The conflict between engineering & rapid innovation.

It's been an amazing five years working with astounding engineers from Matternet to eBay. In many ways it's been a process of confronting my childhood as both my father and brother are engineers.

Empirical, logic based thinking has always been a struggle for me. But until recently i hadn't known why. Since publishing my paper on pattern based thinking i've realized that what i thought was a skill i'd learned, was actually an ability. 

My brother was part of Mensa from an early age when my parents realized he had a bright mind. He performed well at school and clearly understood how to learn. I, in contrast performed poorly at school, not being able to concentrate on linear discussion at all. My parents were so concerned with my performance that they paid for a vocational test. This analytical test measured mental performance across many verticals delivering percentile results, contrasting existing ability with general ability among the populous.

I scored pretty average across most subjects, but very poorly in english, literacy and numeracy. But, i had a very anomalous result. I scored in the top percentile for spatial awareness. Almost to the point of being autistically focused on only this.

We didn't really take much notice because the results weren't super actionable, other than presuming i'd go into a vocational degree. But looking back i realized that i learnt to pass all my exams by remembering the visual relationships between elements on a page. I'd had to redraw the pages i remembered and then solve the problems through mimicking what i remembered in order to fit into the classical understanding of intelligence.

Thankfully after i was offered a place the Royal College of Art i was able to research the non logical approaches to learning. Flexible logic, lateral relationships, instinctual inference and pattern thinking. I realized i could rotate thoughts on my mind like objects - every problem had a shape, and solving them could be done more quickly by looking for similar shapes, rather than traditional analysis.

My good friend and coach Michael Coop Cooper helped me understand that this was an ability and not something everyone can do. I honestly think it came as a coping mechanism to being surrounded by traditional intelligence and complexity - that i discovered a way to understand the surrounding alien world.

Fast forward to joining Matternet. Matternet is an engineering company first, but Andreas the founder had a unique skill, he studied both engineering and design. When he asked me to join he knew that i had an ability to understand patterns. And he knew that a new business like this needed someone to understand the steps to growth.

My biggest struggle was to help traditionally trained engineers understand that my approach to innovation was valid. That using pattern interpretation to leap forward, then post rationalize the result through empirical reasoning was faster and a better way to stay ahead.

I had to learn to shut up, to listen, to respect the scientific method. But i also laid out the entire plan for Matternet in one week, using non linear thinking, a plan which is still in place today. 

The most gratifying part of this is to hear the engineers realize the value of the plan as they discover through validation that it was correct. That pattern thinking had delivered something that was about 75% accurate in 1% of the time and budget.

I've taken this thinking to eBay, and i've learnt how to make engineers more comfortable with risk based thinking. To be honest the entire team are great partners and are happy to build validation as my small team takes big leaps. This partnership is so important. Using pattern based thinking to make instinctual moves creates great momentum in the business. But using empirical logic to validate further levels of investment is making us smarter at finding the best opportunities for growth.

Most importantly people see that pattern based leaps aren't unscientific. And they can create energy and momentum for further investigation.

Of course like any organization there are people who fear non traditional methods. But having quantifiable results is the way to helping them believe.

Using pattern helps the whole team move forward at lightning speed. Post validating helps build strong reasoning for investment. Most importantly this helps us match the speed of the market.

Connecting the speed of engineering, the speed of innovation, the speed of the product to the speed of the market helps me come to terms with my abilities, my family and my upbringing.

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