The Stranger, The Traveler, and the Innovator

When was the last time you entered a new place for the first time? Were you by yourself? Do you remember how you felt?

Chances are you felt a little excited, a little apprehensive, perhaps even a little afraid. The good news is that most people feel this way. The better news is that you have displayed some key characteristics of an innovator. Now all you have to do is learn to take advantage of them.

The Stranger

There is a prophetic narration in the Islamic tradition that goes like this:

Be in this world as if you were a stranger or a wayfarer. When you survive till the evening, do not expect to be alive till the morning; and when you survive till the morning do not expect to be alive till the evening.

Lets go back to the memory of being in a foreign place. I’m guessing you didn’t enter like a bull in a china shop. I’m going to guess further that you were probably treading lightly, and making sure you were not going to make a fool of yourself.

I was recently invited to a barbecue party at a friend’s house. I had never set foot in that house before and I was meeting many people there for the first time. I found myself gingerly making my way around, keeping my elbows close to my body, thinking twice before opening fridges, and making sure I wasn't gorging the chips bowl.

In other words, I was in a heightened phase of self-awareness.

As is the case with many traditions, the interpretations of the above Islamic narration are vast in number and rich in meaning. But the way I prefer to think of it is that we are being advised to:

1) heighten our self-awareness with respect to our surroundings so that we may keep any arrogance or environmental damage in check, and

2) not to become too attached to things that are temporal in nature. What we possess in terms of our wealth or health at one point in time is not guaranteed to last till the next.

If we make sure to put ourselves in the shoes and perspective of a Stranger in the things that we do, we will hopefully reduce the impact of our own physical aggression (of just simply existing!), see our role in our immediate environment, and be constantly vigilant of our usage of our finite resources. These are lessons that even large organizations can learn — and arguably must learn to remain sustainable.

The Traveler

The real act of discovery consists not in finding new lands, but in seeing with new eyes. — Marcel Proust

Tom Kelley, the likable Managing Director of the world’s most respected design firm IDEO, often talks about “thinking like a traveler” as a good habit to adopt in order to increase one’s innovative and creative prowess. In his trademark haven’t-you-noticed style, he describes how when you travel to a new place you are “in this hyper-aware state where you notice everything“. [By the way, I highly recommend you to watch the 4 min video clip from one of his presentations (and then watch the entire talk)].

Here, Kelley is talking about something different from what I've already mentioned in the previous section. If the Stranger is meant to be inwardly-aware, then the Traveler is outwardly-aware of the things around her. He argues that when you train to always be aware of your surroundings, you will spot more opportunities. And that, he says, “gives you more power and more credibility as an innovator”.

And much like how travelers these days document their new and exotic locales ubiquitously on Facebook, Instagram, and countless other social networks and travel blogs, you should strive to document your observations and experiences, too. I prefer to use a Moleskine notepad that I have in my back pocket, but you can choose any medium that makes sense to you. Sooner or later, the collection of your observations will either inspire you to think of tangential ideas or to connect some dots that were already swirling in your head.

Note: this blog post is a product of a few separated and seemingly disparate pieces of notes I had scribbled in my notepad on a few very different occasions. Just as important as it is to observe and document the world around you, you should also frequently review your notes and observations in order to draw any deeper or tangential inferences.

The Innovator

Strangers and Travelers, I contend, are two parts of an effective and credible Innovator. Both need to exist. One to keep yourself accountable and responsible, and the other to sharpen your observational eye.

This post first appeared on my blog, The Innovator’s Odyssey. Follow me there and/or @alirtariq to get more thoughts on innovation, creativity, entrepreneurship, and self-development.