Have faith & never give up - Basic principles of innovation

Strong self-belief and never-say-die spirit are necessary for innovation

Innovative solution does not come out of thin air. At the very outset someone must be working hard to do something that is not routine. In general, one of the necessary conditions for a person to innovate is intense involvement. People who work in a routine environment usually won’t have the agenda to innovate, and thus possibility of innovation coming out of routine work or personal environment (in such an environment there might be an innovator who though work routinely, must generally have a tendency to look for something new, to do something new) is less. 

There are inborn new thinkers at various walks of life who always will think new wherever you put them. But not many are so endowed. An organization or a country have to get on with the employees or citizens they have as far as innovation content is concerned.

Latent problem solving capability and also inventiveness perhaps most people have. It is always a more judicious approach to create an environment of creativity and innovation and nurture the innovativeness of the members of the environment rather than depend on the chance availability of an inherent innovator. This is the view from the organizational position. Just like any serious public domain concerns, how to nurture innovativeness is also a complex issue.

What about inventiveness from individual point of view? How should you or I go about innovation when we are called upon or self-motivated to create innovatively?

Creativity or innovation lies at a high level of human ability. Naturally, it is not easy to be creative and produce an innovative result. Though it is not easy, it is possible for most of us to innovate provided we have the motivation for it and strive towards it. We need to ingrain some basic principles of innovation by being aware and by practicing thus enlarging the set of principles ingrained in your mindset. 
These basic principles are abstract. In addition, we have at least one systematic innovative idea creation methodology TRIZ, and a number of other rich innovative idea paths such as Lateral thinking, that together is powerful enough to help you along the innovative path at least up to a point near the sought after innovative result. The last gap you must bridge yourself. We will cover TRIZ and other innovation systems elsewhere.

It is important to recognize that being innovative once only is not enough; you need to continue in the same vein of inventiveness, and thinking new. Next term contract of a Nobel Laureate holding a special position in a prestigious university that he had achieved on the basis of his unique contribution recognized by the Nobel committee, may not be extended if he or she fails to show continuing work of the high standard expected of him.

Though we have placed “Exploration” as the first requirement for innovation, an innovator must have unshakeable belief that she is an innovator. Strong belief frees up the mind from unnecessary thought entanglements and bindings.

Not only you need to believe that you can innovate, you need also to have complete belief that you would be able to reach the final innovative result.

Have faith and never give up (persistence):

Time and again we get disheartened because a few attempts have failed. Commonly it is believed that inventors are specially gifted people to whom solution appears easily, apparently out of thin air. Actually, inventors work hard towards some important goal and continue their attempts whatever may come. They learn from every failure a little bit and move closer towards the solution. Though cliché, the phrase “failures are the pillars of success” is very much applicable in case of any big success.  Just consider the experiences of a few inventors.

Kevlar® Inventor - Stephanie Kwolek

Remember her? Well, from the time Kwolek first stirred that solution in a test tube, it took six years to produce Kevlar commercially. She and her team had enormous faith on themselves and persistence.

Sailboard Inventor - Newman Darby

Commercial artist Newman Darby had a lifelong passion for boatbuilding. It led to his invention of the first sailboard, better known as a windsurfer. 

In early nineteen forties he bought a small boat with a keel and rudder. He wanted to go to a local island where there were Indian relics. But the water was shallow, so he took off the keel. He found that he could steer by tipping the sail left or right, so he got rid of the rudder, too. 

Darby's experiments with sailing techniques led to a breakthrough by mid-sixties: his girlfriend and later wife Naomi Albrecht sailed his new design while standing on a board. The sail on this sailboat could be tilted on a pivoting mast to change direction and control the boat without using a rudder. In conventional sailboats, tilting of the sail was not possible. It was a unique idea and its implementation (yes implementation is as important as the idea).

Darby kept refining the design. His most important innovation was a special kind of universal joint for connecting the sail to the board, which allowed for greater control of speed and steering.

His invention reached millions.

It took him 22 years from the first idea to the final successful product.

Electric light bulb inventor - Thomas Alva Edison

We know that the most significant of Edison’s more than 1000 inventions was the invention of incandescent light bulb for home use. The story goes that— Thomas Edison failed more than 1,000 times when trying to create the light bulb. When asked about it, Edison reportedly said, I have not failed 1,000 times. I have successfully discovered 1,000 ways how NOT to make a light bulb (even if he had not said that, the idea is of great value).

All inventions have two significant events in their life – the original idea and conversion of the idea to a commercial successful product. Edison was not really the inventor of electric light bulb. Contrary to popular belief, he didn't "invent" the light bulb, but rather he improved upon a 50-year-old idea to make it a commercially viable product. The idea and the successful conversion of it are equally important for an invention to take place. While most of the attention was on the discovery of the right kind of filament that would work, Edison actually had to invent a total of seven system elements that were critical to the practical application of electric lights as an alternative to the gas lights used those days. The developments were:

1.   the parallel circuit,

2.   a durable light bulb,

3.   an improved dynamo,

4.   the underground conductor network,

5.   the devices for maintaining constant voltage,

6.   safety fuses and insulating materials, and

7.   light sockets with on-off switches.

Before Edison could become commercially successful, every one of these elements had to be invented and then, through careful trial and error, developed into practical, reproducible components. 

The most difficult task was though to develop the right kind of filament for the light bulb. To solve this problem Edison had to make enormous number of trials or experiments with different types of materials.

An invention usually does not come easy. Amongst other things, it comes through an unshakeable belief and hard work.

A couple of practical recommendations

Just a small point specially for us common folks: no one will wait for you for 22 years in this age of accelerated times; you also won’t imagine to strive for one thing that long.

Persistence in problem solving and innovation in real life for us means: don’t give up too early; make at least three serious attempts before quitting. Third attempt onwards you will find that your view of the new domain has improved a lot. Who says, you may like then to continue making three more serious attempts!

Second recommendation regarding persistence: give a gap between serious attempts and do something different altogether. That freshens up and re-energizes your mind and also gives a chance for your right brain to come into play.

We will talk about our all-powerful right brain later.  


Read my main blog on Innovation & Problem Solving and the other related blog on Innovation through TRIZ

The key elements for innovation - Basic principles

Exploration and Curiosity are the key elements for innovation

Innovation in core is an idea, a product or a solution to a problem that is essentially positive and new in nature and primarily far away from the common alternatives. As such like intelligence innovation cannot be measured, but to make a sense of what innovation is, some subjective categorization of innovative solution has been made.

For me innovation can happen anywhere—an exclamation, a joke or a new solution at home that nobody else thought. Innovative mindset abounds around us. I am routinely surprised by the inventive little solutions that my neighbor does time and again. In informal discussions insights sometimes strike me as totally new.  Basic ingredient of innovative thinking is thinking new. Important is the innovative mindset. Without innovative mindset innovation cannot happen.

Innovation is newness, only degree of novelty varies.  And not all innovations reach a stage of maturity that can be appreciated or used by many. Amongst various reasons, one important reason for innovation dying prematurely is: only innovative idea is not enough; post idea generation apparently not so hallowed stages of development, marketing, sales and distribution all come in as necessary elements for fruition of the innovative idea.

Interestingly, a common belief is: amongst the two elements of Research & Development, innovation is solely owned by Research. A few of the leading companies of the world have rightly identified that innovation is to be made a necessary ingredient of every function that contributes to the stages of a product life cycle: from idea generation in research to HR functions.

In competitive world innovation provides the leading edge. National innovation content of countries and organizations is talked about, plans are made, projects are taken up and lots of money spent to systematically increase the innovation content.

Innovation is highly talked about, intensely pursued, but remains largely illusive as far as a sure shot path to it is concerned.

In this space we will talk about innovation in general and a few basic principles of innovation. It is believed that these are some of the important principles that aid innovation. There may be overlap of these set of principles with basic principles of real life problem solving. It is understandable, as innovation can be seen as a special type of problem solving.

Along other threads we will cover a few of the more established well-formed methodologies or systems of innovative problem solving.

Basic Principles of Innovative Problem Solving

1: Explore:

Explore For new ideas, new choices and new paths towards solution. This is a primary principle of problem solving; unless you have curiosity about why a specific problem is happening, how can you solve the problem? Whatever be the method, exploration only opens up in front of you new avenues of solution that you never imagined earlier.

Exploration is primarily fueled by curiosity; about properties of things, about behavior of objects and persons and so on. Many inventions took place because of consuming curiosity. Examples are many, in fact too many.

Velcro® Inventor - George De Mestral

It is reported that De Mestral got the idea for Velcro® from cockleburs caught in his clothes and his dog’s fur. In 1948, during a walk in the woods, Swiss engineer De Mestral caught hundreds of burrs in his clothes and his dog’s fur. He could pull them off with great difficulty. He wondered how they could get attached themselves so tenaciously!

De Mestral went on to observe the burrs under a microscope. He saw that each was covered with hooks that looked like evil looking spiked fangs. These hooked onto anything that had a loop—clothing fiber, animal fur, or human hair. The common burr was a natural “hook and loop fastener.” De Mestral realized he could create a fabric fastener that acted like the burrs, and thus the idea of Velcro® was born. After getting rid of the burrs with a lot of pains, most other people would have heaved a sigh of relief, but not De Mistral. He continued along the path of exploration that begun with his close observation of the special nature of the burrs.

Today Velcro® is everywhere. It’s used in sneakers, backpacks, jackets, wallets, watchbands, and children’s toys. It turns up in most unusual places. Velcro helped to hold a human heart together during the first artificial-heart surgery. NASA uses Velcro® to keep equipment from floating about in U.S. space shuttles, and on the insides of space helmets so that astronauts have a rough surface to scratch their itchy noses and chins. 

Kevlar® Inventor - Stephanie Kwolek

Kwoleks habit was to experiment with chemical solutions. Her belief: “All sorts of things can happen when you’re open to new ideas and playing around with things.”
One of the few women chemists at DuPont in the 1960s, Stephanie Kwolek’s work led to the development of Kevlar, a fiber best known for its use in bullet-resistant vests.

Kwolek’s research at the DuPont Textile Lab included experimenting with long molecules called polymers in order to develop lightweight, heat-resistant fibers. In 1965, while trying to dissolve one of the polymers, something strange happened. 

Ordinarily a polymer solution looks like molasses, although it may not be as thick. And it’s generally transparent. This polymer solution poured almost like water, and it was cloudy. Kwolek caught on the oddity and started her exploration from that point on.

Convinced that this unusual solution could be spun into fibers, Kwolek persuaded her colleagues to spin it and test its physical properties. To their amazement the fiber was tested to be immensely strong, stiff, and yet lightweight. It took six years to develop the final product commercially.

Kevlar® is very light but stiff and immensely strong. It is much stronger than steel. And it’s chemical and flame resistant. Today Kevlar® is used in boat hulls, bullet-resistant vests, cut-resistant gloves, fiber-optic cables, firefighters’ and lumberjacks’ suits, helmets, tires, sporting equipment.

Kwolek’s ability to recognize possibilities where others did not is a quality that she shares with many inventors. This ability to see non-obvious connections and relationships often leads inventors to the key insight that is the basis for their invention. Sometimes it seems as if the inventor had a flash of inspiration or a “Eureka!” moment. But often these instances are examples of a lifetime habit, begun in childhood, of curiosity, exploration, and refusal to give up at the first sign of failure.

Would you like to see beyond the horizon? Okay, then you already have the basic resource to become an inventor.


Read my main blog on Innovation & Problem Solving and the other related blog on Innovation - Basic Principles