Cognitive Design

Every successful innovator or leader I have met is always trying very hard to figure something out. Asking questions, learning, testing concepts and talking with others about new ideas.  That simple observation is at the heart of two new books on innovation.

The Innovator’s DNA focuses on five skills of disruptive innovators including asking questions, observing, networking with people for new ideas, making associations and experimenting to uncover insights. Of course you need a the traditional willingness to take risks and challenge the status quo. Likewise in yet to be released book, The Lean Startup,  sees successful entrepreneurs are those that systematically experiment with all aspects of their vision – product, distribution, business model – and quickly figure out how to build a sustainable business.

Fuzzy notions of creativity are replaced by crisper notions and even disciplined methods (e.g. validated learning) for figuring things out. Readers of the cognitive design blog will see at the core of both books the psychology of  the experiential learning loop where we take action, reflect on the action, conceptualize or build up an understanding of what might be going on, take another action to test that understanding and repeat until you give up or have figured things out.

Moving through the loop, fast, cheap and deep requires considerable skill and motivation but nothing mysterious.   Much like a diet or other forms of self improvement, innovation does not involve rocket science just the hard but enjoyable work of figuring things out.

What are you trying hard to figure out? How fast, cheap and deep are you moving through the experiential learning loop to do it?

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 28th, 2011 at 7:38 am and is filed under Books, Related Fields, Service Innovation. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.