Trap

This is the disease of many companies once they grow big. After they become big, the patterns and methods that have proven to work sometimes end up being the very thing that keeps the company from trying anything new.

The reasoning goes: the old way still works, sloppy packaging still generates revenue, no need for social media because the store is still crowded with visitors, no need for TikTok live because customers still come in person, and a whole list of other excuses.

These excuses stem from the success of the old ways, which makes people lazy, or worse, unwilling to try anything new.

I once heard a story during a sharing session in one of the cities in West Sumatra. The organizers from the relevant agency told me at the time that many traders there initially did not want to upgrade their packaging, because they felt their revenue was still doing just fine.

Until, eventually, a similar MSME from the neighboring city started to upgrade their packaging, their own revenue took a hit, and they began to complain.

Conclusion

I actually read these points while learning about Organizational Stagnation, but I think these points are in fact relevant for answering—even if only as a hypothesis—why we, as a region, as institutions, and even as a country, stay stuck in place.

And unfortunately, the solution cannot be one person at a time. We can, of course, only change ourselves and the people around us so that we do not end up in Stagnation.

Because it is not only organizations and institutions that can stagnate; we can too, as individuals, if we get trapped in the points above.