This spring I have been taking couple university courses on the Coursera online education platform. One was about gamification, or how to use concepts that are more familiar to us from different kinds of games in non-game contexts, in order to e.g. improve business performance or job satisfaction. The other course was about innovation, and one of the reading materials included this gem of a list of advise for aspiring innovators:
- Start simple
- Work on things that you like
- If you have no clue what to do, fiddle around
- Don’t be afraid to experiment
- Find a friend to work with, share ideas!
- It’s OK to copy stuff (to give you an idea)
- Keep your ideas in a sketch book
- Build, take apart, rebuild
- Lots of things can go wrong, stick with it
The first two lines, “Start simple” & “Work on things that you like” serve one main purpose: minimising friction. Often the hardest part is to get going, and the simpler you can make a task appear the less internal resistance you will face. Also, when you get to work on something you enjoy, the more motivated you will be. It stops feeling like work and more like fun, and as you probably know you don’t need to spend precious willpower to force yourself to have fun.
The next two lines are about finding direction and refining your goal. “If you have no clue what to do, fiddle around” is helpful to keep in mind when you have only a vague idea of what you want to reach. Or if you are trying to solve a problem, the solution might not make itself apparent at first. In that situation fiddling around, experimenting, and trying new things is essential to keep you moving. You can’t stumble on new discoveries, solutions and ideas by standing still.
Creativity and innovation are inherently social activities. The myth of a lone genius has been crushed long since. Furthermore, if you “Find a friend to work with, share ideas!” you will not only learn from each other, but also have more fun in the process. Jon Krakauer had it right when he wrote in Into the Wild that “Happiness [is] only real when shared”.
“It’s OK to copy stuff (to give you an idea)” might sound deranged in this crazy CISPA and RIAA paranoia induced world we live in, but in reality not a single innovation has been born in isolation. We are unconsciously drawing knowledge from everything we see, hear, and touch. The Wright brothers wouldn’t have created the first engine-powered airplane without learning from non-motored flyers as well as from the flight of birds. Google was not the first Internet search engine, but it improved upon the ones that came before and the world ended up better because of it.
“Keep your ideas in a sketch book” highlights the importance of documentation. Trying to remember everything is unreliable and inefficient. It takes away capacity from our already limited working memory, which can handle only a couple different simultaneous thoughts. By externalising the memory function you will have more brainpower for what matters; creative thinking. Furthermore, having your ideas outside your head helps tremendously with sharing and discussing them with others.
Innovation is, if anything, an iterative process. “Build, take apart, rebuild” and learn from your failures is the fastest way to move from an idea to the final solution. When each iteration contributes to the outcome by teaching you something new about your idea, your confidence about the final solution will also increase. Contrast this to an approach where you would come up with an idea that looks good on paper, and then implement it as-is without any testing or experimentation. Like communism.
Last but not least, innovation is about perseverance in the face of failure. As is said, it’s 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration. “Lots of things can go wrong, stick with it” and eventually you will come up with the winning concept. On the other hand, though, it is also vitally important to know when you should quit and change approach or work on another idea. Seth Godin wrote a whole book about this. However, more often people quit too early than too late.
You could read hundreds of research papers and books about innovation, but this list by 12-year old schoolchildren is easier to remember and already covers the most important parts. Do not overthink innovation. Just start doing and learn on the way.
Resnick, Mitchel (2007). All I Really Need to Know (About Creative Thinking) I Learned (By Studying How Children Learn) in Kindergarten. Presented at Creativity & Cognition conference, June 2007.