Shoto Funakoshi, the founder of
Shotokan Karate, was famous for
saying that in the practice of karate, there
is no room for error. During my brief
study of Shotokan, my instructor told
us that American students and instructors
did not have the patience of their
Japanese counterparts. They permitted
a large number of errors until students
approached black belt. At that time,
student were expected to perfect their
technique. Over time, American instructors
noticed something very interesting:
They were producing more black belts
than the Japanese. Furthermore, although
none of the Americans were as technically
proficient, they were beating their Japanese
counterparts in competitions far more
often than expected.
The reason American black belts
were winning so much is that they were
creative. They knew all the standard
moves, but were also willing to think
outside the box. They won because they
tried things that their opponents never
considered. When they were, quite literally,
smacked in the head, they learned
from their mistakes.
A common refrain from corporations
is that they value “out of the box”
thinking, but how does one do that?
Finding the Box
There is a secret to creative, outside the
box thinking: finding the box. Until you
know where the box is, you cannot tell
if you are thinking inside or outside of it.
Most of the time, these “out of the box”
approaches just don’t work. While it’s
possible to get lucky, everyone knows
what happens when you depend on luck.
So how do you find the box? As
Hungarian psychology professor Mihaly
Czikszentmihalyi points out, you need to
understand the domain, without being
trapped by it. The American Shotokan
students knew their material: They had
mastered the domain. They also were not
afraid to step outside what they knew
and see what would happen.
By the same token, many companies
successfully create products that are
outside the box, such creativity comes
from a detailed study of the market and
the specific area of technology. Google
revolutionized search. When Home
Depot first opened its doors, it was a
young, innovative company that had
devised an innovative approach to selling
hardware. Amazon.com was one of the
first companies to take advantage of
selling over the Internet. Apple’s iPods
have completely changed the music industry.
In each case, the founders first studied
the domain: search, hardware, retail, and
music; then, they developed an innovative
approach to entering that market.
Identifying Solutions
The fact is, that box exists because it
works. There are many tried and true
inside the box solutions that work reasonably
well. There are also plenty of outside
the box solutions to any given problem.
However, when you restrict yourself to
solutions that will actually work, the
number is considerably smaller. Unfortunately,
there’s no way to tell which is
which until you try. Quite simply, being
creative means being wrong a great deal
of the time. It means constantly refining
and adjusting your plans. How many
people remember IBM’s microchannel
architecture or the Apple Newton?
How a business handles mistakes,
especially flashy, expensive mistakes, says
a great deal about how creative that business
will be over time. Creativity is a process of
ranging: sometimes you overshoot; sometimes
you undershoot, and sometimes you
fail miserably. Eventually, that moment of
inspiration comes, and after years of hard
work, you become an overnight success.
Thomas Edison is frequently quoted as saying,
“I learned a thousand different ways to
not make a light bulb.”
That’s easy to say. It’s hard to live.
Fostering the Creativity
So how do you foster an environment
that encourages creativity and outside
the box thinking?
Start with education. What are you
doing to learn and become engaged with
the knowledge of your domain? What are
you doing to look outside your areas of
expertise? It’s hard to be creative without
a constant stream of new inputs and
perspectives.
How do you handle mistakes? Are
you encouraging experimentation or
punishing failure? Does your organization
value taking educated risks? If people are
afraid to take a chance, it’s highly unlikely
that they’ll produce a whole lot that’s
really outside the box.
Take breaks. Whether it’s spotting
the solution to a problem you’ve been
wrestling with all week, or experiencing
a truly innovative breakthrough, creative
flashes happen after you’ve taken a break,
not when you’re stressed out and mentally
exhausted. Hard work is important, but
so is knowing when to let your subconscious
work on the problem.
You can’t force creativity; you can
only create an environment that makes
it likely.
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