There has been quite a lot posted online lately suggesting that innovation and creativity get killed off by the need for data or empirical evidence that something needs or should be changed or created.
Data is everything, creativity is dead
It is an interesting perspective, perhaps borne out of the fact that some individuals feel that when they have a great idea, that it often gets quashed because they cannot prove that there is a market, a potential ROI or a great enough interest.
If this were true, I believe that nothing would ever be created that is innovative or revolutionary, I also believe that empirical evidence and data based decision making has its place but it needs to be tempered with being visionary and forward thinking.
In my view, creativity and innovation stem from a couple of different sources. One common source is looking at the status quo and saying, “this can be done in a better way”. Another source is one where you say, “I wish I could this or that”. Yet another might be, “I wonder how I would do [insert action her]”. Then there is the “I wonder what I could do with that?” after you discover something by accident.
Perhaps these they’re all the same, in that there is an outcome that you wish to accidentally achieve and you’ve either an idea of or are surprised by the end-result. You’re intrigued by the mechanism that gave or gives the result.
I think it is commonly recognised that often innovation and creativity actually bubbles up through related activities and sometimes quite accidentally. For example, the discovery that radio waves can cook something. That coal tar can make something sweet and that a non-stick coating compound can be created with gas and acid. Of course, I am talking about the Microwave, Saccharin and PTFE, something we know commonly as Teflon®.
Creativity is paramount, data is a distraction
The issue here is not so much that they were created accidentally, accidents are more frequent than we often think, it is more the fact that someone saw the results and then said. “That’s interesting! I wonder what I could do with that?”
At the time of the commercialization of the microwave, for example, the only competitors were conventional ovens which took considerably longer to heat food. The engineer who made the discovery was neither a chef nor looking for something to cook food. He reputedly simply observed that something in his pocket was melted, he presumed, because of the microwave beam coming from a radar set. His employer Raytheon then built the Radarange microwave oven for testing in a Boston restaurant – the rest as they say is history.
Microwave confounded the logic of the day which worked on the premise that there was a defined amount of time that it takes for something to be cooked using conventional methods. The reality though is that microwave cooking is of course unconventional.
And so back, to innovation. In reality it is sometimes about being unconventional. This means being divergent in ones thinking, it also means thinking on a parallel but perhaps unrelated track.
Parallel thinking and being prepared to take a chance may be the key to innovation
I thought it was interesting that the second food that Percy Spencer approached was popcorn – all lab scientists love popcorn, right? If you think about microwaves and popcorn today, that’s probably one of the most awesome combinations!
Think of it, a brown paper bag, a smeared knob of butter and couple of tablespoons of popcorn kernels. Fold the bag opening over a few times and stick it in the microwave for a couple of minutes. Press the stop button when the popping starts to trail off. You control the ingredients the method and the execution.
I think that the answer doesn’t lie in data, analytics, creativity or innovation necessarily.
I think the answer may actually lie in being prepared to introduce a little uncertainty, some risk, and being a little more adventurous. Challenge the status quo and choose to go left when usually you might go right.
The original version of this post was made on LinkedIn
About the author
Clinton Jones has experience in international enterprise technology and business process on four continents and has a focus on integrated enterprise business technologies, business change and business transformation. Clinton also serves as a technical consultant on technology and quality management as it relates to data and process management and governance. In past roles, Clinton has worked for Fortune 500 companies and non-profits across the globe.