Neurodivergent minds – are they nature’s original “Skunk works”?
Let’s be clear at the outset. In this context “Skunk Works” is a positive label. It has nothing to do with the popular high-strength strain of a well-known recreational drug nor indeed the black and white malodorous, yet oh-so-cute, mammal.
Here are my personal conjectures of a neurodivergent professional where I observe my mind’s inner workings and how I’ve first come to accept and then more or less harnessed the deluge of ideas spilling in and around it. My brain is a Skunk Works and I suspect I’m not alone…
But first, what is a “Skunkworks?
Exactly when the Lockheed Aircraft Corporation created their Skunk Works is open to a little debate but somewhere between 1938 and 1943, they created the world’s first. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skunk_Works).?It was responsible for a number of aircraft designs, highly classified R&D programs, and exotic aircraft platforms and continues to be a platform for the company’s innovation.
The Skunk Works name was taken from the "Skonk Oil" factory in the comic strip?L’il Abner. It describes a “brains without boundaries” approach to invention and innovation. The fact that Lockheed still uses the approach is a testament to its productivity and robustness.
Skunk Works are predicated on the concept that innovation is more likely to spring from a small diverse group of people from different backgrounds, expertise, and way of thinking. In other words, new ideas require diversity of knowledge, approach, and culture. Complex problems require the broadest approach.
The designation "Skunk Works" is widely adopted in business today, especially in engineering, and technical fields and it’s used to describe a group, usually within an organisation, given a high degree of autonomy and unhampered by bureaucracy, with the task of working on advanced or secret projects.
Apollo 13 CO2?scrubber - a skunkworks saves lives
If you’ve seen the Tom Hanks movie Apollo 13 you will know that at a critical point in what was meant to be a moon landing, a critical system failed due to a small explosion. It didn’t cause catastrophic structural damage but triggered a potentially deadly CO2?build-up. They could have re-directed the command module back to Earth, but they would have all died long before they got home. The answer was to invent and design a CO2?scrubber made only from items available to the astronauts onboard.
A multidisciplinary team was drawn from Mission Control and places like The Jet Propulsion Labs. In fourteen hours, they came up with a working prototype.?The ultimate solution involved using a piece of cardboard, a plastic bag, a hose from a pressure suit, duct tape and a sock to connect the command module scrubbers.?Within a couple more hours the astronauts had built their own and it began scrubbing CO2. As we know they all came home safely. One of the team said at the time,?“Part of what makes it so compelling is how everyone came together and were united around one mission.” For more background check out -
Skunk Works today
Skunk Works projects focus on innovations that disrupt the status quo. Stepping away from incremental improvements to an organization's existing product line or processes. Steve Jobs created what was effectively a Skunk Works team in Cupertino to create the first Macintosh computers. There are many examples. Available through all good search engines.
In clinical medicine in the NHS
An up-the-moment example comes from the British National Health Service.
“The Skunkworks programme is part of the NHS AI Lab. It finds new ways to use AI for driving forward the early adoption of technology to support health, in both clinical and business contexts.”
My mind as a skunkworks
Many neurodivergent people including me, tell of a constant stream of disparate, often contradictory, ideas flitting around their minds. With some, like me, thoughts are associated with a different “voice”. Each one pushes its favoured point of view. Whilst we may have ultra-focused on one obsession, we may also experience many different internal views of how that obsession can be best achieved.?
To some people, having a stream of disparate ideas flowing through their minds is intimidating, overwhelming and their personal version of hell. I wouldn’t dream of speaking here for everyone. Our individual experiences are just that, unique. However, I’ve found over time that being open to and actively fascinated by my ideas and thoughts, no matter how wacky or initially disturbing they may be, has helped me corral them into “Themes”. By paying attention as best I can I’ve noticed certain concepts keep cropping up. Incomplete, but overlapping ideas. I keep a note of them and when there’s a critical mass I sit and obsess about them, testing them to destruction. If they survive this stage, I may work on them for weeks, months or even a decade before I’m happy enough to release them to the world. Even at the last minute, I may burn them as being not good enough. The idea may be poor but not me. This is something I’ve learnt to live with. There will be missteps along the way and that’s fine. No idea or thought or action defines me.
I welcome my diverse rapid-fire thinking. One minute, serious and focussed, the next silly and vague. All of them are useful in their own way, if I let them be. My first step was to be less fearful of my thoughts. They’re all inherently good and potentially helpful. Working with my thoughts is about not trying to adhere to mainstream views of how I should think and behave. Instead, I always come from a standpoint of compassion and unconditional love for all the characters and thoughts in my mind.
What I now find, admittedly a bit late at the age of 66, is that once I relax and accept my mind as it is, cool ideas emerge more fully formed. The more I fight the more fragmented I am. The more I relax and accept my mind in its colourful entirety, the more whole I feel.
My mind is now a full-blown Skunk Works. What it brings forth will never be boring (at least not to me). Some, but by no means all, of my ideas will have real-world traction. I won’t necessarily be the person who runs with them, because as my autistic daughter often says, “I don’t have the spoons to keep going”. That’s also OK, someone else will take them on if the idea is good enough. I don’t need a piece of every project I conjure up.?
My internal Skunk Works is there to throw out ideas for others to road test. This is now my purpose in life. Some ideas will grow, and some will die. Meanwhile, I’m having the time of my life!
I'm not writing this as some kind of catharsis but as more of an invitation to embrace your thoughts no matter how overwhelming. "There is gold in them thar hills!"