ABSTRACT
An incongruity is a discrepancy, a dissonance, between what is and what ‘ought’ to be, or between what is and what everybody assumes it to be. We may not understand the reason for it; indeed, we often cannot fi gure it out. Still, an incongruity is a symptom of an opportunity to innovate. It bespeaks an underlying ‘fault’, to use the geologist’s term. Such a fault is an invitation to innovate. It creates an instability in which quite minor efforts can move large masses and bring about a restructuring of the economic or social confi guration. Incongruities do not, however, usually manifest themselves in the fi gures or reports executives receive and pay attention to. They are qualitative rather than quantitative.
