Imagening your future!

We all want to be Apple, Tesla or Amazon. Don’t we? But do we know how? I doubt it. All management advisers will tell us it is innovation that drives their success. And even though I have read dozens of books on innovation of these high-performers: I tend to not believe it. It is not innovation that drives their success.

For me, their view of a purpose and the imagination of what the world could look like is what makes the difference. Creativity and then innovation is merely the result of these two.

No doubt, innovation is crucial. But: no design thinking, brainstorming or innovation method of this world will get you there unless you look at the full package of how these things work. The synopsis of all this readings for me is that you need to take care to generate 3 simple things to unleash creativity:

• Emotional conditioning (of you and your staff)
• An imagination of your possible future
• And then action

 Before I make my pledge, let me however point out three misunderstandings on innovation:

1. Creativity is not the basis and imagination the result. Imagination of what the future could look like is the fuel to generate innovation. Much like the most famous “Why, how, what” TED talk form S. Sinek, you need to imagine, than create and as such innovate. For me, it is not the genius who creates the innovation, but the innovation that creates the genius.
2. Innovation can’t be scheduled in a calendar: There is no such thing as an eureka moment. Creative idea generation results from a process. The majority of all well know creatives, regardless of whether they were mathematicians, musicians or product developers, describe the fact that their findings have been month long sometimes year or decade long processes ending in a great idea. As Poincare describes: "the process of finding new solutions was not susceptible to conscious control, nor could he have done so". It happens.
3. Imagination or creativity is not a genome determined human intelligence asset but a state of mind. No IQ or EQ in this world will guarantee you to be a great inventor. It is all about the capacity to divert your brain from settled ideas and to rethink the matter looking at the subject from a different angle.

 All of the statements are backed up by tons of research. Since I am not writing a book nor a essay, I will stick to the three quotes made by some of the most creative persons of our century:

• “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used to create them”
• “Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not, and, therefore, the foundation of all invention and innovation. In its arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity, it is the power that enables us to empathize with humans whose experiences we have never shared.”
• “you see things and you say “why?”. But I dream things that never where and and I say: “why not?”.

 I will let you guess who the authors are…

 Is there a one size fits all recipe? I don’t know, but I personally don’t think so. But I can at least tell you what works for me:

Emotional Conditioning:

First of all you need to set an environment in which your ideas can flow:

• Turn of fast thinking: Daniel Kahnemann has told us that we have two brain modes. System 1: fast, automatic, frequent, emotional, stereotypic, unconscious. And System 2: slow, effortful, infrequent, logical, calculating, conscious. Imagining the world of tomorrow is a privilege of system 2. To activate system 2, you need to open up for the problem. Enforced, scheduled, thinking is done by your system 1 and it won’t deliver any extraordinary results.
• Kill time pressure: Creativity or imagination will not work if yet under time pressure. You will not unlock problems because of a deadline.
• Don't (only) apply systematic methods: Although many methods for creative solutioning exist, all call for “system 1”. Find a problem, search for the registered most probable solution you have learned in the last years and reproduce it. In many ways this instinct was useful to survive or to operate. But to solve creative issues, it will only lead you to think in the same way we created the problem.
• Eradicate distraction: Eradicate all distractions. Especially mobile phones, laptops, TV’s or anything similar. Each of the interferences will let your attention derive to anything but the issue here.  
• Create emotions: what drives “REAL” change is the way you feel about things, not how we think about them. Think about it for a minute. Take the most obvious things: Did you choose your partner or spouse because of a checklist? Do you love your daughter because of her IQ and or hair color? Guess not. As Maya Angelou said: "People will always forget what you say but never what you made them feel". That is the core of any innovation. I know it might sound contradictory to the “sytem 1 and 2 approach”. But getting to the source of your feelings will engage 2 and not 1.
• Set the environment: You need to generate a state of flow, as described by Mihály Csíkszentmihályi. Complete concentration on the matter. This state will switch off all irrelevant sources and let you concentrate on the purpose of your endeavor. This environment is highly personal. Some people need daylight, other darkness. For some people it needs to be quiet, for others need music or noise. Some might need an office, others their secure and comfortable homes. Whatever it might be – it needs to trigger the state of mind which, as described by most, will let you dwell half consciously over the subject..

When the conditioning is done, you need to start the process of imagining the future. There are millions of methods, means and tools that will help you do so. But let me repeat the ones we have found most productive and useful:

1.  Empathize: Maybe the simplest but still the most important one. Put yourself at the place of your user or customer and experience your own product or service. We forget all too often that everyone is a client on this planet and that no internal rules, regulations or standards from your firm play a role in the way they perceive your business. 
2. Combine: One of the most simple but effective ways is combining ideas and technologies to achieve new products or ideas. In 1966 already, Arthur Koester Described the unmeasurable value and effectiveness of combinatory thinking, which led to the invention of the evolutional theory from Darwin, the dynamics of planetary movement and the creation of the priniting machine.
3. Negate: When looking for a solution, the nature of mankind is to focus on the problem. Exactly this trait often enforces to think about the characteristics and issues of the current problem. Not however to strive to a solution. Think about the absence of the problem and the potential reasons…
4. Observe: Look at what people do unconsciously to solve daily problems and start from there. Much as Jane Fulton Suri refers to in “thoughtless acts”. The office clerk who jams the button of the window blinds with a paper clip because you need to push it all the time, the person who buckles the seatbelt to transport the groceries on the passenger seat or the guy who uses post-its to identify the cables routing origin.
5. Visualize: Take distance and visualize the problem in your head. Most creative processes are driven by visualizations of the problem. Psychological research proves that visualizing problems can improve your capability to solve them just as much as doing the real action. “All this fires my soul and, provided I am not disturbed , my subject enlarges itself, [..] becomes defined and the whole, though it be long, stands almost complete and finished in my mind, so that I can survey it like a fine picture, at a single glance”. (Not historically sure, but most probably a Mozart quote)
6. Decompose the problem without simplifying: Many problems are so complex, that any mind will sublime. Much as a mathematical solution to a formula needs to be divided into subparts, problems might need to be cut apart. Pay attention to not simplifying the issue too much through. As Einstein said: Everything should be as simple as possible but not simpler”. When simplifying too much, people tend to take rude assumptions on how to do it. Stick to the problem, but decompose it into digestible parts.
7. Imitate: Although often seen as negative in the western world (in strong opposition to asiatic one), imitation can be a fantastic source of creativity. Take the best example of imitating from nature: Whether it be the "lotus effect” to shield from liquids, the behavior of a bird to train the autopilot of an aircraft or the way trees build their trunk to adapt naturally to external loading. Imitation, done right, can be more powerful than any re-invention of the wheel.
8. Emotionalize: Last but not least. We live in a human centric world. In the end all translates into emotions. The result of a great product is the way people feel about it. The result of a service is how people experience it. 

 Finally, I would like to conclude with an utterly dull, but equally important point:

Make it happen. Let me take my own example. Ever since I am 25 I write down my best ideas in small Moleskine notebooks. Every year I see several, sometimes dozens ,of my ideas realized by others. Once a year I take the notebooks, by now 11 to be precise, and scratch the ideas realized by others. It is extremely painful and frustrating. What’s the point? A great idea is just a few characters in a notebook or on a piece of paper if you dont make it happen.

Imagine your future and make it happen.