This article was taken from the January 2014 issue of Wired magazine. Be the first to read Wired's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by subscribing online.
Benjamin Franklin, Stephen Hawking, Tim Berners-Lee: there's no denying the appeal of the lone genius myth. But if you look at the history of innovation, it rarely arrives in an isolated, lightning-bolt moment.
More often than not, inspiration is cultivated over time. In Creative Confidence, my brother David Kelley and I write that having the courage to act on your innate creativity will lead you to breakthrough solutions. Some readers will benefit from learning a few personal tricks for boosting their creative confidence, but there are also collective, concrete things you and your company can do to set the stage for innovation. The first is to create an environment that favours haphazard insights, chance encounters and productive mistakes; the second is to train your mind to recognise when you've hit on something powerful and new. Let me explain why these small changes add up to big results.
At the Googleplex there are cafés serving all-you-can-eat restaurant-quality meals for all employees. Those who otherwise spend the bulk of their day working in silos are invited to engage in daily, casual interactions with people from other departments -- inspiring different ways of thinking and unforeseen insight. It's an expensive perk, but Google is clearly placing bets that by speeding the pace of innovation, the investment will pay off.
Not every company has the luxury of giving away food, but there are many small, affordable changes that foment creative interaction. For example, at IDEO we built a self-service, communal snack kitchen where people gather to get handfuls of nuts and bowls of cereal, but also to cook together. We invite employees to pair up and make treats for a weekly tea time; brew beer together; and prototype the food of the future for our clients.
Some of our best ideas come up at the kitchen table, but we also believe in the power of flexible, reconfigurable workplaces. To that end, we build furniture on wheels and resist the practice of assigning desks. Dedicated project rooms provide a hub for a team.
But we decided to tear the doors off those rooms, creating a "porch" effect, wherein others can peek and get inspired by the work being done.
Such collaborative spaces nurture free expression. Everywhere you look there are whiteboards with bins of sticky notes and sharpies to encourage brainstorming. We even slapped a coat of chalkboard paint in the toilets so we can pose questions and challenges there, entreating employees to leave behind graffiti.
Smart use of space can cultivate creative serendipity, but that does you no good if you don't capture the insights that bubble up.
Louis Pasteur said: "Chance favours the prepared mind." From penicillin and pacemakers to saccharin and safety glass, many discoveries have come about because scientists noticed that one of their mistakes might be the answer they were looking for.
There's much chatter about failure in today's business culture.
But what isn't said is you must be proactive in pursuing it -- increasing your odds of failing fast. Mishaps aren't pleasant, but no one ever alighted on greatness without them.
We're not suggesting setting out to fail. But if you have the courage to embrace ambiguity and not fear a poor outcome, you can create the conditions for innovation. That means entertaining wild ideas, experimenting constantly and learning from each misstep. Perhaps Pasteur meant: "Chance favours people who experiment a lot and pay close attention if something unexpected happens." Less quotable, but probably more accurate.
Tom Kelley is a partner at design and innovation consultancy IDEO. He is the author of The Art of Innovation and The Ten Faces of Innovation and an executive fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley, California
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
