3.6 Literature Review: Disruptive mindset
Creativity is connecting things. — Steve Jobs, founder and CEO, Apple Inc.
There is a general opinion that the ability to create is genetic and hardly achievable. Most people believe that some people like Steve Jobs (Apple), Pierre Omidyar (eBay), Scott Cook (Intuit), are simply born with creative genes, while others are not, because creators are supposedly right brained, meaning that they are genetically endowed with creative abilities. The rest are left brained — logical, linear thinkers, with little or no ability to think creatively. These general assumption have been challenged by Clayton Christensen and William Duggan who argue that creativity addresses both parts of brain and can be developed. Daniel Kahnenman (2011), a leading figure in Behavioral economics, has called it System 1 — fast, intuitive, instinct, and System 2 — slow, thinking, logic.
Willian Duggan in his book Strategic Intuition (2007) combines these Systems 1 and 2 and presents Strategic intuition as a combination of existing ideas that “works the same way in art as it lies in other fields. Innovation comes through creative combination, by bringing past elements together in a new and useful way.” (Duggan 2007, p. 152) It has nothing common with ordinary intuition like gut feeling. “Strategic intuition is the opposite: it is thinking, not feeling.” (Duggan 2007, p. 1).
He argues that creativity can be developed by a number of techniques, like:
- The Wishing Technique answering questions like “If I could have this happen any way I want, how would it be?”
- Image Streaming. With closed eyes describe images and actions seen before, interpreting them like dreams.
- The Sensory Involvement Techniques involving different sense descriptions like sound and color in analyzing the task.
These techniques are addressed to the subconscious and clear the mind for new combinations.
Following this theory, all the disruptive products like iPhone, Google search, and others were created or intelligently taken from old ideas in the form of a better combination. Steve Jobs went on to the next thing without ever inventing anything from scratch, but by putting together new combinations. Pixar, the iMac, iPod are among the examples of this kind.
Clayton Christensen in his book The Innovator’s DNA (2011) introduces research results based on interviewing with 100 inventors of groundbreaking products and services and formulate the code of generating innovative business ideas through “associational thinking” or “associating” which is close to Strategic Intuition by William Duggan. Associating — ability to make surprising connections across areas of knowledge, industries, even geographies, is an often-taken-for-granted skill among the innovators (Dyer, Gregersen and Christensen 2011, p. 41) Associating is connected to as he calls “discovery” skills — the behavioral skill of questioning, observing, networking and experimenting (Dyer, Gregersen and Christensen 2011, p. 41).
Unlike Duggan, Christensen outlines and correlates thinking processes with behavior. He argues that one’s ability to generate innovative ideas is not merely a function of the mind, but also a function of behaviors (Dyer, Gregersen and Christensen, 2011). So, if we change our behavior, address the proper actions (questioning, observing, networking, experimenting), we can improve our creative impact.
Why do some people engage these four skills more than others?
The answer is that they have the courage to innovate. They are willing to embrace a mission for challenging the status quo and take risks to make change happen. The bottom line is that to improve this ability to generate innovative ideas it is necessary to practice associational thinking and more frequently engage in the four skills.
Most people simply accept the status quo. They may even like routine and prefer not to rock the boat. “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix broke” brings the main difference between innovators and others, because “innovators see many things as “broke”. And they want to fix them.” (Dyer, Gregersen and Christensen 2011, p. 25).
