Oil and Innovation

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Testing Possible Solutions

Even if the 75-ton cap holds, the relief wells should be drilled to completion. Remember, we were continually reminded that the relief well approach had never been used at such depths and pressures. This is an opportunity to find out if having a relief well in place can stop a gusher in extremely deep water. With the relief wells completed, they can be tested to see if they can be plugged, and important information will be in hand for the future.

(By the way, I don't believe for a minute that once the spill is under control that such a productive and expensive well will simply be plugged. If BP wants a grand PR gesture and to keep its investment intact, it could apply the proceeds from that well to Gulf Coast restoration for years into the future.)

It is impossible, of course, to do a full-scale test of every idea. But as with test marketing, ideas for preventing disaster can be developed and tested to a high degree of certainty. Against the backdrop of Top Kill and Top Hat, people laughed at a suggestion to nuke the oil well. But suppose the idea of non-nuclear high explosives fed deep into the well had been carefully considered and tested?

That brings me to applying the innovation process to future disasters of all kinds, a challenge much bigger than just oil spills. Government and industry have a responsibility to figure out what threats beyond oil should be on the priority list; what are the solutions to each one's worst-case scenario; what can be done to ensure the solutions will work; and who is responsible?

When you are in the teeth of a disaster, it is hard to sort out who holds responsibility. Disasters in the public domain—earthquakes, volcanoes, hurricanes, and wars—certainly fall on the public sector and taxpayer dollars. But those in the private sector—oil, nuclear energy, biotechnology, and others where shareholder interest comes first—should hold responsibility for identifying and testing solutions to worst-case scenarios, with a healthy dose of government oversight.

With luck, the oil has been stopped, and eventually—albeit at great expense—nature will reassert itself. But shame on us all if the only lesson we learn is a strategy for plugging broken oil wells in deep water. Applying innovation to disaster planning can lead to much more.

Thomas D. Kuczmarski is founder and president of Kuczmarski & Associates, an innovation consultancy based in Chicago. The author of five books, Kuczmarski has also taught product and service innovation at Northwestern University's Kellogg Graduate School of Management for 29 years.

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