Counterintuitivity

Making Meaningful Innovation

Mario Van der Meulen

• Publisher: Mario Van der Meulen
• Year: 2019
• eBook ISBN: 9789811416323
• Topic: Design
• Subtopic: Leadership

Innovation is a lazy industry word. Often but a label for yet another leadership ambition, another consultant-driven program. Innovation has ceased to be a positive force for change. To reverse this, we need to leverage its design and value creation free of the tyranny of profit and efficiency. By designing with more meaning, and not only for iteration, disruption and predictability.

Mario Van der Meulen’s nine counterintuitive behavioral principles will inspire entrepreneurs, executives, consultants, designers and innovators on the front line in virtually any industry to enact positive change in the creation of innovation. Are you ready to act as a catalyst for meaningful innovation and design action? Only those that can pioneer new ways of proposing more meaningful possibilities will warrant the reputation of being true innovators, keeping our innovations and designs human. In fact, these will then become more meaningfully human.

Innovators, entrepreneurs, and designers usually have a pragmatic and instrumental relation with the future. However, our attempts to construct the future in rigid, process-driven methodologies, like design thinking, is mostly leading to the reproduction of known thinking and meaningless ideas. Now that the tech, consumer, and design fields are converging, Mario Van der Meulen believes we need to make a mindset shift to create a future that looks more human by tech, and not less because of it.

To evoke meaning and broaden the outcomes of our innovations, we need new ways of seeing, thinking, understanding, and acting, to intentionally embrace the richness of possibilities. Surprisingly, it is often by doing that what seems counterintuitive. New ways of thinking and working - even the ones that feel counterintuitive - are the kind of things a design mind should love to experiment with!

If it is unclear exactly how leaders may influence perceptions of meaning for their colleagues, clients and stakeholders, these nine counterintuitive behavioral principles will inspire leaders to enact positive change in the creation of innovation. Only those that can pioneer new ways of proposing more meaningful possibilities will warrant the reputation of being true innovators, keeping our innovations and designs human. In fact, these will then become more meaningfully human. Are you ready to act as a catalyst for meaningful innovation and design action?

Part 1

The matters of innovation

chapter 1

Human By Innovation

PAUSE AND LOOK around you. The reality you are perceiving and experiencing has been made. Apart from that which nature provides without any human intervention, everything else is human-made. The creation of things with spaces, textures, and materials are outcomes of inventions and innovations. The actions we do with these, the meanings we gave to and associate from them, the value we bestow in them; these are all acts of design.

For us humans, it is a designed world. It always has been. With the increased visibility of that thing named Innovation, it is easy to think we haven’t done much of it prior to the industrial or modern age. That notion is not something I subscribe to. What we in our history often define as discoveries are instead innovations that are the outcomes of design acts. Obviously, early man did not make distinctions nor job titles to identify the designers among themselves. Instead, our human tendency was to be adept at observing nature and then appropriating from it. Appropriation was our first act of design through which we invented and innovated.

One of the most significant appropriations from nature is fire. We did not ‘discover’ fire; that was in plain sight and occurrence, and our planet experienced fire long before humans were on it. Evidence of fire in the fossil record, referring to the long geological stretch of time before humans, is based mainly on the occurrence of charcoal. The oldest fire recorded on Earth has been identified from charcoal in rocks formed during the late Silurian period, and that has been set at around 420 million years ago. Though plants had already spread on the land surface at that point, the fluctuating levels of oxygen in Earth’s atmosphere meant that the first major wildfires recorded occurred later, dating from around 345 million years ago. But it was the spread of grasses and grasslands such as the savannas of Africa, around seven million years ago, that made the biggest impact. Not only on the environment, but also on the animals living there. Savannahs need regular fire, or else the vegetation may convert to scrub and forest. In this context, and with the knowledge that the African savannahs were home to early humans, it is believed that they would often have seen fire on the landscape, and the first ‘discovery’ would have involved seeing and following the fire.

Our ancestors’ first interaction with fire probably came following a lightning storm that started wildfires. These would cause animals to scatter, likely making them easy pickings for early humans waiting on the edges of the affected areas. Other animals, such as hawks, are also known to engage in such behaviour. There would have been several natural behaviors to observe that gave early humans moments of appropriation. Also, once the fire had subsided, the burned landscape would have allowed for easier foraging. Charred, dead animals left in its wake may have been collected. Some of the foraged food would have been “cooked” by the wildfire, making it more edible and nutritious than when raw. Powerful, hungry brains need calories, and cooked food provides more calories than raw food. Fire helped intelligent humans evolve. That evolved intelligence then went about conditioning the use of fire. Because wildfires occurred only sporadically, the next step would be to learn how to preserve it. Here’s where humans started to exhibit the innate ability to extend their appropriation talents into conscious, measured, and deliberate thoughts for which they had a repeatable plan. They imagined and then designed solutions.

Fires were first sustained by assigned ‘fire preservers’ who used slow-burning animal dung. Those in charge of protecting fire were believed to be solely dedicated to that act. A first primitive division of laborers if you wish; this to can be labeled an act of design, or even an innovative decision to ensure an improved outcome. A fire would have been useful not only for light and warmth at night, but to frighten off predatory animals, and the smoke would have been effective in keeping insects away. All conducive to human well-being. This ability to ‘stretch’ fire through invention and innovation was a novel skill, only developed by humans. So much we can reasonably speculate.

Eventually, early humans solved the issues on how to create and manage fire. Given archaeological evidence, this likely occurred no earlier than 700,000 years ago and no later than 120,000 years ago. With all that in mind, there is factual evidence that managing and creating fire was done differently and multiple times over by early humans in various locations all over the world. This again debunks the notion that it was but a discovery, and that it had more to do with an increased ability for humans to plan and execute a series of predetermined, repeatable actions to arrive at a predictable result. In this case, make fire. Anyone who has ever attempted making fire from sticks and dried grasses will appreciate the effort that this requires. The design of fire by humans as a convoluted process took place over a long period of time. Using and controlling fire on a regular and widespread basis may have started only 7,000 years ago. This may have included the use of fire for land clearance for agriculture and even for warfare. Before we habitually made and used fire, before we had the conditions for us to control it, several acts of innovation through design were required.

Humans displayed their capability, first, mostly through appropriating what they observed in nature, and then by a pure natural ability to design things they imagined without the inspiration their surroundings would give them. Forked branches were used as utensils, stones were fashioned into clubs and knives, the fur of an animal as augmented skin for our own. However, no wheels exist in nature. Unlike branches, stones, or the animal pelts, there was no appropriation that could hint to the possibility of a wheel. The wheel is a one-hundred-percent-human innovation. We did not stumble upon it; we designed it.

fig.1 The relatively late act of designing the innovation called ‘Wheel’

Designing the wheel was a relatively late act of innovation (fig.1), in fact, several other significant human innovations predate the wheel by thousands of years: bow and arrow, sewing needles, woven cloth, rope, jewelry, calendars, maps, glue, basket weaving, boats, beer, and musical instruments. It took humans a lot more time to design the wheel. The innovation of the wheel for transportation is the classic example of early human ingenuity. A quintessential innovation that distinguishes Homo Sapiens from all other animals and kickstarted civilization. But in the scope of human history, the wheel is a rather young innovation. The first recognizable wheels were actually not even designed for transportation. Evidence shows someone created them to serve as a potter’s wheel around 3500 B.C. in Mesopotamia.

This period we know as the Bronze Age, which is a relatively late chapter in the story of the development of human civilization. By this time, humans had already innovated and designed the planting of crops, how to herd domesticated animals, and had some form of designed social hierarchy. The use of wheels for pottery making may date even further back into the Neolithic. As mundane as it appears, the ability to create and shape a pot, a vessel, was of meaningful significance for humankind. It was only possible once we figured out the innovations needed to manage fire. Making things from burned clay has been part of the human experience for thousands of years. A small figurine of a woman is the earliest known object made of fired earth, dated to almost 30,000 years ago. The earliest known example of a pottery vessel was made around 18,000 years ago. Since then, the craft of pottery has developed in all parts of the world, both for the practical purposes of making usable vessels for food and storage and as expressions for art and rituals. About 7,000 years ago, the Egyptians designed their innovation for glazing pots, enhancing both appearance and functionality. The Chinese steadily iterated their kilns to produce more and more highly decorated stoneware and porcelain. The immense strides in making pots were the result of design thinking and innovations by thousands of potters over thousands of years.

And one such innovation was the potter’s wheel. There are many ways of forming a pot. Hand building is the earliest method and is still widely used. The potter’s wheel is said to have been designed about 7,000 years ago, and it is still in use today as the most practical tool in consistently shaping vessels out of wet clay. It would take another several hundred years before humans figured out how to use a wheel for transportation. You could say it took awhile to get things rolling–pardon the pun.

Spinning wheels are basically useless unless they’re attached to a secure structure of some sort. It was only after mankind finally built such stabilizers—which we now call ‘axles’—that the wheel began realizing its full vehicular potential. The wheel-and-axle concept was the true meaningful innovation. That idea required extreme finesse, which only metal tools could adequately provide. Such craft and skill were not widespread until somewhere between 5,650 and 5,385 years ago, hence the delay. The Bronocice pot, a piece of pottery discovered in Poland and dating to at least 3370 B.C., is believed to feature the earliest depiction of a wheeled vehicle. The evidence suggests that small wagons or carts, likely drawn by cattle, were in use in Central Europe by this time in human history. One reason that mankind did not just discover the wheel, but innovated it, is that wheeled vehicles appeared in various areas across the Middle East and Eastern Europe. The invention of the wheelbarrow—a one-wheeled cart used to transport goods and raw materials—is usually credited to the ancient Greeks. However, earlier evidence of wheeled carts has been found in other parts of Europe and in China. Unlike the lightbulb, there is no one person to claim the wheel as their invention. Making it more appropriate to label it as an innovation.

Wheels, of course, are still used today to facilitate all kinds of shipping and transportation. While the basic function of the wheel is unchanged, modern wheels are much different from the simple wooden wheels of the past. Innovations in materials science have made possible all kinds of tires for bicycles, cars, motorcycles, and trucks—including tires designed for rough terrain, ice, and snow. While the wheel is associated primarily with transportation, it has other applications. Watermills, for example, use wheels—large structures with a series of blades along the rim—to generate hydro-power. In the past, watermills powered textile mills, sawmills, and gristmills. Today, similar structures called turbines are used to generate wind and hydroelectric power. The spinning wheel is another example of how the wheel can be used. This device, innovated in India over 2,500 years ago, was used to spin thread from natural fibres such as cotton, flax, and wool. The spinning wheel was eventually replaced by the spinning jenny and the spinning frame, more sophisticated devices that also incorporate wheels. Gyroscopes are navigational instruments that consist of a spinning wheel and a pair of gimbals. Modern versions of this tool are used in compasses and accelerometers. Wheels even became design metaphors in language; think “being the fifth wheel,” or “the wheels are coming off.” When Shakespeare wrote King Lear, one of his characters proclaims, “Fortune, good night, smile once more; turn thy wheel!” The wheel is such a marquee human innovation that we even define it as a final solution. There is, after all, no need to reinvent it, but true to our human nature, this hasn’t stopped us from attempting to do so.

Modern human beings are the result of millions of years of evolution. Not just physical evolution: we are also the result of a series of innovations and inventions of technology that make our lives liveable today. These human innovations began 1.7 million years ago. Pointy pieces of stone or bone fixed to the end of a long stick were used by humans to hunt animals or fight with one another. Archaeologists found projectile points made of bone dating to ~60,000 years ago in the Sibudu Cave, South Africa. This was sophisticated tool crafting. Before we could craft such projectile points, humans had to invent, and then innovate, a whole range of stone butchering tools. The Acheulean hand axe is arguably the first tool we hominids made, a triangular, leaf-shaped rock, probably used for butchering animals. The oldest one yet discovered is from the Kokiselei complex of sites in Kenya, about 1.7 million years old. The concept of such hand axes remained virtually unchanged until ~450,000 years ago. Clothing, bags, sandals, fishing nets, baskets: the origins of all of these and lots of other useful things require the invention of textiles, the deliberate processing of organic fibres into containers or cloth. That was a very different approach from skinning animals and using the fur as blankets or clothing. Albeit textiles are difficult to find archaeologically, for obvious reasons, there is circumstantial evidence: net impressions in a ceramic pot, net sinkers from a fishing village, loom weights and spindle whorls from a weaver’s workshop. The earliest evidence for twisted, cut, and dyed fibers are those from the Georgian site of Dzudzuana cave, between 36,000 and 30,000 years ago. Notice how the act of textile weaving brings together a series of inventions and innovations; devices, tools, dyes, and a known, repeatable process that is teachable. It is the halo effect of invention and innovation; new proposals and possibilities, new ideas and new meaning.

The appropriation of fire by humans was not done by discovery, nor was the wheel a one-off invention. By defining properties of intelligence and craft, which separate us from other animals, humans applied their innate ability to design their own humanity. We innovated our human-ness. Each innovation had a person forming an idea of what could be a great addition to the world people lived at that time, and then they gave it existence. A new shape or form, an added function, and more significantly, a new meaning. One such person is a 16^th-century Welsh mathematician, named Robert Recorde, who invented the common equals sign when he had tired of writing the words ‘is equal to’ and sought a less onerous way of conveying the meaning. Choosing a pair of parallel lines of equal length was an inspired solution and a brilliant example of [graphic] design’s power to solve a practical problem. There are countless other examples of adroitly designed symbols. And not all are designed from scratch. The digital incarnations of the hashtag and @ symbol are equally successful examples of design appropriation, rather than an invention. But all are beautiful acts of design, sometimes resulting in new inventions, other times experienced as meaningful innovations. It always astonishes me that so many people still fail to appreciate those qualities. I find design endlessly fascinating because it is richly contextualized and constantly changing, forcing me to continually reassess my understanding of it.

Invention or innovation; what then is the distinction between them? In its purest sense, invention can be defined as the creation of a product or introduction of a process for the very first time. It was thought and formed by someone, or a group of people who collaboratively figured something out. It’s unknown and unproven and done because of the possibilities of that time. Innovation, on the other hand, occurs when we improve on or make a significant contribution to an existing product, pr...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Dedication
• A Manifest of Sorts
• Prelude
• Part 1 • The Matters Of Innovation
• Part 2 • Questioning The Questions
• Part 3 • Acting On What Matters
• Part 4 • Creating Meaningful Innovation
• Acknowledgements
• References
• Author’s Bio