Category Archives: innovating
Always have a strong point of view
It is so important to have a strong point of view. Let me repeat: it is so important to have a strong point of view. It needn't be as extreme as the one voiced in this ad, but you've got to stand for something.
If you don't have a point of view, you won't know what you don't stand for, and so you'll be tempted to try and do everything, because "no" won't be in your vocabulary. Trying to appeal to everyone by playing in the mushy middle not only will make you less appealing over the long haul (because being boring is not attractive), it also makes it very difficult to get started (because the enormity of the task makes everything too daunting to tackle), and makes it really tough to ship (because you have to do so much in order to meet the needs of so many people).
Having a point of view is incredibly liberating. It takes more energy and more time to get to an honest understanding of what you believe in, what you need to do, and what you won't do, but it is well and truly worth it.
For more on this subject, read Principle 19: Have a point of view
metacool Thought of the Day
"Strive for perfection in everything. Take the best that exists and make it better.
If it doesn't exist, create it. Accept nothing nearly right or good enough."
(in other words, be remarkable)
How’s your invisible jet?
Do you remember Wonder Woman's Invisible Jetplane? If you don't, you can read about it over here, and it looked something like this (because it's invisble, there aren't that many images of it floating around):
It strikes me that her Invisible Jetplane is a good metaphor for a well-equipped journey through the world of the possible. As you embrace the art and science of bringing cool stuff to life, you're going to have moments where you are going to have to stare into nothingness. Literally, there will be nothing there, and as a generative creator of future options, it is up to you to create something. If you're floating out above an abyss, it's good to be packing something to help ensure that you can get through the tough spots.
People who make it through the rough parts of a creative journey have an Invisble Jetplane of their own making, and it's called creative confidence. It's a set of tools you build for yourself, a personally tailored version of whatever design process you subscribe to, a way of working which you know will deliver results. It's certainly not about bravado or pumping yourself up. Not at all. Rather, it's about have the confidence to stop when the going is good, to celebrate when things break, to be able to listen and learn and test over and over in order to create a strong point of view about how things should be going forward — at least for now. And, as with Wonder Woman's jet, creative confidence is invisible, but it'll get you places, and people around you will notice what it can do, too. You can't see it, but you certainly can feel it when someone has it.
So where do you go to get your jetplane? If it were as easy as getting a degree or reading a book, everyone could do it. You certainly can't buy it, and it is not about credentials. The good news — at least for those of us who can't help but apply ourselves toward bringing cool stuff to life — is that it builds in strength with practice. As my friend Jon Winsor says, you have to ride a thousand waves before you truly get what it means to surf. It's the same for creative confidence, too: it's about practice and cycles. To grok it, do it. It's about getting miles under your belt.
Have fun with your jet!
Well, sometimes there really are new ideas!
While it is important to keep in mind that most new ideas aren't likely to be new, sometimes something really is new. And thank goodness. Life would be a dull, grey affair if we couldn't bring truly new things into the world. Today marks the birth of just this sort of thing: according to metacool's research and development partner Telstar Logistics, today marks the 100th anniversary of naval aviation:
Naval aviation was invented one hundred years ago today, on January 18, 1911, when a 24 year-old barnstormer pilot named Eugene B. Ely completed the world's first successful landing on a ship. It happened in San Francisco Bay, aboard the crusier USS Pennsylvania, which had a temporary, 133-foot wooden landing strip built above her afterdeck and gun turret as part of the experiment.
I love the context of this historical event, for several reasons. First, it happened in San Francisco. It's cool to think that remarkable mashups were happening out here back when "web" meant something that came out of a spider. Second, that this innovation really is a mashup: it slams together several new technologies — an airplane and a modern warship — in a way which produced a genuine first. Perhaps the very nature of mashups makes them more likely to disprove the rule of nothing being new under the sun? Take two common things, put them together, and that interaction may be genuinely new and a great source of value creation. Finally, innovation doesn't just happen. Close your eyes and imagine the human drama of this day one hundred years ago, and the importance of measured risk taking becomes readily apparent.
Hats off to Eugen B. Ely, who had guts to get out and do it.
metacool Thought of the Day
"I'm a designer. I'm a creator. I really like helping manage and lead a growing, profitable business. It's a design job."
Wisdom from screwing around
The pattern you see above is the result of a couple of creative minds — colleagues of mine — screwing around with their GPS-enabled wristwatch while out on a morning run. They "wrote" a message for the rest of us at the office, and then sent us to this webpage, where via a mashup we could see their graffito. It's a virtual crop circle, a public digital tattoo, a webified record of a few minutes of personal joy.
It's also the result of many layers of technology working together, from satellites generating the original photographic imagery to other satellites finding the wristwatch to the mind-boggling amount of digital hardware/software integration packaged so tightly into that wristwatch (and don't forget the rechargable batteries and the input/output protocols which allow this GPS data to be brought into Google Maps over the interwebs). Basically, a ton of stuff in the technology side of the equation had to go right to enable these two guys to create this virtual crop circle.
And it's a lot of technology to grok. Do you think any of the engineering teams behind each of the technological building blocks involved had any idea that a couple of Silicon Vallely dudes would use the sum total of their efforts toward this purely aesthetic expression of freedom, liberty, and joy? I doubt it. Very few "consumer" (I dislike that word, but I have to use it) value propositions involving multiple compex technologies can be created in a top down sense. Instead, whether like Twitter they spring up while a development team is busy working on something else, or as in the case of this virtual crop circle or mountain bikes or jazz or hot rods or any pursuit born out of the venacular they just "happen", complex value propositions enabled by technology need to grow organically, with serendipity as their fertilizer.
We can't gain wisdom about the uses of technology unless we allow ourselves time to screw around.
Roald Dahl and the power of walking away
I had the pleasure over the holidays of reading Charlie and the Chocolate Factory to my daughter. It's a wonderful piece of literature, and a great reminder that movie adaptations of great works generally pale in comparison with the original text. Roald Dahl was nothing if not a creative genius.
A special bonus for me was the inclusion at the end of the book of this transcript of a converation with Roald Dahl. It's an exemplary interview, focusing on his process and way of working. In particular, I found the following passage remarkable:
…I never come back to a blank page; I always finish about halfway through. To be confronted with a blank page is not very nice. But Hemingway, a great American writer, taught me the finest trick when you are doing a long book, which is, he simply said in his own words, “When you are going good, stop writing.” And that means that if everything’s going well and you know exactly where the end of the chapter’s going to go and you know just what the people are going to do, you don’t go on writing and writing until you come to the end of it, because when you do, then you say, well, where am I going to go next? And you get up and you walk away and you don’t want to come back because you don’t know where you want to go. But if you stop when you are going good, as Hemingway said…then you know what you are going to say next. You make yourself stop, put your pencil down and everything, and you walk away. And you can’t wait to get back because you know what you want to say next and that’s lovely and you have to try and do that. Every time, every day all the way through the year. If you stop when you are stuck, the you are in trouble!
His insight flies in the face of common wisdom around this subject, which goes something like "when in flow, keep going". In other words, stay with the muse lest it float away. Having the confidence to "stop when you are going good", coupled with the ability to crank it up again the next day, feels like a more mature place to be in terms of one's personal creative process. I bet it takes practice. But, if it leads to more sleep, fewer late nights, and more perspective on what matters and what does not, I'd wager that all of us engaged in the art and science of bringing cool stuff to life would be in a better place.
I, for one, am going to start stopping!
metacool Thought of the Day
"Above all, think of life as a prototype. We can conduct experiments, make discoveries, and change our perspectives. We can look for opportunities to turn processes into projects that have tangible outcomes. We can learn how to take joy in the things we create whether they take the form of a fleeting experience or an heirloom that will last for generations. We can learn that reward comes in creation and re-creation, not just in the consumption of the world around us. Active participation in the process of creation is our right and our privilege. We can learn to measure the sucess of our ideas not by our bank accounts but by their impact in the world."