What is more
important than ideas is making them work. Ideas need to be demonstrated,
hence building things is key to bringing in a culture of collaborative
innovation Some successful organisations use exploration and play to their
continued success and growth
Gever Tulley, famous for his
Tinkering School has a mission; empowering children with interpersonal,
problem-solving and technical skills that will help them succeed in the 21st
Century. The school provides children real tools to solve real problems in
the real world. In their annual weeklong sleepover summer camp, kids have
built all kinds of projects, from a roller coaster with 100 feet of track, to
a bridge made of plastic shopping bags, to a sail-powered railroad car, stuff
that the kids did not believe they built themselves! Children are natural
`builders' and problem-solvers. They are constantly exploring limits: how far
will a paper plane fly? Can we make it fly even farther? Let's make it using
some other paper. Let's make it slightly bigger. Let's throw it from the top
of the building and see what happens.
As formal education
compartmentalises learning and focuses on individual pieces, their
resourcefulness and exploration takes a backseat. Failures reduce and so does
learning from them.
Some of the most successful
organisations in the world use exploration and play to their continued
success and growth. In his book `Serious Play', Michael Schrage of MIT makes
a case for creative improvisation. `Much of this serious play that leads to
breakthrough innovations is increasingly linked to experiments with models,
prototypes, and simulations'.
As digital technology makes
prototyping more cost-effective, serious play will soon lie at the heart of
all innovation strategies, influencing how businesses define themselves and
their markets'.
Learning with children, this very
idea of designing experiments to achieve an end result through a series of
failures can be a transforming experience.
Framing seemingly difficult
projects and solving them with the power of quick prototype building using
collaborative teams might hold the key to transforming society through
participative problem solving.
How is building things so
important to learning and applying the learning to big problems? David Kelley
of the storied design consultancy IDEO says, `makers have this incredibly
positive view of the future and more importantly, they believe they can
change it....If a picture is worth a thousand words, a prototype is worth a
million words'. Kelley explains how a quick and dirty early prototype to
demonstrate one's idea can become an instant focus of attention in a group
and goes on to get maximum criticism as well as help. Then it is just a
matter of making more and more prototypes till you get it right.
IDEO uses quick and dirty early
prototypes to test out individual aspects of function or aesthetics or
whatever needs to be tested atever needs to be tested and then quickly builds
on it rather than treating them as an end point of the thought process.
More than ever, fun damental
innovation around products and experiences is becom ing extremely crucial to
survival and growth of communities and organisations.
Companies are communicating with
the customers not only to understand their needs but also to innovate with
them.
In this bargain, the skill of
building things early, be it models, prototypes or simulations to test them
out very quickly and effectively is a conclusive winner.
As Kelley would say, `stop talking, start making'! |
ET140621
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