Editorial: It’s Time to Get on the Ex Ante Bus

Andrew Updegrove, Partner, Gesmer Updegrove LLP

2/07/2008
(Original Publish Date: 6/1/2006)

It seems intrinsic to human nature that innovation is inevitably followed by ossification. Each new idea is more likely to be challenged than welcomed, but once it becomes incorporated into accepted wisdom, it becomes the new normative referent - what has become fashionable today to call a "paradigm." Both of the personality types that set up this paradox make sense in their own ways - the innovator takes greater risks and, when successful, reaps greater rewards, while the average Joe plays it safe, settles for less, and supports the status quo that has been proven to work in the past, at least well enough.