Inventing Elephants

Use Existing Ideas to Construct New Ideas

Beth Robinson — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 11:16:32 +0000

Three Steps for Effective Borrowing

Dave Murray says to look in each of these places:

1. The Opposite Place

- It can inspire a different way of viewing your world

2. A Similar Place

- This helps you to understand the current reality. A similar place can be as simple as a competitor that you might already be watching. But the point is to view it both through your usual lens and the opposite lens and then not to stop here, but to keep going. It's almost a warm-up exercise.

3. A Different Place

- This is where you'll find the most impactful material for building new ideas. The different place could be within your own observations, from the experience of others, or from actually going somewhere off of your usual path.

The first step of problem definition and visiting the other places help prepare you to make the most of the different places. This is the step that made me think of The Medici Effect, which I'll write about later.

How Can Borrowing Build Originality?

If the basic concept seems shaky to you, the best arguments for it lie within the stories that Murray uses in his book, Borrowing Brilliance. That's where it comes to life.

One you're probably heard before is that of the assembly line. Henry Ford reportedly borrowed the idea for this manufacturing innovation from a meat packing plant. Applying it to building a crafted and precise machine just wasn't obvious to other people.

There's a simple continuum that Murray shows to illustrate his point.

If you borrow from the same domain - you're a thief.
If you borrow from a similar domain - you're a smart guy.
If you borrow from a different domain - you're a creative genius.

Creative Genius Position Open

I must admit that one of the attractions of this theory is that it puts the ability to at least briefly carry the title of creative genius in each of our hands. We don't have to worry about coming up with an original idea, just creating a farflung combination that hasn't been applied in that particular way before.

What do you take away from it?

Build a Foundation for Innovation with Problem Definitions

Beth Robinson — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 11:47:39 +0000

When you ask the wrong question the answer you get may be correct, but still not be what you need. Therefore, the first step in Dave Murray's innovation process is to define the problem.

Locate the Problem

If the problem has been assigned to you, then all you need to do is explore its boundaries. But sometimes you're looking for a problem. Both of these needs start in the same place - with observation.

Observation is the act of studying the production and destruction of patterns. -David Kord Murray

What happens? How is this different or the same? Where does the expected and the actual stop agreeing with each other?

Actually asking questions about what you see to come up with your own problems may be natural for you, or difficult. I find it the latter and prefer to work from an assignment of some variety because it helps me focus my observations. I've found asking others affected by the same environment what they are dissatisfied with or what troubles them to be a great way to provide that first spark.

And then you keep asking why? until you've found the root cause. Often you'll need to learn new things for this step, but you'll also be using them as you expand your definition.

Three-dimensional Definition

You can't build a solution on a single isolated problem. You've got to build on the entire matrix of problems: the high-level ones and low-level ones. - David Kord Murray

By this he means, to find out two things:

What problem was solved that led to the current situation?

Most designs and new things are put in place because they solve somebody's problem, even if it's a personal one that isn't supposed to be part of the situation. It's possible that instead of solving the isolated problem at hand, you'll be better off solving the problem one level up.

What problems do I create when I solve this one?

This one is somewhat harder to answer because you don't yet know what form your solution will take, but some awareness of the options will help you better process the steps coming up.

These questions are also intended to give you a chance to make sure that your primary question, the one you keep in your mind to drive your forward, is at the right level.

Systems Thinking

Murray doesn't use the term, but systems thinking should be part of the defining process. Since it gives you a lens through which to determine interconnections and delays, you can better define the problem matrix and where your potential solution might be applying leverage.

This Isn't Final

You're going to get a chance to come back and change your definition. When I first read this section I had a momentary flash of "Uh-oh, what if I get this foundation wrong?"

It's a foundation only in that you need to do it first for the most success, not in the sense of being a permanent support. It can be refined or completely reimagined after you've gone through the other steps.

More on Borrowing Brilliance

This is the first of a series of posts interpreting and summarizing the book Borrowing Brilliance by David Kord Murray. Read the rest:

Build a Foundation for Innovation with Problem Definitions
Use Existing Ideas to Construct New Ideas

Borrowing Brilliance and The Medici Effect

Beth Robinson — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 10:08:37 +0000

Two thoughts popped into my head when I was barely into Borrowing Brilliance by David Kord Murray.

This is what I was trying to say

When I started this blog I imagined that we each needed to find a way to bring together the different perspectives of our proverbial blind men in order to define the elephant in a way that let us actually solve a problem.

I imagined that we wouldn't always know it was going to be an elephant beforehand, just that it was going to be something.

I expected that there could be a way to develop the skills to do this and a process to follow to improve success.

There is a process. And Murray just wrote about it.

His description of innovation resonated that strongly with me.

I have to read The Medici Effect now

Murray's talk of borrowing and cross-fertilization of ideas reminded me of another book on my shelf, one all about ideas coming together to create something new. One I hadn't actually read yet.

The instant I finished Borrowing Brilliance I started reading The Medici Effect by Frans Johansson.

And I was rewarded by complementary insights that meshed into Murray's steps two and three.

Not a Review Post Yet

I can't really review either book yet because I was going through them so fast that all I was left with was impressions of the scenery.

About all I can say is both were structured well and had readable writing styles. Murray's was more personal in approach, though, and had more story to it, which was used effectively to support the content.

It's time for the walking tour now. These are the next two books that I'll be covering in depth.

If you want to get the postcard first, both books have websites with book summaries, a little supllementary data, and blogs, though Johansson's is more personal.

Borrowing Brilliance Site

The Medici Effect Site

Off-Topic Business - Mine and Minds

Beth Robinson — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 10:46:00 +0000

Where I've Been

This time two months of not blogging equaled concentrating on setting up a freelance business on the side. I started out with "business writing" and it took some shifts in perspective before - and during - setting up my website to get to here.

I'm now offering my services to help turn website visitors into customers.

Specifically, I offer online copywriting and content marketing for b2b companies with a focus on those related to the manufacturing and chemical industries.

The new site is up at Leading with Content. It includes a blog about using content marketing techniques and some basic information about my services. I hope to also get a portfolio up and a newsletter started within the next month or so.

Let me know you've been reading Inventing Elephants and I'll give you a 25% off discount from my rates. If you also provide a testimonial, then the two discounts will add together.

Learning from Extraordinary Minds

This is in the off-topic business post because it's geared for entrepreneurs and I'll get a commission if you end up making a purchase after the free offering. However, I think it's such a neat idea that it's worth sharing even with those two caveats.

53 mega-best-selling business book authors and consultants are being brought together for a series of nine panel discussions to be broadcast via the web and it's completely free to sign up. Free. And you get to hear what they're thinking about now, not just what they wrote years ago. I signed up immediately.

After you put your name and email in to the form then you will be offered things to buy. They start with an offer for the recordings and transcripts, plus one to continue receiving access to similar panels for a fee. You can decline them all and you only need to provide additional info if you accept them.

I don't feel comfortable giving you anything but this extremely low-key introduction here, but if the idea intrigues you then you can see a more benefits centered introduction from me here or go straight to the sign-up page.

The longer summary is on a blog that I started because I got carried away with how cool this sounded. Unfortunately, I realized that continued blogging on the topic won't fit with my primary goals so it will be deleted soon. I'll be learning from the experience, most definitely, just not writing about it much.

Dancing With Living Systems

Beth Robinson — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 10:25:40 +0000

No matter how well we understand systems we'll never know everything. We'll never be able to predict and control the situation completely. Instead we can design, redesign, and change dynamically along with the system.

Donella Meadows considered it a dance and put fourteen of her philosophical tips for learning the steps in the last chapter of her book. You can read an earlier version of the chapter as a public article hosted by Pegasus Communications, which featured it in a recent edition of the Leverage Points newsletter.

One of the more practical ones is to Use Language with Care and Enrich it with Systems Concepts. Because our shared information and mental models are primarily verbal, the words we choose to use to discuss the situation and the system do more than describe it. They shape the perception of it, which changes how we interact with it.

For example, we often discuss "creating jobs" as if it something only corporations do. Which is not going to inspire entrepreneurs to create their own jobs or find a way to grow exponentially more if they hire one person, even part time, to help with certain tasks. These things happen, but perhaps they happen in spite of the way we use language, not encouraged by it.

Meadows suggest two steps and notes that when she originally wrote Thinking in Systems, in 1993, she had to sustainability to her spell checker.

Step 1: Keep language concrete, meaningful, truthful, and clear.

Step 2: Create new words when necessary so that the language can fit our increasing understanding of systems and situations.

The other tips, which are elaborated on in the article and book, include:

Get the Beat of the System
Expose Your Mental Models to the Light of Day
Honor, Respect, and Distribute Information
Pay Attention to What is Important, Not Just What is Quantifiable
Make Feedback Policies for Feedback Systems
Go For the Good of the Whole
Listen to the Wisdom of the System
Locate Responsibility within the System
Stay Humble - Stay a Learner
Exand Time Horizons
Defy the Disciplines
Expand the Boundary of Caring
Don't Erode the Goal of Goodness

And my personal favorite, the one I'd like to leave you with, is to Celebrate Complexity, from which I pulled the following lyrical passage.

Only a part of us, a part that has emerged recently, designs buildings as boxes with uncompromising straight lines and flat surfaces. Another part of us recognizes instinctively that nature designs in fractals, with intriguing detail on every scale from the microscopic to the macroscopic. That part of us makes Gothic cathedrals and Persian carpets, symphonies and novels, Mardi Gras costumes and artificial intelligence programs, all with embellishments almost as complex as the ones we find in the world around us. - Donella Meadows in Thinking in Systems

This post is the ninth and last in a series that discusses the concepts in Thinking in Systems by Donella Meadows. Also read my other posts:

Book Review: Thinking in Systems
What is a System?
Feedback Entangles How Fast with How Much
Delays and Disasters at the Zoo
Effective Systems Beyond Our Control
Why Systems Surprise Us
The Same Story Retold
Four Approaches to Changing Systems
Dancing with Living Systems

Please let me know if you enjoyed this series. Did you read the book? What did you think of it? Do you know of any books related to thinking towards the whole that you'd like to discuss in depth.

Four Approaches to Changing Systems

Beth Robinson — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 13:51:51 +0000

Where do you start to change a complex system? Even if it's diagrammed out, the situation can be a baffling monolith without obvious entry points.

Donella Meadows suggests 12 different points where leverage can be applied in Chapter 6 of Thinking in Systems. I've grouped them into four categories for simplicity. The additional tips and detail she discusses well worth reading the book by themselves - although they'll make more sense if you start at the beginning.

Either list is only for inspiration. Meadows admits that after decades of thinking about systems it still wasn't easy finding the actual points in a real system, but this is a summary of the framework she came up with.

Change the details

These are the practical things that are easiest to geta hold on mentally, but they also have the least effect. Any particular number will generally fall in this category. Other basic things include whether you have a buffer and it's neither too big nor to small, if there's a bottleneck in a physical process, and in the length of the time you set a delay. For some systems one or more of these will be fixed instead of variable.

Change the processes within the system

There is more leverage in the information and control portions of the system. One is to put in place, or properly maintain, emergency response mechanisms that actually provide balancing feedback, restraining runaway disasters. Changing the rate of growth, or any place where having more gives you more, can often have an effect. So can communicating more, or different, information about what is going on to the people involved.

Change the identity of the system

The way the system is defined makes a difference as well. What are the rules in place and has anyone tried to rethink them or find hidden ones? Can you increase or decrease how much the system organizes itself instead of being dependant on a controlling hand? How about checking the goal. Is it what you thnk it is?

Change the paradigms

The most powerful points of change involve mind-set. Unfortunately, these can also require the most effort to alter! What paradigm, what shared idea, does the entire system operate within? And once you answer that question, try moving beyond it to a place where no paradigm is correct and you can select which one is most useful at any given time.

Push in the right direction

Did these feel right to you? Then you had already developed some intuition about where to find leverage points. Now is when you need to be extra careful. Apparently many of them are counterintuitive. The direction you think you should push to make a change is the wrong one and will produce the opposite result that you intend.

Do you have a story about trying to change a system? How did it go?

This post is the eighth in a series that discusses the concepts in Thinking in Systems. Also read my other posts:

Book Review: Thinking in Systems
What is a System?
Feedback Entangles How Fast with How Much
Delays and Disasters at the Zoo
Effective Systems Beyond Our Control
Why Systems Surprise Us
The Same Story Retold
Four Approaches to Changing Systems
Dancing with Living Systems

A Picture Worth A Thousand Numbers

Beth Robinson — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 01:14:52 +0000

What is to be sought in designs for the display of information is the clear portrayal of complexity, not the complication of the simple; rather the task of the designer is to give visual access to the subtle and the difficult - that is, the revelations of the complex. - Edward R. Tufte

To put it another way - Use visual images to express clearly something that is more difficult to understand through strings of words or tables of numbers.

For me this quote captures a piece of the essence of increasing understanding by looking at a situation through different perspectives. It comes from Edward Tufte's first book, The Visual Display of Quantitative Information. Most of the book is more specialized, advocating graphical excellence whenever presenting multivariate data visually.

By this he means primarily that a diagram should:

present the most ideas with the least time spent looking
give the most information with the least ink
tell the truth without distortion

The various graphs or time-series images are not considered as part of the thinking process itself, but as conveying information already determined.

As much as a classic as this book is considered I would not recommend it unless you use graphs of quantitative data extensively. How to Lie with Statistics is a better resource for understanding how numerical data can be distorted by its presentation on the one hand. On the other hand, the concepts of visual display of information have been built up so extensively on this foundation that the original seems dated, more for enjoyment that practical use.

I do have Tufte's later books, Envisioning Information and Visual Explanations, on my to-read pile and am looking forward to them.

5 Ways a Big-Picture Thinker Builds Influence

Beth Robinson — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 10:55:04 +0000

If you're getting bogged down by details of how something is going to happen when you're supposed to be, or want to be, the one looking at the big picture then try doing these five things to increase your influence.

1. Know how to sell your ideas

We tend to believe those who are more persuasive, even when it comes to something as important as voting for our country's leaders. Sometimes the inherent quality of an idea will win out despite stumbles and poor word choice, but more often it's tied to how well the person who champions it carries themselves.

This doesn't mean that you need to push your ideas like a snake-oil salesman. It could mean that you know that this person is more willing to listen if you approach them after lunch instead of first thing in the morning. Or that Mary down the hall wants it straight up but John one floor down prefers to figure out the steps for himself from incomplete information.

2. Know your environment

Read the high level journals and magazines that discuss things of note happening in general and be able to discuss them with others. Even better, find ways to quantify the relevant trends. In business, this would incude whatever CEOs are reading. The exact collection will depend on your field.

3. Know how your people are affected by the environment

Your people can mean customers, co-workers, constituents, or any other group you're interacting with. The point is to make the connections between what they are experiencing and the bigger picture, somethng it can be difficult to do when you're only looking at your own issues.

4. Share your knowledge

You don't want to be the only one who knows about the idea and the plan. Even if everyone around you has contributed to the development, they still may not know all the facets. Hoarding the knowledge doesn't help you, it just puts you in the position of being a human filing cabinet. When everyone can reach the details, then you can continue watching and maing connections to the big picture.

5. Play the part

Lead by example. Be the person who keeps the vision in mind and facilitates all the other necessary pieces without taking them away from someone else. Make sure that you are adding value with your bigger picture view and not being the supervisor who airily waves his hands and doesn't accomplish anything!

What and Why Vs. How

How is important and extremely valuable. There needs to be a way to go from the big picture to the actual result. Yet there are usually specialists or subject matter experts that are going to be able to figure out those details better than the person who is trying to develop the big picture.

How is important enough that it takes up large amounts of time and a different mental lookout. It's important enough that it should often be done by someone other than the person working on what and why.

Trying to do both can be stressful and crowd out the ability to make vision possible. If you're trying to do both, then carve out and set aside blocks of time to do the development work on "what and why" and let the "how" fill in the cracks

Product Management: An Example

This framework was enlarged from a more specific presentation by John Mansour of ZigZag Marketing about how a Product Manager or Marketer should exert influence. He called them the conscience of the company, as the CEO interacted with the investors and all the various divisions had their own particular priorities and point of view.

The Product Manager is determining what customers need based on the market conditions. The Product Marketer is making the most of the current products that a business has. In either case, it's the what and why connections that are important for success and other team members who need to develop the how, even if they happen to share the same title within the organization. They have a number of other relevant articles on their site, such as one explaining why too much knowledge about your product can be a bad thing and an earlier take on how product management can improve its influence.

ProductCamp New York City

I listened to John's presentation at an "unconference" held in New York City. The goal was a self-organizing gathering of information and sharing on topics relevant to Product Management and Marketing and the entire event went off fantastically. If the idea appeals to you, there is a list of current and future PCamps here. ProductCamp itself grew from the concept of BarCamp, which embraces a variety of other subject matter. I also blogged about our keynote speaker, the CMO of Kodak, over on my new marketing blog.

The Same Story Retold

Beth Robinson — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 11:06:27 +0000

Most books and movies can be boiled down to one of a handful of plots. The surprises and excitement lie in the details and in the way the story unfolds.

Destructive systems are similarly predictable, following familiar story lines across different situations, industries, and environments on both large and small scales. Donella Meadows describes 8 of the most common archetypes in Thinking in Systems and caps off each story with a way to get out of the trap set by the plot.

These are:

Policy Resistance - tug of war and we all fall down
The Tragedy of the Commons - overuse via self-interest
Drift to Low Performance -continually lowering your expectations
Escalation - she poked me so I'll poke her harder
Success to the Successful - I won, so now I have money to help me win next time
Shifting the Burden to the Intervenor - You're not helping me enough
Rule Beating - It's what you said, but doesn't get to where you meant
Seeking the Wrong Goal - the system did exactly what you asked, oops

But my favorite is Success to the Successful, because it hardly seems like a trap.

I mean, if you do well at something, maybe make some money, then it makes sense that you should be able to invest what you earned into doing even better at the next thing. It's how you grow a business or get better at your hobbies.

But it's a trap when there is a scarcity of resources, perhaps even if that scarcity is only mental. Each time the successful person gets a little more and gets a little better it becomes that much harder for the unsuccessful person to catch up to them. It happens in the game of Monopoly, where the first person who's able to start charging more and higher rents starts pulling ahead.

When we stay in one mode of thinking, there is scarcity on a larger scale. Poor children in poor areas end up with poor education, making it harder for them to reach a higher standard of living. Land is owned unevenly. Businesses tend to grow larger and are eventually restrained only by anti-trust laws.

When the poor get poorer it's sad from a moral point of view and also poses a danger that those societies or individuals will eventually get frustrated enough in their hopelessness to violently reset the game. Meadows recommends a couple more peaceful ways to level the playing field, such as taxation and gift-giving traditions.

One she didn't bring up is changing the rules. That's why this archetype attracted me. It reminded me of the set-up for disruptive innovations and how tiny businesses can overtake established ones and become wildly successful, sometimes. They changed the game and somehow increased the number of resources available in a way that wasn't directly intended to limit the wealth of the other players. Expanding the concept outside of the business world is a little more complex, but I would expect that changing the way we think still has the potential to provide other ways out of this trap by fostering abundance instead of scarcity.

All eight archetypes are found in Chapter Five: System Traps ... and Opportunities. This post is the seventh in a series that discusses the concepts in Thinking in Systems. Also read my other posts:

Bits and Pieces - May and June 2009

Beth Robinson — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 11:00:38 +0000

A few things that caught my attention while I was wasn't blogging... mostly variations on thinking methods.

Design Thinking

Lessons Learned - Why the Failure of Systems Thinking Should Inform the Future of Design Thinking really hit home for me. I had noticed the overlap between the two and was fascinated by Fred Collopy's vantage point as being a student of both.

Essentially he points out that systems thinking requires mastering many similar disciplines and also following an arbitrary set of shared defintions, but that we learn best, and are most excited by learning, when we can jump in and try things out.

The key suggestion is to make design thinking approachable by creating within it a collection of useful tools that do NOT depend on each other. I wonder if this could also be done for systems thinking, or if that would defeat the point.

If you go read the article, make sure to follow the discussion into the comments. The're worth the extra time.

Systematic Inventive Thinking

This post about becoming greener is also about cognitive fixedness, a precise term to describe having a mental block. The three ways that the SIT team recommends to break it up are to:

recognize the limitation
accept that underlying assumptions can be changed
be flexible about relationships between elements

They have their own blog and a company site by the same name. It's apparently a way to approach innovation, step by step, using systems in the sense of having a regular process. I'd like to a little more closely at their ways to come up with something new.

Natural Systems Thinking Process

I had no idea there was anything called ecopsychology. This article popped up because I have a google alert on "systems thinking" but the only part of NSTP that seems familiar is the idea of everything being interconnected, instead it focuses more on the emotional and natural aspects of the "web of life" and not on increasing understanding overall.

Resilience Thinking

Much of this article flew by me, but I caught enough to want to follow up on the idea later. Garry Peterson describes resilience thinking, in part, as being a deliberatively subjective look at systems. Instead of trying to map it out objectively, you're trying to look at what you can see from the different perspectives in order to get a fuller picture, even in disagreement.

And a little more...

Chris Jones muses about the definition, history, and implications of considering paradigms - the way we describe and understand things. As a side note, Paradigm 101 isn't part of a blog, but part of a wiki set up for Chris's consulting company. I hadn't seen this tack taken in an individual's online publishing before and find it interesting