The 'I' in BUILD (Part One)

Welcome back to The BUILDer Class!

If you cannot watch the video, here is the script.

Invent (Read this out loud to yourself)

“I engage in the repetitive, human-centered creative process of identifying and anticipating needs and rapidly inventing and testing possible solutions.”

Goal: This is where you try AND fail several times at creating a viable solution to the need you identified after going through the UNDERSTAND phase.

This is the ‘innovation hub’ that will force you to get used to failing. It’s very important that you fail fast and forward so that your failure is more of a stepping stone than a stumbling block. This stage is where you throw logic out the window, to be able to find groundbreaking solutions that may not even look sensible at the time you’re writing them on sticky notes. I’ll explain this but before I get into it, say this after me;

“I may not get it right the first time, or the second, or the third, but that is the point of this exercise- to keep going until I get it right.”

“When I think I have figured it out, I may later realize that I haven’t. I will have to come back to this stage and do it again. It is a repetitive process and so there is nothing wrong with coming back to this point. It is okay.”

Here’s a real-life story to help you better understand the process. 

A professor once told me about how  she asked her students to come up with 1000 uses of a goldfish. ONE THOUSAND. They thought it was a typo and kept emailing her informing her of her mistake. She said, “well no - I actually want 1000 uses of a goldfish.” Her reason being, “after the first 10, I would start seeing ideas that are far outside the box”. True to her word, her students came up with crazy ideas such as ‘a goldfish solo concert’, ‘an open snow globe for the goldfish’ and even ‘a curtain tie back’! 

I find it difficult to just ‘think outside the box’ immediately. The truth is, when we are forced to exhaust all the ‘logical’ and ‘rational’ ideas in our heads, THEN, ONLY THEN, are we able to think outside the box. I always think about it like this - to get to the outside of the box, I have to open the box from inside. So, it’s normal that our early ideas all seem old and ‘within the box’

Writer’s Tip: I like to do this stage with a TON of sticky notes and some big paper so that I can write down every single idea that comes to me. Since the goal here is to solve a problem first, this is the one time I allow myself to think beyond my individual abilities and capabilities. There are many things I cannot do and will normally end up executing with a team of other competent people. I like to lift any possible boundaries off my mind, and just sink into a mental state of endless possibilities. Remember, this is not the time for logic and rationale. 

Catch up on the previous post here

TO BE CONTINUED…