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Creativity is, in many respects, a response.
And a process!
This aspect of the creative process, the fact that it emerges in response to a particular difficulty, has spawned its own terminology. It is called the “problem phase” of innovation.
this leaves out an indispensable feature of creativity. Without a problem, without a failure, without a flaw, without a frustration, innovation has nothing to latch on to. It loses its pivot.
You have to have a problem before you can have the game-changing riposte.”
Further studies have shown that those who dissent rather than brainstorm produce not just more ideas, but more productive and imaginative ideas.
Criticism surfaces problems. It brings difficulties to light.
Imagination is not fragile. It feeds off flaws, difficulties, and problems.
“It always starts with a problem,” Dyson says.
Failures feed the imagination. You cannot have the one without the other.”
Dyson’s innovation, stripped down to its essentials, was to merge them. He was a connecting agent. The act of creativity was an act, above all, of synthesis.
And it turns out that this act of connectivity is another central feature of innovation.
“Creativity is just connecting things.” If failure sparks creativity into life, the moment of insight invariably emerges from the attempt to bridge the problem with previously unconnected ideas or technologies.
To put it simply, failure and epiphany are inextricably linked. When we come up with a brilliant idea, when it pops into our mind, it has often emerged from a period of gestation.
turns out that epiphanies often happen when we are in one of two types of environment. The first is when we are switching off:
The other type of environment where creative moments often happen, as we have seen, is when we are being sparked by the dissent of others.
innovation is highly context-dependent. It is a response to a particular problem at a particular time and place.
The reason harks back to the “responsive” nature of creativity.
Dyson is well aware of this aspect of creativity. “Every time I have gone for a patent in a particular field, someone else has got there first,”
With the vacuum cyclone, there were already a number of patents lodged.”
Why did Dyson, rather than his predecessors, change the world of domestic cleaning?
we are even more neglectful of what happens afterward.
He tried new sizes, new shapes. Each time he would note how a small change in one dimension would impact the overall engineering solution. The key challenge was to balance airflow with separation efficiency.
“In the first year alone, I conducted literally hundreds of experiments. It was a very, very thick book.”
“It was another huge problem and it didn’t seem as if a conventional cyclone could solve it.”
The sheer scale of the problem set the stage for a second eureka moment: the dual cyclone.
In all, it took an astonishing 5,127 prototypes before Dyson believed the technology was ready to go in the vacuum cleaner.
According to Dyson: When you file a patent, somebody is almost always there before you. A lot of your argument with the patent examiner is to say: “Look, they may have had the eureka moment when they came back from the timber yard. They may even have created an early prototype.” But none of my forebears had made their prototypes work. Mine is statistically different. That was my decisive advantage.
creative insight work requires disciplined focus. As Dyson puts it: “If insight is about the big picture, development is about the
small picture. The trick is to sustain both perspectives at the same time.”
What was the key ingredient that characterized the winners, the companies that may not have come up with an idea first, but who made it work? The answer can be conveyed in one word:
discipline.
The 20 mile march, fanatic discipline
it is also the discipline to get the manufacturing process perfect, the supply lines faultle...
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he was the only one with the stamina to “fail” his concept into a workable solution.
They worked around the clock, creating new prototypes, iterating the chip into a workable solution. But they also insured that they nailed all the surrounding supply issues crucial for success. As Collins puts it: “Intel obsessed over manufacturing, delivery and scale.”
It is no good if inconsistent production means that a great idea is not translated into a polished product. The original idea is only
2 percent of the journey. You mustn’t neglect the rest.
Winners require innovation and discipline, the imagination to see the big picture and the focus to perceive the very small.
Pixar films are not good at first, and our job is to make them go . . . from suck to non-suck
Get a little less crappy everyday.
To spark the imagination and take our insights to their fullest expression, we should not insulate ourselves from failure; rather, we should engage with it.
The expertise we have developed is crucial for all of us.
we need to reach beyond our current expertise.
we want to break the rules. We do that by faili...
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technological change is often driven by the synergy between practical and theoretical knowledge.
two books on the mathematical theory of how cyclones work. He also went to visit the author of one of those books, an academic named R. G. Dorman.
Dorman’s equation predicted that cyclones would only be able to remove fine dust down to a lower limit of 20 microns.
Dyson’s practical engagement with the problem had forced a change in the theory.
progress happens. It is an interplay between the practical and the theoretical, between top-down and bottom-up, between creativity and discipline, between the small picture and the big picture.
failure is a blessing, not a curse. It is the jolt that inspires creativity and the selection test that drives evolution.
To generate openness, we must avoid preemptive blaming.
the full consequences of a blame culture,
