A More Beautiful Question (38 page)

32
   
In the business world, IDEO has . . .
From my interviews with IDEO executives, from 2008 through 2013, including Tim Brown, David Kelley, Jane Fulton Suri, Paul Bennett, Fred Dust, and others.

33
   
One classic example involved a hospital . . .
From my interview with IDEO’s Bennett, who also tells the hospital story in his July 2005 TED talk, “Design Is in the Details,” http://www.ted.com/talks/paul_bennett_finds_design_in_the_details.html.

34
   
The Acumen Fund’s Jacqueline Novogratz . . .
From my interview with Novogratz at Acumen’s New York office, March 14, 2013.

35
   
Eric Maisel calls a “productive obsession” . . .
From my interview with Maisel, fall 2013. From more on productive obsession, see Vern Burkhardt’s interview with Maisel, “Your Brain Will Thank You, Part 1,” IdeaConnection blog, December 5, 2010.

36
   
Before he changed the way many . . .
The Pandora section relied on several articles about the company, as well as speeches and online interviews with Tim Westergren, including Rob Walker, “The Song Decoders,”
New York Times Magazine
, October 18, 2009; Bill Moggridge’s interview with Westergren for Moggridge’s book/DVD
Designing
Media
(the interview was posted online February 3, 2011, on the Cooper-Hewitt Museum website, http://www.cooperhewitt.org/conversations/2011/02/02/designing-media-tim-westergren; Westergren’s Chicago Ideas Week speech in October 2011, http://www.chicagoideas.com/videos/53; and Rocco Pendola, “A Conversation with Pandora’s Tim Westergren,”
The
Street
, February 12, 2013.

37
   
“In order for imagination to flourish . . .”
Douglas Thomas and John Seely Brown, “Cultivating the Imagination: Building Learning Environments for Innovation,”
Teachers College Record
, February 17, 2011.

38
   
What if we combine three snacks into one? (And then add a prize?) . . .
Gary Satanovsky, “Prizes Inserted into Cracker Jack Boxes,”
Famous Daily
, February 19, 2012; Manny Fernadez, “Let Us Now Praise the Great Men of Junk Food,”
New York Times
, August 7, 2010.

39
   
to use a term that seems to have . . .
Thackara talks about “smart recombinations” in his book
In the Bubble
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006).

40
   
“The creative act is no longer . . .”
Jason Tanz, “Remix Culture: Humanities,”
Wired
, September 27, 2010.

41
   
The book’s author, Seth Grahame-Smith . . .
Michael Cieply, “The Great Emancipator, Vampires on His Mind,”
New York Times
, May 20, 2011.

42
   
David Kord Murray, a former rocket scientist . . .
From a series of interviews I did with Murray in spring 2013; I also relied on Vern Burkhardt’s interview with Murray, “Search and Combine Ideas,”
IdeaConnection
, November 7, 2010. Murray explores the “connections” idea at length in his book
Borrowing Brilliance: The Six Steps to Business Innovation by Building on the Ideas of Others
(New York: Gotham, 2010).

43
   
it’s a form of divergent thinking . . .
From my interview with Heilman.

44
   
More obvious mental connections and associations . . .
From my interview with Kounios.

45
   
Chen-Bo Zhong, a professor at the . . .
From my interview with Zhong, November 2012; from more on his research, see Chen-Bo Zhong, “The Role of Unconscious Thought in the Creative Process,”
Rotman
magazine, Winter 2010.

46
   
What if dots and dashes could sort the world? . . .
Margalit Fox, “N. Joseph Woodland, Inventor of the Bar Code, Dies at 91,”
New York Times
, December 12, 2012.

47
   
Google’s scientist-in-residence Ray Kurzweil . . .
Kurzweil told this to Thea Singer, “6 Beautiful Minds,”
O, the Oprah Magazine
, June 2007, http://www.oprah.com/omagazine/Modern-Day-Geniuses-The-Worlds-Brightest-Minds.

48
   
Sam McNerney pulled together a number . . .
Sam McNerney, “Unconscious Creativity: Step Back to Step Forward,” Big Think blog, May 24, 2012; also, Sam McNerney, “Relaxation & Creativity—the Science of ‘Sleeping on It,’” Big Think blog, May 8, 2012; and Annie Murphy Paul, “Why Daydreaming Isn’t a Waste of Time,” Mind/Shift blog, from KQED Public Media for Northern California, June 1, 2012.

49
   
“Museums are the custodians of epiphanies” . . .
Hugh Hart, “Seven Pieces of ‘Damn Good’ Creative Advice from 60s Ad Man George Lois,”
Fast Company
, March 23, 2012. This quote originated in Lois’s book
Damn Good Advice (for People with Talent)
(New York: Phaidon Press, 2012).

50
   
This idea’s roots can be found . . .
I have discussed thinking wrong in my interviews with Bielenberg (February 2013); Sagmeister (multiple interviews in 2008, for
Glimmer
); and with Luke Williams, formerly of Frog Design (spring 2012).

51
   
you “jiggle the synapses” in the brain . . .
Barbara Strauch, “How to Train the Aging Brain,”
New York Times
, January 3, 2010.

52
   
John Bielenberg, a designer best known . . .
From my interview with Bielenberg.

53
   I attended a workshop run by the creativity consultant Tom Monahan, who teaches an exercise he calls 180-degree thinking.

54
   
Luke Williams, a former creative director . . .
From my spring 2012 interview with Williams; also from his book
Disrupt: Think the Unthinkable to Spark Transformation in Your Business
(FT Press, 2011).

55
   
What if prisons had no walls? . . .
Graeme Wood, “Prison Without Walls,”
Atlantic
, September 2010.

56
   
She was having trouble getting out . . .
From a series of interviews I did with Nanda, starting in 2009 (for
Glimmer
) and concluding in spring 2013.

57
   
Nanda’s quirky project drew the attention . . .
Gizmodo
, http://gizmodo.com/036052/clocky-rolling-alarm-clock, and
Engadget
both wrote about Nanda and the Clocky in 2005, when the product was still being developed.

58
   
“The important thing about telling everyone . . .”
Sam Potts, “My Six Point Plan for Doing Projects,”
GOOD.is
, June 3, 2013.

59
   
“If you want everyone to have . . .”
Clive Thompson, “Think Visual: Why the best way to solve complicated problems might be to draw them,”
Wired
, October 2010.

60
   
“A prototype is a question, embodied” . . .
This line, along with lots of other interesting thoughts on prototyping, can be found on Rodriguez’s bog
Metacool
,
http://metacool.typepad.com/metacool/2009/04/4-prototype-as-if-you-are-right-listen-as-if-you-are-wrong.html.

61
   
“enabling a class of ordinary people . . .
J. Paul Grayson’s quote appeared in Ashlee Vance, “A Technology Sets Inventors Free to Dream,”
New York Times
, September 14, 2010.

62
   
“How might we roll it instead of lugging it?” . . .
Joe Sharkey, “Reinventing the Suitcase by Adding the Wheel,”
New York Times
, October 4, 2010.

63
   
As the writer Peter Sims noted in . . .
Peter Sims, “The Number One Enemy of Creativity: Fear of Failure,”
Harvard Business Review
, October 5, 2012; see also, Peter Sims, “Daring to Stumble on the Road to Discovery,”
New York Times
, August 7, 2011.

64
   
At Facebook, founder Mark Zuckerberg has . . .
Zuckerberg published his manifesto “The Hacker Way” as part of his letter to investors during Facebook’s IPO in early 2012.
Wired
reprinted the complete letter, http://www.wired.com/business/2012/02/zuck-letter/.

65
   
“the trick is to go from one failure . . .”
This quote is worded differently depending on where you find it. On the site Lifehack, it reads, “Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm,” http://quotes.lifehack.org/winston-churchill/success-is-the-ability-to-go-from/.

66
   
How do you make a hard-boiled egg’s shell disappear? . . .
Amy Wallace, “You Bring an Idea and They’ll Do the Rest,”
New York Times
, June 12, 2011.

67
   
Stanford University’s Bob Sutton says that . . .
Robert I. Sutton, “Learning from Success and Failure,” HBR.org, June 4, 2007.

68
   
“If you keep making the same . . .”
Ibid.

69
   
How do you fit a large golf course on a small island? . . .
Adapted from Steven Feinberg, “Seeing: How to create advantages through ‘tactical shifting,”
Conference Board Review
, Winter 2011, and Bruce Anderson, “A Golf Ball that Won’t Carry as Far Enabled Jack to Build a Minicourse,”
Sports Illustrated
, July 23, 1984.

70
   
“When we think of inventors” . . .
Nicole LaPorte, “Don’t Know How? Find Someone Who Does,”
New York Times
, November 27, 2011.

71
   
“if we have people with diverse tools . . .”
Claudia Dreifus, “A Conversation with Scott E. Page: In Professor’s Model, Diversity = Productivity,”
New York Times
, January 8, 2008. See also Page’s book
The Difference: How the Power of Diversity Creates Better Groups, Firms, Schools, and Societies
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008).

72
   
“we all have two amazing things . . .”
From my interview with Mick Ebeling, April 2013. I also drew from Ebeling’s TED talk, “The Invention That Unlocked a Locked-In Artist,” March 2011. The speech was featured in April 2013 on the
Huffington Post
, http://www.ted.com/talks/mick_ebeling_the_invention_that_unlocked_a_locked_in_artist.html.

73
   
Tod Machover of MIT Media Lab . . .
From my interview with Machover.

74
   
How might we cut the cord? . . .
Details about Ran Poliakine’s question comes from Erica Swallow’s “How Powermat Is Leading the Charge for Wireless Electricity,” Mashable.com, October 20, 2011, http://mashable.com/2011/10/20/powermat-wireless-charging-tech/. Meredith Perry’s details from Alyson Shontell’s “Open Letter to Meredith Perry and uBeam,” on Businessinsider.com, July 12, 2012, http://www.businessinsider.com/open-letter-to-meredith-perry-and-ubeam-2012-7#ixzz2dUyhhiEI.

75
   
As the author Clay Shirky has . . .
The appeal of collaborative endeavors is discussed at length in Shirky’s book
Here Comes Everybody
(New York: Penguin Books, 2009).

Chapter 4: Questioning in Business

  
1
   
Christensen introduced the term
disruptive innovation
. . .
The section on Clayton Christensen is from my interview with Christensen, plus the following sources: Christensen’s online interview on the HBR Channel’s
The Idea
, posted on www.claytonchristensen.com; Brad Wieners, “Clay Christensen’s Life Lessons,”
Bloomberg BusinessWeek
, May 3, 2012; Lahrissa MacFarquhar, “When Giants Fail,”
New Yorker
, May 14, 2012; and Christensen,
The Innovator’s Dilemma
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business Review Press, 1997).

  
2
   
“we’re coming off a twenty-five-year . . .”
From my interviews and e-mail follow-up with Keith Yamashita, January and February 2013.