Despite our intelligence and immense creative potential, human beings are still very good at pointing out the things that make us suspicious because they are seemingly impossible.

“That won’t work,” is a standard response to a new idea, and anyone who considers themselves to be innovative will probably bristle and as a result, dive into figuring out how to doctor up the idea and make it work. This is a noble approach, one we at Knowinnovation would appreciate more than acquiescing to the can’t-be-done mentality. But there might be a better approach. Keep reading »

The human mind is, for the most part, set on being in the know. We don’t like being uncertain or confused, we seek answers and explanations, a pattern we can recognize to make sense of what’s happening around us. In the face of an elusive solution, or a mirky, messy problem, a lot of people are ill at ease.

This discomfort has driven invention and innovation for centuries. The need to understand and clarify and find an answer has opened the door to all sorts of advancements, especially in science and technology. In the long term, it’s served us well. Keep reading »

At just about every KI-facilitated event, there comes a moment when we have to talk about terminology. This is especially important with multi-disciplinary groups. Every type of science has a robust language of its own, rife with acronyms and jargon that make for efficient communication amongst peers within the field but can be confusing, misleading or off-putting to people from other disciplines.

Very often, we create a wall of definitions and invite people to think of all the terms that might be pertinent to the topic of the workshop. Then we ask people to define these words and phrases. The conversation that ensues sometimes turns into a debate, from which emerges a clearer understanding of the term, or else multiple definitions. For instance, at a workshop on synthetic biology, the physicists and mathematicians started using the term vector – a quantity having direction as well as magnitude – which confused the biologists, who were thinking epidemiological terms in which case a vector is a living carrier that transmits and infectious agent. I think the computer scientists had their own definition, too.

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While its origins might be more technical, the term networking has stretched into the human realm, and with the advent (and overuse) of the term Social Networking, has raised our sensitivities about its meaning. In its most neutral sense, a network is a collection of connected resources that share and exchange and economize together. If you think about the network of people around you, hopefully it’s a vision of something supportive, a chain of people who sustain and inspire you and connect you to a community.

Networking has some less than positive connotations. Someone who networks too much can be perceived as superficial, a collector of business cards, a name-dropper. Picture the person shaking your hand at a cocktail party, looking over your shoulder to see if there’s anyone more important or more connected that they should be talking to instead of you. That’s a networker, in the most pejorative sense. Keep reading »

The way we talk about our problems says a lot about how likely we are to solve them creatively. When we state a problem as a fact, it becomes a heavy weight. For instance: Nobody’s been able to model the XXX process. Indeed, that’s a problem. It’s also a negative statement – already a downer – and it doesn’t lead to any ideas. It’s a static problem.

A productive problem is one that’s phrased as a question: How might we understand how to model this process? It asks you to wonder about the problem, and even suggests other questions: In what ways is it like other processes that we can model? How might we understand and model aspect of it piece by piece? A problem posed as a question invites ideas that might be a solution. Not even just one solution; an open-ended, wondering question hints that there might be many approaches that could work. Keep reading »

What do you do when the email message lands in your inbox, inviting you to the latest departmental brainstorming meeting? Do you grin or do you groan?

If it makes you groan just to think about it, you’re like a lot of people. Brainstorming sessions can feel like a waste of time, and don’t always generate new ideas, which can make them feel like a useless activity. Keep reading »

Sometimes what you don’t know can help you.

The naïve mind asks questions that test widely held assumptions. The naïve mind dares to ask the stupid questions, not even realizing they might be stupid. The naïve mind makes abstract conclusions that someone steeped in the problem can’t see or hear – not because of being closed-minded, but because the human brain excels at seeking out data that fits established patterns – data that fits with what it already knows. Keep reading »

Succeeding in the current business climate may have little to do with what you know, and much more to do with your ability to find out what you don’t know. In other words, asking questions may be one of the best tools for innovation.

The Harvard Business Review posed the question, “how do innovators think?” to two business school professors, Jeff Dyer of Brigham Young University and Hal Gregerson of INSEAD, who together conducted a 6-year survey of over 3000 creative executives to try to explain how the “innovator’s DNA” works. Keep reading »