How is it possible that someone else come up with so creative, simple and accurate idea and I did not?
Have you ever had this kind of though in your mind? After the solution works it seems to be obvious, but everybody is curious how great mind used their creativity to come up with breakthrough concepts for example like Jobs did with Apple PCs?
In the series of articles you will discover the secret of creative geniuses. You will learn and practice methods they used to create outstanding solutions so you also can apply them in your life.
By creative genius I mean people who invented something outstanding that other people around them did not come up.
In this series we will not consider personality, attitude, personal styles, resources creative geniuses had, but only focus and analyze precisely the way of thinking that lead them to their great ideas.
How Ice-cream cone was born?
Although ice cream had been served on dishes for years, it wasn’t until the 1904 World’s Fair that the ice cream cone was born. An ice cream stall at the fair was doing so well that they were quickly running out of plates while the neighboring Persian waffle stall was hardly selling anything. The two stall owners then had the idea of rolling up the waffles, plopping the ice cream on top and voila…the ice cream cone is born.
Would this discovery be possible if the inventor would stick to his logical, linear thinking and focus only on his stall with ice creams?
The method behind this and most of great inventions is to create original combination by forcing connection between not obviously related objects (example of ice cream + waffles).
How Steve Jobs used intuitively this thinking method to come up with Apple PC?
How Jobs connected dots and came up with Apple concept?
Steve Jobs in 2005 Stanford Commencement Address told a story from his life that showed how he connected not related domains and has been inspired to create new value.
He used the expression: “I’ve connected the dots.” The first dot he learned when he decided to quit studies. These decision allowed him – as unenrolled student – to choose and attend classes he was interested in. He choose one of the best in country course of calligraphy. He said, that time he couldn’t predict this knowledge will have any practical application in his life.
10 years later when they were designing one of the first Apple PC all this come back to him. He connected dots: beautiful calligraphy with PC solutions. As a result he created brand Apple – computers that are beautifully designed and simply different.
Out-of-box thinking required original connections
If you are looking for improvement only within your standard box (Jobs example: PC) you have limited space to create something very original. Thinking only in-box you are about to generate marginal improvements, rather than breakthrough solutions.
When you combine your “box” with some very far, not obviously related another “box”(Jobs example: Calligraphy), you receive more fresh inspirations to create surprising and original connection that others cannot see. Why others cannot see it? Because they looking for solution only in scope of their box.
This is so called out-of-box thinking. Creative geniuses as Jobs, Ford, Einstein, Gutenberg used it. Knowing how this thinking works you can also practice and become very original creative thinker!
But before that in next article I will help you understand why it’s not so easy to see these valuable creative connections, when and why did you lost this ability and stop thinking like creative genius.
Tomek Bakowski
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