Wings
Some only dream of flying
They say you need wings to fly
I say, I have wings
But they can’t hear me
I am already there
And the wind is screaming words with me
But I am not dreaming
They say I wish I had wings
I say, you do have wings
The question is:
Where are you hiding them?
I really like this overview of the creation of the Pulse iPad app. Written by Lisa Katayama of Fast Company, it succinctly captures the big things you have to do to bring something remarkable to market. I especially appreciate the second of the five ways noted in the article:
Define: Are you focused and open to what your team
needs in order to thrive? Define your personal point of view in pursuing
your venture, and then think about what your end user, your team, and
your business need. Even if your end goal is to reach all 6.7 billion
inhabitants of the earth with your product or service, key in on a niche
user to start and identify what works best for him. By observing and
empathizing with the tech geek, for example, Kothari and Gupta were able
to define his need: a better way to catch up with older news and other
treasures that might get buried in linear feeds like Google Reader or
NetNewsWire.
Over the past year, I've outlined 18 of the 21 principles of innovation I've been hacking on. The nineteenth principle happens to be "Have a point of view", and I think the expression of this principle above is just wonderful. Knowing what you stand for, and what you don't, and what is important, and what is not, is fundamental. Without that knowledge, I believe it is impossible to manage the tensions that come with bringing something new to life. Having a point of view not only helps you make decisions, it helps increase the odds that you'll make good decisions — at least decisions that will feel good to the people you're designing for. I suppose I should get my act together and write up those last three innovation principles…
I also dig this article because of what it says about the Stanford d.school. First, I have to give a tip of my hat to my friends and colleagues Michael Dearing and Perry Klebahn, who created and taught the Launch Pad class wherein Pulse was created and launched. They're incredible guys, and I consider myself very lucky to get to learn from them on a routine basis. Second, when George Kembel and I wrote up the "napkin manifesto" for the d.school back in 2004, we had a vision of using "… design thinking to inspire multidisciplinary teams". We thought it would be cool if the next pair of Hewlett and Packard, Filo and Yang, or Sergey and Larry found each other via the d.school. Now, I'm not saying the Pulse is the new Yahoo, but it's very satisfying to see people at the d.school meeting each other, learning with each other, and working together to bring things to life which make a real impact out in the world.
Now that's way cool.
I'm always looking for feedback on my evolving list of innovation principles. What works? What doesn't? What's missing?
Last year Esquire ran this list of aphorisms from the mind of J Mays. I've been holding on to this list since then, and this afternoon I took another look at it. Seeing them afresh made me feel that a few fell naturally into some of my framework of innovation principles. Is it narcissistic to take the thoughts of another person and put them into buckets of your own making? Yeah, probably.
Anyway, here I go… thinking by Mays, buckets by Rodriguez:
Principle 1: Experience the world instead of talking about experiencing the world
"A designer is
only as good as what he or she knows. If all you know is what you've
garnered from fifteen years of living in Detroit, it's going to limit
what you can lay down. If you've had experiences around the world,
you'll be able to design a much richer story for people to enjoy."
Principle 2: See and hear with the mind of a child
"I'll be the first to admit that there were times when I was
wrong, but it didn't change the fact that I was going to keep trying.
On the other side, if you're just going by the herd rule, that's where
you end up–with the herd."
I was delighted earlier this month to learn that Fortune had named me to their list of "The smartest people in tech".
When it comes to advancing the art and science of bringing cool stuff to life, there are inspiring things going on at IDEO and Stanford these days, and I'm very proud to be a member of these teams of amazing people.
Sometimes it's easy to dismiss the idea of doing some prototyping when the "thing" we're working on is as ethereal as a service offering or a software interface. The usual suspect excuses are very predictable:
But, as the video above shows, where there's a will, there's a way. If you believe you can prototype it, you can. Warning, shameless plug approaching: Elmo's Monster Maker was designed by some of my colleagues here at IDEO, and it's awesome. Not only is it one of my kid's favorite apps, but it's one of mine, too. It's fun, social, wacky, will make you giggle, and in the way of all good games, you just can't put it down.
None of this happened by accident. Perhaps Mozart could dish out an entire perfect opera based on the music in his head, but for the rest of us, there's no substitute for getting something out quickly, and then improving it over and over and over until we have to ship it. Iteration makes perfect. Starting is the springboard to perfection.
Some relevant innovation principles:
"Tomorrow, in a very real sense, your life — the life you author from
scratch on your own — begins.
How will you use your gifts? What choices will you make?
Will inertia be your guide, or will you follow your passions?
Will you follow dogma, or will you be original?
Will you choose a life of ease, or a life of service and adventure?
Will you wilt under criticism, or will you follow your convictions?
Will you bluff it out when you're wrong, or will you apologize?
Will you guard your heart against rejection, or will you act when you
fall in love?
Will you play it safe, or will you be a little bit swashbuckling?
When it's tough, will you give up, or will you be relentless?
Will you be a cynic, or will you be a builder?
Will you be clever at the expense of others, or will you be kind?"
If nothing else, working on metacool over the past half decade has helped me meet a ton of people I would never have encountered otherwise. And thanks to another friend I met via metacool, I recently had the great pleasure of meeting Jörg Bergmeister, one of the most talent racing drivers working today.
Those of you out there whose eyes roll back in your head whenever I talk about cars can rest easy (relaaaxxx — let those eyes roll baaackkk), because when Jörg and I met, we didn't talk about automobiles so much as about human-machine interface design and how new technologies may reshape the dominant paradigms of automotive design surrounding us today. Our specific topic of discussion was the amazing new Porsche 911 GT3 R Hybrid, and yes we did geek out a bit on gearhead stuff at the beginning of our interview, but on the whole I think we ventured in to some very interesting territory. In fact, we touched on many of the themes I surfaced in this post I wrote a while back about making green red.
By the way, have I mentioned how totally gnarly Jörg's 911 looks?
My favorite part of our conversation came when I asked Jörg about how he stays inspired, and his answer was just wonderful:
Racing is the one thing I love — well, not the only thing, but I've
done it my entire life and it has been my hobby and I made it my
profession. I'm very fortunate to make my hobby my profession. I think
that's enough inspiration. I just love, love racing.
Words of wisdom. Can you make your hobby your profession, and achieve a "cold fusion" state of permanent personal inspiration. What a way to remain always inspired! I love it.
By the way, have you ever noticed how much the nose of a modern 911 looks like the skull of the ur-land animal Tiktaalik?
Yeah, me too.
If the process of bringing new things to life were a living, breathing organism, it would be a nasty beast! It would be unpredictable. It would consume as much as you dared to feed it. Some days, it would really stink. Yucko! And it would have a tendency to chew up people and spit them out. Most of all, though, it would hairy. Really hairy — think dense forests of tangly, greasy, matted, hair, the likes of which make people run for shampoo, scissors, clippers, straight razors, and a blow dryer.
However, if you shave a hairball, there's nothing left. You know, it's just a ball of hair, right? But in that fuzziness is an unpredictable wellspring of creativity, which — if left to do what it will in in its own nonlinear way — is the source of the new and the wonderful. Consequently, one must never give in to the temptation to shave the fuzzy hairball that is innovation. As institutions and individuals, we have to learn how to live with the hairball and respect it. If we get enough mileage under our belt, we may even come to relish being in situations of great ambiguity and fuzziness. I know that I can't get enough of being there, which is why I do what I do.
Organizations need to find a way to let the hairball be a hairy mess. The fuzziness of the innovation hairball makes its very presence uncomfortable for mature organizations. Successful organizations have gotten to where they are by being able to sell, ship, and support things on a regular basis. If the honest answer to the question "When will this be done?" is "We have no idea!" (which is what the hairball always says), a mature organization will be sorely tempted to lend clarity and structure to the hairball. "Let's put you on a firm schedule with staged checkpoints!", it says. "Here, let me clean up that mess of hair." Instead, we have to be able to let the hairball be greasy and stinky, and learn how to celebrate it. This is a hard thing to do, as leaving a pool of ambiguity unmopped rarely not squares well with meeting your quarterly numbers. As to where and how to do that, well there are many books written around those subjects, so let's just leave it that we need to let the hair be fuzzy. Don't shave it. Find a place for it to grow.
To that point, my friend Bob Sutton wrote a wonderful post about his own experience of learning to respect the fuzzy front end. In it he quotes Bill Coyne, who led innovation efforts at 3M for many years:
Finally, don't try to control or make safe the fumbling, panicky,
glorious adventure of discovery. Occasionally, one sees articles that
describe how to rationalize this process, how to take the fuzzy front
end and give it a nice haircut. This is self-defeating. We should allow
the fuzzy front end to be as unkempt and as fuzzy as we can. Long– term
growth depends on innovation, and innovation isn't neat. We stumble on
many of our best discoveries. If you want to follow the rapidly moving
leading edge, you must learn to live on your feet. And you must be
willing to make necessary, healthy stumble.
I really like Bob's post because of the way he relates the need for organizations to build up muscles around grappling with fuzziness with his own personal journey as a design thinker.
As I've said earlier, at a personal level, being comfortable with the innovation process is largely a matter of learning by doing. The more you're in hairy, fuzzy situations, and the more you find your way out of them, the more your confidence in your own creative process will grow. At an individual level, if you want to be able to live in more innovative ways, you need to learn how to orbit the hairball. That phrase, of course, is the title of Gordon McKenzie's masterpiece Orbiting the Giant Hairball: A Corporate Fool's Guide to Surviving with Grace, which occupies a hallowed spot on my bookshelf. For me, McKenzie's masterpiece is a valuable personal "owner's manual", as it helps you find your own ways to avoid the temptation to shave the hairball. It teaches you instead to find ways orbit it when necessary (which may be almost all the time for some folks).
Know thyself. Understanding how to deal with ambiguity at a personal level is the key to unlocking one's creative confidence. An organization which understands how to resist shaving the hairball, populated by people who know how to orbit the hairball, will be capable of bringing amazing things to life.
Know thyself.
This is number 18 in a series of principles of innovation. It is an evolving work. Please give me your thoughts, suggestions, and good ideas.