Is knowledge the key to good ideas?
When I cast my mind back to my school days, I distinctly remember being taught how to read and write. I can also recall hours of wrestling with simultaneous equations and trigonometry. I certainly have many memories of having my head crammed full of as many facts and figures as my text books and teachers could impart. I also remember the numerous occasions when a frustrated member of my teaching fraternity would, through pursed lips, retort "think, lad, think!" The problem with this though, is that no-one had ever taken the trouble to teach me how. Time is littered with a trail of renowned people, most remembered for their infinite wisdom, their ability to be able to connect the seemingly unconnected, their purity and clarity of thought, their creativity. Their numbers include artists, sculptors, strategists, musicians, engineers, politicians, scientists, innovators etc. The one thing that they all have in common is not their knowledge, for most of us have access to this but rather their ability to think. Unless they are extremely lucky, this was something that they had a natural ability to do, for they, probably like us, were never taught how to. You might argue that exceptional memory is the key to success. The ability to efficiently recall data and draw on the years of experience that we have acquired is what we need to be better thinkers. Of course, in part this is true. The ability to tap into our knowledge is an essential ingredient even to simply survive, let alone progress. Imagine what it would be like to have to continually relearn about the environment in which we live, how to dress in the morning, how to shave, how to meet and greet, how to drive a car? Life would be somewhat difficult and tedious. Fortunately, much of this is dealt with sub-consciously but what about the conscious mind?Creativity and Innovation. Remembering and accessing our knowledge is one step towards greater achievements and our memory is something that can be improved. However, knowledge of what is and what has been does not necessarily help with novelty, innovation or creativity. Thinking back to our list of the famous, many if not most of the names that spring to mind, do so as a result of their ability to create. New approaches, new strategies, innovative products, seeing things and situations as others failed to see them. These are often the things that they are remembered for most. Our ability to think and generate new ideas (consciously), may well be the ingredient that today's organisations are crying out for. We need our people to be more creative, we need new ideas, we need to develop a more innovative culture, we need to develop new products and services, and we need to find ways to differentiate from our competitors. These are things we hear daily. We were most definitely born creative. Children have the enviable quality of being able to see things we simply fail to see. They are masterful at creating ships, houses, even space rockets out of the box that moments earlier contained their new Christmas present. They paint indecipherable images in which only they can see what they portray. There are many reasons why as we get older our creativity is stifled. Too many to mention here but many stem from our own knowledge, our education in terms of what is, our daily interactions with those around us (being critical or ridiculing our ideas), our perceptions and the list goes on. These barriers exist but are not insurmountable. Of course, it helps to remove them first. However, what is absolutely true is that we can relearn and increase our creativity and once again be able to generate new ideas where others may struggle. The tools and processes to do this are varied and numerous, simple to learn and remarkably powerful and again very much based upon the way in which the brain prefers to work. With one recent group, after the introduction of just one simple technique (taking just minutes to learn) the creative output to a given task was remarkably enhanced. The improvement was from 17 ideas to a staggering 123 usable ideas with the same amount of time allotted to the task! I would argue that knowledge is not the key to generating new ideas, if anything it can stifle the process, we can become bound by our own knowledge. What we witness time and time again is that through the teaching of a few proven techniques and a little discipline, an individuals creative output can be significantly enhanced and imagine an organisation where every employee was able to generate one idea per day that made an improvement (however great or small) on the way in which that business operated. It could be a business process, a manufacturing process, an existing or new product, on how it could differentiate, on how it could reduce costs, how it attract new customers, the list of potential applications is enormous and the benefits perhaps beyond our wildest dreams. About the author - Tim Rusling is the Managing Director of Morpheus Con