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How can imagination lead to innovation?
What are the relationships between learning, inspiration, imagination, creativity, and innovation? How can imagination lead to innovation? What factors might play a role?
Jaime Amsel
Jaime Amsel
Nathan Austin
Robert Galway 20+
Perhaps sources of imaginative inspiration might be trying to define one sensory experience in terms of another, such as a painting inspired by a song or a sculpture based on the memory of some event.
Factors in the ability to innovate or imagine include emotional state of mind and ability to focus, powers of observation, sensitivity to environment, natural surroundings, quality of senses, and life experiences.
praveen sinha
Even when we are collaborating on something we are giving the idea a base to be worked on which is common to the team.Imagination provides a base for the innovation to happen.
Karina Eisner 10+
On the other hand, innovation looks to me more like collaborative work or team effort, with wide and open ended repercussions, as in TED or the internet.
Frans Kellner 100+
Maybe you're bit wrong to think invention to be something of the individual.
I saw the day before yesterday a nice documentary on BBC4 about the early days of electricity.
They played around with electrical effects for over almost a full century before someone started to make it into something useful. A lot of people were involved to make it from the secret of freak shows into a kind of battery. That’s when they thought that you could maybe do something with it.
In the effort to reach new frontiers also a lot of inventions are done on the way as a kind of by-product.
Even in prehistoric times you can see little improvements over a long period that lead from one thing to another.
Fengbin (Kathy) Zhao
Collaborative innovation is an important tag in TED. The discovery of DNA structure and many other stories on discovery (find out something that is already exist) and invention (create something that is new) remind me that collective solving problem is very important.
Why did Leonard Da Vinci initiate many projects, but could only finish a few? There could be many reasons. I guess that one reason was that he lacked supports.
Steven Johnson's Talk on "Where good ideas come from"
Janet Echelman's "Take imagination seriously"
all invovle this theme: collaboration matters in the process of innovating.
Frans Kellner 100+
collaboration is indeed as you say helpful and seeing the questions from all angels, from inside and outside.
More important though is to get a kind of intimate relation with the subject. Most innovations in history came from people that had a lifelong and intense connection with a tool, system, craft and had an inspiring moment of insight about how to do it better more easy or effective. The work for an inventor is to do the same in a fraction of that time.
Arthur Borges 50+
In short, Da Vinci got his hands on the ideas, toyed with them and never considered them anything more than pleasant Sunday afternoon distractions: there was never any depth to his vision into technology for the simple reason that he was NO technologist.
Artist, yes, but technologist: NO.
Karina Eisner 10+
(Wikipedia) "The term innovation [...] generally refers to the creation of better or more effective products, processes, technologies, or ideas that are accepted by markets, governments, and society. Innovation differs from invention or renovation in that innovation generally signifies a substantial positive change compared to incremental changes."
So, as we discussed in another conversation, it may have to do not just with "thinking out of the box", but with an entirely new approach, from idea-origination to development, sharing and final product.
An example could be, the new and upgraded PC on one hand, versus a Mac product (Air, Book, ipad, ipod, itouch, iphone) Steve Jobs, the Da Vinci of the 21st century...
Fengbin (Kathy) Zhao
I love to use Wikipedia whenever I encounter something unfamiliar. Wikipedia is a place that can lead me to somewhere.
However, sometimes when I search something in my own field: something about learning design, I am not a big fan. Why? Wikipedia depends on people's contribution to each entry. The premise is: people with good knowledge about a subject matter contribute in Wikipedia. But this premise is not always true.
Even in traditional professional journals, we can see how people disagree with each other. How can we assume that whose knowledge is more valid? The same thing is true for Wikipedia: How can we assume the current version of an item, at the moment of being seen by me is more valid? Even than previous versions?
It is interesting that you mention the difference between invention and innovation, what about discovery. An opinion is that innovation is a broad term, which including invention and discovery.
Salim Solaiman 50+
Shokrullah Amiri 10+
Fengbin (Kathy) Zhao
This is an interesting metaphor. However, it would be also interesting to mention that Janet's 'Take imagination seriously' might imply that: Imagination is indeed important, but only taking imagination seriously can create a necessary condition for innovation.
With writing this, I think of another metaphor: Failure is the mother of success. I never doubt this metaphor before. But now, I might want to reconsider it.
James Turner 10+
Fengbin (Kathy) Zhao
http://www.ted.com/themes/the_creative_spark.html
Fengbin (Kathy) Zhao
I am inspired and informed by her in a few avenues:
1. Transform old use of net to modern ways
2. Transform something "you look at" to something "you get lost in"
3. Look for new material
4. Build relationships with those can help
5. Create new software
6. Janet's 'building nets' in TED after the talk was posted: her persistent communicating with people in TED.