Search Results for: creativity

Constraints Inspire Creativity: How IKEA Started the “Flatpack Revolution”

November 2, 2020 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Designer Gillis Lundgren of IKEA In the mid-1950s, Gillis Lundgren (1929–2016) was a draftsman living in a remote Swedish village of Älmhult. He was the fourth employee of a fledging entrepreneur named Ingvar Kamprad.

Kamprad’s business was called IKEA, an acronym combining his initials and those of his family’s farm and a nearby village. He had founded IKEA in 1943 and got his start selling stationery and stockings at age 17. In the 1950s, Kamprad had launched a low-cost mail-order furniture retailer to cater to farmers.

Constraints have played a role in many of the most revolutionary products

IKEA Flatpack Revolution - Gillis Lundgren's Lovet Table In 1956, Lundgren designed a veneered, low coffee table. He built the table at home but realized that the table was too big to fit into the back of his Volvo 445 Duett station wagon. Lundgren cut off the legs, packed them in a flat box with the tabletop, and rushed to a photoshoot for the IKEA furniture catalog.

And in so doing, Lundgren unintentionally birthed the flatpack furniture industry. He modified his simple design and drew up plans for a disassembled version of the table. Lundgren’s Lövet table (now called Lövbacken) became IKEA’s first successful mass-produced product.

IKEA and Its Flatpacking Took Over the World

IKEA’s trademark, easy-to-follow assembly instructions are a central ingredient to the company’s success. Manufacturing and distributing prefabricated furniture via flatpacking has proved enormously successful. It has dramatically facilitated the shipment and storage of pieces that otherwise took up much more space.

According to Bertil Torekull’s Leading by Design—The IKEA Story (1998,) the concept of ready-to-assemble furniture is much earlier than that. But IKEA was the first to systematically develop and sell the idea commercially.

Flatpacking contributed to many of IKEA’s products’ enduring popularity—they’re affordable, sleek, functional, and brilliantly efficient. In 1978, Lundgren designed the iconic Billy bookcase, the archetypical IKEA product that currently sells one in three seconds.

IKEA’s aesthetic of simplicity and efficiency reflects in its exclusive design and marketing approach. IKEA constantly questions its design, manufacturing, and distribution to create low-cost and acceptably good products.

The method has been adopted by numerous other business enterprises, transforming how products are made and sold globally.

Constraints Inspire Creativity - How IKEA Started the 'Flatpack Revolution'

Out of Limitations Comes Creativity

One problem with creativity is that sometimes people face an open field of creative possibilities and become paralyzed. Constraints can be the anchors of creativity [see more examples here, here, and here.]

Constraints fuel rather than limit creativity. Use constraints to break through habitual thinking and promote spontaneity. The mere experience of playing around with different constraints can stretch your imagination and open your mind’s eye for ingenuity.

Idea for Impact: Use constraints to help stimulate creativity. As the British writer and art critic G. K. Chesterton once declared, “Art consists of limitation. The most beautiful part of every picture is the frame.”

What James Watt and the Steam Engine Teach Us about Creativity and Invention

December 9, 2019 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Necessity is the Mother of Invention

The arc of development of the technique to harness the properties of steam to power mechanical devices embodies the notion that “necessity is the mother of invention” (Latin: “necessitas ingenium dedit.”)

Towards the end of the 17th century, Britain faced the problem of pumping and draining water out of mine shafts. In response, the military engineer Thomas Savery (1650–1715) invented an “engine to raise water by fire” in 1698. However, the “Savery Pump” was limited in practical usage to 20–25 feet of suction. Savery’s rudimentary pressurized boiler was liable to explode, particularly under high-pressure steam (over 8 to 10 atmospheres.)

Independently, and later in partnership with Savery, blacksmith Thomas Newcomen (1664–1729) developed the more practical—and more successful—atmospheric-pressure piston engine in 1698. Newcomen’s engine solved the limitation of the Savery Pump by having atmospheric pressure push the cylinder’s piston down after the condensation of steam had created a vacuum in the cylinder. Therefore, the pressure of the steam did not limit the intensity of pressure.

For five decades, Newcomen’s engine was the most complex technological object of its time anywhere in the world.

Difficulties Compel People to Found Creative Solutions to Problems

James Watt and the Steam Engine: Necessity is the Mother of Invention Then came along the Scottish instrument maker James Watt (1736–1819.) At age 21, Watt opened a shop in 1757 at the Glasgow University to make quadrants, compasses, scales, and other mathematical instruments.

Watt was tasked with repairing a Newcomen Engine at the university for a lecture-demonstration. He initially had difficulty getting the Newcomen Engine to work because its parts were poorly constructed. When he finally had it running, he was surprised at its efficiency. However, the engine was constantly running out of coal because every cycle required the heating and the cooling of the cylinder, thus resulting in a large waste of energy.

In 1769, Watt devised a system whereby the cylinder and the condenser were separate, making it unnecessary to heat and cool the cylinder with each stroke. Watt’s invention of the separate-condenser steam engine (also called the “double-acting” steam engine) decreased fuel costs by 75 percent.

Watt’s “steam engine” was able to produce continuous rotary motion and expanded its use far beyond pumping water. Continuous rotary motion sparked the transition from hand-production methods to machine-power and became the driving force of the Industrial Revolution. Playwright George Bernard Shaw even declared in Man and Superman (1903,) “those who admire modern civilization usually identify it with the steam engine.”

The steam engine continued to power industry and transportation during much of the 19th century and early 20th century, at the same time as engineers developed the internal-combustion engine. Towards the end of the 19th century, with the invention of the first practical steam turbine by English engineer Charles Parsons (1854–1931,) turbines started replacing reciprocating steam engines in power stations.

Reference: Richard L. Hills’s Power from Steam: A History of the Stationary Steam Engine (1989.)

Creativity by Imitation: How to Steal Others’ Ideas and Innovate

October 22, 2018 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Innovation by Imitation: Many Innovations Come from the Outside---How Henry Ford Developed the Moving Assembly Line for the Model T

Emulating others’ ideas is an underappreciated learning tool. Many creative innovators set forth as remarkably astute mimics of others. “Good artists copy, great artists steal,” prods a creator’s maxim often misattributed to Picasso.

Imitation is a leading pathway to business innovation, even if being an imitator is anchored by a sense of derision. Ever more businesses are nicking great ideas wherever they can obtain them—in their own industries or beyond. Hospitals have adapted safety and efficiency procedures from the military and the airline industry. Aircraft manufacturers have adopted the car industry’s lean supply chain management concepts. Ritz-Carlton, the luxury chain of hotels and resorts, runs the Ritz-Carlton Leadership Center that has helped trained its legendary cult of customer service and employee empowerment best practices to managers from companies across industries.

Creativity by Taking Existing Ideas: Applying Them in a New Context

The most prominent example of innovating by imitation is Ford’s development of the automobile assembly line—a system Henry Ford copied (and improved) from the Chicago meat processing business.

Innovation by Imitation: Genesis of the Moving Assembly Line Henry Ford’s relentless ambition to build his Model T a high-volume-low-cost automobile, together with his engineering knowledge and manufacturing experience provided the leadership and creative environment that nurtured the development of the moving mechanical assembly line. Today, the moving assembly line is the epitome of manufacturing. Almost everything that is now industrially manufactured—automobiles, aircrafts, toys, furniture, food—passes down assembly lines before landing in our homes and offices.

The genesis of the moving assembly line is in the American agricultural products industry. During the late 18th century, the movement of grains changed from hand labor to belts and later moving hoppers.

Innovation by Imitation: Many Innovations Come from the Outside

Innovation by Imitation: Chicago Slaughter Houses Pioneered the Moving Disassembly Line Before Henry Ford Started His Assembly Line By 1873, Chicago’s meat-processing industry adapted belts and hoppers to transform beef and pork production into a standardized, mechanized, and centralized business. After cows and pigs travelled to their fate in train cars from farms throughout the Midwest, they were dropped into hoppers and killed. Conveyor belts then moved carcasses past meat cutters, who progressively removed various sections of the animal, cut them into appropriate sizes, and repackaged and dispatched processed meat across the United States.

The meat processors’ task was disassembly (as opposed to putting together automobile parts in Ford’s plants.) Each worker had a specific, specialized job. Production moved swiftly. The American writer Upton Sinclair famously described this industry’s ghastly working conditions in his acclaimed novel The Jungle and said, “They use everything about the hog except the squeal.”

Chicago Slaughter Houses Were the Pioneers of the Moving Disassembly Line Before Henry Ford Started His Assembly Line

In the early 1900s, when Henry Ford wanted to keep Model T production up with demand and lower the price, Ford’s team explored other industries and found four ideas that could advance their goal: interchangeable parts, continuous flow, division of labor, and cutting wasted effort. Ford’s engineers visited Swift & Company’s Slaughterhouse in Chicago and decided to adopt the “disassembly line” method to build automobiles.

The introduction of the moving assembly line process in 1913 enabled increased production up to 1,000 Model Ts a day and decreased assembly time from 13 hours to 93 minutes. Additional refinement of the process, thanks to reliable precision equipment and standardized shop practices, shortened production time radically: within a few years, a new Model T rolled off the assembly line every 24 seconds. First produced in 1908, the Model T kept the same design until the final one—serial number 15,000,000 rolled off the line in 1927.

Auschwitz-Birkenau and Victims of the Holocaust

Sadly, just as Henry Ford copied the Chicago meat processing and perfected the moving assembly line, the Nazi apparatus copied Ford’s methods of mass production to massacre six million people. While Midwestern butchers processed the livestock carcasses, the Nazis systematically handled corpses of the victims of the Holocaust. Nazi operatives removed victims’ hair, clothing, shoes, gold teeth, hairbrushes, glasses, suitcases, and anything of value to be repurposed for the Reich. The atrocities of this inexpressibly shocking disaster are on display at the train tracks and the museums of Auschwitz-Birkenau, Poland.

Formal Strategic-Benchmarking Programs

Smart businesses have formal strategic-benchmarking programs to achieve significant efficiency improvements: they pinpoint the strategic capabilities that matter most to their businesses, seek out companies or businesses that currently manage those capabilities best, and try to copy and deploy those capabilities as rapidly as possible. But time is of the essence for the success of these undertakings, as the management guru Tom Peters warns,

I hate Benchmarking! Benchmarking is stupid! Why is it stupid? Because we pick the current industry leader and then we launch a five-year program, the goal of which is to be as good as whoever was best five years ago, five years from now. Which to me is not an Olympian aspiration.

Imitation is a Key Characteristic of Highly Creative People: The Case of Steve Jobs Copying from Xerox

One of the key characteristics of highly creative people is their exposure to and experience with working in several related domains. They are very good at crossing domain boundaries, relating their creativeness in new and perhaps unexpected ways, and adapting knowledge into new domains. The following case of one of history’s most famous innovators illustrates this distinguishing characteristic.

Steve Jobs of Apple introduced the revolutionary Lisa computer in 1983. It featured such innovations as the graphical user interface, a mouse, and document-centric computing. Jobs had taken—and refined—all these inventions from Xerox’s PARC research labs and introduced by Xerox on its commercially-unsuccessful Alto and Star computers in 1981. The biographer Walter Isaacson writes in his best-selling Steve Jobs: “The Apple raid on Xerox PARC is sometimes described as one of the biggest heists in the chronicles of industry.” Isaacson cites Jobs: “Picasso had a saying—‘good artists copy, great artists steal’—and we have always been shameless about stealing great ideas… They [Xerox management] were copier-heads who had no clue about what a computer could do… Xerox could have owned the entire computer industry.”

Innovation by Imitation: Steve Jobs of Apple copied Xerox's PARC innovations in graphical user interface, a mouse, and document-centric computing

Idea for Impact: Borrow Ideas from Others and Combine Them with Your Own Creativity

Interestingly, many “benchmarking” exercises in the world of business—even academia—do not come “top-down” out of strategy. In other words, innovations by imitation are typically not driven from the top down. Instead, they materialize from everyday operational challenges—those painful experiences that send managers scuttling for solutions in a hurry.

Look outside your industry. To improve your creativity, try spending time researching other smart companies—even those outside of your industry. Learning directly from other companies is a useful, underutilized form of research for finding ways to improve performance.

Attend to developments at your competitors and in other industries. Look for potential opportunities that have been discovered elsewhere. Avoid the “not invented here” syndrome—don’t reject other’s great ideas. Keep an open mind.

How to Stimulate Group Creativity // Book Summary of Edward de Bono’s ‘Six Thinking Hats’

May 13, 2016 By Nagesh Belludi

In his bestselling book Six Thinking Hats, Edward de Bono describes a powerful problem-solving approach that enriches mental flexibility by encouraging individuals and groups to attack an issue from six independent but complementary perspectives.

Edward de Bono is a leading authority in creative thinking. He is widely regarded as the father of lateral thinking. De Bono has written over 70 books on thinking and creativity.

Using the ‘Six Thinking Hats’ for Structured Brainstorming

De Bono created the ‘six thinking hats’ method after identifying six distinct lines of human thought in problem solving. De Bono calls each approach a “hat” and assigns them different colors.

At the heart of the ‘six thinking hats’ method are six different colored hats that participants put on—literally or metaphorically—to represent the type of thinking they should concentrate on while wearing each.

White is neutral, objective, and fact-based. A white hat is concerned with objective data: “What information do we have? What information do we need? What information are we missing? How can get the information we need? What objective questions should be asked?”
Red denotes passion, anger, intuition, and emotions. A red hat considers the emotional side of problem solving, which is often neglected or masked in meetings: “What are our gut reactions to the matter at hand?”
Black is somber, serious, and cautious. A black hat is vigilant, plays devil’s advocate, and encourages derogatory and judgmental behavior: “what are the weaknesses of these ideas? What are the risks? What could go wrong?”
Yellow represents positive thinking, hope, and optimism to counteract the black hat’s power. A yellow hat plays “the angel’s advocate” and is cheerful and confident: “What are the best-case scenarios? What are the best aspects of this? What are the advantages? Who can benefit from this?”
Green signifies abundance, growth, richness, and fertility. A green hat is the hat of creativity; it rejects established rules and norms, and invents new approaches: “What are some new ideas on this subject? What is interesting about this idea? What are the variances in these ideas?”
Blue represents the sky and therefore provides the overarching perspective. A blue hat performs “meta thinking” and is concerned with the organization of the thinking process and the use of other hats. The blue hat synthesizes and reconciles different viewpoints. At the start of a brainstorming session, the blue hat sets the stage for where the discussion may go. The blue hat guides and sustains the discussion, often restating its purposes: “What are we thinking about? What is the goal? What should we do next? What have we achieved so far? What should we do to achieve more?” At the conclusion of the brainstorming session, the blue hat appraises the discussion, and proposes a plan of action.

Use De Bono’s Six Thinking Hats Model for Critical Thinking and Problem Solving

An individual working alone may use the approach to consider broader, distinct lines of thought. By changing hats, the individual can switch viewpoints and ensure that he/she is not stuck in specific thinking patterns.

However, the approach is best suited to group discussions (when chaired by a skilled facilitator) in which conflicting ideas may never otherwise be fully synthesized into plans of action. By persuading each participant to think constructively alongside other participants, the ‘six thinking hats’ method taps into group members’diverse perspectives and uses their collective knowledge without destructive conflict.

Using these hats nurtures creativity by letting participants step beyond their typical roles and contribute to developing, organizing, and progressing ideas. Participants can also identify how their cognitive state at any one time shapes how they approach problems.

Recommendation: Read. Edward de Bono’s Six Thinking Hats presents a very effective technique for stimulating group creativity. The method can remove mental blocks, organize ideas and information, foster cross-fertilization, and help conduct thinking sessions more productively than do other brainstorming methods.

Complement with Dan Ciampa’s Taking Advice for an excellent framework on the kind of advice network you need on strategic, operational, political, and personal elements of your work and life. Read my summary in this article.

Creativity & Innovation: The Opportunities in Customer Pain Points

September 15, 2015 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

The Opportunities in Customer's Pain Points

Ellis Paul Torrance, the American psychologist who devoted his career to researching and teaching creativity, observed that “the process of sensing gaps or disturbing missing elements and formulating hypotheses” is pivotal to the creative process.

This is especially true of solving customer’s problems. Many innovative ideas are born of a reliable formula: prudent attention to and empathy with customers’ experiences, as well as applying resourceful imagination to solve customers’ pain points.

Many an innovator—either as a provider or as a consumer—develops deep empathy for customers’ pain points and sees an underexploited customer-need for convenience. The innovator contemplates, “This customer’s experience does not have to be expensive, protracted, hard, or inferior, as it is with the incumbent provider.” The innovator then uses his/her imagination to convert that understanding into a business idea with broad potential.

Consider the following cases of innovation that could be traced back to customer pain points:

Crispy Potato Chips. Legend has it that in the 1850s, Chef George Crum of New York’s Saratoga Springs created potato chips. A cranky customer at Moon’s Lake House frequently sent Crum’s fried potatoes back to the kitchen complaining that they were mushy and not crunchy enough. To appease the customer, Crum sliced the potatoes as thin as possible and deep-fried them. The customer loved them. Before long, “Saratoga Chips” became popular throughout New England.
Airtight Packaging for Potato Chips. When potato chips were first mass-produced for home consumption, they were packaged and distributed in metal containers, in which the chips would quickly go stale. During the 1920s in Monterey Park, California, Laura Scudder conceived of packaging potato chips in sealed bags. Scudder’s employees ironed wax paper into the form of bags and fill them up with potato chips. This airtight packaging not only kept the chips fresh and crisp longer, but also reduced crumbling. After the invention of the moisture-proof cellophane wrap by DuPont a few years later, chips were packaged in polymer bags. Then, nitrogen gas was blown in to prevent oxidation, extend shelf life, and prevent chips from being crushed as they were handled and distributed.

Chips taste fresher in Cellophane: DuPont Advertisement

Netflix. At the video rental chain Blockbuster, customers who were paying the most in late fees were also the company’s most prolific renters. Even as they continued to patronize Blockbuster, these customers vented their frustration to Blockbuster’s employees, as well as to other existing and potential customers. In fact, in the ’90s, almost $300 million or 20% of Blockbuster’s pretax profit came from late fees. In 1997, Reed Hastings, one devoted Blockbuster customer, was charged $40 in late fees on a VHS tape of the movie Apollo 13. Frustrated by his fees, Hastings started Netflix, a mail-distribution movie-rental service. As soon as the business caught on, Hastings eliminated late fees. Netflix grew quickly, drove Blockbuster into bankruptcy in 2010, and is now valued at $50 billion.
Google News. After 9/11, Google engineer Krishna Bharat and his teammates repeatedly visited ten to 15 news sites looking for a wide range of news reports. Using Google’s legendary “20% Time” policy that allows employees to spend one day a week on side projects and collaborate beyond their immediate teams, Bharat wrote an artificial intelligence software to crawl thousands of news websites, cluster news articles based on topics and keywords, and aggregate a summary. Other engineers at Google loved Bharat’s prototype software and joined the effort to build Google News.
Corning’s Gorilla Glass for Smartphones. By 2007, cell phone makers and consumers were frustrated with the screens on their cell phones. The plastic screens broke too easily when the handsets were dropped, and keys and other objects left deep scratches. Sensing a business opportunity, some engineers at Corning dug into their corporate archives. They dredged up the formulation of a super-strong, flexible glass, Chemcor, which was unsuccessfully prototyped for automobile windshields during the 1960s. The engineers spent $300,000 to produce a trial run of Chemcor and discussed the results with cell phone manufacturers. The resulting cell phone glass was called Gorilla Glass and was widely adopted by Samsung, LG, Motorola, and other cell phone manufacturers. Gorilla’s thinness, strength, and resistance to scratches became the defining feature of touch-screen operation. Later Gorilla Glass became a core component on the iPhone, smartphones, tablets, and other portable devices. For Corning, Gorilla Glass has become a significant revenue stream.

Corning's Gorilla Glass for Smartphones from Chemcor formulation

Uber. In 2008, during a snowy night on a trip to attend a tech conference in Paris, American entrepreneurs Garrett Camp and Travis Kalanick had trouble getting a cab. Garrett purportedly said in frustration, “Why can’t we just tap a button and get a ride?” Before long, during a brainstorming session on ideas for new startups, Camp and Kalanick thought of starting a taxi company with a smartphone app to summon taxis. Instead, they built an app to hail taxi-rides on-demand and opened their app for use by established taxi companies as well as by casual autonomous drivers. In 2010, they launched UberCab in San Francisco. Uber is now worth $50 billion and operates in over 300 cities around the world.

Idea for Impact: Transform Customer Pain Points into Customer Delight

Customer pain points are a consistent pointer to potential opportunities not least because customers are usually willing to pay a premium to have their frustrations with a product or a service resolved.

Discover what opportunities may exist in your customers’ pain points. Examine product- and service-features that your customers find inadequate, more urgent, unpleasant, frustrating, or otherwise troubling. Consider how you could transform those product- and service-deficiencies into innovative features.

Don’t just satisfy customers; delight them by becoming more sensitive to their problems and reducing or eliminating their pain points.

Creativity by Synthesis (Combining Ideas): A Case Study on the Darwin & Mendel Theorems in Biology

April 14, 2015 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

One of the fascinating aspects of invention is tracking the continuity of ideas across an arc of time and tracing the progression of ideas over time. My previous article examined how blending antecedent ideas to form new ones led to the invention of the Gutenberg’s press, the rotary steam engine, and the Wright Brothers‘ first powered flight. In this article, we will explore a related mental model for creativity.

A fundamental component of creative thinking is combining whole ideas (or just certain elements of ideas) to create a new concept. When we synthesize—i.e. fuse ideas to forge new ones—we mirror the footsteps of some of humankind’s most imaginative breakthroughs.

James Maxwell’s work on electromagnetic radiation developed from the synthesis of seemingly unrelated concepts such as electricity, magnetism, light, and motion. His theory of electromagnetism was one of the most significant discoveries of the nineteenth century. Albert Einstein described Maxwell’s work on electromagnetism as “the most profound and the most fruitful that physics has experienced since the time of Newton.”

Even more profoundly, Darwin and Mendel’s work exemplifies the most groundbreaking synthesis of ideas. Combined more than four decades after their deaths, their ideas shaped the foundation of life sciences, as we know it. Allow me to elaborate.

Theory of the Descent of Man - Darwin's Theories of Evolution

Charles Darwin’s Theory of Evolution

Charles Darwin The word “evolution” was first used in English as early as 1647. Long before that, pre-Socratic Greek philosopher Anaximander (611–546 B.C.E) speculated that humans must have evolved from an animal and that this evolution must have sprung from the sea. By the end of the 18th century, naturalists conjectured that different life forms develop progressively from more primitive forms. They also hypothesized that all life forms were interrelated. Erasmus Darwin (1731–1802,) Charles Darwin’s grandfather and a natural philosopher and physiologist, as well as the French naturalist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744–1829) argued along those lines. However, most of their thoughts on evolution and the relatedness of all life forms were purely speculative.

Darwin’s most notable scientific contribution was his vast body of evidence supporting the aforementioned hypotheses. Even more significantly, Darwin identified natural selection as the mechanism that determines evolutionary change. In his seminal treatise, “Origin of Species” (1859,) Darwin distilled the theory of evolution through two foundational concepts:

In any ecosystem, individuals of the same species are likely to differ in their measurable characteristics. Such variations tend to be inherited.
Living beings—plants and animals—reproduce more quickly than nature can impart the resources for their survival. Individuals of a species must therefore compete in order to live and reproduce in a competitive ecosystem.

Charles Darwin’s work on evolution was really a synthesis of concepts from comparative anatomy, paleontology, geology, geography, and animal breeding.

Advancing his theories further, in “The Descent of Man” (1871,) Darwin described humans as an outcome of evolution. Humans have the same general anatomical and physiological principles as animals and are in fact an advanced animal form whose superior traits are a consequence of evolutionary progression. Darwin hypothesized that humans share a common ancestry with animals, more specifically evolving from primates.

The Big Gap in Darwin’s Theory: Lack of an Explanation for Heredity

In the introduction to The Descent of Man, Darwin wrote, “It has often and confidently been asserted, that man’s origin can never be known: but ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, and not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science.”

Darwin’s theories about the evolution of humankind created an instant uproar among advocates of Christian theology and its concept of a wise, benevolent, and omnipotent Creator as laid out in the Book of Genesis. Since then, few scientific theories have been as hotly debated among nonscientists as evolution and its opponent, creationism (and recently, intelligent design.)

After The Descent of Man, it was more than a decade before Darwin’s work came to be scientifically established. Darwin’s work remained deficient—if natural selection was to have lasting effects, these advances had to be conserved and passed on from one generation to the next. He agreed with scientists who argued that his evolutionary theory failed to explain how variations are transmitted from parents to their offspring.

Mendelian Inheritance in Andalusian Fowls - Cross-breeding Experiments by Gregor Mendel

Cross-breeding Experiments by Gregor Mendel: Evidence of Heredity

Between 1856 and 1863, independent of Charles Darwin (1809–1882,) Moravian monk Gregor Mendel (1822–1884) conducted extensive pea plant breeding experiments in his monastery’s garden. He systematically studied what farmers had known for centuries: that crossbreeding animals and plants creates “hybrid” offspring with desirable traits. Based on his pea plant experiments, Mendel laid the foundational rules of genetic inheritance and heredity.

Synthesis of Darwin and Mendel’s Work as the Foundation of Life Sciences

It was not until the 1930s, long after both Darwin and Mendel’s deaths, that biologists started to study Mendel’s work on heredity in conjunction with Darwin’s theory of natural selection. Scientists were then able to understand how variation of characteristics is passed on to new generations and how evolution is a process of descent with modification. Mendel’s laws provided justification of inheritance, thereby completing Darwin’s theory of natural selection. Subsequently, Darwin’s theory became the basic mechanism of evolution—evolutionary genetics was established as biology’s central theorem and the bedrock concept of all life sciences. From that point on, Darwin became one of the most influential persons in human history.

Scientists continue to fine-tune humankind’s understanding of evolutionary biology as new evidence and fresh insights pour in from biochemistry, genetics, archaeology, neuroscience, and various other disciplines.

Creativity by Blending Ideas to Form New Ones: A Case Study of Gutenberg and the Printing Press

February 24, 2015 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Ideas Evolve over Time by Blending with Other Ideas

One of the fascinating aspects of invention is tracking the continuity of ideas across an arc of time. Through education, exposure, and experimentation, people’s creative thoughts can stretch both temporally and across various disciplines of knowledge.

When people develop a new idea, they often share it with others, who may then use this idea to expand their own understanding of concepts, invent even fresher ideas, and spread them. Ideas thus evolve over time.

Building on Antecedent Inventions

Considering the collaborative nature of idea formation, every new idea is arguably a conceptual sum of its predecessors. The power of blending ideas to form new ones is shown in that most seminal inventions are based on antecedents—inventions that came before them. For instance,

James Watt’s “invention” of the steam engine (or, more precisely, his invention of the separate-condenser steam engine) was in fact an attempt to modify Thomas Newcomen’s steam engine. Newcomen’s work was itself based on Thomas Savery’s invention of a steam-powered pump to extract water from mine-shifts. Later, James Watt adapted his separate-condenser to produce continuous rotary motion and expanded its use far beyond pumping water. Continuous rotary motion sparked the transition from hand-production methods to machine-power and became the driving force of the Industrial Revolution.
The Wright brothers’ first heavier-than-air powered flight was the culmination of their experience with bicycles. This first flight demonstrated their ability to improve prior inventions by applying previously-reached solutions to controlled flight issues. [See my previous article on how the Wright brothers argued and developed their ideas.] Within fifty years of the Wright brothers’ first successful airplane, humankind’s concept of distance had changed dramatically: aircrafts could fly across continents in hours—sometimes faster than sound. Just a short time later, aircrafts were traveling into space.
British Mathematician Andrew Wiles’ much-celebrated proof of Pierre de Fermat’s Last Theorem was based on the work of some of the greatest mathematical minds who, over three centuries, had also puzzled over Fermat’s Last Theorem. Contemporaries Gerhard Frey, Jean-Pierre Serre, and Ken Ribet also influenced Wiles’ work. Until Wiles’ success in the mid-nineties, the theorem remained inaccessible to proof for 358 years. In the 1840s, German mathematician Richard Dedekind attempted to solve the theorem and in so doing, laid the foundations of algebraic number theory.

Idea for Impact: Creativity is accessible through the often-subconscious process of blending what you already know to form new ideas.

Gutenberg's Invention of Mechanized Printing: Blend of coin punch and mechanized wine press

Case Study: Gutenberg’s Invention of Mechanized Printing

In the 15th century, Johannes Gutenberg invented mechanized movable-type printing. His invention revolutionized the dissemination of knowledge throughout the Western World and played a pivotal role in the development of the Renaissance, the Protestant Reformation, the Age of Enlightenment, and the Scientific Revolution.

The earliest forms of printing evolved from letter and coin punches, which were in vogue even in the Neolithic era. Woodblock printing was fashionable in East Asia since the second century. At least two centuries prior to Gutenberg’s invention, manual block printing with movable type had existed. However, this technique was hardly known in Europe, where all manuscripts were laboriously copied out by hand or stamped out with woodblocks before Gutenberg’s invention.

Johannes Gutenberg: Inventor of mechanized movable-type printing Gutenberg blended the flexibility of a coin punch with the power of a mechanized wine press to invent mechanized printing. For each character to be printed, Gutenberg used his skills as a goldsmith to cast individual pieces of metal type. These pieces could be quickly assembled into blocks depending on the composition of characters on a page.

Gutenberg’s mechanized press was an adaptation of the wine press, a historical contraption used to crush grapes and extract their juice for winemaking. Gutenberg’s press consisted of a fixed lower bed and movable upper platen containing composed type blocks. The platen was inked, covered with a sheet of paper, and pressed by a small bar on a worm screw. Pressing the upper and lower surfaces together formed a vise and left a sharp impression of inked characters on the paper.

The hand-operated Gutenberg press was further mechanized in the 19th century. Engineers introduced James Watt’s invention of the double-acting rotary steam engine to create steam-powered rotary presses, altogether creating industrialized bulk printing.

Lessons From Entrepreneurs: Thriving With A Disability

October 9, 2020 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Lessons From Entrepreneurs: Thriving With A Disability (Credit: Marcus Aurelius on Pexels)

For budding entrepreneurs with disabilities, there’s no need to let a diagnosis get in the way of success. In fact, individuals with disabilities have a higher rate of entrepreneurship – 13% compared to those without disabilities (10%,) Hubspot reports. Even though launching and maintaining a lucrative business poses a number of challenges, many entrepreneurs with disabilities have already paved the way for success.

Savvy thinking and determination

Glenda Watson Hyatt was born with cerebral palsy. She has speech impairment, can only type with her left thumb, and uses a wheelchair. Muscle weakness, poor balance and coordination, and difficulty speaking are common symptoms of cerebral palsy, and individuals typically require a range of support and therapies, as detailed on this cerebral palsy resources site. Nonetheless, fourteen years ago, after struggling to find a job, Hyatt successfully launched her own online consultancy, which helps companies make websites more accessible to people with disabilities. Working from home on flexible hours allows her to best accommodate her disability. With savvy thinking and determination, Hyatt conquered her biggest challenges. For example, completion software and word prediction boosts her productivity and output despite her being able to only type with one thumb. She also uses text chat during virtual meetings. “Most days I don’t think about having cerebral palsy and using a scooter. I’m too busy to be disabled,” Hyatt says.

Be business minded

In 2004, Bram Cohen founded BitTorrent, a decentralized peer-to-peer sharing system that allows individuals to distribute large amounts of data over the internet. Although this successful computer programmer is well known amongst tech fans, it’s lesser known that Cohen has Aspergers syndrome, a developmental disorder that makes it difficult to effectively communicate and socialize. However, Cohen hasn’t let his diagnosis hinder his success. Quite the opposite. In fact, Cohen says his Aspergers has made him a better entrepreneur. Although navigating social situations can be difficult, since his brain works in a unique way, he’s able to better tackle and solve problems to move his business forward faster.

Play to your strengths

After founding FUBU, a successful fashion company, in the 90s, entrepreneur Daymond John later became a famous investor on the reality TV show Shark Tank. John also happens to be diagnosed with dyslexia. “In math and science, I would excel,” said John about his school years in an interview with the Yale Center for Dyslexia & Creativity. “I could look at something quickly and get high grades, A’s and B’s. Yet reading and spelling were another story.” Just like Cohen, however, John also learned to use his disability to make him a better entrepreneur. He became motivated to strengthen his mathematical and analytical skills rather than waste time on reading tasks he would inevitably struggle with; those tasks he smartly delegated to others.

Disabilities needn’t be barriers to entrepreneurship.

These success stories prove that anyone can run a lucrative business by strengthening their talents and keeping a positive and determined mindset.

Inspirational Quotations #855

August 23, 2020 By Nagesh Belludi

A man who correctly guesses a woman’s age may be smart, but he’s not very bright.
—Lucille Ball (American Actor)

Imitation is a necessity of human nature.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (American Jurist, Author)

What is the people but a herd confused, a miscellaneous rabble, who extol things vulgar, and well weigh’d, scarce worth the praise? they praise and they admire they know not what, and know not whom, but as one leads the other.
—John Milton (English Poet)

When roused to rage the maddening populace storms, their fury-like a rolling flame, bursts forth unquenchable; but give its violence ways, it spends itself, and as its force abates, learns to obey and yields it to your will.
—Euripides (Ancient Greek Dramatist)

A man is not finished when he’s defeated; he’s finished when he quits.
—Richard Nixon (American Head of State)

In the absence of justice, what is sovereignty but organized robbery?
—Augustine of Hippo (Roman-African Christian Philosopher)

The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point, however, is to change it.
—Karl Marx (German Philosopher, Economist)

One’s feelings waste themselves in words; they ought all to be distilled into action … which bring results.
—Florence Nightingale (English Nurse)

Man and his deed are two distinct things. Whereas a good deed should call forth approbation, and a wicked deed disapprobation, the doer of the deed, whether good or wicked always deserves respect or pity as the case may be.
—Mohandas K. Gandhi (Indian Hindu Political leader)

Every good act is charity. A man’s true wealth hereafter is the good that he does in this world to his fellows.
—Moliere (French Playwright)

Don’t give up. Courage is my conviction.
—Dhirubhai Ambani (Indian Businessperson)

A silent mouth is melodious.
—Irish Proverb

Fear of things invisible is the natural seed of that which every one in himself calleth religion.
—Thomas Hobbes (English Political Philosopher)

Patriotism is not a short and frenzied outburst of emotion but the tranquil and steady dedication of a lifetime.
—Adlai Stevenson (American Diplomat)

One very important aspect of motivation is the willingness to stop and to look at things that no one else has bothered to look at. This simple process of focusing on things that are normally taken for granted is a powerful source of creativity…
—Edward de Bono (British Psychologist, Writer)

Overcoming Personal Constraints is a Key to Success

August 14, 2020 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Why do some people reach ever-higher levels of achievement, while others struggle or just plug along?

Norman Vincent Peale, the doyen of the think-positive mindset, provides a particularly illustrative example in You Can If You Think You Can (1987):

In Tokyo, I once met an American, an inspiring man, from Pennsylvania. Crippled from some form of paralysis, he was on a round-the-world journey in a wheelchair, getting a huge kick out of all his experiences. I commented that nothing seemed to get him down. His reply was a classic: “It’s only my legs that are paralyzed. The paralysis never got into my mind.”

Overcoming Personal Constraints is a Key to Success No matter how formidable your talents, you’ll be held back by certain attitudes and behaviors that limit your achievements.

Your personal constraints—some of them beyond your control—will determine your level of success. Identify those constraints and make a plan to triumph over them.

Idea for Impact: The more you can reframe your attitudes toward the past, future, and present, the more likely you’ll find a meaningful life. Don’t let your constraints lay down what you can achieve.