We’re all familiar with the phrase, ‘necessity is the mother
of all invention’. Well my attention was drawn to a recent BBC article which put
forward the viewpoint that today, with very few exceptions, there is no such thing as
a truly new invention.
It suggested that ‘despite what marketers would have us
believe, recycling inventions and the cross-pollination of technologies for new
applications are at the heart of all developments in the 21st Century’. The
iPhone revolution was cited as an illustration of this 'invention illusion' stating
it’s not really a new invention but just a much better version of the original
phone introduced by Alexander Graham Bell in 1876. As the BBC says ‘What Apple
achieved with the first iPhone was truly ground-breaking, but it was the result
of very clever innovation, with existing technologies applied in new ways. It
was not a new invention’.
Anyway, this article reminded me about an old marketing
lecturer who boldly proclaimed– ‘Ideas are nothing more and nothing less than
the NEW combination of OLD elements’. To my mind, while exceptions may exist,
there is a general truth to this. Coming back to Apple for a moment, you only
need to look at how Jonathan Ive, Apple’s chief designer, borrowed extensively
from the design ethics of Braun’s great Dieter Rams.
In fact, scrutinising many of the things we think of as
truly ‘original’ inventions unearths that many of these evolved out of existing
know-how and artefacts rather than being invented from scratch. Two examples
that spring to mind are the printing press and the internet. The printing press
was ‘invented’ in 1440 by Johannes Gutenberg yet many of its components had
been around for centuries beforehand. However Gutenberg had the insight and
gumption to piece them all together. Likewise with the internet. While Tim
Berners-Lee is rightly accredited with introducing the ‘world-wide-web’ in 1991
it didn’t suddenly spring out of the ether. Instead, the internet actually grew
slowly over a number of decades from the evolvement of electronic computers in
the 1950’s with emerging networks and protocols.
So there is no shame in finding and applying different combinations
of existing knowledge in fresh and imaginative ways including looking beyond
the immediate competitor set to find out what others have done. Akin to Kevin Bacon 6-degrees of
separation meme you can always establish a connection with the seemingly
unconnected in drawing inspiration from a much wider pool of know-how. Which
brings me nicely back to the title of this article – ‘Creative imagination is the mother of all innovation’ where cultivating
creativity can be amplified in two ways:
Whilst the process of managed
innovation might sound counter-intuitive, approaching innovation in the right
manner can help cultivate and accelerate the creation of transformative ideas. I read another article recently that talked
about forming creativity circles – a handful of smart people across disparate
disciplines working together in a blended fashion, often in a shared immersive
space, to solve the common challenge. This follows the philosophy we have at we are experience in working to the
mantra that great ideas come from the many (within the creative circle). Working
in a flatter, highly collaborative way with clients enables us to energise,
complement and spark off each other in a way that wouldn’t happen by taking a
more traditional pyramid like organisational approach. So by managed
innovation, I really mean bendy and flexible management, rather than
predetermined or rigid.
2. Encouraging lean thinking
Something else that sounds counter-intuitive
is the notion that a paucity of time can actually be good for the creative
development process. While there is often the harsh reality of too little time
and money on a project, rather than sulk and throw the proverbial toys out of
the pram the team at we are experience
embrace this challenge. We’ve actually discovered that imposing some scarcity
on the managed innovation process mentioned above actually focuses the creativity
and efforts of all involved. Akin to hot-housing a solution for a pitch (honestly,
how many pitches have you worked on that had too much time?!?) this requires you
to be resourceful while working at pace. That’s why we are firm believers in
deploying a nimble way of working with clients as part of our Service Design proposition.
This lean and pragmatic approach includes forgoing high fidelity prototypes at
the initial stages to ensure rapid progression from initial ideas to
fully-fledged end solution.
As the world is forever shifting forward at an increasingly
accelerated pace of change, companies need to be in a constant state of
innovation. Only the fleet of foot and
mind will survive and prosper.
(Extract of a blog originally posted on the service design consultancy we are experience website - http://www.weareexperience.com/).
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