Saturday, February 11, 2012
Wanted: Idea Fusers
Harvard Business Review: It's become pretty much common knowledge that great innovation springs from the ability to pull two unlike things together to create a beautiful third. Steve Jobs famously shifted a paradigm when he fused calligraphy with technology to create the Mac's graphical user interface. Many great inventions fuse something very simple, cheap and widely accessible — say, a small piece of paper — with something expensive and complex — say, a medical laboratory test — to come up with a marvelous solution, such as George Whitesides' postage-stamp sized diagnostic tool.
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4 comments:
As a proud Mac user, I can obviously see the genius produced by the fusion of calligraphy and technology... I'm not sure I understand brilliance created by the combination of cow pies and time pieces, but I guess that comes under the heading of "to each his own."
The point of this article is clear; combining two unlike things can often produce and great third new thing, and that this concept should also be applied to people (in other words, working with intellectually diverse people will result in better ideas). However, this article has also revealed to us why the Snuggie wasn't as revolutionary as its creator's imagined it could be: a blanket and a robe are too similar.
This article makes some really good points. Intellectual diversity is key to innovation. Perhaps it is more valuable then gender and racial diversity when it comes to collaboration. Tina Fey often references this phenomenon in the world of comedic writing. Lorne Michaels, and now Tina Fey, create there writing teams by pairing "Harvard Grad Types" with "Improv People" because they have drastically different approaches to writing and comedy and together can create some of the funniest shows on television. Just look at 30 Rock and SNL and pretty much any late night talk show. Mean Girls is also a good example of this. This tactic, pairing unlike things or people, has proven to work in countless fields to create a newer, better product or idea. This type of collaboration is one of the most successful forms. This is probably a good way to evaluate creative teams. Is there enough intellectual diversity? It really does make a difference.
The last part of this article reminded me of something that I read somewhere, about how some businesses would rather you have majored in something other than business, because it is possible to teach business, say put together a spreadsheet, but that they can't teach someone how to think about what the business is, in this case how to think broadly. This made me like the BXA program a bit better, because this is exactly what the program is trying to encourage, both by allowing completely different majors, and by putting all of those completely different majors together in an area. This has resulted in some really interesting projects, when someone's interest in physics is turned into art, or something similar.
It's kinda sad that even as there is a greater desire for more varied degrees in liberal arts and other fields, more and more people are moving away from those fields to more secure majors, such as engineering, business, etc. The fact is that many people will put off their dreams, and forget about them to go get a more successful degree, when what many employers want is a more varied, and creative set of thinkers in the workforce. There needs to be a greater balance of not only learning the more technical ideas of working in an everyday job, but also figuring out how to become more creative in the workforce. As the article points, it's often being able to bridge the gap between the technical and the creative is often the best way to lead to new and innovative products and ideas. There has to be a balance between the two in order to be successful
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