It is wonderful to be writing again early in the morning, and I’d love to thank the Namibian Business Innovation Center (NBIC), their wonderful team and candidates of the Innovation Week for this inspiration! It was simply awesome to discover this pocket of innovation, quietly blossoming out there in the most beautiful Windhoek. Thanks again for your hospitality and interest in my work and for allowing me to share it with you.
Over the next month or so I’d like to introduce you to The Great Thinkers who shaped my own journey of creativity and innovation, by discussing various cards from The Ideas Game here:
PERCEPTION:
A key marketing lesson I learned from Chris Raats, the marketing genius behind the MNET success story, comes from the pages of Al Ries and Jack Trout’s “22 Immutable Laws of Marketing“, and although I believe they coined the phrase in much earlier works, and they said: PERCEPTION IS REALITY.
This couldn’t be more true when it comes to thinking too! Very often our first impression of a problem, will stay with us throughout the process of trying to solve it. The very words you use to describe your problem, will influence how the person you’re describing it, will perceive it.
I happen to work for the coolest boss on the planet but as an example, how many people have you heard describe their bosses in the most diabolical terms? Without ever having met these bosses, we nevertheless have an impression that they’re awful, right? And that impression will influence the way we deal with them, if we ever had to meet them in a dark alleyway with a baseball bat…
This is also true when it comes to problem solving. When we ask people to help us solve a problem, we often describe it such dire terms that the very starting point others have, is a negative or loaded impression of the problem. No wonder no one likes having problems. My advice would be to embrace your problems; love them! And by having this attitude towards them, you’re going to find amazing ways to solve them.
Back to the card of the day: Albert Einstein was known to shift not only his perspective of problems, but very often also physically change the angle from which he viewed them. In fact, the popular story for the inspiration to discovering the famous relativity of light theory, supposedly came from observing a ray of light streaming in through a keyhole. He moved across the room to imagine himself “gliding across the beam”. Who said thinking couldn’t be fun?
Have a fantastic Thursday and remember to keep thinking!
ReTHINK it! 
Just stunning Nico. You are such an inspiration! Your words flow effortlessly from the fertility of your imagination. Thank you!
Thank you Barbara, that is so kind of you to say! Looking forward to your visit today! (Hey it rhymes…)
And as always I learn so much when I visit you and the team at Intellilab, thank you.
Something that has become very apparent to me in my own life and ventures is the fact that as soon as you make the ‘problem’ personal or when you become attached to the desired outcome of that problem you tend to charge it negatively or positively. I think the genius of Einstein was the fact that he could distance himself emotionally from a problem and he also understood that you cannot solve a problem from the same awareness which created it.
Perception can also be a huge stumbling block in personal growth and development. Perception is created through experience and reference of what you have been exposed to through out your life, you cannot perceive something that is outside your frame of reference and if you are part of a dogma or structured cultural lifestyle or habit you can become close minded which leads to ignorance etc. New research show that most people will not change their minds, no matter how convincing the evidence against their believes, convictions and perceptions. In fact they will mold and change the contradicting information in such a way as to even reinforce their own believes!
The real challenge is to be open minded, with a hint of skepticism (but how much is ‘a hint’?) Just because it says “Superman” on the shirt doesn’t mean the person wearing it is Superman – or is he?
And then there was the legendary Steve Jobs and his “Reality Distortion Field” were, for as far as I can see, he wasn’t so much as a problem solver but more of a ‘magician’ finding a way straight though it through shear intent. What we might perceive as innovation from him might quite simply have been pure nature for him. His perception and strong believe in his reality formed and reinforced his own ‘reality’ and dare I say all of ours? He changed the world literally by thinking differently…but he didn’t look at a problem to find a different way to solve it, in my opinion he just thought differently, from the start and intended his thought and imagination into reality.
Thanks Nic’ for creating an environment where one can share and bounce thoughts and opinions…really cool!
Hey thanks to you! Yes I do think some innovation is completely “willed that way”. I basically believe any idea possible to execute if one had the drive, the energy and finance to see it through. Perhaps it is true that some of the SJ left-field-thinking was simply possible because it had enormous investment behind it. I’ve often wondered if my wild ideas, shot down in flames by the-ones-who-knew-better, would have been successful given the chance…
The problem with “the-ones-who-knew-better” is that they did not!
And I tend toward the thinking as Petre says, that those who really do make a huge creative and innovative difference, think differently from get go. They have the sort of minds that are not hindered by me/myself and I syndrome. They get out of their own way – thus their ability to be neutral much of the time. No emotional attachment and no self absorbing limitations….no need to fulfil their ego.