Посты автора Amit Mayer

There is little argument that Dr. Seuss is one of the world’s most popular and loved writers. His name is associated with imagination, creativity, talent and originality – and on a personal note – he is one of my favorite writers as well.

In 1954, after reading an article about the shortcomings of books used to teach reading to first-graders, Dr. Seuss was challenged by his friend, William Ellsworth Spaulding, to write a book that first graders “can’t put down”. But there was one additional constraint – he was to write that book using no more than 225 words out of a designated list of 348 words that every first grader should know. Dr. Seuss ended up using 236 words, of which 221 are monosyllabic (!!), to write The Cat in The Hat – a book that has been one of the most successful children’s book ever since.

As if that was not enough, Dr. Seuss’s publisher bet him that he would not be able to write another book using as little as 50 different words. As impossible as that may sound, Dr. Seuss not only won the bet – he did so with a bang. In August 1960 he published Green Eggs and Ham – the book that would become his most successful, and the 4th best-selling English-language children’s hardcover book of all time!

So what’s going on here? How did the unreasonable constraint of writing a book using only 50 different words become the catalyst for one of the world’s most successful and admired books? After all, when we try to be creative we usually go through considerable trouble to break the constraints that limit us, and certainly do not choose to embrace new constraints. Can the explanation simply be the extraordinary talent of Dr. Seuss, or is there something else at play that could be relevant to mere mortals like you and me?

Before we try to answer this question, please take a look at these Viagra TV commercials:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMhv_wCx5ug

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7o8_JjiLpw0

In both these commercials, and for fairly obvious reasons, the advertisers had to avoid describing in detail what their product does, or enables… This constraint is not unique to these specific commercials. What makes them unique, though, is the way the advertisers chose to deal with that constraint.

In many similar cases advertisers have tried to bypass this constraint in various ways, such as portraying men in “the morning after”, filled with energy and joy. But in the examples we just saw there was something very different. They do not contain an attempt to avoid the constraint – quite the contrary. If you think about it, what the advertisers did in both cases is to use the constraint – and in a central and conspicuous manner!

And look at the results: two commercials that are based on a unique element, and are therefore interesting, distinct and memorable; dialogues in which the use of “censorship” leads us to imagine the exact same things you just cannot show on primetime television; a central role for the product itself, as an integral part of the commercial; and last, but not least, a Cannes award for the campaign. All in all not too bad for an idea that was paradoxically inspired by the inability to do what initially seems to be so essential (yes, you can read this sentence again…)

It is interesting to compare this campaign with another Viagra campaign that also uses the same constraint in an unusual manner. Take a look:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExQKZKnk6rA

In this amusing commercial (that is even funnier the second time you see it) we witness a different way to address the constraint. Here, too, the advertisers are not running away from the campaign using something like “the morning after” approach. Rather, they are facing it head on by replacing the medium which is the object of the constraint – the language itself. The advertisers decided to go ahead and do exactly what they intended to do originally – constraint or no constraint. This “stubbornness” forced them to explore options and alternatives that would never come up were it not for the constraint.

Let’s summarize what we had so far. We saw a few examples in which we recognize a surprising connection between the presences of significant constraints and the ability to develop original and creative ideas. We can even go further to say that in these examples the creative ideas were not developed despite the relevant constraint, but rather because of it.

Yet with all due respect, the constraints did not do the creative work. That has been done by the individuals that chose to address them not as a force majeure that must be submissively accepted, but rather as raw material for a creative exploration. Not as an “end of story”, but as a starting point for a creative negotiation. And that, my friends, is exactly the insight we can take with us, and the state of mind we can learn to adopt.

Not every constraint, in any situation or creative process, can lead us to the development of an award winning campaign or a successful literary masterpiece; but some might, if we just give them (and ourselves) a chance. The widely accepted notion that constraints harm creativity, in not unreasonable; after all, constraints – by their very nature – limit the options available to us. But if we manage to change the way we view them, we may discover that in many cases they simply stop us from settling for the simple, immediate or generic solutions. And thus, by preventing us from taking the path of least resistance, they force us to explore and consider options we would never reach otherwise.

At any rate, in the complex reality we live in, the submissive approach to constraints is an omnipresent problem. When have you last faced a creative challenge, or a problem that needed a solution, in a constraint-free environment??? Constraints surround us in any task and every challenge, so that the ability to use them as a creative opportunity can come pretty handy in our professional lives (and our private ones, by the way). It does not take a lot of resources or complicated preparations – just a shift in our perspective.

So take a few moments to consider the challenges you are facing today, and ask yourselves what constraints make it difficult for you to face these challenges. Maybe these constraints can serve you in the same way the list of words did Dr. Seuss or the censorship the advertisers of Viagra. In what creative ways can you utilize these constraints? Which ideas can they help you come up with, and why are these better than the ones you came up with so far? It may take more than 20 seconds to find meaningful answers for these questions, but if you give it 20 minutes you might be pretty amazed at what you can come up with…

The original version of this article has been published, in Hebrew, on

http://shivuk.themarker.com

Dr. Gadi Segal, a business partner and a good friend, told me once that “the more therapeutic options you have for a disease, the more likely it is that none of them are really effective.” When I make the analogy to the realm of innovation, I hesitate to conclude that none of the innovation methodologies available are really effective… Let’s just agree that the abundance of approaches and techniques is indicative of the magnitude of the innovation challenges.

Learn about the several types of innovation challenges and how to overcome them

Types of Innovation Challenges 

  Some of these innovation challenges have to do with the process of ideation itself, while others with implementation, some are more relevant on an individual level, and others more on the organizational level. For this discussion, we can define one set of barriers that stop us from coming up with the right ideas (ideation / individual) and another set of challenges involved in the attempt to implement these ideas (implementation / organizational).

Fear of Making Mistakes

Think for a minute about the last time you participated in an innovation session. Think about yourself and about your colleagues. What were the barriers you were facing within that session? Did they have to do with fear of criticism? Perhaps they dealt with the insecurity that comes from not knowing how good your ideas are, or how well they will be received. Were these barriers connected to the fact that some of your ideas might have been a little too innovative? Or was it simply a reluctance to take an active a part in such a public discussion?

If you answered “yes” to any of these questions, you were facing some of the most common psychological barriers to innovation. While some of these barriers are relevant in many types of discussions, others are more innovation-specific. Many of these barriers have to do with our common fear of making mistakes – a fear developed and cultivated by mistake-phobic education systems and organizational cultures.

Cognitive Barriers

There are several innovation methodologies that focus on dealing with these fears and barriers. The most familiar of which is Brainstorming. These methodologies employ various rules and principles designed to mitigate these fears.

You will notice that these barriers are relevant to voicing or sharing innovative ideas that we as individuals have already come up with. These barriers are serious, no doubt, but they have little to do with the actual act of coming up with an innovative idea. The barriers relevant to that elusive phase are quite different. They have less to do with our psychology and more to do with our cognitive capacity.

Structural Fixedness

Let’s take the story of the refrigerator as an example. When this product was introduced to the market (early 20th century), it replaced the previously used ice-box. This simple device used blocks of ice that were put in a designated compartment at the top (the actual “ice-box” that gave it its name) of its structure. The products kept in the ice-box were organized so that the ones requiring colder temperatures were placed higher (closer to the ice), and the ones requiring more moderate temperatures were placed lower (farther from the ice). Does this design sound familiar?

For years, we have been bending down to take out our veggies from the bottom drawer of our modern refrigerator, while the freezer door (which most of us use much less) is located much more conveniently at the top of the appliance. When you think about it now it seems strange and irrational.

Why didn’t the refrigerator industry offer us a refrigerator with the freezer at the bottom and the main compartment above it? And why didn’t we, as consumers, ask for such a design? The answer has to do with a cognitive phenomenon called “Structural Fixedness.” Engineers and customers alike have created a strong link between the product and its structure. We have become structurally fixated. That fixedness has survived not only the transition from the ice-box to the refrigerator but also decades of advance in refrigeration technologies that have followed.

Hidden Pitfalls

When we suffer from Structural Fixedness, we do not choose or intend to overlook potential changes in structure. We fail to consider these possibilities and, at the same time, fail to recognize our own failure. That is exactly the problem with structural fixedness and other cognitive barriers to innovation. These sneaky enemies are like stealth bombers – they stop us from coming up with innovative ideas, and we do not even know they are there.

Although we have only discussed innovation challenges briefly, one thing is already clear: If we are to use effective innovation methodologies, they must deal with more than one type of barrier.

Now that you know some of the key innovation challenges one can face, continue to gather insight and read about how to embrace failure.