Innovation always begins as insubordination.

🎬 In The Court-Martial of Billy Mitchell, a visionary general is mocked for predicting that an air strike on Pearl Harbor would be the most likely scenario.
People laugh.

They call him alarmist.
They put him on trial.
A few years later, Pearl Harbor unfolds exactly as he described.
He wasn’t a prophet.
He was simply untouched by group conformity.

🎯 Hugo Mercier + Samuel Fitoussi: understanding collective blindness
Researcher Hugo Mercier reminds us that individuals aren’t irrational—groups become irrational when dissent is suppressed.

And in his latest book* on the major errors of intellectuals, Samuel Fitoussi shows what happens when brilliant minds choose conformity over accuracy:
they end up defending the indefensible… and never revisiting their mistakes.
Error rarely comes from a lack of intelligence.
It comes from a lack of dissent.

🧭 Leadership takeaway
• Weak signals speak only to nonconformists.
• Consensus feels safe—but is often blind.
• Innovators are judged first… celebrated later.
Visionaries lose their trials.

But they win History.

#innovation #leadership #management #groupthinking

*https://www.decolonialisme.fr/en/pourquoi-les-intellectuels-se-trompent-de-samuel-fitoussi-les-bonnes-feuilles/