Anyone can innovate.
We faced one another in stark, unflattering portrait, waiting for the online innovation workshop to begin. Polite introductions were exchanged. Enquiries made about one’s day and one’s plans.
Extreme curiosity is probably my only real skill, and my attention was drawn to one delegate in particular. She was multi-tasking. Whilst attending this meeting she had elected to progress some knitting. I had to ask.
What are you knitting?
She was knitting a blanket. This may seem like a complete answer, but this sort of innocuous answer is a thread that I’ll remain motivated to pull upon some more.
Who are you knitting this blanket for?
She had embarked upon a laudable goal. She was knitting a warm, fluffy blanket for the local homeless shelter. They never have enough blankets, so she takes every opportunity she can find to knit blanket after blanket. This seemed fair enough, and I offered my respect for pursuing such an admirable goal.
Then it arrived.
The one clue for which the innovator is always waiting.
She continued. Of course, she can’t always knit blankets. I pull on this new thread. She must purchase the wool to make these blankets, and to afford this she must knit blankets for sale. Some of the day she knits blankets for profit. The rest of the day she knits blankets for the homeless. If she could, she would pursue the latter all day.
We’re always waiting for the contradiction.
Our knitting enthusiast is willing to knit blankets all day, and yet she cannot knit blankets for the shelter all day. How can she purchase wool without the need to purchase wool at all? How could wool cost nothing?
I put these questions to her and she stopped for a moment to glance at the ceiling and ponder. She had never before considered that all this wool might cost nothing. This is the moment to remain quiet. The pressure of a contradiction will build. A paradox will be processed. Wait patiently, and let this dough rise.
Then a torrent of ideas came quickly, examples of which follow.
A jumble of old clothes will likely contain threadbare woollen garments. Might old jumpers and scarves long past their wearable life be unravelled and rewound into comfortable blankets? How much of this jumble is available?
A very great number of people fail to make knitting their hobby. Homes are full of wool that is purchased with enthusiasm but quickly becomes untouched and unloved. Might a postage paid envelope encourage abortive amateurs to post their spare wool?
The spool-ends from wool factories may be tens or hundreds of metres long. Would they give away this waste for free? Is there a huge dumpster of free wool to be found behind every woollen mill, into which we could dive?
I’m sure you can think of more. If any of these ideas could be made to work, or any of the others passed back and forth in this impromptu workshop, knitting blankets for the homeless could continue all day.
None of these ideas were mine. Once I had highlighted the contradiction, ideas began to flow from this knitting enthusiast without effort. Simply describing the paradox that a solution must solve can often be enough. A solution may demand two entirely contradictory properties. Once you see it, the mind will attempt to solve it.
There is a danger in this approach, of which you must be very well aware. People are unused to employing contradictions as a means to solve a problem. Often a contradiction is presented as a gotcha, in an effort to score rhetorical points in a dispute. Under these circumstances, a contradiction identified will be interpreted as an accusation of hypocrisy. Identify a contradiction with care, or the listener may feel harassed and aggrieved. But identify it you must.
Identify the contradiction. Ask just the right question. Ask it at just the right time. Ask it in just the right way. And ask exactly the right person. Gently ask them all. Then wait.
The ideas will come.
