Hello! Friends,
Welcome to the new week.
How many times do you have to start that business from a scratch just because you want to be unique? Oh! you are an engineer, you feel like innovation means you have to start from the beginning and bring out your own special way of doing that stuff? You need to pay attention to what I want to submit this moment.
Pixabay: Plan
Early hour of today I was trying to read how Thomas Thwaites made a decision to build a toaster from scratch in 2010. I hope you will learn from this. When he was trying to do this, the first thing he did was to walk into a shop to purchase the cheapest toaster so as to work on it. He broke it down into a piece and from his mind, a toaster is such a simple machine. After the deconstructing, he realized that there are more than 400 components laid out on his floor. This toaster contained over 100 different materials and the primary ones is three which are plastic, Iron and Nickel.
With this, the man decided to create the steel components first. He discovered that iron ore is the only way to get this done, so he called up an iron mine in his region and asked if they would let him use some for the project and he achieved this.
Secondly, he pushed for the creation of a plastic case for his toaster and he realized he would need crude oil to make the plastic. He was unable to get this done from those he asks to fly him out to the oil rig and get him some oil for the project. Its like generosity is far from oil rigged people compared to Iron mines. In order not stop his project, he pushed for the collection of plastic scraps and melted them into the shape of his toaster case. It was not an easy task for him. After the exercise, the toaster ended up looking like a melted cake than a kitchen appliance.
Check Below Picture:
Pixabay: Toaster Project
After this process, to get Nickel components he had to melt old coins and after the whole process, he said, It has come to my realization that if you started absolutely from scratch you could easily spend your life a toaster.
Hey! Do you want to start from scratch?
Today, I discovered one bad idea in the history of my reasoning and that is Starting From Scratch.
Many of us assume that innovative ideas and meaningful changes require a blank slate. Take for example a business fails, we talk to the team and say, can we go back to the drawing board? You remembered you do say this? Ok, what you that want to consider a change of habits, your thinking will start with Mehn, I need a fresh start. Friends, considering creative progress is rarely the result of throwing out all previous innovations and ideas and completely re-imagining of the world.
Illustration
Can you consider nature, the feathers of birds evolved from reptilian scales according to experts and if we check the forces of evolution, scales gradually became small feathers and we then use it for warmth and insulation at first. You know that this small fluffs developed into a larger one (feathers) and these were capable of flight.
Oh, we think there was a magical moment during the time animal kingdom declared this statement of let's start from scratch and create an animal that can fly. When you considered the development of flying birds, it was a gradual process of iterating and expanding upon ideas that already worked.
The credit that we ascribed to Wilbur Wright and Orville the modern flight inventors followed a similar path stated above. Do you know that these guys learned from there aviation pioneers and built upon the work of these people during their quest to create the world's first flying machine?
Are you thinking of how to become innovative thinkers? I have an answer for you... Stop creating, get connected. When you make 1 percent improvements to what already works rather than breaking down the whole system which might leave the whole process useless, build on it and make progress.
My friend, don't originate rather iterate.
Most of the time, it is because we fail to notice the complexity of our modern world, we venture into a business from scratch and end up achieving nothing. Look at that toaster as a case study. Did he find time to think about what might happen before going to store to purchase the toaster at first? Blindness to the remarkable interconnectedness of things overwhelmed us most time when we want to achieve one thing at all cost. Well, I quite understand this fact because this world is so complex and we might not know which forces are working for you as well as which forces are working against you.
In business, we most times focus on the finished product and we fail to recognize the many processes leading up to it, just like the toaster.
In conclusion, are you working on a complex problem? Do you think this business can't continue except you start all over? Friends, the better way to sort this, get connected, build upon what you know has already worked and let this ring in your mind that, any idea you sighted and currently working has passed a lot of tests, don't originate rather iterate. Old ideas will always be a secret weapon for the survival of this complex world, build on them
Thanks for reading.