Flashes of genius…

Andreas Kluth.  Scott Berkun.  Paola Antonelli.  Sprinkled through the conference were mini sessions — usually about 10 minutes long — which were called “Flash of genius”.  I really liked this idea — it provided a good break from the panels and interviews and you could focus on only one person providing a specific perspective on innovation.

Andreas Kluth, US West Coast Correspondent, The Economist

Andreas was the warm-up act for the panel on “Successful Failure”.  He started with the great quote from Rudyard Kipling’s poem “If”:

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster,

And treat those two impostors just the same;

This was the context for a great theme of  ancient and modern “heros” and their paths through triumph and disaster.  He started with Hannibal who in a nutshell started out with great success and ended in defeat.  He then followed up with Albert Einstein whom he felt did the same –in the sense of his initial discovery being a success but then Andreas felt that Einstein closed his mind and was scared by all the new ideas that kept springing up around him.  So in his case success became a prison.

The next example was Scipio who was a general in the Second Punic War and statesman of the Roman Republic. He was best known for defeating Hannibal at the final battle of the Second Punic War at Zama, a feat that earned him the nickname “the Roman Hannibal”, as well as recognition as one of the finest commanders in military history. (from Wikipedia)  According to Andreas, Scipio came from a challenging background and in the end was successful.

Finally, Steve Jobs — fired at the aged of 30 from Apple, founds Pixar and Next — and apparently has said that being fired was like “becoming a beginner again — being freed”.

So success can be a prison — and failure can be a liberation of the imagination.

Scott Berkun, Author “Myths of Innovation”, member of Internet Explorer team at Microsoft from 1994-1999.

Scott’s messages:  Break-through moments or flashes of insight are invariably followed up by a whole bunch of hard work.  Ideas are cheap and easy — it is rare to actually convince someone of your idea and make something happen.  “Reification” fascinates  Scott — regarding something abstract as a real thing — so words like innovative, disruptive, game-changing — end up being given status of something real when they are not — they are abstractions that need to be unpacked.

Paola Antonelli, Senior Curator, Architecture & Design. MoMa

Paola’s message:  designers make ideas reality:  nutrition facts, the bar code, one laptop/child, simcity — these are all projects that need to “archived” in the MoMa because of their importance to society. Design is underserved by the media — why don’t we have more “design” columns in our newspapers?  The importance of arts and culture as part of our innovation spectrum.

Next up:  successful failure and the economics of innovation.