When I was a kid, I wanted to be a hero. Since every other kid also wanted the same, you could say this was no great vision. Nevertheless, it was inspiring enough for me and I tried many strategies to reach this lofty goal. I realised early that trying to become a hero at a physical level was too painful. So I turned to other options. Like being a scientist who made things that nobody had made before. I did many projects with sticks, bottle caps, rubber bands and similar stuff. None of the contraptions I made became a sensation. I even wrote poems in desperation. Nothing worked and in the end, I changed my vision.
A vision is a belief and somebody has said that great leaders must be prepared to change their beliefs. So I have changed my vision multiple times since that day. But one thing that has remained constant is my interest in innovation. What made Thomas Edison invent all those things? It can't be just the genius. If that was the case, I would have also invented something. What caused that Eureka moment for Archimedes? It can't be lying down in a tub. I have tried that, it does not work. I have tried to answer these questions. Of course, I couldn't find the answer myself. I asked others and they said innovation cannot be taught. This is always the best answer to give when you don't know the answer. I also do this. I usually say to my team - "I cannot teach you how to be a good developer. You have to discover it yourself. It has to come from within". It sounds nice. Makes me look like a consultant or a guru. Coming back to the point, an answer to what drives innovation was a mystery to me.
So I was excited when my team said they will be playing one TED talk every day for the next few weeks as a run-up to one of the events we were planning. The talks were to be on innovation and creativity. For the uninitiated, TEDsters are a bunch of people who believe that any great idea can be presented in 18 minutes. I don't know why they chose 18, maybe that itself is a great idea. I searched for 18 in Wikipedia. It said - "18 (eighteen) is the natural number following 17 and preceding 19". I doubt that could be the reason for choosing the number. Then it said - "18, aside from 0, is the only number that equals twice the sum of its decimal digits". Wow! I did not know that before. That is how it is always about TED. You always learn something that you had not thought of before. Thus it was with the spirit of 18 that I went to watch the first talk. It was a packed house. Later I heard that most of the people came because they thought TED was a movie. You can't blame them. These Bollywood movies with rather long and un-pronounceable names are often known by acronyms like TED.
The first one was Steven Johnson talking about 'where good ideas come from'. Steven is a successful author who has written a book by the same name. Writing the book was definitely a good idea because it became pretty successful. So I thought he should know where such ideas come from. Steven said ideas don't get born in Eureka moments, and there I was spending four hours a week in tubs! In fact, I had restarted my tub experiments recently after reading Feynman, the Nobel prize winning Physicist famous for the Feynman series of lectures, that he spent time in closed tubs filled with water to bring on hallucinations. I thought maybe that is how he got all those ideas. I did not have a closed tub, neither did I have the other stimulants that Feynman may have used. Still I thought there was no harm in trying. I never got anything other than a cold from the tub and was about to give up the experiment. Steven said that an idea is a network. They evolve in an environment that allows the ideas or hunches from different people to come together. The more chaotic the environment, the better. When he said that offices should look like a tavern, I couldn't have agreed more. That definitely saves a lot of trouble, especially on Friday evenings.
The next one was a talk by David Kelley, a professor of Mechanical Engineering at Stanford and one of the guys who started the d.school at Stanford. I looked up their web site and saw that they actually claim to teach people how to innovate! I also learned that innovation can be quite expensive, more than $10,000 for just a two-day boot camp. David said that adults have a fear of judgement and that prevents them from letting their ideas fly. I realized then that I must be one rung below the others. I just did not have any ideas to fly. Then he said there is nothing like creative and non-creative people. At least, that was good news. So I was just two steps away from being an innovator. Step one - get some ideas, step two - fly them around. They will then network with other ideas to change this world.
Then came the one that I liked best. In fact it made me climb that first step; almost. It was Kirby Ferguson, asserting that creativity is remix. He said that there were three basic elements to creativity - copy, transform and remix. Since time immemorial, this is how creative ideas have formed. Apparently Henry Ford had said that he did not invent anything new. He had just combined the discoveries of others. And Steve Jobs had opined once that good artists copy, while great artists steal! I liked that. Apple has done this repeatedly. The GUI, multi-touch and many such other ideas were really invented by others. They were just mixed right by Apple. And that was ok, at least to Apple. Then they patented those results, which was not ok for others. Kirby said that creativity comes from without, not from within. We are not independent when it comes to creating ideas, but are dependent on each other. We just have to accept that great ideas are born by copying, knowingly or unknowingly. This was getting easier than I thought. I only had to find something to copy, something that has not been patented already.
Then came Shimpei Takahashi, a Japanese toy designer. He talked about a game that one can play to create new ideas. Just mix two words that come to your mind and there is an idea. Then you mix the second word with a third new word and there is another idea. Just keep this chain going and you have a lot of ideas. I went and searched in Google for two random words. I like to get Google to do my thinking for me whenever possible. Google took me to a random word generator and I got two words - 'zebra' and 'holes'. So there is this zebra behind a curtain and you need to poke holes in it to see him. Let's say that there is an N by N grid on the curtain and you have to play against your computer to poke the holes. This is getting better, let's have a dots and boxes game with the grid. Person who completes one box gets to punch a hole. The more holes you punch, you get to see more of our zebra. So far so good, so I look for my next random word and I get 'address'. I think again. There is this address list on my phone. There is a zebra against every contact and I get a hole on it every time I make or receive a call from that person. So I know just by looking at the contact, how much I am interacting with that person based on how much of my zebra is visible to me. Now I am excited. This is really working. I get up and tell this great zebra idea to the guy who sits beside me.
"What does a Zebra have to do with an address?"
He asked.
"Because it is there. Just above the holes."
I answered. He looked at me with a blank expression. I knew he did not get it, he had not seen the TED shows. He was one of those guys who had come to the first show and then never again. So I forget about him and look for the next word. It is 'torpedo'. Well, I can blow up the unused addresses with a torpedo, can't I? I will use delay-fused torpedoes. Hats off to Shimpei, this is just great. I never thought skinny toy makers who can't even speak English could have such an influence on me.
So let me now conclude. The summary is, I have been transformed. I have a lot of ideas now. You may say they are stupid, copied, remixed or whatever. But I think they are great. I am about to get on to step two. This blog is the first test flight of my ideas. I hope somebody will build on my torpedoes. Whatever you do, handle them with care.
A vision is a belief and somebody has said that great leaders must be prepared to change their beliefs. So I have changed my vision multiple times since that day. But one thing that has remained constant is my interest in innovation. What made Thomas Edison invent all those things? It can't be just the genius. If that was the case, I would have also invented something. What caused that Eureka moment for Archimedes? It can't be lying down in a tub. I have tried that, it does not work. I have tried to answer these questions. Of course, I couldn't find the answer myself. I asked others and they said innovation cannot be taught. This is always the best answer to give when you don't know the answer. I also do this. I usually say to my team - "I cannot teach you how to be a good developer. You have to discover it yourself. It has to come from within". It sounds nice. Makes me look like a consultant or a guru. Coming back to the point, an answer to what drives innovation was a mystery to me.
So I was excited when my team said they will be playing one TED talk every day for the next few weeks as a run-up to one of the events we were planning. The talks were to be on innovation and creativity. For the uninitiated, TEDsters are a bunch of people who believe that any great idea can be presented in 18 minutes. I don't know why they chose 18, maybe that itself is a great idea. I searched for 18 in Wikipedia. It said - "18 (eighteen) is the natural number following 17 and preceding 19". I doubt that could be the reason for choosing the number. Then it said - "18, aside from 0, is the only number that equals twice the sum of its decimal digits". Wow! I did not know that before. That is how it is always about TED. You always learn something that you had not thought of before. Thus it was with the spirit of 18 that I went to watch the first talk. It was a packed house. Later I heard that most of the people came because they thought TED was a movie. You can't blame them. These Bollywood movies with rather long and un-pronounceable names are often known by acronyms like TED.
The first one was Steven Johnson talking about 'where good ideas come from'. Steven is a successful author who has written a book by the same name. Writing the book was definitely a good idea because it became pretty successful. So I thought he should know where such ideas come from. Steven said ideas don't get born in Eureka moments, and there I was spending four hours a week in tubs! In fact, I had restarted my tub experiments recently after reading Feynman, the Nobel prize winning Physicist famous for the Feynman series of lectures, that he spent time in closed tubs filled with water to bring on hallucinations. I thought maybe that is how he got all those ideas. I did not have a closed tub, neither did I have the other stimulants that Feynman may have used. Still I thought there was no harm in trying. I never got anything other than a cold from the tub and was about to give up the experiment. Steven said that an idea is a network. They evolve in an environment that allows the ideas or hunches from different people to come together. The more chaotic the environment, the better. When he said that offices should look like a tavern, I couldn't have agreed more. That definitely saves a lot of trouble, especially on Friday evenings.
The next one was a talk by David Kelley, a professor of Mechanical Engineering at Stanford and one of the guys who started the d.school at Stanford. I looked up their web site and saw that they actually claim to teach people how to innovate! I also learned that innovation can be quite expensive, more than $10,000 for just a two-day boot camp. David said that adults have a fear of judgement and that prevents them from letting their ideas fly. I realized then that I must be one rung below the others. I just did not have any ideas to fly. Then he said there is nothing like creative and non-creative people. At least, that was good news. So I was just two steps away from being an innovator. Step one - get some ideas, step two - fly them around. They will then network with other ideas to change this world.
Then came the one that I liked best. In fact it made me climb that first step; almost. It was Kirby Ferguson, asserting that creativity is remix. He said that there were three basic elements to creativity - copy, transform and remix. Since time immemorial, this is how creative ideas have formed. Apparently Henry Ford had said that he did not invent anything new. He had just combined the discoveries of others. And Steve Jobs had opined once that good artists copy, while great artists steal! I liked that. Apple has done this repeatedly. The GUI, multi-touch and many such other ideas were really invented by others. They were just mixed right by Apple. And that was ok, at least to Apple. Then they patented those results, which was not ok for others. Kirby said that creativity comes from without, not from within. We are not independent when it comes to creating ideas, but are dependent on each other. We just have to accept that great ideas are born by copying, knowingly or unknowingly. This was getting easier than I thought. I only had to find something to copy, something that has not been patented already.
Then came Shimpei Takahashi, a Japanese toy designer. He talked about a game that one can play to create new ideas. Just mix two words that come to your mind and there is an idea. Then you mix the second word with a third new word and there is another idea. Just keep this chain going and you have a lot of ideas. I went and searched in Google for two random words. I like to get Google to do my thinking for me whenever possible. Google took me to a random word generator and I got two words - 'zebra' and 'holes'. So there is this zebra behind a curtain and you need to poke holes in it to see him. Let's say that there is an N by N grid on the curtain and you have to play against your computer to poke the holes. This is getting better, let's have a dots and boxes game with the grid. Person who completes one box gets to punch a hole. The more holes you punch, you get to see more of our zebra. So far so good, so I look for my next random word and I get 'address'. I think again. There is this address list on my phone. There is a zebra against every contact and I get a hole on it every time I make or receive a call from that person. So I know just by looking at the contact, how much I am interacting with that person based on how much of my zebra is visible to me. Now I am excited. This is really working. I get up and tell this great zebra idea to the guy who sits beside me.
"What does a Zebra have to do with an address?"
He asked.
"Because it is there. Just above the holes."
I answered. He looked at me with a blank expression. I knew he did not get it, he had not seen the TED shows. He was one of those guys who had come to the first show and then never again. So I forget about him and look for the next word. It is 'torpedo'. Well, I can blow up the unused addresses with a torpedo, can't I? I will use delay-fused torpedoes. Hats off to Shimpei, this is just great. I never thought skinny toy makers who can't even speak English could have such an influence on me.
So let me now conclude. The summary is, I have been transformed. I have a lot of ideas now. You may say they are stupid, copied, remixed or whatever. But I think they are great. I am about to get on to step two. This blog is the first test flight of my ideas. I hope somebody will build on my torpedoes. Whatever you do, handle them with care.
