Be Ingenious … Innovation does not come from technology but how it enables humanity to be better. Ingenuity is driven by imagination and intuition, empathy and design.

April 18, 2023

Ingenuity is the quality of being clever, original, and inventive. Popular in the 1800s, and less so today, it also has a sense of nobility, of ingeniousness. It comes the French ingenieux or Latin ingenium referring to the mind or intellect.

Takashi Murakami is often called the next Andy Warhol, fusing high and low art, combining ideas from both Japan’s rich artistic heritage, and its vibrant consumer culture. But whilst the American icon created multi-million dollar works of art, Murakami is much more interested in creating everyday objects for everyone, from bubble gum and t-shirts to phone covers and limited-edition Louis Vuitton handbags.

He started in the traditions of Japan, then studied “Nihonga” art which is a combination of 19th century eastern and western styles but became distracted by the rise of anime and manga in Japanese eighties culture. He loved the modern styles which connected with people, and the issues and aspirations of today’s society. He was fascinated by what made iconic characters such as Hello Kitty and Mickey Mouse so popular and enduring.

Japan has a centuries long tradition of “flat” art, achieved with bold outlines, flat colouring, and a disregard for perspective, depth, and three-dimensionality. “Superflat” was a term Murakami started to use in 2001 and has evolved into one of modern art’s most active movements, combining the traditions flat art with anime and manga, taking components of high and low culture to defy categorisation. He says that he uses the style to also reflect what he sees as the flat, shallowness of consumer culture.

Today Murakami is a rock-star artist, highly aware of his image and brand, and an avid user of social media. He loves fame and commercialism. His business has been helped by collaborations with celebrities, creating animated music videos for Kanye West and designing sculptures with Pharrell Williams.

If “ingenuity” is about thinking and performing in a way that is original and inventive, it is a good descriptor of Murakami. He is inspired by both the past and the future create his own distinctive presence, to connect with and challenges his environment, embrace personal insight and opinion to defy conventions, and them his audience with him.

Imagination, creativity and innovation.

Imagination is often called the primary gift of human consciousness.

In a world of ubiquitous technology which challenges our humanity, a world of infinite yet largely derivative choices, and a world of noise and uncertainty, there is nothing quite like being human.

Imagination move us forwards. It allows us to leap beyond the conventions, the limits of our current world. It takes us beyond the algorithms of AI-enabled robots who can create perfection out of the world which they know, but struggle beyond it. It inspires us to think in new ways, to shape hypotheses to test, and aesthetic designs to enjoy.

Sir Ken Robinson is probably best known for his self-deprecating sense of humour with which he delivers a very important message: “Imagination is the source of all human achievement.” The Times said of his UK government report on creativity, education and the economy that “it raises some of the most important issues facing business in the 21st century. It should have every CEO thumping the table and demanding action.”

His book “Out of Our Minds: Learning to be Creative” argues that our world is the product of the ideas, beliefs and values of human imagination that have shaped it over centuries. He says, “the human mind is profoundly and uniquely creative, but too many people have no sense of their true talents.”

Imagination explores new possibilities and captures them as new ideas
Creativity shapes and stretches the potential of existing ideas
Innovation takes existing ideas and makes them practical

Creativity is applied imagination, innovation is applied creativity, you could say.

I remember back to when my two daughters were young, the pictures they drew and models they built, the questions they asked and answers they imagined. There’s was a world unlimited by experience, by prejudice or conformity. Their brush strokes were simple, their colours bold, their questions were simple but disturbingly difficult.

As adults we shift to a productivity mindset, preferring to get things done, rather than explore possibilities. We seek to reduce complexity to its simplest form and describe ideas in the context of what we already know, squeezing out any nuggets of newness.

We are all born creative, but somehow lose that spark, or at the confidence to allow it out. Some people, we say, are creative, and others not. Yet we all have the same neurons and synapses which drive the process. The reality is that no individual is as creative as even the dullest people once they start working together. If we could reclaim our creativity, we could discover our passion, allowing us to feel more alive, and do so much more.

Harvard professor Howard Gardner identified 8 “intelligences” or ways to solve problems. They range from linguistics (limited only by the words you use), logical (mainly through mathematics), spatial (as used by designers), musical, physical (like athletes), natural (like farmers), intrapersonal (within yourself), and interpersonal (with others).

The point is that we have many ways to be creative, or even combinations of our mental and physical capabilities. As Leonardo da Vinci loved to say, inspired by his own polymath life as artist and musician, anatomist and sculptor, architect and engineer, creativity is ultimately about making new connections.

Innovation makes life better

The purpose of any business, and therefore any innovation, is to make life better. It drives human and social progress, as well as seizing new opportunities for business growth. Whilst it is a practical, technical and process-based challenge, it is also human and philosophical, strategic and futuristic.

The Royal Society of Arts recently published a document “How to be Ingenious” starting with a definition of ingenuity as having three components:

an inclination to work with the resources easily to hand
a knack for combining these resources in a surprising way
and in doing so, an ability to solve some practical problem

Another way to describe it is the ability to do unexpectedly more for less in the face of constrained resources. Given the social and environmental challenges facing every business today, that might be a useful addition.

The Huit Denim Company is a great innovator for social good. Cardigan, a small town on the west coast of Wales, used to have Britain’s biggest jeans factory. It employed 400 people in a town of 4,000 people, making 35,000 pairs a week, but it closed suddenly in 2001. It had a huge effect on employment, but also on confidence in the town. David and Claire Hieatt responded by deciding that they would to try to get 400 people their jobs back. Huit Denim Co was born, and now with a cult global following. Their semi-automated, hand-stitched process still takes 5 times as long as most jeans factories, but they can then sell them online direct to consumer for $300 a pair, securing a profit margin that keeps the town in work again.

Navi Radjou, the French-Indian author of Frugal Innovation likes to remind me that some of the most ingenious ideas comes from emerging markets, where people improvise to solve problems. He tells the story of Kenyan villager Peter Kahugu, for example, who used a set of pulleys, a sharpening stone and an inner tube to modify his bicycle. Re-using the inner tube as a rubber belt, he created a pedal-powered knife-sharpening service and earns about $10 a day.

A more inspired approach to innovation

Innovation demands human ingenuity.

It is exciting, it is about people, about the future, with limitless possibilities.

It is an essential role of every business leader, every business function. Whilst innovation has long centred around the tangible, technical icon of the product, organisations have finally opened their minds to many more forms of innovation.

Innovation used to be associated with long, disciplined, stage-gated processes by which ideas were productised and taken to market. Today’s innovators, in small and large businesses, get excited by design thinking and lean development. These are useful tools to create more insightful and faster solutions, but there is much more to innovation.

A more inspired approach to innovation has 9 dimensions

Human-centred rather than driven by products
Problem-solving rather than limited by capability
Future shaping rather than aligning with today
Whole business rather than functionally isolated
Fast and experimental rather than slow and perfect
Sustainable impact rather than profit obsessed
Active adaptation rather than launch and forgotten
Growth driving rather than unaligned commercially
Portfolio building rather than isolated innovations

Innovation is not like most other business functions and activities. There is no department or VP of innovation in most companies. There is rarely even an innovation strategy or budget. There are few standard templates, rules, processes, or consistent measures of success. In a sense, each act of innovation is a unique feat, a leap of imagination that can be neither predicted nor replicated. It is certainly not business as usual.

That’s also the beauty. Innovation is pervasive, a challenge for every function and person across the business. It can have process, but it can also break all the rules, and sometimes needs to. By being rooted in every part of the business, and drawing on budgets from each, it can be a more collaborative, integrated and formidable approach.

Leaders are the ultimate innovators in companies, not necessarily entrepreneurs as in the founders of start-ups, but setting the agenda, ensuring that it has the resources and space to thrive, and that the business delivers today, but also creates a better tomorrow.

Excerpt from “Business Recoded” by Peter Fisk

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