The Innovationfanboy Hall of Fame is an opportunity to recognize some of the folks who have played important roles in the formation of the Innovationfanboy perspective. While I take full responsibility for whatever misapplications of thought I have made from these influences, I want to honor what has been some important insight for me – ideas that have excited me and helped make me the raging, inexorable thunderlizard* innovation fanboy that I am. I will never be able to thank these folks sufficiently.
Inductee # 1. The envelope, please.
Edward de Bono
Per Wikipedia (so we know it’s bulletproof), “Edward de Bono (born May 19, 1933, in Malta) is a physician, author, inventor, and consultant. He is best known as the originator of the term lateral thinking and a proponent of the deliberate teaching of thinking as a subject in schools.”
My first flirtations with innovation and creativity as process/system came from reading deBono. I found the following two deBonan (?) ideas about ideas exciting, and, more importantly, really helpful in my own thinking:
- Forced associations/random provocation. This is a great riff on Einstein’s “Combinatory play seems to be the essential feature in productive thought.” Ah, the power of relating the previously unrelated to create new conceptual space. By stretching beyond the expected, the linear, first-tier adjacent/similar areas to go to random/wild/forced associations, we pull ourselves out of perceptual ruts. For example, if we were working on compelling new sink ideas, where do we go if we collide “sink” with “luxury furs?” ”Fur sink” opens up completely new sink territory for me such as soft sink, sinks with much richer tactile experiences, sinks that integrate other parts of the washing process such as washrag/benefits such as scrubability, etc. Each of these spaces is fresh and unexpected, and I need not continue now with “fur sink” and can play with those areas as starting points now, which leads me to…
- Ideas as vehicle v. destination. A certain degree of cognitive nimbleness can be really helpful. deBono talks about using ideas, particularly the crazier ideas, for their “movement” power rather than simply judging them per se. Where the idea takes you is at least as important as the merits of the idea itself. Look at ideas as means first, and perhaps later as ends in themselves. A provocative idea sets the stage for you to generate another seven, eight or 40, because it opens degrees of freedom that previous assumptions (particularly unconscious assumptions) had nailed safely shut.
Dr. deBono, we are unlikely to meet, but I owe you a solid (or 200). Thank you for ideas that drew me to the path. Thanks for the ideas that pack the killer combination of conceptual excitement and immediately pragmatic payout. Thank you, thank you.
*The cat that this term comes from will be recognized later on.
