The Manner of Idea Creation

Background

Do you remember the last time you take a photo? Most of the people have take pictures every day and post them online including Snapchat and Instagram. However is there any connection between us and the object?

Diagram

A company held a summer sale event and set up a DJ-booth for the promotion.

During DJ session, pedestrians stopped in front of the booth and took photos and videos. Usually those photos function as an amplifier of the information. On the other hand, when DJ is not performing, people do not stop: it does not serve the purpose. As I saw this situation, I started thinking why this happens and drew the following diagram.

Without DJ, a speaker or music itself is just a piece of machine. On the x-axis, I put “presence” and on the y-axis I put “degree of empathy,” or “possibility of sharing.” The relation between them looks like this. The more powerful the presence is, the more likely to be shared. That’s the reason why pedestrians did not take photo outside the DJ session.

Background

A Japanese traditional doll crafting company wanted to expand its customer and business opportunity.

Solution

Usually, grandparents give this Hinamatsuri doll to the grandchildren with wishes of safe and growth, etc. In order to expand potential customers, I thought young generations should be targeted (as a gift from men to women). This is the SHIFT in a business model.

In addition, doll itself is a product; it does not connected to the Internet. However, in recent years, Instagram and other SNS have become a powerful tool to make a movement. Bridging between Online and Offline Experience is a crucial strategy, I thought. Then, how about the following idea? As you point smart phone’s camera to the doll’s face, the message from a sender appears on the screen. Each face has a different message/meaning, for instance happy face wishes happy marriage. It enable users to upload the photo on SNS easily and the story of the product spread rapidly. This process includes the SHIFT in both technology and customer experience.

Background

The number of smartphone users is rapidly increasing right now and people use sim card for their internet services. How can we add value to the mobile service? A mobile company tries to answer this question.

Diagram

When we talk about mobile services, most of the activities are completed within the upper left area — individual and online. If we continue generating new ideas of mobile service, I bet most of the concepts stick with this area. It is time to break the bias. Let’s take the opposite spot — group and offline. It sounds crazy and difficult to achieve, however this is the beginning of idea creation. How can we develop an idea from this concept?

Background

 In recent years, people started to talk about creativity. “Innovation is a key to the growth,” or “We need another Steve Jobs or Elon Musk.” However, does this modern society do a good job in terms of creativity? 

Diagram

Joi Ito, the director of MIT Media Lab, classifies study into two categories: Education and Learning. Education is, by his definition, something that is done to you. On the other hand, Learning is something you do for yourself. In modern education, people are taught to use jargons in the academic field. Unfortunately, however, the relationship between use of jargon and creativity looks like the diagram above. The more you use jargons, the less creative you become. It is a sad story, but it is true. The reason why this happens is about BIAS. Jargons make us to see things from a narrow scope. Think about Joi; he dropped out of college twice but Joi is the director of one the most leading institutions in the world right now. 

Well, how can we deal with this problem? It is true, though, people have started to aware of the danger of current education. Yes, the society knows how to deal with it, but it faces a huge barrier: System. Since most of the people who have power in the society experienced current education, it is hard to change it instantly. Let’s name it “S-S Dilemma.” I assume that a drastic change in education takes time. Until that moment, we must continue Learning in order to enhance our creativity. 

Additional Information

[YouTube] Conversation between Joi Ito and Mimi Ito about learning, social science and digital media. 

[ Background ]

I was reading a psychology book, How Emotions Are Made (Barrett, 2017) several weeks ago. In that book, the author touches upon the idea of “prediction(concept)” and discusses how people react to it. I came up with the following idea (the connection between prediction error and story creation) and draw diagrams.

[ Diagram ]

In the daily life people face a series of event: A, B, and C. There is a loose connection among them and people unconsciously start to draw a line. It is a concept as well as prediction. 

Then we expect the following event D on the line. However, we suddenly encounter another event E which is called “prediction error.” 

Although E has nothing to do with a prediction line, people start wondering and try to find some connection between a group (A, B and C) and E. That is the beginning of story creation. Thanks to this process, people turn a boring series of event into a meaningful personal experience.

[ Background ]

Why do people try to “come up with,” rather than to “create” an idea?

[ Diagram]

Whenever I work with people to start some project, they always ask me “do you have an idea?" From my point of view, they think that great ideas, as known as innovation, come up from the brain instantly; however it is not true. If you want to have a great idea, you have to "create” it.

For instance, a company asks you to “come up with” a new hotel. Most of the people start thinking about new hotel ideas such as a hotel for long-stay travelers and a manga-world hotel. If you are on this strategy/method, the outcome would be not sexy.

Instead, start exploring around the idea and asking yourselves. What is a hotel industry? Why do I think this idea is cool? What are the cool factors? Focusing and asking  on “why” rather than “what” enable us to create  deeper concepts.

Another important aspect of creating an idea is fighting with the bias. After you found cool factors, you might start combining them and creating ideas. THIS IS THE BIAS. Fighting with that bias and creating controversial new ideas that has never seen before are required to finish the process of idea creation.

[ Exercise ]

Find three apps that you think “cool.”

Find three cool factors in each app (3x3=9 cool factors). 

Combine some cool factors togeher and create new ideas. Do not forget to put ideas on the diagram. 

[ Background ]

What is going to be the important aspect of next service, product or business in general? I attended to several conferences in Japan and drew this diagram to simplify the concept.

[ Diagram ]

General vs. Personal and Function vs. Meaning. 

General function is what we think when we hear function. We can listen to music with iPhone or PC has variety of functions, for instance. Personal meaning is a connection to an individual. You might say this is a gift from my grandma or I have been using this pen since I was six. Although these concept still have a power, there are new animals: personal function and general story. First, let’s talk about personal function. Thanks to the development of technology, we can easily connect to someone even to a factory. Most of the current products are designed for the mass. However we can order and customize online: we can add personal function into services and products. It is the age of F2C (factory-to-consumer).

[ Background ]

Japanese comedian/creator, Akihiro Nishino was talking about the next generation of entertainment on Youtube. I put into the form of a diagram and extended its concept to education.

[ Diagram ] 

For the past few decades, the relationship between creator and audience has looked like this diagram. There is a clear boundary between them. For instance, in a concert, performers play/sing/dance music while the audience watching and enjoying it. Fashion show or newspaper is also a good example. This concept is also applied to education. Most of the cases, teachers give lectures while students listening and taking notes. It is true that discussion class exists today, but usually knowledge goes from one to the other.

This diagram shows the next generation of entertainment and education.  There is no clear boundary between creator and audience; professional and amateur. All of them are both creator and audience. What I mean is, for instance in education, teacher does not teach nor study. All of the participants study/learn and teach each other. We share knowledge, creation process, performance, atmosphere, and so on together. We can say it is the new system of “sharing economy.” 

This video is a good example of integration of creator and audience.

[ Background ]

I started noticing that my friends studying abroad are doing something weird. A lot of them start blogging about the life at the college and give a presentation when they come back to Japan. Of course this whole process is done in Japanese and the main target is Japanese. Usually they talk and write about what they saw, heard and felt. In addition, no one tries to get out from this limited frame. I started to draw a diagram in order to analyze and prepare for the better communication. *This diagram (concept) was co-created with Genji Kawakita.

[ Diagram ]

Communication1.0 — External x Single

People convey the information such as what they saw, heard and felt (external) to the single target. The example was mentioned in the previous section.

Communication2.0 — External x Multiple

People convey external information to the multiple target. In this context, target means culture, academic field and similar things.

Communication3.0 — Internal x Single

People convey the information such as what they think or what they can do (internal) to the single target.

Communication4.0 — Internal x Multiple

People convey internal information to a massive audience. The main language is English and multiple medias are used.

[ Background ]

A year ago, I was writing essays for college admission and thinking about like, “What is my strength?” or “How can I contribute to the campus community?” I came up with this idea “ 3 types of leader”.

[ Doodle ]

First, I wanted to visualize my ideal leader model “catalytic leader” and decided to do so by showing the relationship between leader and energy flow. Finally I classified leader into three types. Charismatic Leader: Energy flow is external. This kind of person express their opinion/idea to the external world. They tend to control the community and to become a dictator. Reliable Leader: Energy flows toward the leader. Everybody wants to listen leader’s opinion and tends to rely on them. Mother is similar to this type (think about the relationship between mother and child. A child asks for the help). Catalytic Leader: At a glance, this person has nothing to do with energy flow. The arrow goes neither external or internal. However this leader plays an important role to shape the flow properly and acts like a catalyst.

[ Outcome ]

[ Background ]

In a class of Beloit College (Beloit, WI), as a midterm project, archival project was assigned. College archive of specific era (1920, 30, 40, etc. ) was assigned to each of the students in the class and we asked to find something interesting such as transportation, greek life and dormitory. The task was to compare the campus life in that era and in these days and analyze it in terms of sustainability or nature.

[ Diagram ]

I was in charge of the 1920s. When I looked at materials carefully, I found that every dorm room has a physical photo on the wall or on the desk, thus  I drew this diagram. The vertical axes is industrial vs. agricultural, 2016 is more industrial world compare to the 1920s. It was not so difficult to come up with this way of capturing. The horizontal axes is human vs. nature. What I mean is, there was several phases in industrial revolution. Today’s industrial world is much different from the historical one. It is more machine depended industrial era.

When it comes to the photo in the dorm room, it is located in the bottom left: industry+human. Although we take photos, we tend to store them in the smartphone or cloud storage and it has nothing to do with “human”. However at the time of that archive, people selected photos they like and printed them out. Though a photo itself is industrial material, we engaged it as a human being.

So far, I visualized the path of the human beings and that is not sustainable as we discuss. Why do not think about upper left column? Perhaps there is something which brings us to a sustainable society.

[ Outcome ]

[ Background ]

In an online idea contest, a Japanese company wanted to create new concept of hotel which fits not only high-end users from neighboring countries but also domestic general users. In addition a client wanted to expand its business to rural areas in Japan (FYI: rural areas in Japan face various problem including shrinking population and aging society). The main goal of this idea contest was create new innovation in the hospitality industry.

[ Diagram ]

When we think about new hotel, there are countless approaches: hotel for the long-stay visitor or collaboration with anime characters. I draw this diagram in order to grasp an abstract image of hotel industry. It is all about the relationship between hotel and user/visitor. A hotel provides customer services including various activities both inside and outside of the hotel and visitors enjoy them. From a customer point of view, they evaluate the whole hotel service on the internet (e.g., Facebook, Twitter and reviewing website).

So far, I visualized the bias of this industry and it could easily be broken. Swap the objects. That is, customers provide service in a hotel (there are many possibilities) and the hotel reviews it. From this new concept, regional revitalizations are possible. This hotel could be a hub for the community and helps to find the next generation creators. Furthermore, by expanding this hotel into several regions, cities start to compete each other and it could lead Japan’s economy.

[ Background ]

At an event “Mirai no gakkou" (“future school” in Japanese) was held in Tokyo in 2015, a business contest for high school student took place. The theme was “Creation of future education” which could be run as a business. We worked in pairs for about 6 hours and at the end of the event, we gave a presentation to participants.

[ Diagram ]

I simplified “education” into 3 stages. First stage is information. We are surrounded by so many information in an educational system such as textbook, video and lecture. Second stage is knowledge. We process the information and store it as knowledge. A representative example is score-based test, which measures how far we memorized. The last stage is thinking. We think, in another word, create something new using knowledge that is accumulated through educational process.

In the previous diagram, I structured/visualized “education”. Current education model is from external to internal: first, we read textbooks and listen to the lecture and then, memorize most of the part and finally, think and create our own opinion using knowledge. This is a kind of bias; when we think about “education”, we naturally think about this process. Yes, finally I successfully visualized/structured the bias.

The last thing I did was breaking the bias. In this project I reversed the direction of arrow. The user thinks first and memorizes then, finally is exposed to the information. We created several ideas from this concept (e.g., Education App) and asked some experts.

[ Outcome ]

When you hear “creativity”, what do you think? May be you say “I’m not creative”,”Design thinking” or “It’s more like a talent”. However anyone can be creative if you understand the protocol of creating innovation.

Hideshi Hamaguchi, a Japans business designer defines innovation as follows: Innovation is something 

1) that has never seen before

2) that is doable within a time frame 

3) that creates controversy.