To Innovate, Start with a Blank Slate—Literally

Think about how a normal brainstorming session at a company plays out.

The leaders identify an issue that needs to be solved. They schedule a meeting, and you walk into a conference room filled with people sitting in front of their laptops, barely paying attention. 

Someone presents a boring-as-hell, incremental adjustment plan. Then, everyone looks up from their laptops to offer “constructive” feedback on why the plan won’t work.

“Well, that won’t align with the manufacturing process we have in this factory.”

“We’re already using another material, and we can’t change that.”

“We’d have to talk to this other team because it impacts them in this way.”

And that’s the response to a boring, playing-it-safe plan. In the rare chance that a truly innovative solution is proposed, it will be shot down even more quickly for not conforming to the company’s current systems.

The result is that while the world at large is constantly changing, the company remains static and begins to fall behind.

If you want to remain competitive, you need to innovate. To do that, you need to throw out everything you take as a given and start with a blank slate. Let’s look at how Uber successfully innovated doing just that, and how you can do the same.

The Innovation of Uber 

Often, the systems and processes in place at companies are old, and in case you hadn’t noticed, the world has changed over the last century or so. If you don’t force yourself to erase everything you know about an old system, you can’t dream about how it would work with inputs that exist today. This is what happened with Uber and taxi companies.

Fifty years ago, if you wanted to get someone from point A to point B, you needed a taxi. But how did the general public call for one? There were no cell phones and no data plans. Drivers didn’t even have those huge car-phones back then. 

Cab companies solved this communication challenge with radios and infrastructure to support them. The public could call a main line to reach a dispatcher. The dispatcher could relay the request, via radio, to the taxi driver. That meant cab companies required a fleet of vehicles with radios installed and drivers attached. It was a solution that worked.

Fast-forward to today. If you’re a cab company trying to continue providing this service in an efficient way, what do you do? How do you improve your setup to serve growing cities with increasing congestion? 

Well, if you own a fleet of vehicles with radios installed, you fixate on trying to make use of your assets. And you don’t create Uber.

You don’t consider the modern realities of every person having communication devices at their fingertips. You don’t think, If someone is standing at a street corner and wants to call a cab, they probably have their cell phone in their hands, and an unlimited data plan. You don’t consider the supply chain in a new way, and think, There are underused vehicles already in the marketplace and drivers looking to make extra money, and maybe they’re closer than this yellow car.

Uber drivers are closer. Almost always. Uber is more efficient than traditional taxis from a customer perspective. 

It’s also cheaper. Drivers use their car for personal time as well as Uber work. That keeps costs low. There’s significant investment required to keep the app and back-end systems running, but these are scalable projects that can easily be applied worldwide. Uber doesn’t have to pay thirty dispatchers to answer phones in each city and hire more as they become busier.

By approaching the industry from a completely fresh perspective, not weighed down by a fleet of taxis, Uber was able to innovate and create a better service. 

Erase What You Know: Whiteboarding

To imagine anything remotely interesting, you first have to erase what you already know. You have to forget about whatever assets or systems you have in place and start with a blank slate. A great exercise for this is whiteboarding. 

Get a whiteboard with nothing on it, and build the product, service, or operation up from scratch. I mean this literally. Find yourself a real whiteboard and some dry erase pens. Then, don’t put anything about the existing process on the whiteboard. Nothing.

Solving problems is done best when you create without constraints. I’m not suggesting you ignore the obstacles completely. Every situation has very real limitations, processes, and challenges. But when you start with the foundations of an innovative idea, you can build the constraints into the image, and innovate on top of that. If you do it the other way, laying out all the current constraints first, you’ll never see past them to create something new.

Once you have your foundation, you can ask yourself, How can I contribute to this effort in a way that makes sense for the environment and job that I have today? This takes you from the big picture goal—fixing obesity rates—to the reality of the constraints in front of you.

Uber execs likely took this approach at one point. I can’t guarantee they used a whiteboard, but they certainly threw out everything they knew, started with an innovative idea (ride sharing), and then built all the constraints on top of that.

Whiteboarding gets you clear on the issue, helps you bring it into the context of the world you participate in, and gives you the freedom to come up with ideas. It’s simple but effective.

Anything Is Possible

If you play the game of what’s not possible, you’ll lose every time. Maybe you’d say, “I’d like to go to the sun someday.” And the devil on your shoulder says, “That’s not possible, dummy.” 

Well, I don’t want to sound completely insane, but how do you know Elon Musk won’t design a material that could protect us from the heat of the sun? At one point, people thought we’d never land on the moon. 

To innovate, we need to look at everything in life as limitless. Whiteboarding is a tool that lets you do that. It lets you dream about doing things unencumbered by the bullshit that’s been around for years and years. It frees you to move fast and in new directions. 

So start with a clean canvas. Define the problem you’re solving and establish the most efficient way of doing it. And believe that anything is possible.

For more advice on innovating, you can find The Elephant’s Dilemma on Amazon.