How to develop right idea at right time?

Siva Kumar | July 10, 2019 | Tuesday Technology Thoughts | No Comments

Warning : Slightly big blog post with loads of content
There are two answers to the title question “How to develop right idea at right time?”
First one is more of theory. Second one, is Easier one, which is given at the end of this blogpost.

Two terms we often hear.. — Creativity & Innovation .

What is Creativity ?
Creativity is often thought something special capability given by god to some people. But it is not a fact.
Some of the common things about all creative people in all fields are
1) Their urge to express their ideas (even if they fail 100 times)
2) They are able to hold few thoughts
3) Deliberate practice.
4) They are ambidexterity in nature.

I am leaving first three points as they are quite obvious definitions.
Fourth one is the key feature to be creative.

Textbook dictionary definition ambidexterity is the ability to use both hands right and left. Let us expand the same to business concepts

1. Make the product elegant keeping the cost low
2. Make a detailed note in a single slide
3. Take your time to think , but finish it before tomorrow
4. Tell the details, still keep the secret

At the outset, these parts of the sentences seem to be opposite in direction. Actually creative people like to have these challenges, in fact they strive these moments.

Let me take analogy given in the book “Creative curve”

Generally people tend to live with known people, known territory. But when the new devices (gadgets/phones) are coming to the market, they buy them .. Where is this difference coming from?

The answer is creative curve:

It is exactly mid point, when people call it creativity. The product should not seem to be too different or too familiar.

Easiest way to achieve this apply two different principles on other things.

1. When hair drier is used as dust cleaner to remove the dust under the carpet
2. When plastic bottle is mounted on straight steel frame to avoid any injury

To achieve this , one has to do things differently.
Refer this picture , where taxi driver and School bus driver – as taxi driver is exposed to different routes every day, his creativity quotient is higher than school bus driver

(picture credit: Creative curve, by Allen Gannett)

or in simpler terms, creativity is combining both parts of the brain – analytical and emotional brains

Thus the creative people have this ability of traversing on the edges – they never take easy path of “this or that”. They take this difficult path of “this and that”
Four laws of creativity : Consumption,imitation, communities collaboration, iterative

Consume : They spend more time in understand the art/technique, they are into , this time is normally much more than the amount of time they spend on actually create.

Imitate: They never start from ground up. They will try to mix two concepts from two different places,people

Community,collaboration : They share, they discuss, they talk a lot, they write, they argue, they speak… (in fact, people cannot tolerate the immersed explanation) They just enjoy talking about it

Iterative: They just keep on trying, never stop… 10 or 15 iterations will go on continue..