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Speaker 1: Pushkin. As the night draws in and the fire blazes

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Speaker 1: on the hearth. We warn the children by telling them stories.

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Speaker 1: The hobbit teaches them not to leave the path. But

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Speaker 1: my stories are for the education of the grown ups,

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Speaker 1: and my stories are all true. I'm Tim Harford. Gather

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Speaker 1: close and listen to my cautionary tales. Augustine sixteen, the

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Speaker 1: Western Front in the First World War. The opposing armies

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Speaker 1: had dug into entrenched positions stretching five hundred miles across

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Speaker 1: France and Belgium from the mountains to the sea. Barbed

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Speaker 1: Wire and machine guns meant that it was all but

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Speaker 1: impossible for either side to advance. The Noble cavalry, long

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Speaker 1: the most celebrated force in the army, were utterly useless.

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Speaker 1: It was a murderous stalemate, but a few miles behind

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Speaker 1: the Allied lines, hundreds of people, both civilians and British

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Speaker 1: and French army officers, had brought picnics and were waiting

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Speaker 1: patiently for a demonstration of a remarkable invention. It was

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Speaker 1: a pleasantly warm day and a quiet spot if you

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Speaker 1: tuned out the artillery of the somb Battlefield thundering away

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Speaker 1: beyond the horizon. Then another noise began to cut across

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Speaker 1: that distant rumbling, the chug of a powerful engine, the

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Speaker 1: relentless metallic clattering of caterpillar tracks carrying twenty eight tons

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Speaker 1: of cannon and armor plating at a walking pace. Everyone

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Speaker 1: was talking and chatting when slowly came into sight the

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Speaker 1: first tank I ever saw. Not a monster, but a

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Speaker 1: very graceful machine with beautiful lines, lozin shaped, but with

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Speaker 1: two clumsy looking wheels behind it. That's major JFC Fuller.

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Speaker 1: He's the central figure in our story. He's thirty seven,

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Speaker 1: a small man with a neatly trimmed mustache. His hairline

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Speaker 1: is retreating over his crown and beginning to march down

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Speaker 1: the back of his head. He could pass for a

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Speaker 1: butler and a costume drama, but beneath the surface of

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Speaker 1: JFC Fuller is an inner radicalism. Not long ago, he'd

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Speaker 1: been friends with the notorious occultist Aleister Crowley. Crowley called

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Speaker 1: himself a wizard. One newspaper called him the wickedest man

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Speaker 1: in the world. Cavorting with self proclaimed warlocks is not

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Speaker 1: the typical social pastime of a British Army officer, but

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Speaker 1: as we'll see that isn't even the strangest thing about

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Speaker 1: the life and the fate of JFC Fuller. Fuller sees

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Speaker 1: instantly that this new machine, the tank, is the solution

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Speaker 1: to the basic tactical problem of the war of how

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Speaker 1: to cross mud and trenches and barbed wire against a

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Speaker 1: storm of bullets. Nothing else has worked, not even the

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Speaker 1: novel atrocity of poison gas. But the tank will do

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Speaker 1: the job, and JFC Fuller can see that with absolute clarity.

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Speaker 1: The tank is the unknown X in the equation of victory.

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Speaker 1: All that is necessary is to get the people to

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Speaker 1: see the problem. But getting other people to see the

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Speaker 1: problem was well, perhaps that was the problem. You're listening

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Speaker 1: to another cautionary tale. The British officer class simply adored

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Speaker 1: a more traditional way of waging war, one involving stirrups

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Speaker 1: and swords and big, beautiful horses. Here's one general explaining

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Speaker 1: what he regarded as the obvious disadvantage of the tank.

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Speaker 1: Look into the face of individuals who deal with the

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Speaker 1: horse and the faces of the men who deal with

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Speaker 1: the machine. You will see in the letter what I

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Speaker 1: might almost call a lequ of intelligence. You keep up

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Speaker 1: the high standard of intelligence in the Man from his

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Speaker 1: association with the horse. If Major Fuller was going to

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Speaker 1: persuade the British Army to embrace the tank, it would

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Speaker 1: be a long struggle. At least he managed to get

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Speaker 1: himself in the right place. He applied to transfer to

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Speaker 1: the newly formed Tank Corps. When he got there, he

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Speaker 1: was given a blank sheet of paper and ordered to

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Speaker 1: think through what might be done with these new fangled machines.

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Speaker 1: That was the easy bit. Fuller soon formed a clear

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Speaker 1: strategic vision for tank warfare. He proposed that tanks could

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Speaker 1: attack the German Army's brain, the string of German headquarters

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Speaker 1: miles behind the front line. New faster tanks were being designed.

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Speaker 1: They could roll across the trenches and be on the

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Speaker 1: German command posts in an hour. Full as attack would

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Speaker 1: come from nowhere. Air support would disrupt German road and

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Speaker 1: rail travel. Bad news confuses, confusion stimulates panic. His idea

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Speaker 1: was dubbed Plan nineteen nineteen. By striking suddenly at the

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Speaker 1: German command Plan nineteen nineteen would cause the German Army

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Speaker 1: to disintegrate. It would be the winning of the war

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Speaker 1: in a single battle, but the war ended anyway before

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Speaker 1: Fuller's astonishing idea could be tested, and it became the

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Speaker 1: most famous unused plan in military history, according to his

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Speaker 1: biographer Brian holden Reid. But it's not entirely true to

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Speaker 1: say that it was unused. It was used to great

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Speaker 1: effect twenty years later by the Germans in a lightning war,

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Speaker 1: occupying much of Europe. In a matter of weeks, JFC

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Speaker 1: Fuller had invented Blitzkrieg and the British Army had wasted

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Speaker 1: his idea. If the spirit of this story feels faintly familiar,

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Speaker 1: there's a reason echoes of it have been repeated again

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Speaker 1: and again since the British Army stuffed full As plans

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Speaker 1: for Blitzkrieg into a desk draw In nineteen seventy the

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Speaker 1: photocopying giant Xerox established the Palo Alto Research Center or Park.

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Speaker 1: Xerox Park then developed the modern personal computer, an achievement

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Speaker 1: which Bill Gates of Microsoft and Steve Jobs of Apple

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Speaker 1: observed with great interest. Xerox still makes photocopiers. In nineteen

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Speaker 1: seventy five, a twenty four year old engineer named Steve

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Speaker 1: Sasson built the world's first digital camera, the invention that

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Speaker 1: was to destroy Eastman Kodak, the photography giant. What's strange

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Speaker 1: is that Steve Sasson was working for Kodak. In nineteen

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Speaker 1: ninety nine, Sony launched one of the world's first digital

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Speaker 1: music players, the memory stick Walkman. Sony was armed with

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Speaker 1: the iconic Walkman brand, the world's best digital engineers, and

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Speaker 1: Sony music stars from Bob Dylan to Celine Dion. All

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Speaker 1: they succeeded in doing was paving the way for Apple's iPod.

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Speaker 1: And back in nineteen eighteen, the British had the best

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Speaker 1: tanks in the world, a clear vision of how to

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Speaker 1: use them, and in Fuller, one of the world's best

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Speaker 1: military strategists. Yet by the late nineteen thirties, the British

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Speaker 1: had conceded technical and tactical superiority to Adolf Hitler's New Army.

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Speaker 1: When this sort of thing happens so often, you have

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Speaker 1: to ask yourself if it's really a coincidence the tank,

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Speaker 1: the personal computer, the digital camera, the iPod. Why do

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Speaker 1: some idears slip out of the grasp of incumbents then

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Speaker 1: thrive in the hands of upstarts. JFC Fuller once began

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Speaker 1: an essay with an aphorism about pressing ahead when you're

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Speaker 1: in a leading position. Race horses don't pull up at

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Speaker 1: the winning post. Perhaps that's true, but organizations do pull

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Speaker 1: up at the winning post. Within touching distance of victory,

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Speaker 1: they slow down and allow others to overtake them. For

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Speaker 1: a glimpse of what Fuller was up against, consider the

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Speaker 1: Battle of Cambrai late in nineteen seventeen. The British Army

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Speaker 1: had finally decided, prodded on by Fuller, to use four

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Speaker 1: hundred tanks to lumber across German lines. The tanks could

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Speaker 1: only reach a top speed of four miles per hour,

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Speaker 1: but that was fast enough. They swept aside the bar wire,

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Speaker 1: shrugged off the machine gun fire, and bridged the German trenches.

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Speaker 1: Our machine guns fire incessantly, unsandvisful and cornaide fires added.

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Speaker 1: But he must admit all our efforts that stops his

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Speaker 1: tanks are ineffective. We can do nothing against him. Without exaggeration,

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Speaker 1: some of the German infantry seemed to be off their

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Speaker 1: heads with fright. It was impossible to obtain any clear

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Speaker 1: idea of the situation. There was no chain of command

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Speaker 1: and no orders. It was a stunning tactical success, but

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Speaker 1: the success was squandered. The British high command decided that

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Speaker 1: the gap that the tanks had opened should be exploited

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Speaker 1: by the cavalry. A great deal of clattering, galloping and shouting,

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Speaker 1: and a lot of our medieval horse soldiers came charging

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Speaker 1: down the street. The Germans eventually regrouped and drove back

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Speaker 1: the British assault. The opportunity was wasted, and not just

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Speaker 1: the tactical opportunity of that day at Cambrai, but the

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Speaker 1: strategic opportunity to reshape warfare itself. Some of the infantry

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Speaker 1: who had been there understood what had so nearly been achieved.

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Speaker 1: Some of us had lost faith in the tanks, but

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Speaker 1: we had been there knew that one tank at the

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Speaker 1: right time, at the right place, could have avoided the

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Speaker 1: slaughter of two or three hundred men on that damp,

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Speaker 1: chilly morning. Fuller understood two before the gunsmoke had cleared.

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Speaker 1: He was scribbling away furiously at his desk at Tank

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Speaker 1: Core Headquarters, sketching out what had been discovered and what

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Speaker 1: should be done next. Those scribblings would, over the following

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Speaker 1: months become Plan nineteen nineteen. He understood that the success

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Speaker 1: at Cambrai was just a glimpse of what might be possible.

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Speaker 1: The British High Command did not. There are several explanations

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Speaker 1: for these miss opportunities, but most of us don't get

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Speaker 1: past the first and most obvious. People are idiots. Now

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Speaker 1: we can get back to some real soldier ing, so

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Speaker 1: remarked one senior officer to Fuller at the end of

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Speaker 1: the First World War, as though defending Britain in an

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Speaker 1: existential struggle had been a frivolous distraction from tending to

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Speaker 1: noble horses, bright buckles and shiny boots. A year after

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Speaker 1: the war had ended, Fuller's essay, the one that begins

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Speaker 1: with the reference to race horses, won the gold medal

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Speaker 1: from a prestigious think tank, the Royal United Services Institute.

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Speaker 1: A general burst into his office, what have you done?

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Speaker 1: Next year he wrote another strategically visionary essay, this time

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Speaker 1: overturning the ideas of naval warfare, and he won a

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Speaker 1: second gold medal. It is rather amusing as a soldier

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Speaker 1: having beaten the sailor at his own job. Others were

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Speaker 1: not amused. The top brass complained Fuller never received his

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Speaker 1: second gold medal and was forbidden from publishing his second essay.

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Speaker 1: The Army also blocks publication of Fuller's books for several years.

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Speaker 1: They were regarded as annoying and insubordinate. The most brilliant

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Speaker 1: ideas from the most brilliant strategist were seen as less

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Speaker 1: an opportunity than as a threat. The top man in

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Speaker 1: the British Army, Field Marshal Sir Archibald Montgomery massing Bird,

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Speaker 1: didn't read Fuller's most celebrated book. It would only annoy me.

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Speaker 1: He responded to the threat of Nazi militarization by increasing

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Speaker 1: the amount spent on hay and other food for horses

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Speaker 1: by a factor of ten. Cavalry officers would be provided

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Speaker 1: with a second horse. Tank officers would get a horse too.

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Speaker 1: As I say, people are idiots, and it's not just

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Speaker 1: the British Army who seemed guilty of idiocy. When Steve

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Speaker 1: Jobs visited Xerox Park in nineteen seventy nine, he couldn't

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Speaker 1: contain himself when he saw a Windows and mouse interface

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Speaker 1: for the first time. Why aren't you doing anything with this?

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Speaker 1: This is the greatest thing that is revolutionary. If Jobs

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Speaker 1: had been teleported into the British War Office between the wars.

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Speaker 1: He might well have said the same thing, But there

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Speaker 1: is something about the idiot theory that feels too glib.

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Speaker 1: Consider Xerox Park. How is it there's a corporation could

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Speaker 1: be smart enough to establish such a superb research center

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Speaker 1: but then failed to take advantage. Was Kodak really run

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Speaker 1: by idiots in the nineteen seventies, Was Sony in the

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Speaker 1: nineteen nineties. No, these organizations stumbled for a reason. Management

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Speaker 1: theorists have a word for the phenomenon. They call it disruption.

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Speaker 1: By disruption, they refer to an innovation that changes the

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Speaker 1: world in such a way that if successful organizations keep

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Speaker 1: on doing what made them successful, they're short to fail.

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Speaker 1: But why don't organizations adapt? After all, they usually have

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Speaker 1: the resources, the experience, and the reputation to outpace any upstarts.

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Speaker 1: Code acted, so did Xerox, so did Sony, and so

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Speaker 1: did the British Army. But for some reason they get stuck.

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Speaker 1: More horses more. Hey, we've already explored the idiot hypothesis,

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Speaker 1: but there is a different theory of what goes wrong.

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Speaker 1: It's a famous theory too in management circles. It comes

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Speaker 1: from Clayton Christensen of Harvard Business School. More than twenty

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Speaker 1: years ago, Christensen published The Innovator's Dilemma. It told a

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Speaker 1: compelling story about how new technologies creep up from below.

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Speaker 1: These technologies are flawed or underdeveloped at first, so they

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Speaker 1: ownt appeal to existing customers, but they find niches and

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Speaker 1: slowly they improve while the incumbents are looking elsewhere, and

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Speaker 1: one day the new technology is good enough to destroy

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Speaker 1: the business of the old giants. Christensen's disruption theory is

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Speaker 1: an elegant one, but there are plenty of examples that

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Speaker 1: just don't fit. Think about why Xerox didn't exploit that

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Speaker 1: cutting edge research at Xerox Park. Not because the mouse

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Speaker 1: and the graphic user interface are a low end competitor

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Speaker 1: to the photocopier. They aren't. They're from a different universe.

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Speaker 1: The iPod didn't sneak up on Sony from below, and

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Speaker 1: Kodak not only developed the digital camera, it made a

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Speaker 1: good income from the digital camera patents. These organizations weren't

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Speaker 1: slow to see the change coming. They often saw earlier

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Speaker 1: than anyone else what lay ahead, yet they were unable

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Speaker 1: to put together the right response. So it was a

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Speaker 1: century ago with the tank. Nobody could seriously call the

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Speaker 1: tank a low end competitor to the horse, and nobody

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Speaker 1: could claim that the British Army hadn't noticed the tank.

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Speaker 1: The British were well ahead of their rivals. So we've

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Speaker 1: set aside the idiot hypothesis and we've examined Clayton Christiansen's

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Speaker 1: theory of disruption. It's one of the most celebrated ideas

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Speaker 1: in management. But if we want to understand why the

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Speaker 1: British Army lost its advantage in tank warfare, our cautionary

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Speaker 1: tale needs a new theory. In nineteen ninety, a young

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Speaker 1: economist named Rebecca Henderson published an article that presented a

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Speaker 1: different view of why it's hard to do new things

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Speaker 1: in old organizations. The relevant word is the boring one organizations.

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Speaker 1: What Rebecca Henderson pointed out was that these organizations don't

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Speaker 1: stumble because a new technology is radical. They stumble if

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Speaker 1: it requires well a different type of organization. No matter

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Speaker 1: how brilliant and how new an innovation is, if it

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Speaker 1: slips snugly into the organizational chart that already exists, the

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Speaker 1: dominant organization of yesterday has a good chance of being

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Speaker 1: the dominant organization of tomorrow. Let me give you an example. IBM,

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Speaker 1: the giant of old fashioned mainframe corporate computing. IBM is

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Speaker 1: a survivor. It was top dog from the age of

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Speaker 1: the punch card machine all the way through to the

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Speaker 1: nineteen eighties. Everything changed in computing over those decades, everything

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Speaker 1: except the fact that IBM was in charge. This was

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Speaker 1: because the organizational challenge of making and selling a room

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Speaker 1: sized mainframe computer to a bank in the nineteen seventies

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Speaker 1: wasn't very different from the organizational challenge of making and

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Speaker 1: selling a room sized mechanical tabulating machine to a bank

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Speaker 1: in the nineteen thirties. But then computers crossed a threshold.

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Speaker 1: They became small enough and cheap enough that they'd be

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Speaker 1: bought by small businesses and hobbyists and even parents. Now

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Speaker 1: IBM faced a very different challenge. They had a corporate

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Speaker 1: army ready to negotiate multimillion dollar contracts with multinational procurement departments.

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Speaker 1: What were they supposed to do when a computer became

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Speaker 1: a household appliance, something more like a blender. IBM did

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Speaker 1: create a strong business in personal computers, but that business

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Speaker 1: was openly aggravating the rest of the organization bypassing IBM's

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Speaker 1: distribution division and cutting IBM's components division out of the loop.

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Speaker 1: In the end, IBM's internal politics asserted itself and the

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Speaker 1: personal computer division was sold off. It just didn't fit.

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Speaker 1: What had flummoxed IBM was not the pace of technological change.

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Speaker 1: It had been dealing with technological change just fine for

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Speaker 1: more than half a century. IBM's problem was that its

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Speaker 1: old organizational structures and systems had become a liability, not

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Speaker 1: an advantage. Rebecca Henderson calls this sort of technological change

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Speaker 1: an architectural innovation, and an architectural innovation demands a new

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Speaker 1: organizational structure, which means that old organizations face an uphill struggle.

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Speaker 1: Those organizations may have changed the world that when they're

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Speaker 1: forced to change themselves, that's a harder challenge. Before the

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Speaker 1: First World War, armies had been organized for centuries around

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Speaker 1: cavalry and infantry. The mounted troops offered mobility, the foot

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Speaker 1: soldiers strength in numbers and the ability to dig in defensively.

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Speaker 1: Three new technologies, artillery, barbed wire, and the machine gun

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Speaker 1: shaped the battlefield of the First World War. They changed everything.

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Speaker 1: Everything that is, except the way armies were organized, and

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Speaker 1: that was because the armies didn't need to change barbed

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Speaker 1: wire and machine guns were used to reinforce infantry positions.

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Speaker 1: The big guns of the artillery could support either cavalry

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Speaker 1: or infantry from a distance. The old hierarchies were preserved.

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Speaker 1: But then the tanks clanked slowly into view. And the

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Speaker 1: tanks were different. In some ways, they were like cavalry

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Speaker 1: because their strength lay partly in their ability to move quickly.

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Speaker 1: In other ways, they fitted with the infantry, fighting alongside

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Speaker 1: foot soldiers. Or perhaps tanks were a new kind of

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Speaker 1: military capability. Entirely, this isn't some weird philosophical argument, like

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Speaker 1: whether a tomato is a vegetable or a fruit. It's

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Speaker 1: very practical. I spoke to a modern day general about this.

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Speaker 1: He told me that the tank problem has happened again

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Speaker 1: and again. After the tank, it was the helicopter. Was

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Speaker 1: it a kind of plane? Should it be run by

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Speaker 1: the air force? Is it more of a navy thing?

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Speaker 1: Or is its role to support the tanks? Now the

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Speaker 1: same sort of question is arising about drones. These seem

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Speaker 1: like silly questions, but they aren't. They're fundamental from the

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Speaker 1: tank to the helicopter to the drone. Someone in the

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Speaker 1: organization actually needs to own the new technology, otherwise it

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Speaker 1: will fail. So where to put the tank? Tank warfare

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Speaker 1: has been grafted onto a system it is intended to destroy.

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Speaker 1: One possibility was that because the tank offered new capabilities,

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Speaker 1: it should be in a new kind of unit. Infantry

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Speaker 1: will become first a subsidiary and later a useless arm

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Speaker 1: on all ground over which tanks can move. The army

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Speaker 1: of the last war was pot bellied and b brained.

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Speaker 1: That was JFC Fuller's view. You can just imagine the

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Speaker 1: reception he got for that. The problem with setting up

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Speaker 1: new specialized tank units was that those units would be

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Speaker 1: seen as a grab for power and resources within the army.

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Speaker 1: A new tank regiment would have no allies and no

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Speaker 1: historical tradition. So an alternative was to place the tanks

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Speaker 1: with cavalry regiments as the modern mobile strike force. That

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Speaker 1: made some sense too, and eventually tanks did end up

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Speaker 1: in the old cavalry regiments. But the cavalry were never

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Speaker 1: really organized around the concept of mobility. They were organized

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Speaker 1: around horses. The cavalry officer loved his horse. His regiment

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Speaker 1: was devoted to feeding and caring for the horses, why

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Speaker 1: should he welcome the usurper tank. It's easy to laugh

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Speaker 1: at these hide bound officers with their shiny buttons and

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Speaker 1: their big mustaches, rejecting the tank in favor of their

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Speaker 1: beloved horses. But the more you examine the difficulty of

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Speaker 1: embracing architectural innovation, the more the problem looks like something

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Speaker 1: really fundamental. Xerox Park developed or assembled most of the

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Speaker 1: features of a user friendly personal computer, but Xerox didn't

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Speaker 1: have the organizational architecture to manufacture and market such a computer.

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Speaker 1: Xerox did much better when Park developed the laser printer.

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Speaker 1: The laser printer was like artillery or the machine gun

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Speaker 1: for zero. It was an exciting new technology, but it

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Speaker 1: wasn't a challenge to the organization's architecture. The personal computer

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Speaker 1: was like the tank. One challenge could easily be met,

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Speaker 1: the other was insurmountable. The politics of change are never easy.

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Speaker 1: Since an architectural innovation requires a painful organizational overhaul, it's

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Speaker 1: a task that needs skillful diplomacy. JFC Fuller was no diplomat.

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Speaker 1: He had been annoying senior officers since before the tank existed.

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Speaker 1: For example that the start of the Great War, a

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Speaker 1: British general had been concerned that if the Germans invaded,

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Speaker 1: British counterattacks would be hampered by all the sheep on

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Speaker 1: the roads of rural England. He told Major Fuller to

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Speaker 1: sort it out. All are some signs stating sheep must

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Speaker 1: not use this road, sir. What if the less well

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Speaker 1: educated sheep are unable to read them? Fuller was just

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Speaker 1: a little too fond of his own cleverness. Remember it

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Speaker 1: was Fuller who had clearly sketched out a vision for

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Speaker 1: using tanks for lightning attacks on the enemy's command structure.

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Speaker 1: It was Fuller who had won a pair of gold

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Speaker 1: medals for his strategic essays. But his prize winning writing

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Speaker 1: was also dotted with spiky critiques of the army's commanders.

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Speaker 1: Once he testified in front of a committee of senior officers,

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Speaker 1: how many hours a day can a tank run? Thus

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Speaker 1: far we have never exceeded twenty four. For Fuller, this

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Speaker 1: was part of the game. He reflected, I knew I

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Speaker 1: should create enemies, Yet without a sturdy opposition, it is

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Speaker 1: most difficult to explode deep rooted absurdities. In other words,

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Speaker 1: Fuller thought that the best way to argue with a

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Speaker 1: stupid person was to tell him to his face that

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Speaker 1: he was stupid. I'm not sure he was quite right

355
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Speaker 1: about that. People could see that Fuller was smart, creative,

356
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Speaker 1: perhaps even brilliant, but nobody had a higher opinion of

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Speaker 1: him than he did of himself. And let's be honest,

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Speaker 1: Fuller could be pretty weird. As I told you, It'd

359
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Speaker 1: been a disciple of the country's most infamous magician, Alister Crowley.

360
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Speaker 1: Crowley was into dark rituals and sex magic. He was

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Speaker 1: such a cult figure that his image later ended up

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Speaker 1: on the cover of the Beatles Sergeant Pepper album. After

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Speaker 1: a while, he and Fuller fell out, But you can

364
00:27:48,530 --> 00:27:53,770
Speaker 1: still hear echoes of the strange spiritualistic beliefs in Fuller's arguments,

365
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Speaker 1: even when he was lecturing in formal settings about the

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Speaker 1: warfare of the future. I saw a fleet operating against

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Speaker 1: a fleet not at sea, but on land. Cruisers and

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Speaker 1: battleships and destroyers. My astral form follows one side, and

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00:28:12,010 --> 00:28:17,530
Speaker 1: I notice that it is indifficulty. It cannot see. There

370
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Speaker 1: appears an aeroplane and gives its sight my astral form.

371
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Speaker 1: What's he talking about? Yet? Despite the hocus pocus. Fuller

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Speaker 1: was handed a unique opportunity to advance the cause of

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Speaker 1: tanks in the British Army. He was appointed commander of

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Speaker 1: a new experimental mechanized Force in December nineteen twenty six.

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Speaker 1: There was just one problem. He would have to step

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Speaker 1: away from his single minded focus on the tank and

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Speaker 1: also take command of an infantry brigade and a garrison.

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Speaker 1: That would mean taking responsibility for managing people as well

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Speaker 1: as creating ideas. In short, Fuller would have to get

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Speaker 1: into the organizational headaches that surround any architectural innovation. He

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Speaker 1: balked and wrote to the head of the Army, demanding

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Speaker 1: that these other duties be carried out by someone else

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Speaker 1: so that he could focus on developing tactics for mechanized warfare. Eventually,

384
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Speaker 1: Fuller threatened to resign, The position was awarded to someone else,

385
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Speaker 1: and Fuller's career never recovered. Architectural innovations can seem too

386
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Speaker 1: much like hard work, even for those most committed to

387
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Speaker 1: seeing them succeed, and as we'll see, Fuller's petulance was

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Speaker 1: to cost him and the British Army dearly. This has

389
00:30:02,010 --> 00:30:06,050
Speaker 1: been a story about how JFC Fuller failed to persuade

390
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Speaker 1: the British Army to reorganize itself around the tank. Full

391
00:30:10,250 --> 00:30:12,250
Speaker 1: as part in It will soon be coming to a

392
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Speaker 1: painful end. But there is another side to this tragic tale,

393
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Speaker 1: a story of how other organizations seemed to find it

394
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Speaker 1: so easy to take and use these ideas the personal computer,

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00:30:25,610 --> 00:30:29,290
Speaker 1: the memory stick, walkman, the digital camera, and of course

396
00:30:29,610 --> 00:30:34,010
Speaker 1: the tank and the idea of blitzkrieg. If the inventors

397
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Speaker 1: of these ideas, Xerox, Sony, Kodak found it so hard

398
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Speaker 1: to use them, why did their rivals seem to find

399
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Speaker 1: it so easy. The answer is that it's sometimes easier

400
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Speaker 1: to build an organization from the ground up than to

401
00:30:50,730 --> 00:30:56,170
Speaker 1: disassemble and reassemble what's already there. The treaty signed after

402
00:30:56,210 --> 00:30:59,930
Speaker 1: the First World War all but abolished the German Army.

403
00:31:00,570 --> 00:31:04,250
Speaker 1: It was scarcely more than a collection of officers ahead

404
00:31:04,410 --> 00:31:10,130
Speaker 1: without a body, and tanks were strictly forbidden. The British

405
00:31:10,170 --> 00:31:13,890
Speaker 1: Army had been victorious, and it's hard to reorganize a

406
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Speaker 1: victorious organization. The Germans had no organization to get in

407
00:31:18,850 --> 00:31:24,250
Speaker 1: the way, no status quo to defend. German officers paid

408
00:31:24,370 --> 00:31:28,250
Speaker 1: close attention to what Fuller and his fellow tank enthusiasts

409
00:31:28,250 --> 00:31:32,730
Speaker 1: were writing. They also closely watched British experiments with the

410
00:31:32,810 --> 00:31:37,170
Speaker 1: tank when Adolf Hitler came to power in nineteen thirty

411
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Speaker 1: three and dramatically expanded the German army secretly at first

412
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Speaker 1: he encountered a German military that had been preparing for

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Speaker 1: tank warfare for fourteen years. Early in nineteen thirty nine,

414
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Speaker 1: Hitler celebrated his fiftieth birthday with a parade of Germany's

415
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Speaker 1: newly reconstructed army through the streets of Berlin. One Englishman

416
00:32:06,410 --> 00:32:10,370
Speaker 1: was there to see it. For three hours, a completely

417
00:32:10,410 --> 00:32:16,570
Speaker 1: mechanized and motorized army roared past the fur Yes, JFC

418
00:32:16,770 --> 00:32:21,210
Speaker 1: Fuller was there. Indeed, he was a guest of honor

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00:32:21,610 --> 00:32:26,730
Speaker 1: at Hitler's birthday celebrations. After quitting the British Army in

420
00:32:26,890 --> 00:32:33,210
Speaker 1: bitterness and frustration, he turned to fascism, supporting authoritarian anti

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Speaker 1: Semitic parties both in Britain and overseas. And of course

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00:32:38,930 --> 00:32:41,970
Speaker 1: he felt that there was one army that had really

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Speaker 1: understood and embraced his ideas, that of Adolf Hitler. After

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Speaker 1: the parade, Major General Fuller met Hitler himself in a

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Speaker 1: receiving line of the chancellery. The Furer grasped Fuller's hand.

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Speaker 1: I carfer sievar and mit idenkindenzer Frieden. I hope you

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00:33:06,250 --> 00:33:11,130
Speaker 1: were pleased with your children, your excellency. They have grown

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Speaker 1: up so quickly that I no longer recognize them. In

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Speaker 1: nineteen seventeen, Fuller had been planning the defeat of the

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Speaker 1: German army. In nineteen thirty nine, he was schmoozing with

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Speaker 1: Adolf Hitler himself. It's an awful little detail of history.

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Speaker 1: Oh and that piece of flattery that Fuller didn't recognize

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Speaker 1: the tanks anymore. It wasn't really true, was it. He'd

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Speaker 1: been describing the War of the future for two decades,

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Speaker 1: and the War of the future was about to arrive.

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Speaker 1: Thirteen months later, on Adolf Hitler's orders, German tanks rolled

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Speaker 1: through Belgium, Holland and France. A French pilot called Saint

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Speaker 1: Exupere flew over the battlefield. If you recognize the name,

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Speaker 1: then yes, it's the same guy who wrote The Little Prince.

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Speaker 1: Saint Exupere described what had happened to the French and

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Speaker 1: British army. Is these armored readers bring irreparable consequences in

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Speaker 1: the territories they have blitzed. An army may still appear intact,

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Speaker 1: but he does seems to be an army who once

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Speaker 1: there was an organism. Now this is merely a quantity

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Speaker 1: of disconnected selves. Compare that to JFC Fuller's explanation. Without

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Speaker 1: an active and directive brain, an army is reduced to

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Speaker 1: a mob. Germany defeated France, Belgium and the Netherlands in

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Speaker 1: just forty six days, sending their battered British allies scrambling

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Speaker 1: back across the English Channel. Blitzkrieg had worked exactly as

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Speaker 1: Fuller had described. His superiors may not have wanted to listen,

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Speaker 1: but JFC Fuller, that brilliant to strange little man, had

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Speaker 1: seen it all coming. You've been listening to Cautionary Tales,

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Speaker 1: and if you want to know more about what I

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Speaker 1: think about new technologies, I have written an entire book,

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Speaker 1: fifty inventions that shaped the modern Economy. You might like it.

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Speaker 1: Cautionary Tales is written and presented by me Tim Harford.

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Speaker 1: Our producers are Ryan Dilley and Marilyn Rust. The sound

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Speaker 1: designer and mixer was Pascal Wise. Who also composed the

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Speaker 1: amazing music. Starring in this season are Alan Cumming, Archie Panjabi,

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Speaker 1: Toby Stevens and Russell Tovey, alongside Enzo Chillente, Ed Gochen, Melody, Gutteridge,

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Speaker 1: Mass Siam and Rowe and rufus Wright and introducing Malcolm Gladwell.

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Speaker 1: Thanks to the team at Pushkin Industries, Ulia Barton, Heather Fame,

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Speaker 1: Mia LaBelle, Carlie Migliori, Jacob Weisberg and of course the

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Speaker 1: mighty Malcolm Gladwell. And thanks to my colleagues at The

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Speaker 1: Financial Times