Innovators think completely differently. I read a story about two doctors at the Texas Heart Institute who saved a man’s life by completely removing his heart and replacing it with a pump they devised. The man has no heartbeat and no pulse. The pump sends blood through the body with a constant flow, like a garden hose. Read more about this amazing story and watch the incredible video.
This story shows that to make giant leaps of progress you need to totally look at the problem completely differently. Instead of looking at ways to fix a damaged heart, the doctors looked at ways to take the heart out of the equation. All innovators think like this. They see the world differently and behave in ways that are contrary to so called normal constraints.
I took a drawing class in college in which the instructor had us draw an image from a photograph, but with an interesting twist. Before we began drawing the instructor had us turn the photograph upside down. It was a great lesson in looking at things differently. Upside down the photograph had shapes, shadows, and colors I didn’t see when looking at it right side up. I know my drawing turned out differently because of this exercise, and I would go so far as to say it was better than if I had drawn it using the photo right side up.
Our mind often sets about fixing problems before even fully realizing what the problem is. We assume we know what the issue is and we go to work on it. Instead, we should take a step back and try to study the problem more closely before trying to come up with a solution.
Is there something you are working on that needs a different way of looking at it? What if you look at it upside down? Inside out? Not look at it at all? The possibilities are almost endless.
Doesn’t that make the problem more fun to solve now? Let me know what you come up with. Here’s to innovation!
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