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

LESSONSTO TAKE AWAY

Innovators use the Four Lenses of Innovation to see patterns that the rest of us may not see.

(Amazing things can happen when you open your eyes!)

Some time after kindergarten, most of us stop using our creative and perceptive powers in the way that innovation demands.

(Creativity is like a muscle. If you don’t use it, you lose it.)

Our brains save mental energy by learning and storing familiar patterns for automatic recognition and use.

(We tend not to notice or think about the patterns we have already learned. They recede into the landscape of our lives.)

Institutions form fixed patterns of thinking and behavior that become habitual, and are very difficult to change.

(Managers typically resist new or disruptive ideas that don’t fit their current operational paradigms.)

To spot opportunities for innovation, we need to change our patterns of thinking.

(If we keep viewing something the same old way with the same old mind-set, we will never be able to envisage it any differently.)

An idea is simply a combination of thought elements arranged in a particular pattern.

(Innovation is about introducing ideas that either improve existing patterns or replace them with new ones.)

The Four Lenses of Innovation give us a perceptual power tool for recognizing, rethinking, and reinventing patterns.

(They amplify and extend our natural creative thinking capabilities—as individuals and as teams—effectively catalyzing our innovation efforts.)