Wasteful thoughts: From Nash's dieting to Rumi's welcoming

Wasteful thoughts – anxiety, stress, blame, guilt, etc – form a large part of our thinking process. It can consume a significant portion of time and energy in a day. Mindfulness involves recognizing wasteful thoughts while thinking and seeing them drop off, at least sometimes. The character of Nobel Laureate John Nash Jr. as depicted in the movie “A beautiful mind” advocates an approach to wasteful thoughts called “diet of the mind”. Jalaluddin Rumi, a 13th-century Sufi poet, suggests welcoming every thought be it “a joy, a depression or a meanness” in his poem “The guest house”. Are these two seemingly different approaches to wasteful thoughts, Nash’s dieting, and Rumi’s welcoming, related? What’s common between them? Could they be complementary? I attempt to explore these questions in this article.  

First, let’ see what is common between Nash and Rumi’s approaches. In Nash’s dieting approach, it is expected that one watches the thoughts while thinking to check whether they are useful at that moment. “Like a diet of the mind, I choose not to indulge certain appetites,” says Nash in the movie.  In Rumi’s poem, he says, “meet them (thoughts) at the door laughing”. Both these approaches assume a certain degree of attentional freedom such that one is able to watch the ongoing thoughts. Based on my experience, I feel this isn’t as easy as it sounds. And it is especially difficult when there is negative emotion accompanying the thoughts. However, I feel attentional flexibility can be built with practice by learning to hop off the train of thought.

Now, let’s turn to Nash’s approach. The best way to get a feel for this approach is by experimenting with it. Whenever you get a chance, watch the ongoing thoughts. And check if this train of thought is serving any useful purpose at that moment. Sometimes the answer would be “yes”, other times “no”. When we recognize a train of thought to be wasteful at that time, it drops off, at least sometimes. It may be replaced by another train of thought and so on. It is a wonderful experience to see a repetitive thought pattern drop off at least for a while. Like Nash suggests, the “diet of the mind” involves learning not to indulge in certain thought patterns by being alert and watchful.

Nash’s dieting approach may not work all the time. You feel you have recognized the train of thought to be wasteful and yet it persists. One possibility is that this recognition hasn’t touched the source that is fuelling the thought pattern. For example, I may be worrying about the impending recession and I recognize the repetitiveness of this thought pattern to be wasteful. However, deep down I may be carrying an assumption that it is absolutely necessary that I have a job. And this absolute necessity overpowers the thinking process. And this is where Rumi’s approach may be helpful.

Rumi says,

This being human is a guest house.

Every morning a new arrival.

 

A joy, a depression, a meanness,

some momentary awareness comes

as an unexpected visitor.

 

Welcome and entertain them all!

Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,

who violently sweep your house

empty of its furniture,

still, treat each guest honorably.

He may be clearing you out

for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,

meet them at the door laughing,

and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,

because each has been sent

as a guide from beyond.

Rumi is challenging us here. Try meeting a dark thought laughing. It is not easy. I find the phrase, “each has been sent as a guide from beyond” very helpful. What is this place from beyond that the thought is coming from? Could it be a clue to a mystery? My suggestion is that this place is where assumptions of absolute necessity reside. And they are the doorways to self-awareness.

As mentioned in the earlier para, I may carry an assumption of absolute necessity that, “I MUST never be out of a job.” These assumptions of absolute necessities are held deep down somewhere. And yet discovering them reveals a lot about oneself. If I clearly see that there is nothing absolute about this assumption and it is quite possible that I might be out of a job. And several people I know have been out of jobs and many of them got back new jobs. And even if one doesn’t get a job, it is not the end of the world. Life is much more immense and mysterious than a job. If one sees all of this clearly then it stops overpowering the thinking process.

To summarize, both Nash’s dieting and Rumi’s welcoming approach assume a certain degree of attentional freedom. If you feel you don’t have it yet, then that is the first step. Once you are able to watch the ongoing train of thought, experiment with Nash’s dieting approach. Just like you watch what you are taking on your plate, watch the thoughts you are indulging in. If you recognize them to be wasteful at the moment, they will drop off. For repetitive thoughts that persist, learn to use them as a guide to explore the mysterious place “from beyond”. You may discover an assumption of absolute necessity hiding there which makes no sense.

And don’t be alarmed if you begin to see that there is no such a thing as an absolute necessity. It is possible that this is the place where Rumi wrote his poems. 

Sources:

“The guest house” is from “The Essential Rumi” translations by Coleman Barks, HarperOne, 1995.

Nash’s quotes are from the movie “A beautiful mind”.

Images: Youtube.com 

I explore wasteful thoughts and absolute necessities in my book "Mindfulness: connected with the real you".

Can we empathize through data without face-to-face interaction?

As a facilitator of design thinking workshops, I have held a view that face-to-face observation and listening are essential elements of empathy. Our body language sends powerful ques about our state of being, our approvals, disapprovals, comforts, discomforts, etc. And it is very difficult to capture these through data, graphs, analytics, etc. However, this belief is being shaken up over the past few years. Can we empathize through data alone? In this article, I present a few examples that have made me ambivalent.

Last year I read Brad Stones’ “Amazon unbound: Jeff Bezos and the invention of a global empire”. It is a story of Amazon’s transformation from a powerful force into the Giant over the past decade. The book highlights the data obsession at Amazon led by Jeff Bezos and percolated throughout the company. Decisions about whether to launch a new product such as Alexa, which private label products to launch and the locations of the warehouses were all based on data. Stones sometimes calls this “cold, hard data”. Given the size of Amazon’s customer base and its nature of ecommerce business where except delivery everything else happens online, it is understandable that Amazon doesn’t need face-to-face observation of customers. It is possible that the ecommerce business focuses on the 3 core customer needs, low prices, vast selection and fast delivery which don’t change much. Perhaps all other customer insights come through data without any face-to-face observation.

I thought the situation may be different for Alexa, the AI-enabled conversational device as well as a technology platform Amazon sells because building empathy is an important goal. It turns out the kind of effort that is being put in making Alexa socially relevant in a conversation, involves gathering a large amount of customer conversations with Alexa. This seems to be more of device-to-face interaction rather than face-to-face interaction. Customers who are helping Amazon evaluate newer ways of conversing with customers as part of Alexa Prize competition are interacting with the device and giving a rating on how likely they would be to converse with this “friend” again. No face-to-face interaction.

One would expect that face-to-face interaction is necessary in emergency psychiatry. However, Karl Deisseroth, a psychiatrist and neuroscientist at Stanford, tells in the book “Connections: the new science of emotion”, how his belief has changed over the years and got further validated during Covid pandemic. He says, “Emergency psychiatry, I saw again and again, though it somehow surprised me each time, can be carried out with precision even over phone, through that lonely single line.” He feels, “Psychiatry and medicine broadly – though still constructed around interpersonal communication – can survive and operate well with much less social information than the traditional face-to-face interview provides.”

Earlier this year, I read Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel “Klara and the sun”. The protagonist of this story is an artificial friend, Klara. And one of the reviewers has aptly called this book “an absolute master class in empathy.” Ishiguro in his subtle and slow-moving style creates various scenes in which Klara, the robot, learns about human anxieties and aspirations through observation and conversation. If this fiction work is any indication of what could become a reality, then perhaps outsourcing empathizing to a robot is not too farfetched.

A few months ago, I joined a team of senior managers at an offsite in the outskirts of Bangalore. The team members have been working with each other for years and were meeting online throughout the pandemic. However, they were very happy with the face-to-face interaction and it came up multiple times during the conversations.  Video calls were dry and to the point. The physical presence, jokes, fun cooking activity, eating together in a relaxed atmosphere was no match to innumerable video calls.

Now you get some idea about my ambivalence. Can we empathize through data without face-to-face interaction? The answer seems to be a ‘yes’ at least in some contexts. But, can we eliminate face-to-face interaction in most contexts? I am doubtful but now open to the possibility.

Sources:

For Alexa related discussion, check out

Laura Stevens, “Alexa, can you be empathetic, all-knowing and funny?”, Wall Street Journal, March 7, 2019

“Rohit Prasad: Amazon, Alexa and Conversational AI”, interview of Rohit Prasad, Head Scientist, Alexa by Lex Fridman, Dec 14, 2019.

What does Ramana Maharshi mean by “All sciences end in the Self”?

“Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi” has been my reflection companion for over two decades. It contains conversations with Ramana Maharshi (RM) (1879-1950), a spiritual teacher known for his emphasis on self-inquiry. The conversations in this book took place between 1935 and 1939 in RM’s ashram in Tiruvannamalai in South India and were recorded by one of the then residents of the ashram, Munagala Venkataramiah.

In one of the conversations with a visitor in 1937 (Talk 380), RM said, “All sciences end in the Self”.  What did RM mean by this? Science continues to unravel so many mysteries including the mystery surrounding the concept of self. Isn’t it an important path towards understanding reality and one’s own nature? Did RM underestimate the power of science? This is an attempt to explore these questions.

Let’s begin with an excerpt from Talk 380 where this quote appears. The visitor had come from Europe and most likely there would have been a translator.

V: I want confirmation of the Self.

RM: You seek the confirmation from others. Each one though addressed as ‘you’, styles himself ‘I’. The confirmation is only from ‘I’. There is no ‘you’ at all. All are comprised in ‘I’. The other can be known only when the Self is posited. The others do not exist without the subject.

V: Again, this is nothing new. When I was with Sir C. V. Raman he told me that the theory of smell could be explained from his theory of light. Smell need no longer be explained in terms of chemistry. Now, there is something new; it is progress. That is what I mean, when I say that there is nothing new in all the statements I hear now.

RM: ‘I’ is never new. It is eternally the same.

V: Do you mean to say that there is no progress?

RM: Progress is perceived by the outgoing mind. Everything is still when the mind is introverted and the Self is sought.

V: The Sciences - what becomes of them?

RM: They all end in the Self. The Self is their finality

Let’s note that “the Self” is a translation of the Sanskrit word Swarupa which could also be translated as “one’s nature” or essence. 

How ignorant was RM about sciences? In the same book where the above-mentioned conversation happens, there are a couple of places where RM refers to science. “Even the material sciences trace the origin of the universe to some one primordial matter - subtle, exceedingly subtle.” (Talk 199) And, another one, “There is no difference between matter and spirit. Modern science admits that all matter is energy.” (Talk 268) This implies that RM had probably heard of the implications of the special theory of relativity and the brand-new branch of quantum mechanics. Looks like he was not totally ignorant.

Then where does this confidence of “All sciences end in the Self” come from? Let’s look at one more elaboration of RM on this topic (Talk 388):

“There are no objects without the subject, i.e., the objects do not come and tell you that they are, but it is you who says that there are the objects. The objects are therefore what the seer makes of them. They have no existence independent of the subject. Find out what you are and then you understand what the world is.”

Empirical evidence is an important aspect of the scientific method. Scientific theories predict future observations for a given context. This implies the separation of observer and observed. Is observer independent of observed? What if the observer is the observed? It could be like one hand observing the other hand – having some relative independence but ultimately part of one whole. Perhaps what RM is trying to say is that science has relevance when the subject considers itself to be independent of the object and loses its relevance when the sense of separateness vanishes.   

And even if a branch of science (e.g. quantum mechanics, statistical mechanics, neuroscience) is telling that observer and observed are not independent, RM feels that having the mere knowledge is not the same as internalizing that knowledge. A scientist may champion a monistic theory and yet feel frustrated or get depressed because fellow scientists are not paying attention to his theory. RM brings it out in the following Q&A from Talk 27.

Q: Is the study of science, psychology, physiology, philosophy, etc. helpful for (1) this art of yoga-liberation. (2) the intuitive grasp of the unity of the Real?

RM: Very little. Some knowledge is needed for yoga and it may be found in books. But practical application is the thing needed, and personal example, personal touch and personal instructions are the most helpful aids. As for the other, a person may laboriously convince himself of the truth to be intuited, i.e., its function and nature, but the actual intuition is akin to feeling and requires practice and personal contact. Mere book learning is not of any great use. After realisation all intellectual loads are useless burdens and are thrown overboard as jetsam. Jettisoning the ego is necessary and natural.

This is like the difference between cycling and cycology. One may know the theory behind how a cycle works and how a cyclist balances his weight and yet may not know cycling. Cycling is a full-body knowledge also called embodied cognition and it is mostly implicit. Similarly, knowing that the self is not independent of and intimately connected with the outside world is not enough. It needs to be embodied and internalized to be effective.  

One implication of what RM is saying is that reading this blog itself is of very little use. Turning attention inwards, watching the movement of thought, and exploring the origin of I-thought is more important. RM says, “Change your outlook. Look within. Find the Self. Who is the substratum of the subject and the object? Find it and all problems are solved.” (Talk 331)

Related blog:

Ramana Maharshi’s self-inquiry through Upadesa Saram verses, Dec 2021.

Image source: amazon.in

Is “8 steps to innovation” still relevant in the digital era?

It has been nine years since the publication of our book “8 steps to innovation: going from jugaad to excellence”. In a fast-paced world where technology becomes obsolete every two-three years, nine years is a long time. My co-author Prof. Rishikesha Krishnan has been nudging me and suggesting that we should re-look at the framework, especially in the context of the digital era. Is the framework still relevant? Here is an attempt to sketch some initial thoughts on this topic. The attempt is clearly biased and criticism is more than welcome.

Relevance of pipeline-velocity-batting average:  The framework addresses the question, “How to become more innovative systematically irrespective of strategy, size, sector, and culture?” This question is more relevant for organizations and teams and less relevant for individuals. The framework divides the main question into three sub-questions: How to build an idea pipeline? How to improve idea velocity? And how to enhance batting average? The pipeline problem addresses the generation of a constant stream of business-relevant ideas. Velocity problem explores validation of various assumptions associated with the ideas and finding relevant resources including investors for the promising ideas. Batting average problem looks at increasing the chance of success for big bets while building a margin of safety. 

Are pipeline, velocity, and batting average problems still relevant in the digital era? I have been presenting these sub-questions to MBA students and corporate executives. And nobody has questioned the relevance of any of these sub-questions. These questions were relevant when Thomas Edison was running his invention factory more than a hundred years ago and are relevant for the innovation engine at Mahindra today. Even a corner grocery shop if it plans to do systematic innovation would have to address these questions. So then, what has changed?

The eight steps are responses to these three questions. First three steps address the pipeline problem, the next three steps address the velocity problem, and the final two address the batting average problem. Let’s see how the relevance of each step changes in the digital era.

Pipeline problem: (Step-1, 2, 3)

Step-1: Laying the foundation: This step involves setting up the core processes like idea management process, buzz creation process, and learning and development process. It also involves establishing clarity on the scope, source, and sponsorship of innovations. I feel these things are not affected in the digital era. Any organization that is serious about innovation has these in place in some form or the other.

Step-2: Create a challenge book: This step emphasizes the creation of a challenge book and establishing collective clarity around it. The digital era has created new metaphors like Uber (marketplace), Tesla (EV, semi-autonomous, over the air upgrades), Zomato (home delivery), Amazon (shopping convenience), Paytm (mobile wallets), etc. In the past few years, we have seen new waves like the pandemic, sustainability-related regulatory norms, electric vehicles, cryptocurrency, machine learning, etc. gaining momentum. All these metaphors and waves contribute to building a challenge book. However, in my opinion, the relevance of challenge book doesn’t go away. In fact, it becomes more relevant because in a world of ever-increasing distractions, challenge book can bring focus to the innovation efforts.

Step-3: Build participation: This step assumes that navigating complex challenges may benefit from participation, the way it happens in a café or a conference. The assumption remains relevant in the digital era. However, the digital era highlights the importance of the customer experience dimension.  With steps like search, discovery, comparison, selection, payment, delivery, and returns associated with online shopping, end-to-end experience has become increasingly important. Moreover, this cuts across the shopping of products like mobile phones, grocery items, and services like blood testing and banking. Hence, a methodology like design thinking which puts experience design at its center and weaves empathy, participative problem solving, and experimentation in an iterative manner has gained significance.

Velocity problem: (Step-4, 5, 6)

Step-4: Experiment at low-cost with high speed: The digital era has seen the emergence of new tools – computational modeling tools, simulators, 3D-printers, etc. Many of these tools are now available on cloud making them easily accessible at low-cost. They are helping idea authors test their ideas or at least some assumptions associated with their ideas with less cost and at high speed. For consumer-facing digital applications, A/B testing – a form of randomized controlled experimentation – has become an important mechanism for testing ideas. No matter what the technology or tools, the relevance of low-cost high-speed experimentation hasn’t diminished over the years.

 Step-5: Find a champion: This step is based on the assumption – An idea either finds a champion or dies. Is the assumption still valid? Very much. Finding a strategic customer who endorses the idea or an investor who supports the development of the idea continues to be important today. Social media has helped ideas authors find champions by publicizing their idea through videos. Programs like Shark Tank are creating platforms for start-ups to find investors and/or mentors.

Step-6: Iterate on the business model: As the relevance of data increased, so did the importance of business models that leverage data. Dental insurance company Bento partnered with Philips which manufactures electric toothbrushes. This is because having the data on how many times a person brushes his teeth would help determine his dental insurance. EV companies like Ather Energy began to unbundle their product offering and started selling batteries separately as a subscription. Banks began to offer Buy-Now-Pay-Later (BNPL) payment option as an alternative to credit cards. Business model innovation continues to be an important lever for digital businesses.

Batting average problem: (step-7, 8)

Step-7: Build an innovation sandbox: Exploring big bets is inevitable for any company that is serious about survival. Google explores self-driving cars, Amazon experiments with Just-walk-out stores, and Facebook bets big on virtual/augmented reality. Small firms may have to consider automation and analytics seriously. The challenge is you can’t bet on all the big trends, you will have to choose. And even after choosing a trend, you may not know how this trend may lead to a new offering. You need to identify a few use-cases, invest in building experimentation infrastructure, and perform a large set of experiments to see what is both meaningful in your context and promising enough. In short, you need to build an innovation sandbox, unless you choose to acquire the innovation. Building an innovation sandbox is neither low-cost nor a short-term project. Technology platforms may speed up the process and open innovation may help in connecting ideas from remote corners of the world.  I haven’t seen its relevance diminished.

Step-8: Build a margin of safety: Big bets bring risky exposures. You can’t have one and not the other. Datacenter outages are a given once you adopt the cloud. If you are a bank and if you don’t worry about managing data center outages you will be in trouble sooner or later. HDFC Bank learned it the hard way. Shakespeare knew that a pound of flesh is a risky promise for the Merchant of Venice. And V G Siddhartha, the founder of Café Coffee Day was expected to know how much debt is enough. This step – building a margin of safety – could very well be the most challenging step to internalize. And it is evergreen.

In short, from my biased perspective, the core problems raised in the book – pipeline, velocity, and batting average are still relevant in the digital era. And 8-step responses are relevant too. However, your input is welcome and it is possible that I am missing something here.

How does tradition-induced brain damage get healed?

Last month I explored the question “Can tradition cause brain damage?” in a blog.  The post was based on a dialogue between spiritual teacher Jiddu Krishnamurti and physicist David Bohm in the book “The limits of thought”. My blog ended with a brief mention of how the brain damage could get healed as per the dialogue. In this article, I would like to expand on the healing process as JK-Bohm discuss it in the book.

Can the damage be healed at all? JK says, “If it is completely damaged, you can’t do anything about it, you are ready for an asylum. But we are talking of a brain that is not too damaged.”¹

What is the first necessity? JK says, “That is the first necessity, that I realize it.” What do I realize? “That whatever the damaged brain does, which is the result of thought and tradition and all the rest of it, will produce further damage.”²

Let me try to explain this part with an example. Let’s say the cultural tradition says that you must become a successful person otherwise your life is a waste or success is necessary for a secure future. So, the thought of becoming successful dominates my life. It involves identifying success parameters like wealth, position, fame, social contribution, etc. And I get caught in the measurement game. I constantly compare what I have (wealth, name, fame) with some gold standard of success, find something that is still missing and strive to get there.

We can extend this to religious tradition as well. JK says, “I have accumulated psychologically as a Hindu; another has accumulated as a Muslim; there are thousands of divisions. Therefore, accumulation in its very nature divides people, and therefore creates conflict.”³

What JK is saying is that the first step is to realize that my thought process is caught in a loop that is the result of the tradition-induced brain damage and it is making the damage worse.  The next thing that may happen is a deep insight which “acts as a tremendous shock or jolt”4 to the brain.

Deep insight into the movement of thought: JK says, “If I have an insight into the whole nature of control, which is measure, that liberates the mind from the burden.”⁵ “When there is this insight, the damage is undon.”⁶ However, JK warns, “It (the insight) cannot be invited. It’s like saying – I’ll be attentive in order to receive truth. That’s nonsense.”⁷

Now, insights are not new to us. When there is a shift of perception while looking at an optical illusion, it is an example of a tiny insight. Many of us also experience a small jolt when we realize a belief, we held for a long time is false. For example, Santa Clause is a fiction, or ghosts don’t exist. Could a deep insight JK is talking about bring a significant change in the brain? Yes, it is possible. Unfortunately, there is no formula or method for getting the insight.

Don’t be concerned with truth: Should I strive for such a deep insight into truth? JK says, “Don’t be concerned with truth, you don’t know what it means. Be concerned only with (thought-created) reality and its distortions. To be free of distortions, just observe the distortions, don’t resist them, just observe them. That observation needs (attentional) freedom and that freedom and the observation will give you energy to push away the distortions.”8 A distortion typically manifests as a disturbance such as fear, anxiety, stress, anger, blame, guilt, etc.

To summarize, we need attentional freedom to watch the movement of thought. It is important to observe the movement especially when there is a disturbance in the form of fear, anxiety, anger, etc. This observation may cultivate the ground for a deep insight to sprout into the meaninglessness of the whole nature of control and measurement thought is caught up in. The deep insight would heal the brain. There is no formula or method for the insight.

Source:

1.       “The limits of thought”, J. Krishnamurti and David Bohm, Krishnamurti Foundation India, 2013, page 94.

2.       “Limits of thought”, Page 94

3.       “Limits of thought”, Page 123

4.       “Limits of thought”, Page 94

5.       “Limits of thought”, Page 106

6.       “Limits of thought”, Page 108

7.       “Limits of thought”, Page 52

8.       “Limits of thought”, Page 26

A 10-point checklist for running a challenge campaign

You can solve a tough challenge by working alone in your garage or attic for years like how Prof. Andrew Wiles worked on Fermat’s Last Theorem for several years. Alternately, you can throw the challenge to a group of people and solve it collectively. The group can be a couple of friends or a large organization. The challenge could be an urgent challenge like the iPhone multitouch keypad accuracy problem to be solved in a matter of days. Or it could be an automation challenge Tanishq, the jewellery division of Titan, launched in 2008 which might have run for a few months resulting in inventing the diamond-bagging machine over the next few years.

I have been participating in the design of challenge campaigns in the organizations for over a decade and consider them to be a key element of innovation initiatives. Some of these challenges were more urgent like the iPhone multitouch challenge while others were closer to Titan’s automation challenge. Over the years I ended up preparing a checklist that I use when I participate in a challenge campaign design. Not all items in the checklist are useful in all challenges. Nevertheless, it helps to go over them to check if they are relevant in that context.

1.       Identify a challenge sponsor: It is important that a challenge campaign begins with a sponsor. In case of iPhone multitouch, the head of engineering was the sponsor while in Tanishq perhaps the business head of the Tanishq division was the sponsor. 

2.       Identify a challenge theme: The challenge theme may come from the sponsor. Alternately, he may invite challenges from his peers/team members. The theme can be loose like “simplify and automate” or it can be sharper like “get keyboard accuracy to 90%”. I remember themes like “half the time” for reducing the delivery time to half, “single-click cloud migration”. These days Zomato’s “10 minutes delivery” is in the news. The most important characteristic of a theme should be its business relevance. A good metaphor helps make the challenge concrete, enhance its emotional appeal and provide hooks for imagination.

3.       Prepare a project plan: Is the challenge expected to run for a few days, a few weeks, or a few months? Whom should we invite? Will there be one round, two rounds, or more? Will there be help in terms of resources for prototyping? Will there be mentoring for idea authors for clarifying their ideas and preparing a business case? Will we have a panel for the final round? How will promising ideas go forward? It helps to discuss these questions and possible options with the sponsor and create a project plan.

4.       Know Your Challenge (KYC) workshop: For a “simplify and automate” challenge you don’t need a workshop to explain it. However, for challenges related to emerging technologies or business challenges that are complex or nuanced, it helps to have a workshop where the sponsor and perhaps a few experts articulate what the challenge means to them. They may provide starting points for those interested in studying the topics further. These could be department heads such as sales, marketing, finance, R&D giving their perspective on a challenge area.

5.       Announce the challenge and invite ideas: This is the step where challenge is announced and ideas are invited. This could be done in multiple ways. If it is a small team, like in iPhone multitouch challenge, you could announce it in a team meeting. If you want to invite experts or members from outside your team or business, you may want to announce it to your team first so that they get some lead time to submit their ideas before others. If you feel subject matter experts (SMEs) from within the team can come in a week or two later that’s fine too. In the case of iPhone multitouch challenge, this step merged with step 7 of prototyping. Team members didn’t come out with ideas and waited for a go-ahead for prototyping. Ideas were demonstrated through prototypes. In most challenge campaigns I have witnessed, idea generation and prototyping were separate stages.

6.       Helping idea authors to clarify their ideas: When people get ideas, they are raw and many times unclear. If you ask clarifying questions it helps them to expand on their ideas. Sometimes people are not sure if their ideas are worthy of submission. Encouraging them helps. When one is playing this sounding-board role, it is important not to be judgmental at this point even if you feel the idea may not work. This is easier said than done and needs alertness. For a large campaign, volunteers may be needed to play this role of sounding board or catalyst.

7.       Idea selection:  If ideas are posted on a wall in your office, idea selection could mean just doing tick marks. Depending upon the number of ideas, idea selection may go through two or three rounds. For example, ideas posted on a portal may go through a social selection process similar to likes on a social media site. One could also invite a panel to select ideas. 

8.       Prototyping/experimentation:  Authors of the selected ideas are invited to build low-fidelity prototypes. This is a tricky stage because idea authors may not get time to do this work. One way to overcome this issue is by organizing an event such as a hackathon where the idea authors work individually or by bringing collaborators to build prototypes. Prototypes may also include storyboards, wireframes, paper models, CAD models, 3D printed models, scrap material demos, etc. This stage may require organizers to make relevant tools available to the idea authors. I typically get pushback from manufacturing companies saying that this is not practical. However, in most cases, this can be done with some preparation.

9.       Selection and preparation for final presentation: After prototyping, there could be another round of selection for final presentations to the sponsor and his panel. In the final presentation, the panel typically looks at return-on-investment potential for ideas. However, idea authors may not have the skills to make a business case. Hence, the idea authors may need mentoring. The campaign organizers may have to facilitate this process of identifying right mentors for finalists.

10.   Presentation to the sponsor/panel: This is the final stage. The most important aspect of this stage is the nature of sponsorship for the selected ideas. If you give gift coupons and end the show that sends a poor message. As mentioned in step-2, if the challenge is business relevant, then the sponsorship should reflect that. In the case of iPhone challenge, Ken Kocienda became the feature owner for the multitouch autocorrect function and began developing it further full-time. In the case of Titan’s diamond bagging machine, I am sure there was a dedicated cross-functional team that worked on it as a formal project. Note that the sponsorship doesn’t have to be for the complete implementation. Like a typical venture fund, it could be for a specific milestone of validating certain assumptions be it need, technical feasibility, performance, etc.

Hope you find the checklist useful. Happy to hear your input.

Sources:

Image: “Creative selection: Inside Apple’s design process during the golden age of Steve Jobs,” by Ken Kocienda page 147.

Titan’s diamond bagging machine story is also described in “The 9 nuggets of innovation” by L R Natarajan, page 16.

Is design thinking right-brain centric?

“Is design thinking a right-brain specialization?” or “Am I a left-brain person?” Questions of these sorts are not uncommon in my design thinking workshop. However, I have been unsure of my response to this topic so far. My ambivalence has been influenced by the literature that points to the myths associated with creative-left vs analytical-right brain classification (also check this article). But then popular authors like Daniel Pink have argued that abilities like design are right-brain abilities (Check his video 53:00). My friend and collaborator Prof. Ganesh Prabhu has been presenting this Daniel Pink view in our joint program at IIM Bangalore for the past few years. That kept on nudging me to look for more evidence one way or the other. Recently, I came across Iain McGilchrist's book “The master and his emissary: the divided brain and the making of the Western world” which has shed some light on this confusion. In this article, I would like to present my learnings from this book related to this left-vs-right brain topic.

Let me begin with a process view of design thinking and associated competencies that I present in my workshops. Note that this is not the only process view of design thinking and is borrowed from the Stanford Design School framework. The competency view is not exhaustive either. But it is useful for our purpose.

Now, let’s turn to McGlichrist's book “The master and his emissary”. McGilchrist is suggesting in this book that left (LH) and right hemispheres (RH) are different in not what they do but how they see or pay attention to the world. The LH sees the world through a map of objects it constructs separate from itself and its primary objective is to secure a better future by manipulating the world. In contrast, the RH sees the world as fresh, living, ever-flowing whole not separate from itself. LH sees parts first while RH sees the whole first. Originally, the RH was the master and the LH was a helper to carry out repetitive tasks. However, over the centuries, the map has become extremely sophisticated and the helper or the emissary has become the dominant master and it has made RH a subservient helper. Through the nerve fibres connecting LH and RH (corpus collosum), LH mostly sends the message to RH, “I don’t need you”. As the map gets solidified, one becomes more intolerant of alternate worldviews. The map begins to get treated as the territory and that creates all kinds of conflicts.

When LH becomes dominant, McGilchrist argues, certain functions where RH plays an important role weaken. He mentions many but here is a list relevant for us: empathy, metaphoric thinking, capacity for insight, and holding ambiguous possibilities in suspension. Here are a few quotes from the book on each of them:

Empathy: Self-awareness, empathy, identification with others, and more generally inter-subjective processes are largely dependent upon…right hemisphere resources. (pg 57, 2019 new expanded edition)

Metaphoric thinking: Metaphoric thinking is fundamental to our understanding of the world because it is the only way in which understanding can reach outside the system of signs to life itself. It is what links language to life…Only the right hemisphere has the capacity to understand metaphor. (pg 115)

Insight: Insight, whether mathematical or verbal, is the sort of problem-solving that happens when we, precisely, not concentrating on it, is associated with activation in the right hemisphere. (pg 65)

Holding uncertainty: The left hemisphere needs certainty and needs to be right. The right hemisphere makes it possible to hold several ambiguous possibilities in suspension together without premature closure on one outcome. (pg 82)

While empathy and metaphoric thinking map directly onto the process view above, insight is typically associated with define and ideation stages, and holding uncertainty is related to hypothesis thinking of the test stage. Thus, if McGilchrist’s hypothesis is indeed correct, then we might have a tendency where LH inhibits RH from either activating or passing on information related to empathy, metaphors, insight, alternate hypotheses. 

Of course, this doesn’t mean everything in design thinking is right-brain centric. For example, one can define a challenge without using a metaphor – improve sales by ten percent or reduce the turnaround time by fifty percent. Inventive techniques seem to, at least partly, belong to the LH domain. Similarly, prototyping would need LH resources to manipulate objects in building the prototype.

In short, McGilchrist’s book “The master and his emissary” suggests that design thinking is heavily dependent on right hemispheric resources. It is no surprise that learners who approach design thinking as purely a conceptual framework to be understood by reading a book or listening to a lecture struggle to grasp the essence.