The great invention

When I was 8 years old I created a piece of technology that would change the world forever. This revolutionary piece of technology was made with colouring pencils and a slightly water damaged drawing pad. And without any special training, financial backing, or qualifications.

At the time I was blissfully unaware that 20 years later it’d be a hot topic; part of a new craze that is revolutionising the way we look at how we interact with the world. Unfortunately for me, this design never made it off my drawing pad and to the person who could have helped me build my dream.

The craze I’m referring to is wearable tech. And what I had so lovingly designed was a revolutionary watch complete with a television screen, radio, and camera. Near identical to the Samsung Galaxy Gear (and many others like it) that are taking the smarts of our phones and putting it on our wrists.

Solved with imagination

As I sat in my bedroom designing my watch, I wasn’t aware of wearable tech, or how such a device could improve the user experience of mobile technology. All I wanted to do was trying to overcome a challenge: if one device combined everything I wanted, it was a more likely candidate for my Christmas present that year!

Using Lego space ships, plasticine robots, and anything else I could get my hands on I went about solving my childhood ‘problems’. And I’m not alone in this either. Like most years, Lego makes it on all the top Christmas gift lists; toys that help you express your imagination, create anything your mind can think of, and allow you to weave a story around it.

With over 33 million copies sold to date, Minecraft is the latest thing to hit the market for the imagination. Using textured cubes you can create intricate and impressive structures using your imagination and the imagination of others. One such amazing creation is a 1:1 scale replica of the Starship Enterprise, which took over a year to build.

If imagination is “the faculty or action of forming new ideas, or images, or concepts of external objects not present to the senses.” then having a strong imagination is a fundamental building block of creativity and innovation.

Playtime and magical thinking

Using pretence and role-playing from an early age has been said to be the basis of a child’s grasp of social and physical reality. This counterfactual, magical thinking allows us the ability to imagine what could be and what could never be. We start asking the “what if . . .?” questions and begin to build the capability to project different realities in our mind.

These new capabilities are first used when we start believing in fictitious characters, like fairies and superheroes. We start role-playing the scenarios to bring our reality closer to the ones we have created in our minds, and share these with others.

These beliefs allow us to push our imaginations beyond what is currently possible and allow us to contemplate the seemingly impossible. As creatives, we do this kind of serious play (Johan Roos and Bart Victor) almost every day when brainstorming or creative thinking. In fact, this process is so closely linked to imagination that Lego offer a brand of this approach called Lego Serious Play.

Laughing out loud

Along with imagination and magical thinking, children use humour to understand false belief situations, and to build social acceptance from parents and peers. Children will always act silly to get a humorous reaction from their parents. Don’t think so? Go to YouTube and you’ll find proof.

Dr. Astro Teller, Captain of Moon Shots at Google (x), talks about how humour and creativity are inexorably linked. Humour makes us laugh because it’s unexpected. It creates a perspective shift in our minds so we look at the situation posed to us in a different way. Creativity comes to us in the same way — not through learning anything new about the situation but by looking at it from a different perspective. Astro talks about making solutions that are ten times better rather than 10 per cent better. Taking the 10-times perspective means not just making improvements to an existing system but redesigning the system from the ground up.

Perspective shifts come in many forms. A different perspective can be gained through taking yourself away from the situation for a moment, or even overnight by sleeping on it. Asking someone for a different perspective on your problem, chances are their insight will be useful even if they don’t have the answer.

In software development there is a widely used technique called “Rubber Ducking”. It’s the simple practice of explaining your problem to another person or inanimate object, usually a Rubber Duck. It seems the simple act of vocalising assumptions about a problem gives you new insight into solutions. You have not learned anything new about the problem, you have only changed your perspective, perhaps looked at it through the eyes of a Rubber Duck.

Why is this important?

The world is evolving quicker than ever before. There are new breakthroughs or pieces of technology that promise to make our lives easier. More emphasis is being put on people and businesses to become more innovative and creative to keep up with this growing demand.

Companies that want to innovate are turning to techniques like serious play to bring a different perspective into brainstorming and product development. They are using humour and fun to coax new and interesting ideas out of their employees. Google and Facebook are using fun and playful office spaces to spark a more creative and collaborative atmosphere.

It seems like everyone is in search of a more childlike imagination in which anything is possible. Next time you are posed a difficult problem you could try thinking about from the perspective of 8 year who has just got a new set of colouring pencils and slightly water damaged drawing pad, you may be surprised at the solutions you come up with.