BackExcerpt: The Creator’s Code
Someone might have already fixed your problem in another context or field; look for solutions that can be transported and tweaked to benefit you
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Amy Wilkinson interviewed 200 entrepreneurs, including electric car maker Tesla’s Elon Musk, fast-food chain Chipotle’s Steve Ells, Mark Zuckerberg of social network Facebook, and online marketplace eBay’s Pierre Omidyar, to distil the skills that might make an entrepreneur successful into her book The Creator’s Code: The Six Essential Skills Of Extraordinary Entrepreneurs.
In the chapter “Find the gap", Wilkinson, a lecturer at the Stanford Graduate School of Business in the US, writes that asking the right questions and finding unmet needs in the markets is the first of the six key skills. Edited excerpts:
Connections, expertise, talent, and resources have something to do with a breakthrough discovery, to be sure, yet scores of people who possess all these ingredients fail to capture opportunities. And individuals who possess few of them succeed. What if the answer involves unique ways of thinking and perceiving? What if Elon Musk—and others like him—have a sensibility and a curiosity that allow them to identify needs that are going unmet?
This chapter is about what makes creators different, what makes them able to find and fill gaps in a variety of ways. Some of these creators—those I call Sunbirds—transport solutions that work in one area and apply them to another, often with a twist. Architects recognize openings and furnish what is missing. They spot problems and design new products and services to satisfy unfilled needs. Melding existing concepts to combine disparate approaches, Integrators build blended outcomes.
Although our experience may lead us to see the world from just one of these perspectives, we can learn to spot opportunities in a variety of ways.
Sunbirds: From one domain to another
“I look at a problem and think, ‘Let’s not look at how this problem has been approached in this field, but let’s go to industries that are completely different and take technologies that, if applied to the problem at hand, would solve it,’" inventor Dean Kamen said. Kamen created the Segway PT transportation vehicle, the AutoSyringe drug infusion pump, and the iBOT all-terrain wheelchair, among other technologies. “I find someone who has solved the problem in another field and then just tweak it a little bit," Kamen explained, adding wryly, “Every once in a while it works."
Kamen is a real-life mad scientist. He lives in a large, hexagonal house in Bedford, New Hampshire, that features, among other quirks, a large steam engine once owned by Henry Ford. Kamen pilots his own helicopter to work every day. The helicopter inspired Kamen, Sunbird-style, to invent a heart stent. Baxter Healthcare, frustrated with stents that collapsed inside blood vessels, commissioned Kamen to create a sturdier model. Helicopter blades withstand incredible stress, so Kamen studied their function and construction and applied what he learned to build a better stent...
What makes someone a Sunbird? The first and most obvious criterion is that Sunbirds take something that already exists and transport the model to create something new. They relocate and reshape existing concepts across geographies and industries, and bring old ideas up to date.
By definition, a sunbird is a small bird native to Africa, Asia, and parts of Australia. Like the North American hummingbird, sunbirds subsist primarily on nectar. They fly from bud to bud, transferring pollen between flowers.
There is a simple way to describe how Sunbird creators spot opportunities. They harvest working concepts, proving that repurposing an idea can be a powerful means of discovery. Sunbirds transport solutions from one place to meet the needs of another...
The farther Sunbirds transport solutions, the greater the likelihood of breakthrough results. Gaps can be narrow, leading to incremental innovations, or they can be wide, leading to more novel creations.
The power of analogy
To transport concepts that the rest of us don’t see, Sunbirds use the power of analogy.
Analogy operates on two levels: Surface analogies describe similarities such as shared product design and product features, and structural analogies reflect parallel underlying elements.
Howard Schultz (CEO, Starbucks) drew a surface analogy when he observed coffee culture in Europe and brought the coffeehouse experience to the United States. When Schultz invested in technology that originally was developed to freeze-dry red blood cells and created VIA instant coffee, he followed a structural analogy.
Sunbirds examine underlying elements. George de Mestral got the idea for Velcro when he observed how burrs stuck to his dog’s fur with tiny hooks. University of Oregon track coach Bill Bowerman studied his wife’s waffle iron and adapted the pattern of little spikes produced by the appliance to create Nike’s original waffle-tread running shoe.
“If you take a minute to really think about things, to compare and contrast, you are two to three times as likely to apply known principles to discover and connect with future ideas," said Dedre Gentner, director of the Cognitive Science Program at Northwestern University. Energetic engagement triggers the brain to recast what we see into new and useful ideas. Through experiments with management consultants, accountants, business school students, and undergraduates, Gentner found that making comparisons helps people utilize what they already know. “Push your analogies to the limit. That will lead to breakthroughs," Gentner said. “Instead of saying, ‘Damn, that didn’t work,’ ask, ‘What parallel can I draw?’"
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