Start Fast and Slowly Go Faster
Recently I took a group of 22 business women and men on a 7 day escorted innovation safari / trade mission deep into the heart of Israel’s Silicon Valley to discover, explore and find bleeding edge technologies and the people inventing them.
We explored the areas of AI, IoT, Health, Social Entrepreneurship, Blockchain, Mobility, Cybersecurity, FinTech and more and found technology that untangles traffic in real time, truly portable blood testing devices, the potential for invitro fertilisation with a 66% surety, AI and street cameras keeping us safe in real time, water purification systems for use in developing nations; a small device that when inserted into the soil monitors 24/7 soil condition, irrigation, root condition, fertilisation and more and these were only some of the feast of innovation, inventors and thought leaders we were privy to.
But as well as discovering incredible new tech, we also received a far more important gift, an understanding of why a country with only 8 million people, that has been in existence for 70 years and has no natural resources is able to lay claim to an innovation culture that makes 350 of the Fortune 500 companies want to set up offices and R&D departments there; where 700 start ups commence each year and at any time there are over 7000 active start ups many of whom go on to great success and even unicorn status.
Both the technology and the transferable lessons, of how to take a place, a company or a person from what seems like an impossible under-resourced position and turn them into a profitable, world renowned innovation machine are there for the taking and in this 1/2 podcast tour I share with you both the amazing bleeding edge technologies that we discovered and also the innovation lessons we learnt.
So get yourself a cup of coffee, sit back and let me show you around Innovation Central – Israel
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: What does ‘start fast, go faster’ mean in practice?
It means launching with a minimum viable version of a change or initiative, learning from the early results, and using that learning to accelerate iteration. The error most organisations make is designing for perfection before launching, which guarantees they are solving yesterday’s problem with last year’s insight.
Q: Why do organisations move too slowly in the face of change?
PTFA™ — Past Trauma, Future Anxiety. Organisations that have been burned by failed initiatives become risk-averse. They design approval processes that prevent failure by preventing action. The result is a pace of change that is slower than the environment they are operating in.
Q: How do you build velocity into an organisation’s change process?
By separating the high-stakes, high-consequence decisions — which genuinely require careful deliberation — from the low-stakes, highly reversible experiments — which should move fast. Most organisations apply the same approval friction to both. That is the specific governance failure to address.
Q: Can Morris Misel speak about innovation velocity and organisational agility?
Yes. For keynotes on change, leadership, and adaptive organisations, visit morrismisel.com/event-organisers.
Start fast and Slowly Go Faster – the first hand travelogue and story of why and how Israel consistently innovates beyond expectations & how you can do the same.
When signals like Start Fast and Slowly Go Faster emerge, organisations that engage early have the advantage of choosing their response rather than reacting to events. That gap between those who prepared and those who did not is where competitive positioning is actually made or lost.
The most important question is not whether Start Fast and Slowly Go Faster will matter, but how quickly it will matter in your specific context. Leaders benefit most from mapping the ripple effects early — not just the direct impact but the second and third-order consequences that arrive later and hit harder. That is the practical work of foresight.
