2-3-4 Friday
‘Seeking to spark the most potential within you per word of any online newsletter’
1 thought
Innovation is a big buzzword today.
Dave Snowden, the thinker behind the Cynefin framework, is a bit of a badass.
We had been invited to the OCBC Bank’s office where he was the speaker, and treated to a visual tour of their innovation office with
its chic nap pods, the game consoles there, and the ‘design thinking’ rooms in there.
And then he went on to talk about how innovation didn’t come about because you
- Have ‘innovation rooms’ with fancy chairs, nice cushions, inspirational quotes on the wall
- Have ‘agile thinking’
- Organise hackathons
His point?
Innovation didn’t come as a result of the things you had…
But listen to this.
But because of the things you don’t have.
Innovation appears as a result of scarcity.
How do you be more creative?
It’s when you’ve your backs to the wall, and when you’re forced into a hole, and forced to come up with something.
It’s not because
you had fancy cushions around you. Or you had lots of food and needed to come up with something.
You don’t fall into analysis paralysis. You just do what you know how to do, and you keep iterating, until something works.
1 talk
Innovation happens because of what you don’t have, not what you have.
1 tip
If you’re in a situation where you have to come up with something at work, here’s something that I think might work better beyond going for more hackathons.
Give yourself a deadline.
Work in a team.
Keep doing something until something works.
Real life example. Back when I first started writing as a
career, I had no idea how I was going to earn enough money to survive (click to read how side hustle became full hustle).
I didn’t have the
money to go for more writing courses, or to spend time thinking about more fancy ideas for making money.
All I knew was that I needed to do something.
- I asked people if they had work for me, or to refer me to their friends,
- I
wrote about anything related to social issues and tried to pitch them to whoever would hear them,
- and slowly we began to make enough money to survive.
Here the innovation isn’t that there was a new business model. Here the innovation was that you, me changed to become something that
we never saw in ourselves before.
Innovation is coined maany things, but I think the simplest way I see it is,
YOU make change for the better.
1 try, (and let me know how it went)
Is there something you've really wanted to do? I will keep you accountable. Take the smallest, baby step towards it, and let me know how that went.
P.S. I reply every email.
John
Live Young, Live Well - Work Your Love
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