The Garden Vs The Grocery Store

For all of the important benefits that the notion of "the design sprint" has conferred upon the corporate world, I think it has done the practice of innovation one great disservice: it has unintentionally implied that great ideas are easily come by, and are the function of episodic, momentary bursts of effort.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

To use a metaphor, I see it something like this. Far too often, the responsibility for idea generation is viewed somewhat like folks view a trip to the grocery store: "just pick up a couple new ideas on the way home!" Instead, I'd suggest an approach more like gardening: carefully cultivating a series of inputs, sometimes accompanied by delight, sometimes frustration. Not automatic, no guarantees, but lots of surprises.

The way this is manifested is how folks tend to reach the end of a creativity workshop, or innovation bootcamp, with the mentality of "I'm done! I did it!" As if now that I know the right thing to do, or have had this experience, I'm good. But that'd be like going to basketball practice for a couple of days, or watching videos of Steph Curry drain 3-pointers, and having understood the technique, declaring oneself to be a master hooper. Instead of saying, "I'm done," we advocate an attitude closer to "I've begun."

"I've entered into this practice. I recognize that, like every other important area of my life (from my hygiene and health to my spiritual life, to hobbies like piano and painting), my creative capacity is something that requires regular attention and careful cultivation." Use it or lose it applies as much to creative problem solving as anything else.

That's not to say that sprinting isn't an incredibly valuable tool and ability. It is. We are constantly invoking a sprint mentality in the LaunchPad accelerator at Stanford. But to go with that metaphor, perhaps what we need to compliment this important paradigm, is more stretching, more training, more warming up.

If someone walked into your office right now and asked you to run a 400-meter dash, could you do it? Cold? Unless you've literally just been in the gym, stretching, etc, you'd probably balk at the demand. Why is cognitive, creative sprinting any different?

I'm not saying we shouldn't sprint. I'm saying we should be in the regular practice of stretching, lifting, and training, so that when the time for sprinting comes, we're ready.

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