How to Breed an Innovative Business Idea — #10 of 31 Proven Skills [Research]
Skill #10: Copy by Observing Yourself
The uncertainty typically attached to coming up with a good idea can be reduced by holding in your mind a picture of the broad solution that is required to deal with the problem you are facing. We spend a lot of our time thinking about ourselves and sometimes aspects of what we are or are doing personally can be applied to problems outside ourselves.
If You Blink, You Won’t Miss It
In 1962, engineer and inventor Bob Kearns, whose eyesight was partially impaired, was driving in the rain and struggling to see because of the relentless movement of the wiper blades, even when the rain eased off. Faced with this problem, he began thinking about how the human eye blinks to clean itself only when it needs to. He reasoned that perhaps this ‘self-cleaning’ capability could also be applied to windscreens so that a wiper cleaned the windscreen only when rain fell on it. As is shown in the representation above, that journey led to the invention of the Intermittent Windscreen Wiper.
Kearns engaged in a proven innovative skill. With the reliable benefit of hindsight, we can say that he was engaged in Copying by Observing Yourself. Many inventions that we now regard as famous came about through self-observation or self-reflection. Copying by Observing Yourself is just one of 31 personal skills that I have identified in studying the formulation of thousands of innovative business ideas.
In most cases, experiences such as that undergone by Bob Kearns are not planned but are typically the result of a fortuitous coincidence of thoughts. But, there are some distinguishable elements involved. Usually, someone spends time mulling over a problem they are facing until, on a particular occasion, what they notice causes them to rise above the specific experience and understand that something more general is occurring that could help with their issue. The broader capability they now discern then leads to a specific solution to the problem they have been pondering about.
As is illustrated in the opening image, using the metaphor of climbing a mountain can help our comprehension. Bob Kearns accumulated learning on the way up, processed it more generally on the mountain top and then used it to good effect on the way down.
Other Examples of Copying by Observing Yourself*
We will look at two more examples of products and services that had their origins in the skill of Copying by Observing Yourself. One of them goes back quite a long way — the invention of the telephone — and one is more recent — how the ubiquitous social media website Twitter got its name.
Around 1875, the eminent scientist, Alexander Graham Bell was conducting research on sound and how to transmit it. As part of this research, he sought to understand exactly how his ear worked and he noted that his eardrum vibrated when ’hearing sound’. Seeking to replicate its capability, as is demonstrated below, he journeyed up and down a ‘Breeding Mountain’ and was able to design a vibrating metal diaphragm that could hear remote human speech. By observing an aspect of himself, Alexander Graham Bell went on to invent the telephone.
In 2006, an American software developer, Noah Glass, was trying to think of a name for an embryonic, online social network. One day, his cell phone rang and began to vibrate. The vibration caused him to ‘mentally associate’ from it to the impulses that cause his brain muscle to ‘twitch’. He was attracted to the word “twitch” and chased it down in a dictionary, persistently inspecting all of the words accompanying it. As is depicted below, he was able to breed from the parallel word “twitch” until he found a similar-sounding word that had the capability to become a brilliant website name, now recognized the world over as ‘Twitter’. Although it is unlikely that he was aware of it at the time, Noah Glass came up with an innovative name by also employing the skill of Copying by Observing Yourself.
While it is natural to seek inspiration from other people and external things, our own thoughts and actions are also a powerful resource when we are looking to resolve some conundrum. Observing and reflecting upon them can be a most worthwhile pastime.
Takeaway
*Thousands of categorized, innovative business ideas can be found at Sebir.com
