Synthetic imagination as part of the bedrock of product innovation
The author Napoleon Hill spent over 20 years interviewing and studying the lives of the wealthy and successful before publishing the astoundingly successful business book “Think and Grow Rich”.
His research led to his discovery of the truths of money and the pursuit of success. But behind every discovery was an immersion into a mystery through research.
Innovation is founded upon a bedrock of good research.
I’d like to explore a few of the characteristics of a good researcher.
- Desire to discover.
Without a will to keep an open mind about the solutions that lie ahead and perseverance to keep searching, many innovations will lay just under the surface undiscovered.
2. An active (yet restrained) imagination.
When a point of interest is brought to the surface during research the researcher should be diligent to capture their thoughts on how this new revelation connects with previous knowledge. At the same time, the researcher needs to keep that enthusiasm for their solution or new revelation from bleeding into every future activity they participate in.
3. Patience; in digging into a subject, in listening as an interviewer, and in seeking validation before proceeding
It is thrilling to find a possible solution, but the good researcher needs to be cautious about not getting too excited too early; many more discoveries may lead the product to even greater innovation if the researcher does not fixate on one valid or even good solution.
The researcher that is patient and methodical is less likely to miss valuable information in the last stages of any activity. While researching the industry, it is easy to latch onto a single vein and dig deep enough to feel like you have ‘the’ solution. Industry research might require three or four thorough discoveries into paths that will provide supplementary information for later stages of the design process.
While interviewing it is imperative that a researcher remains unbiased and does not modify their interview techniques from one interview to the next. Each interview is going to vary, yet the interviewer should remain concentrated on hearing all the answers without trying to confirm or deny any prior discoveries.
Once all activities of discovery have been conducted, the research continues with defining and validation. When a discovery has been made, but is not extremely prominent throughout the research it should not be neglected, but included in an activity that allows it to be brought to prominence or remain auxiliary to the project. One such activity that I’ve found useful is card sorting; card sorting can help gather the order of importance for features and identify how they should relate to one another (among other things). This allows clarity in the define/synthesis stage of the design process; it provides a vision for moving forward.
In Think and Grow Rich, Napoleon Hill describes Synthetic imagination as “A faculty through which one may arrange old concepts, ideas, or plans into new combinations. This faculty creates nothing. It merely works with the material of experience, education, and observation with which it is fed. It is the faculty used most by the inventor, with the exception of the ones who draw upon the creative imagination, when he cannot solve his problem through synthetic imagination.”
Synthetic imagination is the attribute tied to point #2 above that uniquely highlights and separates a good researcher from a true innovator. While imagination is a part of the bedrock of being a good researcher, the degree to which it can be harnessed and developed is what separates good from great.
How far can you push your ability to produce innovation? How well can you use synthetic and creative imagination to invent the next big thing?
That all depends on how much you train these skills.
