Hunch

I am becoming increasingly enamored of, and chastised, haunted and just plain bothered by this word.  Back to the etymology and we get a bit of a murky provenance (isn’t that perfect?…you continue to blow my mind, Hunch!) that looks something like this:

originally (1581) a verb, “to push, thrust,” of unknown origin. Meaning “raise or bend into a hump” is 1598, in hunchbacked. Perhaps a variant of bunch. Figurative sense of “hint, tip” (a “push” toward a solution or answer), first recorded 1849, led to that of “premonition, presentiment” (1904). (http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=hunch)

With Hunch, we’re not solving anything yet, just pushing some things together to create a rough, lumpy form.  Any bystander sees an amorphous blob, but we, as the hunch-formers, benefit from seeing the movement as this malformed, Quasimodo (literally, “half-made”…is that cool or what?) of an idea emerges from previous nada, and feeling the first stirrings of “what can be” as they send a dopamine cocktail to us with a cool mint sprig in it.

We innovation fankids need to step this up. More musing!  More foolish wondering!  More kicking things around, in crude, malformed ways!  Banish the premature fixation about being right!  Let’s have a lot more “be,” period!

As innovationistas, our task is to create options.  Tom Hustad, founding editor of the Journal of Product Innovation Management and a PDMA Crawford Fellow of Innovation (also, to my great fortune, my friend, mentor and teacher in my days at IU) gave a moving speech at PDMA’s International Conference in Santa Clara, CA one month after 9-11, where he contrasted the limiting, option- and life-destroying worldview that had just wreaked such horrific havoc with the noble effort of innovation.  Some key points from this (my takeaway) – innovation creates options.  Innovation opens opportunity.  It’s not just about a bunch of new products – it’s about more choice, more opportunity.  It’s about being part of the arc of human effort toward the ideal.  It’s honest work.  It’s deeply human work. It is noble. It is vital.  It is needed.

And it all begins with a hunch.

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