Innovation Engine Read online

  Essentially, Lek’s attitude about elephants motivated her to gain knowledge about these magnificent animals, a rich resource in Thailand. Her knowledge became a toolbox for her imagination, which she drew upon to create a habitat where she could protect the animals and share her passion and knowledge with others. The visitors’ new knowledge and appreciation changes their attitudes about elephants, and this is slowly changing the cultural response to these creatures. This is an example of the Innovation Engine at work!

  As you can see, all the parts of your Innovation Engine are inexorably connected and deeply influence one another.

  • Your attitude sparks your drive to acquire related knowledge.

  • Your knowledge fuels your imagination, allowing you to generate innovative ideas.

  • Your imagination catalyzes the creation of a stimulating habitat, leveraging the resources in your environment.

  • Your environment, including the habitat, resources, and culture, influence your imagination, knowledge, and attitude.

  Here, again, is the fully functional Innovation Engine, illustrating how all the parts are braided together.

  Habitat is outside of imagination, since the habitats we build are external manifestations of our imagination, and the habitats in which we live and work directly affect our imagination.

  Resources are outside of knowledge, because the more you know, the more resources you are able to unleash, and the resources in your environment influence what you know.

  Culture is outside of attitude, since culture is essentially the collective attitudes of our community, and our attitude is affected by our culture.

  By engaging all the parts of this engine, creativity is unleashed. There are great examples all over the world of individual entrepreneurs drawing on their drive and imagination to create new hubs of innovation in unlikely places. Daniel Isenberg, of Babson College, describes this beautifully in his article “How to Start an Entrepreneurial Revolution”:18

  It has become clear in recent years that even one success can have a surprisingly stimulating effect on an entrepreneurial ecosystem—by igniting the imagination of the public and inspiring imitators. I call this effect the “law of small numbers.” Skype’s adoption by millions and eventual $2.6 billion sale to eBay reverberated throughout the small country of Estonia, encouraging highly trained technical people to start their own companies. In China, Baidu’s market share and worldwide recognition have inspired an entire generation of new entrepreneurs.

  Isenberg tells a wonderful story of a young man in Saudi Arabia, Abdullah Al-Munif, who broke through traditional expectations to launch a business making chocolate-covered dates, which he sold in kiosks inside other stores. His business, Anoosh, eventually grew into a national chain of stores, and Abdullah Al-Munif became a local hero, admired and then emulated by other young people in Saudi Arabia.

  To give students the experience of engaging their own Innovation Engines, the Stanford Technology Ventures Program launched a Global Innovation Tournament, in which students were given either five dollars or a simple object, such as a water bottle, paper clips, or a handful of rubber bands, and asked to create as much value as they could from these objects. The results of this tournament, described in detail in What I Wish I Knew When I Was 20, point to the fact that everything, even a handful of rubber bands, can be turned into something of greater value. The students engaged their attitude, knowledge, and imagination to leverage seemingly invaluable resources to create something extraordinary. The tournament provided the habitat and culture to make that happen.

  I was recently in Japan, where I gave an even more challenging assignment to a group of forty students at Osaka University. Instead of starting with something of small value, such as five dollars or a handful of rubber bands, I challenged the participants to create as much value as possible from the contents of a single trash can—in only two hours. While there, I sent a note to several colleagues around the world and asked them to invite their students to participate as well. As a result, we had teams in Thailand, Korea, Ireland, Ecuador, and Taiwan taking part in this challenge at the same time.

  At first the students thought this assignment was crazy. How could they create something from trash?! But this challenge prompted them to contemplate the meaning of “value.” They spent hours discussing what value meant to each of them, coming up with such things as health, happiness, community, knowledge, and financial security. These insights led them to look at the contents of each trash can in a new light when the timer started their two-hour window.

  The results from this assignment were fascinating and remarkably diverse. One team from Japan took old hangers and plastic garment covers from a local dry cleaner and created mats that could be used for sitting on damp grass on their campus. They painted game boards on the mats so that students could play with one another while they enjoyed time together. A team from Ecuador created a beautiful sculpture of a bird using organic yard waste, a team from Thailand made a spectacular carved elephant out of a used coconut shell, and a team from Ireland turned a bunch of old socks into a fabulous sweater. And a Taiwanese team made a collection of toys for children using the contents of a single trash can. One of the participating students remarked afterward, “I had no idea that we are so creative!”

  These interactive projects are designed to demonstrate that starting with essentially nothing, you can create remarkable innovations. In the trash can challenge, the students used their own knowledge, imagination, and attitude to create something from nothing, and I provided the habitat, culture, and resources to stimulate that process. This is important: the students already had the innate skills they needed, but the habitat created by our classroom environment and the rules of the assignment triggered their motivation and unleashed their creativity. The Innovation Engine captures the relationship between all these factors.

  You hold the keys to your Innovation Engine and have creative genius waiting to be unleashed. By tapping into this natural resource, you have the power to overcome challenges and generate opportunities of all dimensions. It is up to you to turn the key!

  NOTES

  1. Sarah Lyall, “Oxford Tradition Comes to This: ‘Death’ (Expound),” New York Times, May 27, 2010.

  2. There were nine Muses, each responsible for a different form of expression, including several types of poetry, dance, music, history, comedy, tragedy, and astronomy. The word “museum” is derived from the word “muse” and was a place where the Muses were worshipped.

  3. One of Shakespeare’s sonnets laments, “Where art thou, Muse, that thou forget’st so long?” In another he expresses appreciation to his muse: “So oft have I invoked thee for my Muse / And found such fair assistance in my verse.”

  4. See “Tesco: Homeplus Subway Virtual Store” at www .youtube.com/watch?v=nJVoYsBym88.

  5. AnnaLee Saxenian, Regional Advantage: Culture and Competition in Silicon Valley and Route 128 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006).

  6. Adam Gorlick, “Is Crime a Virus or a Beast?” Stanford Report, February 23, 2011.

  7. Alex Faickney Osborn, Applied Imagination: Principles and Procedures of Creative Problem-Solving, 3rd rev. ed. (New York: Scribner, 1963).

  8. Richard Wiseman, “The Luck Factor,” Skeptical Inquirer, May/June 2003.

  9. David Foster Wallace, Commencement Address, Kenyon College, May 21, 2005.

  10. You can find a lecture by Steve Blank at ecorner.stanford.edu.

  11. Jeff Hawkins with Sandra Blakeslee, On Intelligence (New York: Times Books, 2004).

  12. Leigh Buchanan, “Finding Jobs for Ex-Offenders,” Inc., May 2011.

  13. Ira Glass, “Two Steps Back,” This American Life, www .thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/275/two-steps-back.

  14. Teresa Amabile, Constance Hadley, and Steve Kramer, “Creativity Under the Gun,” Harvard Business Review, August 2002.

  15. Eric Ries, The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovatio
n to Create Radically Successful Businesses (New York: Crown Business, 2011). A lecture by Eric Ries is available at ecorner.stanford.edu.

  16. Rachel Fershleiser and Larry Smith (eds.), Not Quite What I Was Planning: Six-Word Memoirs by Writers Famous and Obscure, from SMITH magazine (New York: HarperPerennial, 2008).

  17. Richard Maulsby, director of public affairs for the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office, quoted in Karen E. Klein, “Avoiding the Inventor’s Lament,” Business Week, November 10, 2005.

  18. Daniel Isenberg, “How to Start an Entrepreneurial Revolution,” Harvard Business Review, June 2010.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  TINA SEELIG has a Ph.D. in neuroscience from Stanford University Medical School. She is the executive director of the Stanford Technology Ventures Program, the director of the National Center for Engineering Pathways to Innovation, and the author of the international bestseller What I Wish I Knew When I Was 20. In 2009, Seelig was awarded the prestigious Gordon Prize from the National Academy of Engineering for her pioneering work in engineering education. Follow the author on Twitter at www.twitter.com/tseelig.

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  ALSO BY TINA SEELIG

  What I Wish I Knew When I Was 20:

  A Crash Course on Making Your Place in the World

  inGenius:

  A Crash Course on Creativity

  COPYRIGHT

  INNOVATION ENGINE. Copyright © 2013 by Tina L. Seelig. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

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  FIRST EDITION

  ISBN 978–0–06–232704–8

  EPub Edition February 2014 ISBN 9780062327048

  14 15 16 17 18 RRD(H) 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

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