Borrowing Briliance (book by Murray)

Borrowing Brilliance

David Kord Murray

Borrowing Brilliance

 Most creativity is not exactly original; it is the reapplication or combination of older ideas to a new context. This book asserts that most practical and creative problem solving is based on borrowing the ideas of others.

 

We tend to look down on borrowing, but the history of innovation is full of borrowing. Sometimes, borrowing looks very similar to copying. In the past, copying was a normal practice, and perhaps preferred to originality. Around 1800, the industrial and scientific revolutions began and inventors wanted to get the maximum value (and credit) for their inventions, which meant preventing others from copying them. Part of the approach was to promote a social distaste for copying. By 1900, this was in full force and originality became a desirable attribute. But that did not stop people from borrowing other’s ideas and adapting them. When we look to solve future problems, we should start by looking for the solutions that others have applied to similar problems and borrow elements to solve our problems.

 Some people are real geniuses and do this naturally, but all of us can simulate genius. The author suggests that creative geniuses follow a 6 step process unconsciously and that we can copy it for our use. Most of this will be familiar to people, but a few comments deserve attention.

 Define the problem

The number one reason that people struggle to solve their problem is that they do not understand it. Understanding the problem is the absolute foundation for solving it. A shaky foundation means a shaky solution. We often fail to appreciate the amount of time and effort that famous creatives (think Newton, Darwin, Einstein) put into studying their problem. Understanding the context and details of the problem is a major step in defining the problem. What bigger situation is the problem part of? What details of the problem matter? People struggle with the scope of the problem. By having too broad or too narrowed a definition, they miss the essence of the problem. Thus, the effort should include “chunking” to insure that the definition is placed in the right scope.

 Many real-world problems are not single problems but clusters of related problems. Bringing a new product to market will spawn a wide range of problems. Develop an understanding of the problem space by creating an inventory of related problems then spending time sorting and re-organizing the information uncovered. This deep understanding of the problem space allows the development of solution criteria. These will be used later to judge ideas. The key point is that problem definition deserves much more attention than it is normally given.

 Borrowing

This phase is dedicated to collecting the “materials” that will be used to solve the problem. It is not problem solving itself, but an examination of ways that other people have solved analogous problems. Collecting is the predecessor to borrowing; it determines what you can borrow. Since the premise of this book is that everybody borrows, what makes some ideas stand out as especially creative? The answer is that ideas borrowed from a more distant source will probably be more creative. For example, suppose the problem is designing tax preparation software. If you borrow from an Intuit product, that will be a very close source. Borrowing from an internet portal is still software, but it is different. Borrowing from movie making is distant. A useful idea borrowed from Hollywood will seem extremely creative. Another way to borrow creatively is by searching in the opposite. Solving a problem in a “big” process with an idea from a “micro” process would be creative. Darwin’s understandings developed from considering why birds in the Azores and Galapagos (“opposite” sides of the world) were so similar – but were not identical. Comparing and contrasting uses the paradox that two things can be simultaneously identical and different.

 Darwin borrowed the concept of slow change from geology and competition for resources from Malthus. Gates borrowed the concept of visual interface from Xerox (via Apple). William Lamb borrowed the idea for the shape of the Empire State Building from a #2 pencil. You can borrow from competitors, mentors, the natural or man-made world. Looking around with the problem definition in mind and being open to what is observed is the key. Just like you create an inventory of problems in the definition phase, here you create an inventory of concepts of how you might solve the problem. It is worth remembering that every solution spawns more problems, so your inventory should be prepared for the whole problem.

  Combining

Creating a solution begins in this stage. In the context of this book, when you borrow to solve your problem you combine two existing things to create a solution. For example, George Lucas was making a science fiction movie, but he did not want to combine science fiction and a western because that was Star Trek. He tried to combine science fiction and a spy thriller, but that did not work at all. Eventually, he re-read a college text book and borrowed the idea of the Hero’s Journey from mythology. Star Wars was the result.

Sometimes the borrowing involves something from the end user’s world. Microsoft borrowed the idea of the desktop and file cabinet and combined it with computer file architecture. Chairs borrow the function and term of a leg to use as a support structure in combination with a flat horizontal surface. These two examples highlight the importance of metaphor and analogy in the combining phase. It is useful to conceive of the problem in metaphoric or analogous terms that allows you to think about the similarity of your problem and existing “solutions”. Some can be quite distant (Newton recognizing that an apple and the moon are both falling towards the earth) and because an apple and the moon seem quite different, the leap of insight was quite creative. Some metaphors are no longer visible to us from habituation (chair legs). Here is a short list of the applications of metaphor. The point of this list is to highlight the utility of abstracting the problem to the point where you have a wide range of possible solution spaces to borrow from. Not all metaphors work, so it may be quite important to try a metaphor, abandon it and try another. Metaphors can both liberate and confine thinking. So it is important to use metaphor and analogy to solve the problem, but not confuse the metaphor with the problem. 

Who made it	What was compared	What resulted
Charles Darwin	Selective breeding and survival of the fittest	evolution
John Nash	Poker and business decision making	Game theory
Sigmund Freud	Doorman and conscious-unconscious boundary	Theory of consciousness
Walt Disney	Movie and visit to Disneyland	The Disney experience where the visitor is an “actor in the movie of their visit”
Larry Page and Sergy Brin	Library and scientific paper citation	Page rank searching

 Not all combination is as abstract. Some combination occurs when two things from separate contexts are combined. Masaru Ibuka (Chairman and co-founder of Sony) was visiting a development lab one day and saw that the engineers had connected a Pressman tape recorder (a handheld recorder sold to journalists to record interviews) to some home speakers. He asked them to turn it on and was surprised at the quality of the music’s sound. He listened for a few minutes, then told everyone to wait right there. He went to another lab that was developing headphones, brought them back and plugged them in. The combination of an existing cassette tape recorder and existing small headphones resulted in the Walkman and invented the category of personal entertainment system.

 Incubating

The fourth stage depends on the unconscious mind making connections between two or more things that will be the core of a solution. The book’s discussion of incubation made the point that this in the process that seems mysterious. It is amazing, but the insights created in incubation are not really accidents.

 The discussion in the previous section might have made it seem like those people thought about the connection and consciously constructed the insight. This is an illusion. Darwin published “On the Origin of Species” in 1859, but began to realize the core of the concept before 1835. George Lucas worked on his Star Wars script for 3-4 years before remembering his college course of mythology. Not all solutions require years, but they probably require some pause. The brain is very busy all the time. We have thousands of thoughts, yet are aware of just a few of them. Freud used a metaphor of a grand banquet held in a large room. Many people are in this room. Our conscious mind is in a small room next to the main hall and at the door is a guard to let the right thoughts in and keep other thoughts out. When the small room is full, the guard keeps new thoughts out. There is a code-of-conduct in the small room, but not in the large; the guard watches for ideas that won’t obey the rules and rejects them at the door.

 The solution for many problems will be created in the ballroom, and the challenge is to bring them into the small room for examination. This is the purpose of incubation. Incubation allows the unconscious mind to create combinations of thoughts based on the problem definition, materials collected, and metaphors created. But a second aspect of incubation is relaxing the guard. This is a combination of allowing the small room to empty and putting the guard to sleep. Doing something different, especially something “mindless” can create the quiet that allows the ideas into consciousness. This is why people report getting ideas on walks, in the shower or when falling asleep or waking.

 Unconscious thinking often reveals itself in emotional sensations before conscious recognition of the idea occurs. For example, Chris Langan has an IQ of 195; pretty smart. Sometimes he dreams the solution to a problem, then remembers it and writes it down. Other times he just “feels” the answer, so he starts typing and discovers the solution by reading what he is typing.  …Langan feels the idea that’s in his subconscious mind before he’s able to consciously perceive it. Emotion is like a fishing line used to catch the ideas deep below and bring them up. If you break that attachment, you severed the fishing line and are now unable to capture these ideas.* We tend to think that we should be logical and deliberate. In this stage of the creative process, we need to be sensitive to our emotions, open to vague and incomplete ideas, and trust our minds to find a solution.

 An interesting example of paying attention derives from misunderstanding. Misreading, mishearing or misremembering are potential subconscious insertions into our conscious thinking. Alexander Graham Bell read a paper by a German physicist, but his German was not too good. As a result, he worked out how to transmit human sounds over an electrical wire and invented the telephone, though the paper did not describe that.

 When trying to solve a problem insert some incubation time. For group sessions, take frequent breaks or even spread the effort out over days to allow relaxation periods. Combine quiet ideation techniques with interactive ones. Incubation and brainstorming, as commonly practiced, are incompatible. The intense interaction between people essentially stops incubation.

 Judgment

If the noisiness of brainstorming is one flaw, an even bigger flaw is the banishment of judgment. Ideas differ in their value. Even good ideas are not perfect, and it is judgment that allows those flaws to be recognized and fixed. The author suggest that one of the reasons that almost everybody feels that brainstorming is useless is that too little judgment is at work. Consequently, ideas do not address the requirements of the problem’s definition adequately.

 Judging an idea is a balancing act requiring both positive and negative perspectives. Any idea that makes it to awareness has some positive aspects that must be accounted for. It inevitably has problems too. These must be recognized, but then there is an opportunity to solve those problems in developing a complete solution. Looking for flaws is not being “negative”; it is seeking a complete understanding of the idea. It is also not a random search for negative aspects but results from a comparison of the idea against the problem definition.

 Most people are natural negative thinkers, so this is not hard. What is hard is to step back from your own ideas and look at them negatively. In stepping back, one mantra might be “it is just an idea”. Developing this approach in groups is equally important. The group is going to judge the idea – not its originator. Egos might be bruised on occasion, so formalizing the negative perspective can help create a bit of distance – perhaps by appointing a devil’s and angel’s advocate to focus on the negative and positive elements, respectively. Picasso said that “Every act of creation is first of all an act of destruction.”, so a serious examination of an idea’s weaknesses is just another step towards an ultimate solution. Not all ideas will survive this process, and that will because they do not move towards a solution as defined in the problem definition and criteria.

 Thinking about the positive is harder; it requires more imagination, but it just as important. Many ideas can solve more than the problem in question. Some ideas can have far-ranging positive effects, but they need to be imagined first. One technique is to assume that the ideas has worked, then imagine all of the benefits that are becoming apparent now.

 What might tie these semi-logical approaches together is an emotional element. Sometimes, you’ll feel uncomfortable about an idea. Perhaps it seems too good or underappreciated, but you can’t say why. These emotional reactions are the subconscious expression of judgment. Pay attention to these feelings, let them incubate and you may recognize why your unconscious has reached this judgment. While business decisions are supposed to be logical and fact-based, the foundation for the rationalization of the decision is emotional. It is easy to denigrate this sort of “emotional” reaction, except that we can’t communicate with our unconscious mind without them.

 Enhancing

The final step is probably a return to earlier stages. Through the process, you’ve learned that the problem definition is incomplete or wrong. Re-define the problem. You may need to return to any or all of the earlier stages. In fact, this book presents these stages as if they were in a fixed order.  This is a logical order and a wicked problem may require a number of cycles through the process to understand and define the problem well enough to gather the materials really needed to solve the problem, to incubate on the various sub-problems that arise and to judge the partial and complete potential solutions.

 The book provides two possible expressions of a problem statement to illustrate how perspective might shift through a cycle. The initial question may have been “How can I improve the efficiency of my workers?” which may be restated as “How can I reduce the time spent working on my product?”  Henry Ford wanted to make the world’s least expensive car, but his competitor Will Durant wanted to make a car that people could afford. Ultimately, this distinction allowed General Motors to overtake Ford.

 Some problems take time and much iteration through the cycle to solve. Kepler took 9 years and 9000 pages of notes to calculate the orbits of the planets. Disneyland was 25 years from concept to opening. Newton took 20 years to write his Principia Mathematica, and he was standing on the shoulder of those who had gone before. A brilliant insight, borrowed from somewhere else does not eliminate the hard work of making a solution a reality. Many business problems are not a complex as these, and take less time to resolve. But the author concludes by suggesting that the only way that we fail is by giving up. He does not quote Edison, but the suggestion that “genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration” would fit right in. So would another Edison quote, “Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.” Throughout the book, the author suggest that we are unlike these genius’ in many ways, but we can simulate their thinking and working processes and get valuable results for ourselves and our organizations.

 Comment and interpretation:

• I struggle with normal brainstorming. I can’t pay attention to other ideas, and think deeply and build on other ideas at the same time, and never could. I can tune out and think or listen and think later. I suppose that I am bombarded by ideas that crowd my consciousness and potentially block my unconscious mind. It is hard to pay attention to my inner dialog when there is a vigorous outer dialog to attend to also. I come in with an inventory of ideas, but my best ideas probably come outside of the session. It may be while preparing or it may be later, but I think my brain mostly listens to others ideas during the session rather than thinking deeply.
• According to Henry Ford, “Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.” In modern terms, I think this is about making sure that every try leads to learning and persistence means that we put the learning to work.
• The book presents itself as if this is a process that you can learn, and there is some truth to that. But I think its greater value is in communicating that creativity is not magical or accidental, but the result of a process of not-quite-random unconscious thought. You can help the unconscious part along, but part of helping yourself is to be self-aware to know whether you have studied the problem, gather some resources or used your judgment. You can take action and get better results for your efforts.

*text in italics is directly quoted from the book