Be disruptive : "Think outside of the box"

Probable you think that one of the best ways to drive innovation is to dig deep into a subject, observe it meticulously from all angles, and only by knowing it inside out can you discover what will renew it. However, the reality is quite different: innovation does not come from the heart but from the gap. By always digging the same furrow, you risk burying yourself there but certainly not finding new solutions.

Isn't the answer to the difficulty of a large part of brilliant engineers who have the strength to seek to develop the perfect product, moving away from the innovative product in a market?

Most innovations are grafts, hybridizations, and interbreeding. It is from the confrontation of different points of view that new ideas are born, and it is by combining several existing products or approaches that you will be able to bring out genuine innovations. If you specialize in a single discipline or skill, you can hone and optimize it, but it will be difficult for you to really change it. The worst enemy of innovation is specialization.

The American philosopher and historian Thomas Khun, in his famous work "The structure of scientific revolutions", has shown that the real innovators are not the recognized specialists in a scientific field, who would not gain much by transforming it, since they are both products and its guardians, but rather marginals, who bring a different perspective by being outside the system. For example, Pasteur was not a doctor, and Einstein was not a university professor.

?

The same idea is addressed in David Robson's book, where he defends the different types of bits of intelligence and that, obviously, thinking outside the box is one. And a big one!

So, what should you do to increase your capacity for innovation??

A possible recommendation is to take inspiration from the maxim of the writer Rudyard Kipling, British but born in India: “He who only knows England does not know England. ? Do your best to be exposed to disciplines you do not know. Read books on subjects that are foreign to you. Travel to countries whose culture is unknown to you. Talk to experts in areas you don't know. This will allow you to be doubly innovative.

On the one hand, your fresh and offbeat look will perhaps give you the possibility of spotting in what you discover particularities that go unnoticed in the eyes of those who experience it daily, to the point that you will eventually be able to offer them innovations that were beyond their control. Remember this instructive little fable: a passer-by walking along the edge of a river sees a fish sticking its head out of the water and asks it “Is the water good? Astonished, the fish replies, “Water, but what water? ".

If you always bathe in the same environment, you forget it exists.

Second, by forcing yourself to explore unfamiliar terrain, you may spot ideas, practices, and solutions that you can import into your own field. This transposition will be fruitful, much more than the deepening of your expertise.

To innovate, you have to confront the unknown and the differences, and the best advice that can be given to an aspiring innovator can be summed up in a simple sentence: “Do you want to innovate? Go look elsewhere! ".