Inspiration - Some Of The Best Ideas Come From Unexpected Sources
In his book, "A Whole New Mind," Daniel Pink proposed that we have entered an era in which creative conceptual thinking has become increasingly important. Right-brain thinking that is emotionally and observationally based needs to take its rightful and valued place next to the left-brain thinking of logical analytical and theoretical thought. Both science and business often say that the result of creative thoughts need to contain both originality and appropriateness. To get to that final stage, there is a process (the 4I's) that takes inspirationinto idea into invention and later into continuing innovation.
So with creative thought a valued process, where does the "first I of Inspiration" come from? Some examples follow that demonstrate that some of the best ideas and solutions come from truly unexpected sources that are about as far removed from the "industry of record" as possible. A humble kitchen. A walk with a dog. Street art in some dicey alleys.
1940’s - Velcro
The inventor of Velcro (Swiss engineer George de Mestral) was inspired by the burrs stuck in his dog’s coat. Returning home from a hunting trip in the Alps, he noticed all the burrs, specifically burdock seeds, stuck fast to the coat of his dog. Examining this scenario under a microscope, he saw that the burrs had hundreds of "hooks" that caught on anything with a loop, dog fur for example. Thus was revealed the seed of the idea for a new and simple way of binding two materials together if he could figure out how to duplicate the hooks and loops that he had found in nature (burrs and fur). Ten years after that walk with his dog, he submitted the patent for Velcro that was later granted in 1955.
1970’s - Nike
A waffle iron led to a revolutionary athletic shoe sole design and the birth of a global mega brand. Track coach Bill Bowerman of the University of Oregon was experimenting with ideas for shoe outsoles that would better grip the newly resurfaced track at the university. One Sunday morning, he poured liquid urethane into his wife’s waffle iron. This evolved into the famed Nike “waffle sole” which was first mass manufactured and distributed in the iconic Nike Waffle Trainer in 1974. In 2008, Nike’s revenues were nearly $19B. That’s a lot of waffles.
1980’s - MTV logo
On August 1, 1981 MTV launched on a small New Jersey cable system with a theme song in the form of a crunching guitar riff playing over a montage of images of the Apollo 11 moon landing. The MTV logo on the astronaut’s flag is the iconic symbol of the company that was inspired by the graffiti and street art that Creative Director Fred Seibert and his team would see walking the streets of NYC. Contrary to the “industry standard practice” of never touching a corporate logo/icon, the MTV logotype, true to its street art origins, is constantly changing and simultaneously existing in many different creative manifestations.
21st Century - Twitter
I'm not sure what the real story of the initial inspiration for Twitter is. Maybe it's as "mundane" as some form of evolution of SMS. But I am intrigued by the tweet exchange betweenTwitter co-founder Jack Dorsey and Mayor Mike Bloomberg that vindicated that the social platform was inspired by new York City itself.
Lesson? In the creative idea economy, you never know what the source and timing of initial inspiration is going to be. More often than not, inspiration springs from unexpected sources far removed from the confines of the particular business or problem at hand, which says something about the value of an "informed naivete" in the approach to the creative process ...well that, and taking a lot of walks and spending time in the kitchen.