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

LESSONSTO TAKE AWAY

Innovators tend to be contrarians, heretics, and revolutionaries. (We have to be willing to challenge conventional thinking and to shift our basic assumptions.)

An orthodoxy is a deeply held belief, a traditional practice, or a conventional way of thinking that is commonly assumed to be true or correct. (Orthodoxies form habitual patterns of thought and behavior that are rarely questioned.)

Orthodoxies can easily blind us and our organizations to new ways of doing things. (They create the proverbial “box” within which we come to think and operate, and make it difficult for us to see outside of these fixed boundaries.)

Try to identify and systematically question the fixed patterns that exist inside your own company, and across your industry. (Is there really only one “right” way of doing things? What if you opened your mind to radical alternatives?)

Avoid the inhibiting trap of “mental inertia.” (It’s the tendency to maintain a particular mind-set, and to stubbornly resist any change in thinking and behavior, unless some external force exerts pressure otherwise.)

Learn from disruptive industry newcomers. (They have no preconceptions about how an industry is “supposed” to work, so they spot the opportunities for revolution that incumbents either don’t see or don’t want to accept.)

Remember, it’s the “crazy” ones who change the world. (Whenever you hear “that’s just the way it is,” take it as an invitation to imagine how it could be or should be—then ...