In my experience, innovation is not something you choose: it happens to you, when a concrete problem refuses to be solved by the usual methods. And whoever carries it forward inside a large organisation always meets the same four obstacles. They are recurring, structural and partly predictable forces — and precisely for that reason, they can be crossed. The acronym comes from the Italian names of the forces.
The four forces
Hostility. The aversion — almost never frontal — of those who stand to lose something from change: power, habits, entrenched positions. It targets people more than ideas, and it is defused with three levers: sponsorship, buy-in, and public visibility of results. → Latent Hostility
Resistance. The most underrated force, because it does not push back: it absorbs. The system welcomes the innovation, redefines it in its own terms and metabolises it until nothing changes any more. It smiles in meetings and carries on as before. → Resistance Doesn't Push Back: It Absorbs · → The Archetypes of Resistance
Complexity. A large system multiplies connections, rules and actors: no gear lives alone, and every intervention touches balances nobody can see. It is the force that makes technically perfect projects fail. → The Mechanical Watch
Anxiety. The most personal one: public exposure, the isolation of being the only one who sees the whole picture, the fear that everything will vanish at the next change of leadership. In controlled doses it helps; chronic, it paralyses the ability to decide. → The Anxiety of the Public-Sector Innovator
How to use it
The model works first of all as a preventive reading grid: at the start of a transformation project, asking where the four forces will show up — who stands to lose, which routines will absorb the change, which interdependencies are unmapped, where the person leading is most exposed — turns unexpected obstacles into project constraints. The forces cannot be eliminated: they are crossed, with the tools of the journey.
Frequently asked questions
What does O.R.C.A. stand for?
It is the acronym — from the Italian — of Hostility (Ostilità), Resistance, Complexity and Anxiety: the four forces anyone trying to innovate within a complex organisation meets, without fail.
What is the model for?
For recognising obstacles in advance. The four forces are recurring, structural and partly predictable: whoever sets off knowing what they will meet can get through them instead of being overwhelmed.
Where does it come from?
From transformation projects at INPS — the Sirio design system, the Institute's rebranding — and it is formulated in the book Innovare nella Pubblica Amministrazione (McGraw Hill, 2025, in Italian).