ENJOY AND APPLY THIS EXCERPT FROM AN ISSUE OF FRESH IDEAS:

BUILD LOOSE SOCIAL TIES

Make a point of talking to someone new whenever possible.  Note what you learn from them, and look for ways to apply this new knowledge.   

This strategy extends your frame of reference and helps you sidestep outdated assumptions.  

A Stanford School of Business study found that most successful entrepreneurs spend less time than average with business contacts who are friends and more time than average with acquaintances and strangers.   

Strong social ties embed ideas and practices, while contact with strangers and acquaintances can bridge different areas of expertise. 

Office furniture and snowboarding? 

How could someone from Herman Miller help a future Shaun White?  Burton Snowboards found ways to apply design elements from the Aeron chair to the creation of their breakthrough CO2 board bindings. See how here.

But what if I’m working with a more serious challenge?

At the Harvard Business School, Karim R. Lakhani created a process for “broadcasting” tough scientific challenges to outsiders.  They found that people with expertise on the margins of the challenge quickly offered tenable solutions; almost a third of the “unsolvable” challenges were solved.

It’s a time-tested phenomenon. In See New Now, de Jaager and Ericson report, “A study of the top fifty game-changing innovations over a hundred-year period showed that nearly 80 percent of those innovations were sparked by someone whose primary expertise was outside the field in which the innovation breakthrough took place.”   

Putting This into Play

Learn more about and from unusual points of reference.

With Others

• Pull together several people from distinctly different occupations. 

• Ask each person to select an area of expertise, and then note a rule of thumb from this area. For example:  in investing, a simple rule of thumb could be “diversify the portfolio.”

• Post a list of the areas of expertise and their associated rules of thumb.

•  Post the challenge requiring creative thinking. 

• Choose one rule of thumb.  Ask the expert to give a thorough description of the principle, working to teach the group something new.

• Ask the group to find ways to apply the described principle to the challenge at hand.  Document every idea without comment or critique.

• Repeat this process, choosing another rule of thumb that sounds very different from the previous one.  Continue through the list.

Source note:  this “Trans-disciplinary Analogies” process is described in Paul Plsek’s Creativity, Innovation and Quality.

Over Time 

Bumping into different ideas and attitudes can help you become more aware of your own assumptions.  Pay attention to how you respond when this happens.

Make a point of starting conversations with new people, and looking up old contacts. This practice can actually increase your luck factor. 

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