The Four Lenses of Innovation: A Power Tool for Creative Thinking

Seeing things from a fresh perspective

A bagless vacuum cleaner. An online bookstore (and later megastore). A tiny cable TV channel that transformed itself into a global sports empire. A women-only fitness franchise. How did radical innovators come up with game-changing businesses like Dyson, Amazon, ESPN, and Curves? Why didn’t anyone else spot and exploit these opportunities for industry revolution?

Whether or not they were aware of it, the creative visionaries behind these success stories were using the perceptual lenses described in Part One of this book: Challenging Orthodoxies, Harnessing Trends, Leveraging Resources, and Understanding Needs. Either by accident or design, they were looking at the world from the particular angles of view that are common to every case of great innovation. And it was exactly by applying one or more of these lenses—these particular ways of perceiving things—that they were able to discover breakthrough insights and ideas that everyone else seems to have missed. Here’s how they did it.

Challenging Orthodoxies

Back when vacuum cleaners all looked boringly similar, British engineer James Dyson questioned some common and deeply rooted industry assumptions by asking, “Why does a vacuum cleaner need a vacuum bag? What if there’s a much more effective mechanism for sucking up and collecting dust? And why does a vacuum cleaner have to look so ugly and ...