Anyone Can Ideate
Yan Chow, MD, MBA
Healthcare Industry Strategist | Intelligent Automation | Leading Digital Transformation | Entrepreneurship
Over two thirds of employees are unengaged or actively disengaged (Gallup, 2014). Most wish they could be anywhere else but at work – for good reasons. A manager might be superb at running a large group, aligning strategy, building political bridges, meeting goals and deadlines, and managing budgets. But at the end of a long day, she or he will be exhausted and stressed from ticking off the required to-dos. Missing is a sense of ownership, autonomy, excitement, creativity. You lose out, and your company loses out.
How can you revitalize your job or personal life and be more valuable to your colleagues? Try introducing new ideas.
In the animated movie Ratatouille, Chef Auguste Gusteau wrote the bestseller "Anyone Can Cook." In the same way, I believe anyone can form new ideas. The neurons may be rusty, but with willing practice anyone can rev them up to bring the power of new ideas to their job, venture, personal life, family, and community.
But you may say, "Don't I need innate talent and creativity to come up with great ideas?" True, great ideas seem to be few and far between. But there is an infinite number of good ideas to be discovered, some of which turn out to be great. Don't let conventional wisdom discourage you from creative thinking.
Recently I had a chance to re-read The Five Faces of Genius by Annette Moser-Wellman, a leading expert on innovation who researched creative people throughout history. She came up with a framework to understand where ideas come from, and described five kinds of creativity we can leverage to become more productive. Her framework is one of many, but I do recommend reading her book if you are running short of ideas.
Can you see yourself as one or more of the following personalities? If you're curious, the book provides a self-test.
1. Seer - The Power to Image
The painter Paul Gauguin said, "I shut my eyes in order that I may see." Beethoven composed his Ninth Symphony after he had become deaf. A seer is someone who uses their mind's eye to see what is possible in the future. You are someone who can imagine your office redesigned with a new layout and color scheme, or envision how people might connect with their social network through smart home interfaces. You visualize in great detail, and modify those details to make the vision even clearer. This visualization yields the breakthrough.
2. Observer - The Power to Notice Detail
Walt Disney reportedly got his idea for Disneyland when he took his daughters to an old amusement park. He noticed details like the dilapidated rides, unfriendly operators, filth, and poor sanitation, which led him to ask, "What if there were a fun place for the whole family to enjoy together?" That eventually led to a revolutionary theme park concept. As Observer, you notice every little detail. Details are the data input that defines the problem and stimulates the ideas.
3. Alchemist - The Power to Connect Domains
This creative style harnesses the power of analogy. Could bank ATMs work to dispense not cash, but medications, in a retail setting? In another example, Amazon Prime Air is a service that combines the robotic technology of aerial drones with an online retail model to deliver goods even faster than one can go to a local store to pick up those items. Applying ideas from a different domain requires the willingness to suspend disbelief and ask, "What if?" The answer can often astonish and lead to a breakthrough.
4. Fool - The Power to Celebrate Weakness
Attempting to develop a super-strong adhesive, 3M scientist Dr. Spencer Silver instead created a low-strength, tacky, reusable substance -- a failure. Five years later his colleague Art Fry tapped the power of the Fool by using the tacky glue to keep his bookmark in place. This eventually led to one of 3M's bestselling products, the ubiquitous Post-It Notes. A Fool analyzes failures to mine their redeeming value, often in surprising ways.
5. Sage - The Power to Simplify
Movies such as The Lord of the Rings and Star Wars rely on certain foundational themes: good vs. evil, revenge, love, triumph of the underdog, a messiah who fulfills prophecy, man/woman vs. society. Moviegoers readily recognize these themes, which help them understand the movie. Similarly, a Sage boils a problem down to its core essence, often using historical precedent, in order to understand what ideas are needed. The insights gained can outweigh the risk of oversimplification.
Do you have a problem that's been bugging you for a while? Try a different approach. You may get the breakthrough you need.
As you said very few people talk about the surfacing of ideas. Blame some of that on the internet because people are not meeting face to face in a casual environment where they can talk through ideas. People are using email and messaging far more than verbal communications and the lack of verbal communications is in my opinion a show stopper. Whereas a group of colleagues might explore wild ideas when having a coffee break it's unlikely the same free discourse would occur online or even in a conference call. In the book the Idea Factory (Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation) where 1200 PhD and 5000 engineers were housed in one building; the massive building was designed with very long walkways so that employees from different departments would have to pass each other on the way to the restaurants, restrooms and other departments would have to pass each other. The book talks of many instances where an employee had some wild idea but did not have the skills to develop it further and then passes someone else in the walkway from a department that might have those skills. And so it was at Bell Labs that this kind of building architecture enabled people to discuss wild ideas on the fly and in doing enabled Bell Labs to create the transistor, cellular telephone technology and much more. This kind of building architecture has been repeated at Google and other Silicon Valley giants who value this human interaction to stimulate innovation. Unfortunately the US patent office is awash with patents some which are real innovation but the inventors never get the chance to meet with others who could help them get their ideas into being. Imagine if the government sponsored innovation workshops across the country so that people who had ideas for new products and services could meet in person with many other like-minded people to exchange ideas. Mind you gathering a crowd of people in a large room is not the simple answer to this idea exchange. Finding the right person to talk to could be challenging. Happily there is a solution to this problem. It's called Chatting Spot (registered trademark) (www.chattingspot.com) and its a smartphone Wi-Fi accessed bulletin board which is OFF GRID (not connected to the internet) which is only accessible to those in the hotspot. It's an icebreaker and its public messaging chat room enables anyone to join in the open messaging platform. Then anytime two users find they have something in common they can simply walk across the room and meet each other to exchange ideas. I should mention that I invented Chatting Spot and have patents pending on the technology. Production of the Wi-Fi hubs is expected to start in February 2016.
I agree with Yan Chow's premise that innovation is not just limited to brilliant people but anyone who can observe everyday events and come up with a better way of solving a problem. One fact he did not mention which holds people back from innovating and that is the fear of ridicule. As an inventor and patent holder I have been ridiculed time and again for my inventions which I have to defend against naysayers. A second fact not mentioned is the inability of people to create something new from a blank sheet of paper. In my experience that once I have an idea on paper then people feel comfortable about improving on it. In my book Observations and Innovations published om Amazon I look at everyday problems and offer suggestions as to how they maybe solved and some these solutions are as a result of being widely traveled and seeing what works in one country and was never picked up in another country. So in summary I say to would-be innovators, travel as much as you can and always have a camera at hand to snap new products or services not seen at home, scan the web and USPTO database to see if anyone has already come up with the same idea. Then try writing a press release to announce your invention because this forces you think it through. Next get a blank sheet of paper and sketch out what the product or service would like. Then do not share it with your better half or relatives because they are the first to ridicule the innovation. Share the idea with friends who are open to new ideas.
Senior Nurse Strategist, Nursing and Community Affairs, Stanford Health Care | Section Chief, Nursing Research Section & Clinical Assistant Professor, Stanford University School of Medicine
9 年Great read, Yan!
International Tech Liaison who coined: "Let the audits test, you sprint." Dedicated to inclusion through accessibility, and fostering a safe engineering culture through ADHD (Audit Driven Hyper Development)
9 年Great read, indeed.