Hypothesis

The hypothesis for these results is that stress is the enemy of conceptual thought. When we are stressed we release cortisol amongst other adrenalines, which impede us from thinking about the big picture. Therefore finding a posture that is relaxing to you can play a role on how you think and come up with ideas.

This part of a new are of neurology called ‘embodied cognition’, which is that our body thinks right along with our brain. For instance ‘ you may think that you smile because you are happy, but in fact happy feeling arise in a large part from the psychical sensation for smiling. Furthermore in a study where people had their frowning muscles frozen through botox took longer to read sad or angry sentences. *

Experiment

1. Change your posture when you want to think creatively, find what makes you comfortable and see how much better your ideas flow.
2. Put a pen in your mouth and force your smile muscles to engage and feel how much happier you feel after 10 minutes.
3. For linear thinking stand up and physically move away from the problem.  Then give each thought a direction in a room. Walk each idea out, see how concise and practical your thinking becomes.

* The above quotes are extracted from New Scientist The Thinking Body 15 October 2011.

The crux of innovation is the idea. Ideas come from feeding your brain with diverse knowledge bases. When your brain perceives and understands a certain mechanism, it will then find a pattern from which it will continue to interpret. For example, we no longer have to ‘think’ about tying our shoelaces, because our brain has created a pattern for it. Taking this principle further, when looking to innovate we have to break away from established thought patterns – otherwise we will literally keep thinking within the same parameters.

There are many books and courses claiming that they have the secret to innovation; sadly, it cannot be bottled. There are some constants that we have observed in people that innovate: they are in a constant state of inquiry, they are great observers, and they march to the beat of their own drum.

So what can we learn from the Kalama Sutta, Buddha’s sermon to the Kalama people? In this ancient religious text, when the Kalama asked the Buddha how to tell which prophets were telling the truth, he replied:

Do not accept anything because of

1. repeated oral transmission
2. lineage or tradition
3. it being widely stated
4. it being written in books
5. it being logical and reasonable
6. it interfering and drawing conclusions
7. it having been thought out

From our observations, great innovators questions everything and do not settle for someone else’s ‘truth’.

Imagine if the Wright brothers would had been satisfied with the accepted theories of gravity? Or if Galileo had heeded the accepted wisdom of his time? Or if Darwin had been content with the Biblical explanation of creation?

It takes bravery to break away from tradition, popular thought and current dogma, but if you wish to innovate that is what you must do.

According to Wikipedia, the word engineer is derived from the Latin word ingenium, meaning ’cleverness’. At a time when America and Europe’s economies are broken beyond easy repair, the Middle East is awash in political unrest, and our natural resources continue to deteriorate, how can ingenium not be at its most significant?

Engineers are furthermore known for their great analytical thinking drawing on science and mathematics, making them the gatekeepers of pragmatic and essential solutions.

Anyone, even an engineer, claiming that these attributes are no longer fundamental to helping us create better ways of doing things is not seeing the full potential of the engineer. However, our in house engineer, Daniel Gutierrez would argue that this is not  a new perception – ‘I studied engineering because I wanted to create better systems and now I use my skills to make entrepreneurs more productive’.  It is engineers that are moving the economy forward in countries like India and we are missing out if we do not create more in the UK and US. In the article Tom Gillis says that the future of an economy is service based- however we still need engineers to create a better economic system, create more environmentally friendly solutions, and even be part of political negotiations – who is leading solutions in difficult countries like Afghanistan or Iraq?

In Corporations

We often hear in the news of the struggling CEO at the helm of a company that is no longer performing the way it ought to be.  The usual response is to cut costs, and make things cheaper to manufacture to increase margins. However, what would happen if corporations were instead to hire engineers to create better systems, not only in production but also in the office?  Or include them as part of the innovation team to create better systems around the innovation process, as well as engineering better products and services?

In Enterprise

As part of the IEA team, we have an industrial & systems engineer.  However, instead of engineering mechanical systems to increase productivity on a factory floor, he creates productive systems of innovation for entrepreneurs.

Conclusion

The future of engineers is to be leaders of innovation, productivity, and improvement. We need more engineers, not to make things cheaper or faster, but to create solutions for a new era of economy and change. We would like to leave with one last thought from Albert Einstein – ‘Engineers create that which has never been.’ Creating that ‘which has never been’ never goes out fashion, it is human nature to keep creating.

At a recent talk we attended by Carl Schramm, the CEO of the Kauffman Foundation, one topic that kept coming up was ‘How do you form successful firms?’ This led us to wonder what was at the core of a successful business. Our answer is ‘human beings’. It seems very obvious and common sense, but we do often forget to put the human at the centre when turning our ideas into businesses.

From our perspective, businesses are set up by humans for humans. Therefore understanding our own brain technology is important in creating a successful firm. There is no formula, shortcut, or A to B process for creating innovative businesses. It is about being aware of what humans need and then learning to effectively communicate the vision. We are seeing more and more businesses that take care to understand the human and therefore create mindful businesses. There is Be Social Change in NYC, who is run by behavioural psychologist; aLondon-based web company which uses psychology as a basis for their design, and a Dubai-based investment firm, which only invests in companies which will create a positive social impact.

Finally, putting the human back in the middle can help us create more visionary enterprises. We are reaching a saturation limit in creating companies that are only driven by profit and create little benefit to society.

Think About It

1. How much do you listen to your clients?
2. Does your services or product create a positive impact in the life of your clients?
3. How much time do you spend understanding how your clients think, what makes them trust, what their perception of value is?

Professor Philip Davis from the University of Liverpool School of English looked at brain responses. Our most common brain response time is 400 milliseconds after “experiences, a thought or perception”. These responses are called N400 and they are the most common. However when the professor studied the brains of people exposed to Shakespearean language they had a response called P600, which indicates activity 600 milliseconds after their initial contact with the text. The professor equates this type of response of “a state of heightened consciousness”.

In the process of innovation, this is exactly what we strive for. We strive to be in a heightened sense of thought, exploration and awareness. The brain needs to be turned on and exercised, or it will literally get bored – and a bored brain only throws out ideas that are patterned.

Imagine how much more exciting your ideas would be if you could operate your brain to provoke P600 responses rather than the usual humdrum, day-to-day responses.

The professor’s hypothesis is that the Shakespeare’s unorthodox use of linguistic construction interrupts our brain. It tells the brain that this is something that needs further attention. We cannot just sit and read Shakespeare; he forces us to think. He actually interrupts our consciousness because our brains cannot create patterns or make linguistic assumptions. In other words, when we read simple text our brain no longer has to ‘think’, but when exposed to Shakespearean language your brain has to be in the moment, aware, and on.

Being innovative is like being a great athlete: you cannot foster an active brain by sitting by and being lazy. Your brain needs activity and stimuli.

Brain Exercise

• Read a Shakespearean text, preferably one of his sonnets as they are full of alliteration, metaphor, and linguistic oddities.
• Interpret the text in your own words. Write the imagery it creates in your brain, how it makes you feel, possible meanings, etc.
• Finally, tackle an idea that you have been considering. Write it out, ask questions and explore it.
• Write down the differences in your thought patterns, levels of consciousness, and any new interpretations of the idea.

Female leadership seems to be on the rise and we have seen it in the amount of women starting business at our spaces as well. The glass ceiling seems to be lifting as we begin to accept the fairer sex as a powerful contributor to finance, innovation, and enterprise.

The shift is also creating a balance in the business place, this trend doesn’t mean getting rid of the male perspective. We are hopeful that this is the start of the sexes learning to collaborate more effectively. After all ideas need the support from diverse collaboration.

According to anthropologist Helen Fisher, this trend is actually quit primitive, she believes that we are actually going back to our roots. When our ancestors were hunter gatherers the tribe depended on the skills of both sexes. Testosterone lead in the linear and calculating task of hunting, this is the reason males are much better at linear thought, systems, spacial awareness, and making high risk decisions. In contrast estrogen had to manage crops, children, the kill, therefore females now carry traits of management , multi focusing, observation, and circular thinking.

Think About It
1. If the traits that are related to estrogen begin to lead in enterprise, what will products look like, how will this affect company management, how would this affect value?

1. If more females lead in business how will this change the perception of family?
2. Male leadership has shaped many of our societal, philosophical, and scientific theories, so if there is a switch, how will this affect how we view the world?

Resources

Halla Tomasdottir: Icelandic woman who took her company through the eye of the financial storm.

Helen Fisher: How Women are transforming leadership

Christine Langarde: New head of IMF

Emerging women entrepreneurs

Lately, there is so much talk about innovation- what it is, and how to do it. It’s often applied in the spheres of tech and product development. But the New Oxford American Dictionary describes to innovate as: “to make changes in something established…”

That means that you can innovate nearly anything. When Idea Engineering Agency talks about innovating, it’s breaking through established forms of thought and action that we speak of, regardless of how Idea Engineering is applied.

Recently I sat down and drew a little map of IEA and where we sit as a company in relation to all of our other related activities. Each of us work on this process, but we also devote a fair amount of time to other entities as well: THECUBE in London, WeCreate in NYC, and the Detroit Creative Corridor Center in Detroit. Additionally, new projects are popping up all of the time. As I began to worry that perhaps we were moving in too many different directions, I asked myself: “is there a through-line?”

It turns out that there definitely is. In all of what we do, we are busy innovating communities. Araceli and Marianne are busy in London, working to create a new platform for an entrepreneurial community at THECUBE and throughout London, especially with Marianne’s new weekly column at The Independent. Daniel is hard at work building a new community in New York City, at the WeCreate space, where he is mobilizing the city’s forward thinkers towards a new way of creating economy and social change. And I am working everyday to establish a creative and entrepreneurial community dedicated to the City of Detroit. In the midst of all of these efforts, we are making observations, reaching out to those who can help us build and better understand the community we’re innovating, helping to broaden the minds to wake up to new potential, and creating broad yet meaningful peer-to-peer networks across industries, cities, and even nations.

You could break it down like this:

We innovate communities of innovation and enterprise

We innovate communities of sustainability and self-reliance

We innovate communities of 21st Century potential

And whether we are working directly with a company, a city, a group of concerned citizens, or even an entire nation, we are innovating a community of some kind.

This has major implications for the direction of our work. Once I saw this through-line, I realized that we are just getting started. All of our research and work satisfies a shared goal, regardless of where or how we do it or who we work on it with. This gives us real vision.

And at the root level of anything, there is a community, where its value is derived from the human potential of those who have the passion to serve it.

In our observations, our brain is the latest tool we need to develop and understand to move towards a new area of economy and enlightenment.  This is the core of brain technology, learning how to use our brain to its potential.

When was the last time you questioned how your brain forms thoughts or ideas? Or are there things that you can do to make better use of your brain?

Did you know that zone one part of the brain can only take in 40 items per minute, whilst zone 2 can take in millions? Or did you know that it only takes 90 seconds for a neurochemical to flood the entire blood stream? These two facts seem irrelevant to business, but if you are only using the zone 1 of your brain to create ideas or solve problems, you will only produce patterned ideas rather than building new neurological circuits. Building new circuits and delving into zone 2 generates better solutions thus allowing us to better business strategists.

Or take the second fact, if we are constantly releasing dopamine over and over, we stop the brain from strategic thinking, however if you don’t release enough your brain does’t have the energy to create conceptual thought.

Knowing our own brain technology helps us make better use of our potential, which is what we need right now; we need better visionaries, thinkers, and innovators.

When you look at disasters like Japan, the economic crisis, the economic state of Detroit, it is not the use of old knowledge that will lead us to better answers, it is the understanding of our brain.

After all the brain governs everything, how we think, how we articulate thought, how we interact with others, our ideas, and ultimately how we do business.

The solutions are always there, it is just learning how to use the amazing technology inside our heads that is missing.

How Do We Do It

Every tool that IEA develops for innovation and business strategy uses brain technology. Our tools are new and are constantly being questioned, observed, and developed. This is to ensure tools are fresh, relevant, and innovative.

First Stage

We spend 3 weeks studying research from brain synapses, circuitry, diseases, neurochemicals, etc.

Second Stage

We extrapolate the knowledge and create tools for business and innovation.

Third Stage

We experiment with the new tools during PLATYPUS and refine them.

Fourth Stage

We use give the tools to our members in our spaces and to our corporate clients

How Is It Deployed

We deploy our brain technology through our collaborative workspace in London and soon in our innovation workspace in New York.

An example is peer to peer economy as published in Gigaom.com. The basic crux of the theory is ‘transactions happen between individuals or a group of individuals and not between corporations and individuals.’ Some examples of this are Air BnB, Kickstarter, and workspaces like THECUBE and WECREATE NYC.

This type of economy is creating independence and equality, it means that anyone with a great idea and will can generate their own economy.

It all seems revolutionary, but if you look at native american tribes in the Amazon this has been their economy for thousands of years.  There are no corporation or big governing bodies just individuals creating an equal sustainability through collaboration and power balance.

The question now is, will this rise accessibility and openness begin to erode at the corporate talons?

If one constantly perceives business challenges as problems, what does that do to our state of mind? Even the word challenge alludes to accepting a confrontation, which sets us on a defensive mode, causing a brain circuitry that is not conducive to cognitive thought.

Instead we have found that it is best to see the ‘problem’ as a tool. If for example, you are having a cash flow problem, instead of it being a problem or challenge, think this is an opportunity to innovate.

Low cash flow can be due to loss of clients, too many overheads, or a change in the market. Either of the three present an opportunity to generate new business tools  and become better entrepreneurs.

If it is a need to generate new clients, switch into an innovation mode. Find tools that will help your company be more innovative in order to create better services, customer relations, communication, products, etc.