One of the most effective ways of setting yourself apart professionally in these turbulent times is by unleashing your “inner innovator”. Learning to do this will differentiate you by making you the person who knows how to add value to your organization. How can you increase your innovative capacity and that of your enterprise?
A first step is to bust open the myth that creativity is a gift that a few select people are born with. Actually, we all have the potential to be creative. Perhaps not to the same degree, but we all do have innate creative abilities. As children, we were all more creative than we are today. This premise has been tested out many times over the years. For example, 1,600 five-year-olds were given a creativity test used by NASA to select innovative engineers and scientists, and 98 percent of the children scored in the “highly creative” range. These same children were re-tested five years later and only 30 percent of the 10-year-olds were still rated “highly creative”. By the age of 15, just 12 percent of them were ranked in this category, while a mere 2 percent of 200,000 adults over the age 25 who had taken the same tests were still on this level. Creativity is therefore not learned, but rather unlearned.
Unless you go through a second childhood or hire a bunch of 5-year-olds, what can you do to tap into that innovative potential? First it would be useful to consider what creativity really is. I contend that creativity is about collecting and connecting dots … dots being ideas, disciplines, ways of looking at problems, and experiences. As Albert Einstein once said, “Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.” In fact, knowledge is, in my opinion, the enemy of innovation. I am always amused when someone, upon finding a lost item, says, “Can you believe it? It was in the last place I looked.” Well of course, who finds something and then continues to look for it? The same thing is true when looking for a solution to a problem. Once your brain finds what it thinks is the best solution, it stops looking. Where do we look for these solutions? We tend to look into our memory banks of what has worked in the past. And for those of you out there who are experts, I’ll bet you “find” an answer quite quickly. Unfortunately, your solution might not be new, innovative, or even good. What we need to do is train our brain to keep looking, even when we have found an answer.
The reason children are so creative is that they look at the world with fresh eyes. They are always collecting dots that they eventually string together. Everything is a new experience. And rarely do kids jump to quick solutions. However, once they start going to school and socializing with other children, they are forced to fit it. Peer pressure drives conformity. Education focuses on the regurgitation of facts rather than on gathering new experiences. At university, you choose a major and then become an expert in that area. As we get older we find things in life that we like, to the exclusion of all else. We read the same sections of the newspaper. We watch the same movies. Eat the same food. Socialize with the same people. Read the same magazines. And we tend to find ways of operating that work for us. We use those modes continually without trying anything new. Our communication style. Our view of the world. Our political thoughts. As we get older, instead of collecting dots, we begin a process of dot elimination. We ride down the same path over and over.
What can be done to reverse the effects of time? The key is to restart the process of collecting and connecting dots. Much has been written on the techniques for sparking creativity and innovation. In fact, there are over 2,500 books with the word “innovation” in the title. A large portion of these are focused on “event-based” techniques for generating new ideas. That is, approaches to be used during brainstorming sessions. These approaches may be a “5-step process”, “7 techniques” or “9 tools”. Although these are useful, I want focus on approaches that change the way you see the world. Approaches that, with practice, help make innovation an every day activity. As Aristotle has written, “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then is not an act but a habit”.
One of the most effective ways of setting yourself apart professionally in these turbulent times is by unleashing your “inner innovator”. Learning to do this will differentiate you by making you the person who knows how to add value to your organization. How can you increase your innovative capacity and that of your enterprise? In my previous article, I introduced the concept of “The Four Thinking Lenses”. Thinking like a Pack Rat, a Matchmaker, a Kid, and a Contrarian. In this article I describe the first two of these lenses:
THINK LIKE A PACK RAT
Children are creative because they are looking through fresh eyes. As adults, we start to filter everything we see, just like a polarized lens that lets in only light that is aligned one way. So to reverse the years of filtered thinking, you need to start collecting new dots. Start gaining new experiences. To paraphrase Steve Jobs, “Creativity is just having enough dots to connect … connect experiences and synthesize new things. The reason creative people are able to do that is that they’ve had more experiences or have thought more about their experiences than other people.” So, our first lens is to get you thinking like a pack rat. Collect and hoard every experience for later use. You never know when some randomly stored experience will be the catalyst for breakthrough thinking. Try these techniques.
Each morning, when you wake up, make believe you are someone different, a detective, a mechanic, an artist, a gardener. You will then begin to see things over the course of the day that you have never seen before, because what you focus on expands. Another approach is to look at the world in a new way. Treat it as art, as music, as simplicity. You will see, hear, smell, and sense new things through your new filter.
Or try this. As adults, we tend to do the same things over and over. Our lives repeat themselves like a broken record. Break the pattern. Pick up magazines you have never read before. Listen to music you thought you didn’t like. Meet new people. Eat different food. The more you do this, the more new experiences you will gain and the more ideas you will be able to draw from in the future.
THINK LIKE A MATCHMAKER
Now that we have collected lots of new experiences by being a pack rat, we have to do something creative with them. As adults, when we try to solve a problem, we often ask, “What does this mean?” We try to pull the answer from our knowledge bank, just like finding the solution in an encyclopedia. Solve the problem the way it has been solved in the past. This can be useful, but it provides a limited set of possibilities. This is about replication and regurgitation. An alternative (and more insightful) way of looking at problems is to ask, “What is this like?”
Be a matchmaker. Make connections. Try and find analogies, metaphors, and associations that fit the problem you are looking to solve. Recombine ideas in new ways. If you are redesigning a business process, borrow a best practice from a different industry. South West Airlines did this when it benchmarked an Indianapolis 500 pit crew. Or when hospitals benchmarked Marriott Hotels for the check-in processes. But take it a step further and look to non-business analogies and metaphors.
Look at nature. Model your business after an evolutionary process, an ecosystem, jazz music, or whatever tickles your fancy. If redesigning a product, ask what the product is really like. If redesigning a computer chip, look to racing circuits, rivers, or anything with a flow. When you have many dots collected, you have limitless ways of recombining them to create something new. This is not about invention, which is pulling something out of the thin air. This is about innovation which is about reconstituting old ideas in new ways. Don’t always go for the obvious solution. Some of the best ideas come from some of the most unlikely combinations.
One of the most effective ways of setting yourself apart professionally in these turbulent times is by unleashing your “inner innovator”. Learning to do this will differentiate you by making you the person who knows how to add value to your organization. How can you increase your innovative capacity and that of your enterprise? In my first article, I introduced the concept of “The Four Thinking Lenses”. The second article described the first two of those lenses: thinking like a Pack Rat and a Matchmaker. In this article I describe the last two lenses: thinking like a Kid and a Contrarian.
THINK LIKE A KID
Children love to play. To them, everything is a game. And if you watch them play, one of their favorite games is “Yes, and…” This is a game where kids fully use their imagination. The game starts with the first kid concocting a scenario. Let’s say, making your fingers into a gun, pointing it at another person and saying, “I’m zapping you with my laser beam.” The next person then says, “Yes, and…” and builds on what the previous person said. So, the second child may say, “yes, and… I am wearing my mirror suit so that it bounces back at you.” And the game continues going back and forth between two or more children. Very simple, and the game can go on for hours.
Interestingly, if you watch adults play this game, they are more likely to respond with “yeah, but” rather than “yes, and.” Instead of contributing back, they shoot down the previous idea. So, if the first adult makes his fingers into a gun, points it at his friend, and says, “I’m zapping you with my laser beam,” the next adult would probably fall over and say, “I’m dead”. Not much of a contribution, and the game would end quite quickly.
Adults often see all of the reasons why things won’t work. They put the “NO” in innovation. So, be a kid, and keep the play alive. Therefore, the next time you have a problem to solve, like inventing the next hot design for a toilet, try this game. Have one person throw out the first idea, and then continue with, “Yes, and…”, building on the previous idea. The key is to answer quickly and avoid thinking too much. Top-of-head answers tend to tap into a part of the brain we don’t use during our normal thinking process. And be sure that your answer is a contribution. It should build on what the previous person said rather than invalidate it.
You will develop many new ideas over the course of play. Many of the ideas will be duds. But don’t worry. Play with it. Have fun. You never know when a real gem will be found. After all, it is only a game. And over time, this will become a normal mode of operating. You will become the master at breakthrough thinking on a regular basis by building on the ideas of others.
THINK LIKE A CONTRARIAN
Think like a contrarian. Turn everything upside down. Here are some techniques to get you started.
Bring those hidden assumptions to the surface by asking the “who, what, where, when, how, how much, and why” questions. I applied this method in challenging some models of consulting. For example, in determining the fees, typically the consultant (who) sets the rate (how much) before (when) the work is done. I have introduced a billing concept where the client (who) determines how much to pay me after (when) my work is done. The amount is solely at their discretion.
Another way of coming up with new ideas is to force illogical combinations. Select some or all of the “who, what, where, when, how, and how much” attributes. Next, come up with various answers for each attribute to solve your problem. Then randomly mix and match various combinations. For example, if redesigning the supermarket checkout process, we might look at “who”, “where”, and “when”. The typical combination for checkout is that it is done by the cashier (who), at the cash register (where), after all of the purchases are made (when). But customers could also enter purchases on a handheld device as they go, and some supermarkets have such trials under way. Some of the most creative ideas come from the most illogical combinations.
THINK LIKE A WHOLE BRAINED TEAM
It is human nature to surround ourselves with people we get along with. Recruiting processes tend to focus on human chemistry as much as competencies. Unfortunately, this perpetuates the culture of the past. Instead, choose people with different analytical, creative, and personality styles. Welcome the creative tension. New ideas are bound to emerge, and so long as you are open to them, your whole-brained team will create new ideas never previously conceived.
If you try these techniques, you will build the brainpower necessary to stimulate your inner innovator. Not only will you have more fun, but you’ll be able to add more value to your organization…and to your life.
Stephen Shapiro is the author of 24/7 Innovation and founder of The 24/7 Innovation Group. He has advised many of the world’s leading organizations, from BMW WilliamsF1, ABB and UPS to Lucent and Xerox. For more information, go to: http://www.24-7innovation.com/.