0:15

Pushkin. As

0:23

the night draws in and the fire

0:25

blazes on the hearth. We

0:27

warn the children by telling them stories.

0:30

The hobbit teaches them not to

0:32

leave the path. But my

0:35

stories are for the education

0:37

of the grown ups, and my

0:39

stories are all true. I'm

0:42

Tim Harford. Gather close

0:45

and listen to my cautionary tales.

1:07

Augustine sixteen,

1:10

the Western Front in the First World

1:12

War. The opposing armies

1:14

had dug into entrenched positions

1:17

stretching five hundred miles across

1:19

France and Belgium from the mountains

1:21

to the sea. Barbed Wire

1:24

and machine guns meant that it was all

1:26

but impossible for either side to advance.

1:29

The Noble cavalry, long

1:32

the most celebrated force in the army,

1:34

were utterly useless. It

1:36

was a murderous stalemate, but

1:42

a few miles behind the Allied lines,

1:44

hundreds of people, both civilians

1:47

and British and French army officers,

1:49

had brought picnics and were waiting

1:51

patiently for a demonstration of a remarkable

1:54

invention. It was a pleasantly

1:56

warm day and a quiet spot

1:58

if you tuned out the artillery of the

2:01

somb Battlefield thundering away

2:03

beyond the horizon. Then

2:06

another noise began to cut across

2:08

that distant rumbling, the chug

2:11

of a powerful engine, the relentless

2:14

metallic clattering of caterpillar

2:16

tracks carrying twenty eight tons

2:19

of cannon and armor plating

2:21

at a walking pace. Everyone

2:24

was talking and chatting when slowly

2:26

came into sight the first tank I ever

2:28

saw. Not a monster, but

2:31

a very graceful machine with beautiful

2:34

lines, lozin shaped,

2:36

but with two clumsy looking wheels behind

2:39

it. That's

2:41

major JFC Fuller. He's

2:44

the central figure in our story. He's

2:46

thirty seven, a small man with

2:48

a neatly trimmed mustache. His

2:50

hairline is retreating over his crown and

2:53

beginning to march down the back of his head.

2:55

He could pass for a butler and a costume

2:58

drama, but beneath the surface

3:00

of JFC Fuller is an inner

3:03

radicalism.

3:05

Not long ago, he'd been friends with the

3:07

notorious occultist Aleister Crowley.

3:10

Crowley called himself a wizard. One

3:13

newspaper called him the wickedest

3:16

man in the world. Cavorting

3:18

with self proclaimed warlocks is

3:20

not the typical social pastime

3:22

of a British Army officer, but as

3:25

we'll see that isn't even

3:27

the strangest thing about the life

3:29

and the fate of JFC Fuller.

3:35

Fuller sees instantly that

3:37

this new machine, the tank, is

3:40

the solution to the basic tactical

3:42

problem of the war of how to cross

3:45

mud and trenches and barbed wire

3:47

against a storm of bullets. Nothing

3:51

else has worked, not even the novel

3:53

atrocity of poison gas. But

3:56

the tank will do the job, and

3:58

JFC Fuller can see

4:00

that with absolute clarity.

4:04

The tank is the unknown X in

4:06

the equation of victory. All

4:08

that is necessary is to get the people to

4:10

see the problem. But getting

4:12

other people to see the problem

4:15

was well, perhaps that

4:17

was the problem. You're listening

4:20

to another cautionary tale.

4:42

The British officer class simply

4:45

adored a more traditional way of waging

4:47

war, one involving stirrups

4:49

and swords and big, beautiful

4:51

horses. Here's one general

4:54

explaining what he regarded as the obvious

4:56

disadvantage of the tank. Look into

4:59

the face of individuals who

5:01

deal with the horse and the faces

5:03

of the men who deal with the machine. You

5:05

will see in the letter what I might almost

5:08

call a lequ of intelligence. You

5:11

keep up the high standard of intelligence

5:13

in the Man from his association

5:16

with the horse. If

5:18

Major Fuller was going to persuade the British

5:20

Army to embrace the tank, it

5:22

would be a long struggle. At

5:24

least he managed to get himself in the right place.

5:27

He applied to transfer to the newly formed

5:30

Tank Corps. When he got there, he

5:32

was given a blank sheet of paper and ordered

5:34

to think through what might be done with these

5:36

new fangled machines. That

5:39

was the easy bit. Fuller soon

5:41

formed a clear strategic vision for

5:44

tank warfare. He proposed that

5:46

tanks could attack the German Army's

5:48

brain, the string of German

5:51

headquarters miles behind the front

5:53

line. New faster tanks

5:55

were being designed. They could roll across

5:58

the trenches and be on the German command

6:00

posts in an hour. Full

6:02

as attack would come from nowhere.

6:05

Air support would disrupt German

6:07

road and rail travel. Bad news

6:09

confuses, confusion stimulates

6:12

panic. His idea was dubbed

6:15

Plan nineteen nineteen.

6:18

By striking suddenly at the German command

6:20

Plan nineteen nineteen would cause

6:23

the German Army to disintegrate.

6:25

It would be the winning of the war

6:28

in a single battle, but

6:34

the war ended anyway before Fuller's

6:37

astonishing idea could be tested, and

6:39

it became the most famous unused

6:42

plan in military history, according

6:44

to his biographer Brian holden Reid.

6:48

But it's not entirely true to say that

6:50

it was unused. It was

6:52

used to great effect twenty

6:55

years later by the Germans

6:57

in a lightning war, occupying much

6:59

of Europe. In a matter of weeks, JFC

7:03

Fuller had invented Blitzkrieg

7:07

and the British Army had wasted his

7:09

idea. If

7:13

the spirit of this story feels faintly

7:15

familiar, there's a reason echoes

7:18

of it have been repeated again and again

7:20

since the British Army stuffed full

7:22

As plans for Blitzkrieg into a desk

7:24

draw In nineteen seventy

7:27

the photocopying giant Xerox established

7:30

the Palo Alto Research Center

7:32

or Park. Xerox Park

7:34

then developed the modern personal computer,

7:37

an achievement which Bill Gates

7:40

of Microsoft and Steve

7:42

Jobs of Apple observed

7:44

with great interest. Xerox

7:47

still makes photocopiers. In

7:50

nineteen seventy five, a twenty

7:52

four year old engineer named Steve Sasson

7:54

built the world's first digital

7:56

camera, the invention that was to destroy

7:59

Eastman Kodak, the photography

8:01

giant. What's strange

8:04

is that Steve Sasson was working

8:06

for Kodak. In

8:09

nineteen ninety nine, Sony launched

8:12

one of the world's first digital music

8:14

players, the memory stick Walkman.

8:17

Sony was armed with the iconic Walkman

8:19

brand, the world's best digital

8:21

engineers, and Sony music

8:23

stars from Bob Dylan to Celine Dion.

8:27

All they succeeded in doing was

8:29

paving the way for Apple's iPod.

8:32

And back in nineteen eighteen,

8:35

the British had the best tanks in

8:37

the world, a clear vision of

8:39

how to use them, and in Fuller,

8:42

one of the world's best military strategists.

8:45

Yet by the late nineteen thirties,

8:47

the British had conceded technical and

8:50

tactical superiority to

8:52

Adolf Hitler's New Army. When

8:56

this sort of thing happens so often, you

8:58

have to ask yourself if it's really a coincidence

9:02

the tank, the personal computer,

9:04

the digital camera, the iPod.

9:07

Why do some idears slip

9:10

out of the grasp of incumbents then

9:12

thrive in the hands of upstarts.

9:16

JFC Fuller once began an essay

9:18

with an aphorism about pressing ahead

9:20

when you're in a leading position. Race horses

9:23

don't pull up at the winning post. Perhaps

9:25

that's true, but organizations

9:28

do pull up at the winning post. Within

9:31

touching distance of victory, they

9:33

slow down and allow others to overtake

9:35

them.

9:44

For a glimpse of what Fuller was up against,

9:47

consider the Battle of Cambrai late

9:50

in nineteen seventeen. The

9:52

British Army had finally decided,

9:54

prodded on by Fuller, to use four

9:56

hundred tanks to lumber across

9:59

German lines. The

10:01

tanks could only reach a top speed

10:03

of four miles per hour, but that

10:06

was fast enough. They swept

10:08

aside the bar wire, shrugged

10:10

off the machine gun fire, and bridged

10:12

the German trenches. Our machine

10:15

guns fire incessantly, unsandvisful

10:17

and cornaide fires added. But he

10:19

must admit all our efforts that stops his tanks

10:21

are ineffective. We can

10:24

do nothing against him. Without

10:27

exaggeration, some of the German

10:29

infantry seemed to be off their heads

10:31

with fright. It was impossible

10:33

to obtain any clear idea of the situation.

10:35

There was no chain of command and no orders.

10:40

It was a stunning tactical success,

10:43

but the success was squandered.

10:45

The British high command decided that the gap

10:48

that the tanks had opened should be exploited

10:51

by the cavalry. A

10:53

great deal of clattering, galloping

10:55

and shouting, and a lot of our medieval

10:58

horse soldiers came charging down

11:00

the street. The Germans eventually

11:02

regrouped and drove back the

11:04

British assault. The opportunity

11:07

was wasted, and not just

11:09

the tactical opportunity of that day at

11:11

Cambrai, but the strategic opportunity

11:14

to reshape warfare itself.

11:17

Some of the infantry who had been there understood

11:20

what had so nearly been achieved.

11:22

Some of us had lost faith in the tanks, but

11:25

we had been there knew that one tank

11:28

at the right time, at the right place, could

11:30

have avoided the slaughter of two or three hundred

11:33

men on that damp, chilly morning. Fuller

11:36

understood two before

11:38

the gunsmoke had cleared. He was

11:40

scribbling away furiously at his

11:42

desk at Tank Core Headquarters,

11:44

sketching out what had been discovered and

11:47

what should be done next. Those

11:49

scribblings would, over the following months

11:52

become Plan nineteen nineteen.

11:55

He understood that the success

11:57

at Cambrai was just a glimpse

11:59

of what might be possible. The British

12:02

High Command did not. There

12:06

are several explanations for these miss

12:09

opportunities, but most of us don't

12:11

get past the first and most obvious.

12:14

People are idiots. Now

12:16

we can get back to some real soldier

12:18

ing, so remarked one senior

12:21

officer to Fuller at the end of the

12:23

First World War, as though defending

12:25

Britain in an existential struggle

12:28

had been a frivolous distraction from

12:30

tending to noble horses, bright buckles

12:33

and shiny boots. A year

12:35

after the war had ended, Fuller's

12:37

essay, the one that begins with the reference

12:40

to race horses, won the gold

12:42

medal from a prestigious think tank, the

12:44

Royal United Services Institute.

12:48

A general burst into his office, what

12:50

have you done? Next year

12:52

he wrote another strategically visionary

12:55

essay, this time overturning

12:57

the ideas of naval warfare, and

12:59

he won a second gold medal. It

13:02

is rather amusing as a soldier having

13:04

beaten the sailor at his own job.

13:08

Others were not amused. The top

13:10

brass complained Fuller never

13:12

received his second gold medal and was

13:14

forbidden from publishing his second essay.

13:17

The Army also blocks publication

13:19

of Fuller's books for several years. They

13:22

were regarded as annoying and insubordinate.

13:25

The most brilliant ideas from

13:27

the most brilliant strategist were

13:30

seen as less an opportunity than

13:32

as a threat. The top

13:34

man in the British Army, Field Marshal

13:37

Sir Archibald Montgomery massing

13:39

Bird, didn't read Fuller's most

13:41

celebrated book. It would only annoy

13:43

me. He responded to the

13:45

threat of Nazi militarization by

13:48

increasing the amount spent on hay and other

13:50

food for horses by a factor

13:52

of ten. Cavalry officers

13:54

would be provided with a second horse. Tank

13:57

officers would get a horse too. As

14:00

I say, people are idiots,

14:04

and it's not just the British Army who

14:06

seemed guilty of idiocy.

14:09

When Steve Jobs visited Xerox Park

14:11

in nineteen seventy nine, he couldn't

14:13

contain himself when he saw a Windows

14:16

and mouse interface for the first time.

14:18

Why aren't you doing anything with this?

14:20

This is the greatest thing that is revolutionary.

14:23

If Jobs had been teleported into

14:25

the British War Office between the wars.

14:28

He might well have said the same thing, But

14:31

there is something about the idiot

14:33

theory that feels too glib. Consider

14:37

Xerox Park. How is

14:39

it there's a corporation could be smart

14:41

enough to establish such a superb

14:43

research center but then failed

14:46

to take advantage. Was Kodak

14:48

really run by idiots in the nineteen seventies,

14:51

Was Sony in the nineteen nineties. No,

14:55

these organizations stumbled

14:57

for a reason. Management

15:02

theorists have a word for the phenomenon.

15:05

They call it disruption. By

15:08

disruption, they refer to an innovation

15:10

that changes the world in such a way that

15:13

if successful organizations keep

15:15

on doing what made them successful,

15:18

they're short to fail. But why

15:20

don't organizations adapt? After

15:23

all, they usually have the resources,

15:25

the experience, and the reputation to

15:27

outpace any upstarts. Code

15:30

acted, so did Xerox, so did

15:32

Sony, and so did the British

15:34

Army. But for some reason they

15:36

get stuck. More horses

15:39

more. Hey, we've

15:42

already explored the idiot hypothesis,

15:45

but there is a different theory of what goes wrong.

15:47

It's a famous theory too in management

15:49

circles. It comes from Clayton

15:52

Christensen of Harvard Business School. More

15:54

than twenty years ago, Christensen

15:56

published The Innovator's Dilemma.

16:00

It told a compelling story about how

16:02

new technologies creep up from below.

16:05

These technologies are flawed or underdeveloped

16:08

at first, so they ownt appeal to existing

16:10

customers, but they find

16:12

niches and slowly they improve

16:15

while the incumbents are looking elsewhere,

16:17

and one day the new technology

16:19

is good enough to destroy the business of

16:22

the old giants. Christensen's

16:25

disruption theory is an elegant one,

16:27

but there are plenty of examples that just don't

16:29

fit. Think about why Xerox

16:32

didn't exploit that cutting edge research

16:34

at Xerox Park. Not because

16:36

the mouse and the graphic user interface

16:39

are a low end competitor to the photocopier.

16:42

They aren't. They're from a different

16:44

universe. The iPod didn't

16:46

sneak up on Sony from below, and

16:48

Kodak not only developed the digital

16:50

camera, it made a good income from the

16:52

digital camera patents. These

16:55

organizations weren't slow to see the

16:57

change coming. They often saw earlier

16:59

than anyone else what lay ahead,

17:02

yet they were unable to put together

17:05

the right response. So

17:07

it was a century ago with the tank.

17:10

Nobody could seriously call the tank

17:12

a low end competitor to the horse,

17:15

and nobody could claim that the British

17:17

Army hadn't noticed the tank. The British

17:20

were well ahead of their rivals. So

17:23

we've set aside the idiot hypothesis

17:25

and we've examined Clayton Christiansen's

17:27

theory of disruption. It's one

17:30

of the most celebrated ideas in

17:32

management. But if

17:34

we want to understand why the British

17:36

Army lost its advantage in tank warfare,

17:39

our cautionary tale needs

17:42

a new theory. In

17:52

nineteen ninety, a young economist

17:55

named Rebecca Henderson published

17:57

an article that presented a different

17:59

view of why it's hard to do new

18:01

things in old organizations.

18:04

The relevant word is the boring

18:06

one organizations.

18:09

What Rebecca Henderson pointed out was

18:11

that these organizations don't stumble

18:14

because a new technology is radical.

18:17

They stumble if it requires well

18:19

a different type of

18:21

organization. No matter

18:23

how brilliant and how new an innovation

18:26

is, if it slips snugly

18:28

into the organizational chart that already

18:31

exists, the dominant organization

18:33

of yesterday has a good chance

18:36

of being the dominant organization of

18:38

tomorrow. Let

18:40

me give you an example. IBM,

18:43

the giant of old fashioned

18:45

mainframe corporate computing. IBM

18:48

is a survivor. It was top

18:50

dog from the age of the punch card machine

18:53

all the way through to the nineteen eighties. Everything

18:56

changed in computing over those decades,

18:58

everything except the fact that

19:01

IBM was in charge. This

19:03

was because the organizational challenge

19:06

of making and selling a room sized

19:08

mainframe computer to a bank in the

19:10

nineteen seventies wasn't very

19:12

different from the organizational challenge

19:15

of making and selling a room sized

19:17

mechanical tabulating machine to a

19:19

bank in the nineteen thirties. But

19:22

then computers crossed a threshold.

19:25

They became small enough and cheap

19:27

enough that they'd be bought by small

19:30

businesses and hobbyists and

19:32

even parents. Now

19:34

IBM faced a very different challenge.

19:37

They had a corporate army ready to negotiate

19:40

multimillion dollar contracts with

19:42

multinational procurement departments. What

19:45

were they supposed to do when a computer

19:47

became a household appliance, something

19:50

more like a blender. IBM

19:54

did create a strong business in personal

19:56

computers, but that business was

19:58

openly aggravating the rest of the

20:01

organization bypassing IBM's

20:03

distribution division and cutting IBM's

20:05

components division out of the loop. In

20:08

the end, IBM's internal

20:10

politics asserted itself and

20:12

the personal computer division was sold off.

20:15

It just didn't fit. What

20:20

had flummoxed IBM was

20:22

not the pace of technological change.

20:24

It had been dealing with technological change

20:27

just fine for more than half a century.

20:30

IBM's problem was that its

20:32

old organizational structures

20:34

and systems had become a liability,

20:37

not an advantage. Rebecca

20:40

Henderson calls this sort of technological

20:43

change an architectural

20:45

innovation, and an architectural

20:47

innovation demands a new organizational

20:50

structure, which means that old

20:52

organizations face an uphill

20:55

struggle. Those organizations

20:57

may have changed the world that when

20:59

they're forced to change themselves, that's

21:02

a harder challenge. Before

21:07

the First World War, armies had

21:09

been organized for centuries around

21:11

cavalry and infantry. The

21:14

mounted troops offered mobility, the

21:17

foot soldiers strength in numbers

21:19

and the ability to dig in defensively. Three

21:23

new technologies, artillery, barbed

21:25

wire, and the machine gun shaped

21:28

the battlefield of the First World War.

21:30

They changed everything. Everything

21:33

that is, except the way armies

21:36

were organized, and that was because

21:38

the armies didn't need to change

21:41

barbed wire and machine guns were

21:43

used to reinforce infantry positions.

21:46

The big guns of the artillery could support

21:49

either cavalry or infantry

21:51

from a distance. The old hierarchies

21:54

were preserved. But

21:56

then the tanks clanked slowly

21:59

into view. And the tanks

22:01

were different. In some ways, they

22:04

were like cavalry because their strength lay

22:06

partly in their ability to move quickly.

22:09

In other ways, they fitted with the infantry,

22:12

fighting alongside foot soldiers. Or

22:14

perhaps tanks were a new kind of military

22:17

capability. Entirely, this

22:19

isn't some weird philosophical

22:22

argument, like whether a tomato is a vegetable

22:24

or a fruit. It's very practical.

22:27

I spoke to a modern day general about this.

22:29

He told me that the tank problem has happened

22:32

again and again. After the

22:34

tank, it was the helicopter. Was it

22:36

a kind of plane? Should it be run by the air

22:38

force? Is it more of a navy thing? Or

22:41

is its role to support the tanks? Now

22:43

the same sort of question is arising

22:46

about drones. These seem

22:48

like silly questions, but they

22:50

aren't. They're fundamental

22:53

from the tank to the helicopter to

22:55

the drone. Someone in

22:57

the organization actually needs

22:59

to own the new technology, otherwise

23:03

it will fail. So

23:08

where to put the tank? Tank

23:10

warfare has been grafted onto a

23:12

system it is intended to destroy.

23:14

One possibility was that because the tank

23:17

offered new capabilities, it should

23:19

be in a new kind of unit. Infantry

23:22

will become first a subsidiary

23:24

and later a useless arm on all

23:26

ground over which tanks can move.

23:29

The army of the last war was pot

23:32

bellied and b brained.

23:34

That was JFC Fuller's view.

23:37

You can just imagine the reception he got for that.

23:41

The problem with setting up new

23:43

specialized tank units was

23:45

that those units would be seen as a grab

23:47

for power and resources within the

23:49

army. A new tank regiment

23:51

would have no allies and no

23:54

historical tradition. So

23:56

an alternative was to place the tanks

23:59

with cavalry regiments as the

24:01

modern mobile strike force. That

24:03

made some sense too, and eventually

24:06

tanks did end up in the old cavalry

24:08

regiments. But the cavalry were

24:10

never really organized around the concept

24:13

of mobility. They were

24:15

organized around horses. The

24:17

cavalry officer loved his horse.

24:19

His regiment was devoted to feeding

24:21

and caring for the horses, why

24:24

should he welcome the usurper tank.

24:27

It's easy to laugh at these hide

24:29

bound officers with their shiny buttons

24:31

and their big mustaches, rejecting

24:34

the tank in favor of their beloved horses.

24:37

But the more you examine the difficulty

24:39

of embracing architectural innovation,

24:42

the more the problem looks like something

24:45

really fundamental. Xerox

24:49

Park developed or assembled most

24:51

of the features of a user friendly personal

24:53

computer, but Xerox

24:56

didn't have the organizational architecture

24:58

to manufacture and market such a

25:00

computer. Xerox did much better

25:03

when Park developed the laser printer. The

25:05

laser printer was like artillery

25:07

or the machine gun for zero. It was an

25:09

exciting new technology, but

25:12

it wasn't a challenge to the organization's

25:14

architecture. The personal computer was

25:17

like the tank. One challenge

25:19

could easily be met, the

25:21

other was insurmountable.

25:31

The politics of change are never

25:33

easy. Since an architectural

25:36

innovation requires a painful organizational

25:39

overhaul, it's a task that needs

25:41

skillful diplomacy. JFC

25:44

Fuller was no diplomat. He

25:47

had been annoying senior officers since

25:49

before the tank existed. For

25:51

example that the start of the Great War,

25:53

a British general had been concerned that if

25:56

the Germans invaded, British counterattacks

25:58

would be hampered by all the sheep on the roads

26:01

of rural England. He told Major

26:03

Fuller to sort it out. All

26:06

are some signs stating sheep must

26:08

not use this road, sir.

26:11

What if the less well educated sheep are unable

26:14

to read them? Fuller

26:16

was just a little too fond of his own

26:18

cleverness. Remember it

26:20

was Fuller who had clearly sketched out

26:23

a vision for using tanks for lightning

26:25

attacks on the enemy's command structure.

26:27

It was Fuller who had won a pair of gold

26:29

medals for his strategic essays. But

26:32

his prize winning writing was also

26:34

dotted with spiky critiques of the army's

26:37

commanders. Once he testified

26:39

in front of a committee of senior officers,

26:42

how many hours a day can a tank

26:44

run? Thus far we have never

26:46

exceeded twenty four. For

26:49

Fuller, this was part of the game.

26:51

He reflected, I knew I should

26:54

create enemies, Yet without

26:56

a sturdy opposition, it is most difficult

26:58

to explode deep rooted

27:00

absurdities. In other words,

27:03

Fuller thought that the best way to argue

27:05

with a stupid person was to tell

27:07

him to his face that he was stupid.

27:10

I'm not sure he was quite right about that. People

27:13

could see that Fuller was smart, creative,

27:16

perhaps even brilliant, but nobody

27:19

had a higher opinion of him than he did

27:21

of himself. And

27:23

let's be honest, Fuller could

27:25

be pretty weird. As I told

27:28

you, It'd been a disciple of the country's

27:30

most infamous magician, Alister

27:32

Crowley. Crowley was into

27:35

dark rituals and sex magic.

27:37

He was such a cult figure that his image

27:40

later ended up on the cover of the Beatles

27:42

Sergeant Pepper album.

27:44

After a while, he and Fuller fell

27:47

out, But you can still hear

27:49

echoes of the strange spiritualistic

27:52

beliefs in Fuller's arguments, even

27:54

when he was lecturing in formal settings

27:56

about the warfare of the future. I

27:59

saw a fleet operating against

28:01

a fleet not at sea, but on

28:03

land. Cruisers and battleships

28:06

and destroyers. My

28:09

astral form follows one side,

28:11

and I notice that it is indifficulty.

28:14

It cannot see. There

28:17

appears an aeroplane and

28:19

gives its sight my

28:23

astral form. What's he

28:25

talking about? Yet?

28:29

Despite the hocus pocus. Fuller

28:32

was handed a unique opportunity to advance

28:34

the cause of tanks in the British

28:36

Army. He was appointed commander

28:39

of a new experimental mechanized

28:41

Force in December nineteen

28:43

twenty six. There

28:46

was just one problem.

28:49

He would have to step away from his

28:51

single minded focus on the tank and

28:54

also take command of an infantry

28:56

brigade and a garrison. That

28:59

would mean taking responsibility for managing

29:02

people as well as creating ideas.

29:05

In short, Fuller would have to get

29:07

into the organizational headaches

29:10

that surround any architectural innovation.

29:13

He balked and wrote to the head

29:15

of the Army, demanding that these other

29:18

duties be carried out by someone else

29:20

so that he could focus on developing

29:22

tactics for mechanized warfare.

29:25

Eventually, Fuller threatened

29:27

to resign, The

29:30

position was awarded to someone else,

29:33

and Fuller's career never recovered.

29:37

Architectural innovations can seem

29:39

too much like hard work, even

29:42

for those most committed to seeing

29:44

them succeed, and as

29:46

we'll see, Fuller's petulance

29:49

was to cost him and the British

29:51

Army dearly. This

30:01

has been a story about how JFC

30:04

Fuller failed to persuade the British

30:06

Army to reorganize itself around the

30:08

tank. Full as part in

30:10

It will soon be coming to a painful

30:13

end. But there is another

30:15

side to this tragic tale, a

30:17

story of how other organizations

30:19

seemed to find it so easy to take

30:22

and use these ideas the

30:24

personal computer, the memory stick,

30:26

walkman, the digital camera, and

30:28

of course the tank and the

30:31

idea of blitzkrieg. If

30:33

the inventors of these ideas, Xerox,

30:36

Sony, Kodak found it

30:38

so hard to use them, why

30:41

did their rivals seem to find it

30:43

so easy. The

30:45

answer is that it's sometimes easier

30:47

to build an organization from the ground up

30:50

than to disassemble and reassemble

30:52

what's already there. The

30:54

treaty signed after the First World

30:56

War all but abolished the

30:59

German Army. It was scarcely

31:01

more than a collection of officers ahead

31:04

without a body, and tanks

31:06

were strictly forbidden. The

31:09

British Army had been victorious, and

31:11

it's hard to reorganize a

31:14

victorious organization. The

31:16

Germans had no organization

31:18

to get in the way, no status quo

31:20

to defend. German

31:23

officers paid close attention

31:25

to what Fuller and his fellow tank enthusiasts

31:28

were writing. They also closely

31:30

watched British experiments with the tank

31:33

when Adolf Hitler came to power

31:36

in nineteen thirty three and dramatically

31:39

expanded the German army secretly

31:41

at first he encountered a German

31:43

military that had been preparing

31:46

for tank warfare for fourteen

31:48

years. Early

31:52

in nineteen thirty nine,

31:54

Hitler celebrated his fiftieth

31:56

birthday with a parade of Germany's

31:59

newly reconstructed army

32:02

through the streets of Berlin. One

32:05

Englishman was there to see

32:07

it. For three hours, a

32:09

completely mechanized and motorized

32:12

army roared past the fur Yes,

32:16

JFC Fuller was there. Indeed,

32:19

he was a guest of honor at

32:21

Hitler's birthday celebrations.

32:25

After quitting the British Army in bitterness

32:27

and frustration, he turned

32:29

to fascism, supporting

32:31

authoritarian anti Semitic

32:33

parties both in Britain and

32:36

overseas. And of course

32:38

he felt that there was one army

32:41

that had really understood and

32:43

embraced his ideas, that

32:46

of Adolf Hitler. After

32:50

the parade, Major General

32:52

Fuller met Hitler himself

32:54

in a receiving line of the chancellery. The

32:58

Furer grasped Fuller's

33:00

hand. I carfer sievar

33:02

and mit idenkindenzer Frieden. I

33:05

hope you were pleased with your children,

33:08

your excellency. They have grown

33:11

up so quickly that I no longer

33:13

recognize them. In

33:15

nineteen seventeen, Fuller had

33:17

been planning the defeat of the German

33:19

army. In nineteen thirty nine,

33:22

he was schmoozing with Adolf Hitler

33:24

himself. It's an awful

33:27

little detail of history. Oh

33:29

and that piece of flattery that

33:31

Fuller didn't recognize the tanks anymore.

33:34

It wasn't really true, was it. He'd

33:37

been describing the War of the future

33:39

for two decades, and the

33:41

War of the future was about

33:43

to arrive. Thirteen

33:46

months later, on Adolf

33:48

Hitler's orders, German tanks

33:50

rolled through Belgium, Holland and

33:53

France. A French pilot

33:55

called Saint Exupere flew over

33:57

the battlefield. If you recognize

33:59

the name, then yes, it's

34:02

the same guy who wrote The Little Prince.

34:05

Saint Exupere described what had

34:07

happened to the French and British army. Is

34:10

these armored readers bring

34:12

irreparable consequences

34:15

in the territories they have blitzed.

34:17

An army may still appear intact,

34:21

but he does seems to be an army

34:23

who once there was an organism.

34:26

Now this is merely a quantity

34:29

of disconnected selves. Compare

34:31

that to JFC Fuller's explanation.

34:35

Without an active and directive

34:37

brain, an army is reduced

34:40

to a mob. Germany

34:44

defeated France, Belgium

34:47

and the Netherlands in just forty

34:49

six days, sending their battered

34:52

British allies scrambling back

34:54

across the English Channel. Blitzkrieg

34:58

had worked exactly as

35:00

Fuller had described. His

35:02

superiors may not have wanted to listen,

35:05

but JFC Fuller, that brilliant

35:09

to strange little man, had

35:11

seen it all coming. You've

35:21

been listening to Cautionary Tales,

35:24

and if you want to know more about what I think about new

35:26

technologies, I have written an entire

35:28

book, fifty inventions that

35:30

shaped the modern Economy. You

35:33

might like it. Cautionary

35:35

Tales is written and presented by me Tim

35:38

Harford. Our producers are Ryan

35:40

Dilley and Marilyn Rust. The

35:42

sound designer and mixer was Pascal

35:44

Wise. Who also composed the

35:46

amazing music. Starring

35:49

in this season are Alan Cumming,

35:52

Archie Panjabi, Toby Stevens

35:54

and Russell Tovey, alongside

35:56

Enzo Chillente, Ed Gochen, Melody,

35:59

Gutteridge, Mass Siam and Rowe and rufus

36:02

Wright and introducing Malcolm

36:04

Gladwell. Thanks

36:06

to the team at Pushkin Industries, Ulia

36:09

Barton, Heather Fame, Mia LaBelle,

36:12

Carlie Migliori, Jacob Weisberg

36:14

and of course the mighty Malcolm

36:16

Gladwell. And thanks to my colleagues

36:18

at The Financial Times