A recent New Yorker had another excellent piece by Malcolm Gladwell, this time about simultaneous invention, the core topic of chapter 5 of The Myths of Innovation. Much of his coverage is spot on - we underestimate how many inventions and discoveries were achieved independently, despite how specific and isolated the credit we give often is.

It’s an excellent article and I recommend it. One highlight for me is this:

Stigler’s Law: “No scientific discovery is named after its original discoverer.”

A law which Gladwell points out also applies to Stigler’s law :)

My critique begins with his coverage of Nathan Myhrvold and his company, Intellectual ventures (IV). A firm dedicated to creating what they call “an invention economy”. He never asks any questions about the conflicts between a patent system designed centuries ago to protect individual inventors, and a well-funded company created, as best I can tell, to dominate entire domains of Intellectual property through massive patent fillings and then selling them. Who is best served by “an invention economy’?

It’s not his job to raise every question - that’s my job as the reader. But since the article focuses on Myhrvold & IV, it literally begins and ends with him, the fact that he never questions his company’s place in all this paints them as a positive evolution in how invention will be done. They are loosely portrayed as heroes, an idea which I couldn’t help but find personally depressing - Not entire sure why yet, but I did feel that way.

But more important is his overstatement of artistic creations. He writes:

A work of artistic genius is singular, and all the arguments over calculus, the accusations back and forth between the Bell and the Gray camps, and our persistent inability to come to terms with the existence of multiples are the result of our misplaced desire to impose the paradigm of artistic invention on a world where it doesn’t belong.

Shakespeare owned Hamlet because he created him, as none other before or since could. Alexander Graham Bell owned the telephone only because his patent application landed on the examiner’s desk a few hours before Gray’s. The first kind of creation was sui generis; the second could be re-created in a warehouse outside Seattle.

If you talk to most writers or artists they’ll tell you about specific influences for specific pieces. Picasso said “bad artists borrow, great artists steal”. We’re pretty sure Shakespeare based Hamlet, and many of his plays, on stories and plays he’d heard before. Reading Joseph Campell or Karen Armstrong on mythology reveals the incestuous nature of stories: they breed like rabbits and steal like thieves, and to claim any creative work as Sui generis (means, roughly, something uncategorizable) usually means there’s a kind of ignorance at work about that particular kind of art, or a lack of imagination about what a category is.

And as a kicker, what is one to say about amazing song covers, Like Johnny Cash’s cover of the Nine Inch nails song “hurt”? The fact that an idea can be both deriverative and creative means our definitions aren’t that good (For reference, Cash’s version - you really should see this).

Michelangelo’s David and Picasso’s Guernica are masterpieces, but an analysis of these works by people in the field can point out influences, progressions, and connections to other works the creator knew of or was deliberately trying to emulate. Sometimes, like simultaneous invention, artists pursue similar ideas at the same time: they’re called artistic movements. It’s not the same as simultaneous invention, but it’s close enough. I’ve studied art for years and I still have trouble telling Picassos from Braques, despite works by both being considered masterpieces.

I totally grant there are differences between artistic creation and engineering invention. And Gladwell’s piece had me thinking about them for the better part of a plane flight, a gift which I’m thankful for. But his cut at the differences isn’t quite right.

Posted in creative thinking | No Comments »

The more I learn about creative thinking and about teaching, two subjects of great interest, the more depressing organized education in the U.S. becomes. I’m familiar with Montessori, Waldorf and various other well known private school brands, as well as public school programs here and there, but it’s all vaguely disappointing. I’m often left feeling there is no substitute for parents and extended family: they are the best hopes young minds have for learning what it means to think free. Perhaps that’s as it should be.

Two bright spots I’ve found are these two programs, aimed at giving kids exposure to creative problem solving in team environments. I’ve yet to see these things in action but I’d love to visit and maybe even help out with a local chapter.

Odyssey of the Mind - An international program that focuses on creative problem solving projects. It’s a world-wide competition with regional finals and programs.

Destination Imagination: Similiar to Odyssey of the mind, but offers 5 different tracks each with a different creative focus, from technical, to artistic.

If you know of other resources for parents who want to augment their kids exposure to creative thinking and problem solving skills, or have experience with either of the above programs, please leave a comment. I’d love to hear more.

Posted in Teaching/Training, creative thinking | 9 Comments »

Rube Goldberg was an engineering student who quickly realized he preferred making fun of engineers more than engineering things himself. His legendary cartoons of bizarre, over-engineered devices for trivial tasks have lived on well past his own lifetime.

So what do we make of people who actually try to make Rube Goldberg machines? Are they simply creative enthusiasts with a sense of humor or are they entirely missing Goldberg’s point? You decide.

This year, at one of four Rube Goldberg Machine Contests, a team from Purdue won with a 156 step machine for making hamburgers.

Video highlights of the event on gizmodo.

And you can see photos of the winning machines from the last few years on the Purdue website.

Posted in Innovation, Teaching/Training, creative thinking | No Comments »

Before the good, the bad. Over on wikihow, the entry on How to write a song has this as the first entry.

1. Learn Music Theory.

No Way! Learn music theory. Never would have imagined that. Wow. So - What does the entry for how to cook say? Go to cooking school? Totally lame.

The good: Metafilter had a gem of a post recently on song writing. Pulling from the comments you’ll find a new NYT blog by songwriters about their creative process, NPR’s All songs considered project (Pros write a song in 48 hours), The freshman experiment about people writing a musical.

Posted in creative thinking | 6 Comments »

The recent Wired article on Apple’s management practices is interesting for the wrong reasons. The article makes several points about the irony of Apple’s popularity in the tech-world given the secrecy, an old world concept in the new open web 2.0 world, with which they work.

This is fine and good, but the big question I had while reading the piece is this: if Apple is so secretive, how can the reporter have any confidence that their sources are any good? Or that the people willing to talk to the reporter don’t have their own reasons for telling less than flattering stories about Steve Jobs? The article says:

Apple creates must-have products the old-fashioned way: by locking the doors and sweating and bleeding until something emerges perfectly formed. It’s hard to see the Mac OS and the iPhone coming out of the same design-by-committee process that produced Microsoft Vista or Dell’s Pocket DJ music player

The old fashioned way? Hard to think of many old fashioned companies making perfect products. And while it’s hard to see the iphone coming out of the same process at Microsoft and Dell, I’m sure there were plenty of design review meetings, executive reviews, and other meetings at Apple that are similar in purpose to what goes on at Microsoft or Dell. Like Google’s 20% time, culture is the overlooked factor in why outcomes are what they are. The same process can arrive at very different outcomes if the cultural values and rewards are different.

Believe me, I’m no Apple flunky defending the mothership - but the article creates it’s own lack of credibility in making judgments about a place described by the writer as very difficult to access, and because it’s a magazine article there’s no burden of referencing sources, or even calling on other Wired writers for context in how product decisions at Apple are made.

Moreso, the article misses the fundamental point: Apple loves its products, and people love its products. If there is any ideal Jobs represents it’s clearly the attempt to make great things, an ideal rare among tech companies, much less ones in the Fortune 500. And with product quality so high consumers are indifferent to whatever management philosophy is behind it.

The best analogy for the description of Apple offered in this piece is the film industry. Where directors and producers drive creative visions, large numbers of experts work hard in service to those ideas, and the entire endeavor is organized with premiums on secrecy and control. It’s just an artistic model for business, not something unique to Apple or that odd for folks who study how great things are made.

Posted in Management, creative thinking | 8 Comments »

Everybody loves to think one little trick can make their organization transform into a super creative powerhouse. With the rise of Google, no single tactic comes up more in innovation circles than their concept of 20% time. Simply put, employees get 1/5th of their time to work on projects of their own choosing.

For the myths of innovation book i spent time studying lots of concepts, models and approaches similar to 20% time, and even talked to a few Google employees about how they see the idea. What follows below hits on most of the erroneous assumptions I’ve heard people make about the concept.

Here’s a short report:

• Google’s 20% time is more of an attitude and culture than a rule. First, hourly time isn’t tracked there, so there’s no way to enforce or even know what percentage of time people are spending on side projects. But more importantly, the entire idea seems to function more as an attitude - that new projects should be spawned by whoever has the best ideas, not who is in what place in the hierarchy, and the culture is based on this fundamental belief. There seems to be way more support for the pursuit of ideas generally than in most cultures, and simply creating a 20% rule doesn’t give you that culture. G-mail, Adsense & Google News are three examples of major offerings initiated by a self-motivated engineer. See Google employee Joe Beda’s blog post for one of better first persons accounts you’ll find online.
• It’s worth noting that people at Google work very hard on their 80% time. It’s not as if every Friday is 20% day and work shuts down on all existing projects so people can do their 20% things. Google culture, much like Microsoft in the early 90s, has a very strong, competitive work ethic, and peer pressure and pride drive many people to work hard. Like many tech companies, the vibe is that, yes, if you have an idea you should follow it, but not to the determent of other responsibilities. Time for 20% projects is protected, but more by individuals than by managers. Managers spend little time tracking engineers (span of control is wide, with managers typically having 10 or more reports, influencing people and code more than “managing their direct reports”). I’ve heard different things from employees in different groups at Google about how this has changed as the company has grown (10k employees and counting) and perhaps the variances in their culture will continue to grow. (Read Steve Yegge’s excellent post on software development process at Google).
• The 20% time concept isn’t new. 3M developed a 15% time rule in the 1950s with the same exact intentions and basic philosophy. Masking tape and Post-it notes are two notable products that were concieved and developed by individual engineers working without formal budgets, plans or management support. I’m sure other companies and organizations in the past have had similiar attitudes about creativity (Edison’s Menlo park lab likely qualifies). For more on 3m’s approach read this short Wired article. Also, the Google founders mention at their talk at TED that Montessori school philosophy influenced their ideas on 20% time (Jump to 8:50).
• Google’s culture has a resistance, or even distrust, of hierarchy - they often use voting, peer review, and debate to make decisions or decide which new projects and features to add. With that structure the 20% time idea makes sense as they want self-motivated creatives putting ideas in the hoper for others to review, evaluate, or contribute to, rather than waiting for executives to spend weeks making big vision documents and marketing plans, dividing things up into smaller and smaller pieces, before allowing creatives to make (creatively constrained) contributions. 20% time complements, or perhaps even depends on, what is a unique culture for a large, 10,000 person company. It’s the lack of dependence on hierarchy that empowers individuals, and this is the thing people at more conventional companies have the hardest time comprehending. 3M also had a strong maverick, anti-structure vibe that made their 15% successful. Giving people time is one thing, but it’s the culture of the org they get that time inside that determines how useful that time will be to the company.

20% time experiment: Atlassian, a software development shop, just announced a serious 20% time experiment, adopting the idea in their culture and blogging about it as they go.

Disclosure: Don’t take my word for it alone - While this is based on some research, and although I have visited Google several times, I have never been a Google employee and if you start with the links above you’ll hear from more authoritative sources on Google management and culture than myself. If you know of others I should read, please leave ‘em in the comments.

Posted in Innovation, Software/Web development, creative thinking | 10 Comments »

I didn’t read much as a kid, but one book I read cover to cover dozens of times was the Advanced dungeon’s and dragons handbook. In elementary school my friends and I played that game several times a week, and despite our ridiculous abuse of the rules and complete disregard for fair play (think Lord of the Flies mixed with the Soprano’s) the effect the game had on us was transformative.

Without knowing it we did a kind of improvised, collaborative theater, and used our imaginations to create worlds, instead of using the passive, pre-fab ones found in video games or television shows. Sure, the games gave us a structure we didn’t make, but what a bunch of 11 year old kids did with it - wow.

I never knew much about who he was, or what he did: my D&D phase ended well before I though much about authors and creators. But that that name, that crazy name that seemed like it belong in the game and not in the real world, Gary Gygax, matched with that wild image of thieves and demons on the cover, was etched in my mind mind forever.

Thanks Gary & Dave.

Posted in books, creative thinking | 3 Comments »

As part of her Sunday business column on ideas, Janet Rae-Dupree quotes both me and the book a few times in Eureka: it really takes years of hard work.

Posted in Innovation, Myths of Innovation, creative thinking | 2 Comments »

A few folks forwarded different versions of this to me: hi+low had the image, but teczo had the writeup. And it appears to all come from an NPR story about Sister Corita Kent.

She was an art teacher who influenced many creatives, including Buckminster Fuller, Charles and Ray Eames, John Cage and Henry Miller, and is perhaps most famous for the 1985 love stamp.

1. Find a place you trust and then try trusting it for a while.
2. General duties of a student: pull everything out of your teacher, pull everything out of your fellow students.
3. General duties of a teacher: pull everything out of your students.
4. Consider everything an experiment.
5. Be self-disciplined. This means finding someone wise or smart and choosing to follow them. To be disciplined is to follow in a good way. To be self-disciplined is to follow in a better way.
6. Nothing is a mistake. There is no win and no fail. There is only make.
7. THE ONLY RULE IS WORK. If you work it will lead to something. It’s the people who do all of the work all the time who eventually catch on to things.
8. Don’t try to create and analyse at the same time. They’re different processes.
9. Be happy whenever you can manage it. Enjoy yourself. It’s lighter than you think.
10. “We’re breaking all of the rules. Even our own rules. And how do we do that? By leaving plenty of room for X quantities.” - John Cage.

Helpful hints: Always be around. Come or go to everything always. Go to classes. Read anything you can get your hands on. Look at movies carefully often. Save everything, it might come in handy later.

Love it! You can see some of her work online or check out the recent book about her work.

Posted in creative thinking | 8 Comments »

Can you be creative without constraints?

It’s a tricky question. Creative people everywhere complain that they don’t have enough resources to be creative at work. In the lingo, “blue sky” refers to a project where the sky is the limit, and it’s the creative holy grail. “If only I could get a week to think blue sky, I could do amazing things”.

But one definition of creativity is the ability to transcend constraints. To find a clever way out of a difficult situation, or use a new idea to make lack of resources an advantage. I think about the Ramones or the Sex Pistols, bands whose lack of training became an asset. Spike Lee & Richard Rodriguez, filmmakers whose first films cost less than the price of a new car.

It’s interesting to notice how big corporations, with huge asset pools, tend to fail at being creative despite their blue sky budgets. Is there something in the nature of constraints that brings out the best creativity?

I think of constraints as a special tool - they’re flexible things. Constraints can be:

• interpreted differently
• intensified
• diminished
• created on purpose
• eliminated on purpose

Thinking like a manager, the goal is to have appropriate constraints that roughly match the goals. A team that is on life support needs to have constraints removed. But a team that is unfocused or out of control needs tighter constraints to function well.

Back in the 90s, Microsoft used to hire 3 people to do a project they knew required 5. Why? To create a set of constraints that self-motivated people would love. In trade for the extra work people received autonomy, and the net result was a creative, and productive, win.

Thinking like a individual, routines like writing an hour a day, or making a certain number of alternative designs, is a self imposed creative constraint to force my best work to surface, and in that sense I think everyone uses constraints in some way to help them be creative.

How do you use constraints in your creative work? Both at a personal level, but also at the project or team level?

(MacGyver is the patron saint of creative constraints).

Posted in creative thinking | 17 Comments »

One of my most popular blog posts ever, how to write a book, generates tons of comments and e-mail every week. Here’s an interesting one I couldn’t help but respond to:

David wrote:

Great article, gave me lots of inspiration and hope. I just submitted a proposal to O’Reilly, and it was rejected within 30 minutes. Very efficient, and very nicely worded, but devastating nonetheless. What do you do if you think you have a great idea, but the world disagrees?

The first rule of creative work: expect to be rejected. Ask anyone who reviews creative work of any kind, whether it’s screenplays, music demos, or book proposals, and they’ll tell you they reject a ratio of at least 20 or 30 to 1. Sometimes it’s 1000 to 1 in the case of movie actors or works of fiction. There is nothing wrong with you or your work simply because you have been rejected. Rejection means you are doing something many others want to do and it’s hard work.

Ask any writer, including the famous, how many rejection slips they’ve seen. They’ll laugh and tell you about how they papered their wall with them. Seriously, rejection is part of the game. I note many of these stories in The Myths of Innovation. The Star Wars screenplay was rejected by almost every major studio. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle maintenance was turned down over 100 times. Stephen King, J.K. Rawlings, John Grisham, you name it, they’ve been rejected. Do not give up hope: instead, use rejection as fuel. Prove them wrong. Get better at your craft. Work harder, and when you’re finished, send them a signed copy with your warmest regards.

In some ways how you handle rejection is self selection for creative work - if you cant handle a few rejections from publishers, how will you handle a few bad reviews of your finished book? No matter what you do, if you’re making something, many people won’t like it. In fact the more popular the thing is, the more people who will pick on it and for increasingly trivial reasons.

As I mentioned in the post, one major advantage of living in 2008 is how cheap it is to make things yourself. The only approval you need to create something is your own. You can self publish a book, make a video or a bunch of mp3s for just a few hundred bucks. If the world isn’t behind you, to hell with the world - do it anyway. The only thing stopping you is you.

Posted in Innovation, On writing, creative thinking | 6 Comments »

The ever creative ze-frank is currently asking a great question about creative process.

From his current post:

When you make things with an audience in mind, do you have internal representations of that audience to help guide you in the process? Are you in dialogue with a cast of proto-audience members that somehow represent different facets of your perceived audience? Are there little homunculi that provide editorial voices different from your own?

My answer, which I posted, is that I don’t have formalized characters when I’m writing a book or preparing a talk. But there is an ongoing dialog in my head when revising that approximates three or four imaginary people:

1. The curious neophyte. If someone at random walked in off the street would any of this make sense? Would they keep reading/listening?
2. The expert asshole. What if the person who knew everything about this subject and loved to criticize read this paragraph or heard this lecture. What vitriol would I hear? What bullshit would they call me on?
3. The daily grinder. How about the guy who actually does whatever I’m talking about for a living and when I’m done will go straight back to work. Will anything I write or say impact what he does the rest of the day? week? month?
4. The fan. Will someone familiar with my work find this boring? repetitive? derivative? Can I make this more fun for them instead of less?

Posted in On writing, creative thinking | 3 Comments »