ideas Archives - Page 5 of 7

How One Man Overcame Ridicule and Changed Rocket Science Forever

TomCreativity, ScienceSeptember 2, 2015September 1, 202030 Comments

The New Horizons space probe has been on a decade long mission to reach the dwarf planet Pluto, and the imagery is amazing. It would seem that this is just the first waypoint. Next on the itinerary is a Kuiper Belt object, 1 billion miles away.

[UPDATE] “As of March 2019, New Horizons was about 4.1 billion miles (6.6 billion kilometres) from Earth, operating normally and speeding deeper into the Kuiper Belt at nearly 33,000 miles (53,000 kilometres) per hour.”

Imagine for a moment how complex the New Horizons project has been. Persisting for over a decade with such a specific purpose. But in many ways, the first part of the journey was the hardest. Leaving our Earth’s atmosphere is hard – gravity will do that for you.

Robert Goddard is now considered one of the founding fathers of modern rocket science. He was visionary. It is due to his discoveries and his own form of persistence that we even have interplanetary missions.

One of the reasons I share the story with you is that it wasn’t such a smooth ride for Robert Goddard. The number of doubters speaking out against him at times must have felt like a gravitational force he may never draw away from. The creative conflict in his story is intriguing. We may add his tale to many who were considered ahead of their time, but ostracised for their originality.

Inspiration and Support

Robert was captivated by the allure of space. This came primarily from reading The War of Worlds by HG Wells – he was hooked. Fast forward twenty years and he was making pioneering discoveries in rocket propulsion. His contemporaries did not understand him and he found it almost impossible to gain financial backing to continue his work. In 1915 he even considered abandoning his efforts in the face of such continued challenge and isolation.

The Assistant Secretary of The Smithsonian, Charles Greeley Abbot, did not hold the same opinion. After reviewing an application for support from Goddard he provided a grant of $5,000 in 1917 to accelerate his efforts. This proved pivotal to Robert Goddard, encouraging him to persist when so many around him were full of doubt.

Squashing Ideas

In 1919, the Smithsonian published Goddard’s classic treatise “A Method of Reaching Extreme Altitudes in the Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections” (Vol. 71, No. 2). This scientific report exacerbated the challenge and doubt from his peers. Goddard had outlined a proposal for a rocket leaving the Earth’s atmosphere. His proposed rocket flight to The Moon drew wider public ridicule from the press. Everyone doubted his theory, and the press made a mockery of his ideas.

This had a profound effect on Goddard’s perspective and disposition. He became more guarded and isolated in his work. The list of those he trusted with his thinking dwindled. At the time a peer at the Californian Institute of Technology highlighted the challenges of not collaborating:

The trouble with secrecy is that one can easily go in the wrong direction and never know it.

Despite this on March 16, 1926, Goddard constructed and successfully tested the first rocket using liquid fuel. A flight as significant to history as that of the Wright brothers at Kitty Hawk.

He never got to see the fruit of his labours and died in 1945 from throat cancer. He was posthumously awarded over 200 patents for his discoveries and pioneering thinking in the field of rocket propulsion. Nowadays he is a celebrated creative scientist who paved the way for human exploration.

Creative Traits

In my opinion one of the most important traits of creative individuals is vision. It is clear that due to Goddard’s unique insight into the field he brought the horizon closer much more quickly than others. It is perhaps his Tenacity and Courage in the face of such widespread doubt that defines his creative spirit.

A further element that is clear within this story is the impact of the people around him. The negative voices were there from the start and they persisted. But it is the people that championed his ideas and said, “Yes!” that had the crucial impact. His wife continued to share and celebrate his work after his death, raising awareness and appreciation for his foresight. The support he received throughout his career from the Smithsonian in finances and belief is likely to be regarded as having the most impact. When others doubted, Charles Abbot believed. Mirroring the foresight that Goddard showed himself. In Goddard’s own words of appreciation to Abbot:

I am particularly grateful for your interest, encouragement, and far-sightedness. I feel that I cannot overestimate the value of your backing, at times when hardly anyone else in the world could see anything of importance in the undertaking.

Your Next Steps

Ideas do not exist in a vacuum and the story of Robert Goddard is as much about those who encouraged him. The open-mindedness to encourage and nurture nascent ideas is a critical dynamic as new thinking develops. Yes, we may need to show Courage and Tenacity when our ideas are out there, but new ideas rely on the courage of others too.

Something we can do, with our colleagues and students, when developing new creative ideas is to say “Yes“. It changes everything and signals openness to what might be next. It signals encouragement.
When we know that ideas are at an early phase we need to adjust our critique appropriately. In other words, when we hear new thinking we must be more delicate and encouraging as they take their first steps into the wild.
“Hold your ideas lightly“, is a good way to explain the mindset we need to have when sharing early ideas too. As the bearer of those new ideas, we have to be willing and open to others helping to make them better.

Just imagine the conversation fifteen, maybe twenty years ago:

“I think we should try and send a probe into the furthest reaches of our solar system. To Pluto.”

“That’s over 4.6 billion miles away.”

“Yes and the technology has not been invented yet and it will take us over a decade to get there.”

“Yes, great. We’ll call it the Decadal Survey. Let’s start.”

Goddard would have cherished the opportunity to see the images of our solar system and those from the New Horizons mission. I am certain he would have quietly approved of the tenacity and conviction of those who held the early theories and ideas. But also he would have recognised the value of those who showed similar “far-sightedness” in their unwavering support and encouragement.

References

“See New Horizons’ Entire Pluto Flyby in 23 Seconds.” 2015.
“Robert H. Goddard: American Rocket Pioneer | Smithsonian …” 2012.
“Robert H. Goddard – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.” 2011.
“NASA – Dr. Robert H. Goddard, American Rocketry Pioneer.” 2004.

Thinking about writing about Thinking

Tom28 Days of Writing, Blogging, ThinkingFebruary 14, 2015February 14, 20152 Comments

As we hit the midway point of this journey of a full month of blogging everyday, (#28daysofwriting) I am just looking back on where I started and some of the challenges that I faced establishing a steady habit and what I have learned.

So the 28 minute time constraint seems to have been pretty handy in setting a limit that still allows ideas to flow and some time to think whilst writing. I have had a few days in the last 2 weeks when I have wanted a little longer, but I am happy with how I have been able to carve out the half an hour or so everyday to sit and write. So I have learned I can find the time when I need to – even just half an hour. Time was cited as the biggest challenge by those involved. I am hopeful that for everyone taking part they will form a better understanding of how we create and protect this precious time – or simply why it is still such a challenge.

The image above is a word cloud of the biggest challenges to getting into a regular blogging habit shared by the 100+ people who are involved this month.

I have learned that writing in the evening has been my go-to time for the activity. I might switch over and do some morning writing and see how that goes for me during the remainder of the month. Learning when we write best or when we have a preference to do so is hopefully a better understanding those involved in #28daysofwriting will have.

One of the most important positive outcomes for me was a shift in the way I have been reflecting and thinking during the day. I actually felt this very early on and it has been something that has continued. I am thinking about my writing more and identifying aspects of my work, or concepts I want to explore in more detail. Previously this was something I felt only when I was sat staring at the blinking cursor, ready to go. I have learned that thinking about writing more regularly throughout the day has helped clarify my thinking. I have opened up the positive aspects of the thinking process that goes on with writing to be woven into the fabric of my day.

Hold Your Ideas Lightly

Tom28 Days of Writing, Creativity, Design ThinkingFebruary 10, 2015October 1, 20156 Comments

This is a simple metaphor to understand. When you are exploring the validity of an idea, hold your idea lightly – do not clutch it tightly to your chest. We often explore if an idea is valid in the company of others and so we need to present our thinking with this mindset as lots of good things flow from it. It is an important mindset we adjust to in our design thinking workshops we run with teachers.

Instead of having to pry open our fingers to get to the idea to offer advice, when it is held lightly and openly in our open hands others can access it.

Offer an invitation to your ideas not a barrier to hurdle.

When we hold on to our ideas lightly we are being more careful in terms of what we have committed to that idea. There is no tension in our grasp of the idea because we have invested lots of time and energy into developing it. It is probably early on in terms of our thinking and we are open to what others say.

If our grasp is light it might be swept along by a strong breeze from others. Who knows if we are open to other people contributing and building on our idea it might be taken in a direction that we might not have seen.

It is all about communicating your idea as early as you can, but matching that action with a relatively low commitment in energy, time and resources.

In the workshops I have led over the last four years I have asked hundreds of people to communicate an idea they have only just created to someone else. The constraint comes from the time they have to communicate the idea or concept and the resource they have to do it with. A single Post it note. What else!

They are thrust into a situation where they are already non-committal about an idea and are encouraged to “Hold their ideas lightly”, pitching the idea to someone else quickly. All of these things create a scenario that is often alien within education – sharing something so early. I always like to follow this sort of task up by asking “What does it feel like to have to share an idea so early on in the process?”

Invariably there is a mixed reaction. From the “nerve wracking” and “scary”, to “liberating” and “exciting”. The anxious responses normally speak of a habitual culture of getting it “just so”, or working on something heavily before sharing widely. The more positive responses, which is the majority, recognise how this mindset, named up front, and the process that activates it, creates a refreshing sense of openness about our creative work.

Hold your ideas lightly – don’t clutch them tightly to your chest.

Moving Back and Forth Between Fantasy and Reality

TomCuriosity, Design ThinkingJune 15, 2014January 3, 20159 Comments

During my keynote at Edutech a few weeks back I outlined some of the false pedagogic dichotomies that are present in education. In addition to these supposed tensions there are natural forces and tendencies at play such as moving between fantasy and reality. In this post I will share some of my thinking on the importance of that creative thinking.

Previously I have outlined the importance of saying “I don’t know” to students, encouraging them to discover for longer – not just to start discovering, questioning and digging deeper, but to do it for longer. To stay in the question. Saying “I don’t know” opens learning up to students:

to take responsibility
to ask more questions and explore further
to remain in the state if the unknown for longer
to continually ask more complex questions

For youngsters they cannot readily explain their world away with existing knowledge and in fact they remain in the unknown for a long period of time. That world is surely a mysterious one, filled with sights and smells that make no sense. Colours and lights casting images on a young mind, a nurturing world filled with odd sounds and language that is not yet understood.

However that young learner does not attribute the same meaning to the world as we naturally do and so is free of such a burden. As a young adult we certainly go through a time when we think we know everything and the remnants of this mindset are still evident into our adult life. We see the world around us as Known. But it is not that simple.

For one thing as we grow older we are continuously learning, however that illusion of knowledge can descend and we are comforted by just enough information to get by, things become normalised, we begin to believe in the “illusion of the known”. A state that can breed assumption and potentially masks our natural instincts for curiosity.

Secondly the extreme of the Unknown is not so extreme after all. That colourless canvas is rich with ideas and connections. Because while we were choosing kidney beans, our little learners are devising an imaginary world along the Canned Fruit and Vegetables Aisle. Whilst we are watching out for traffic, our little learners are dodging spaceships. Whilst we are helping them to understand the concrete, known world around them, our little learners are dancing in the world of the abstract – splattering the canvas with rich imaginative explanations of their own.

This can often be an imaginary world we don’t see. We have all been there, quite possibly some of you are there now! We all have had our ticket stamped to this place and we must continue to remember that we work with children who are continually exploring this world. It is a world where we need to leave the illusion of knowledge at the door because almost anything is possible.

In this next clip, which I would hope you would have seen, a father who is a special effects technician for films has, in a way, begun to imagine what his own son’s view of the world would be like.

It would seem that the boy’s father deals with the imaginary world pretty regularly himself don’t you think? I love how he depicts what must be happening as his son imagines those scenes unfolding before him. I especially like the bubbling lava in the lounge amongst the sofas I remember leaping from sofa to sofa myself – “it’s crocodiles infested waters, now it’s lava!”

It is not as simple as saying learners are in a known state or in an unknown state when they are young, because they are rapidly moving from one world to the next, building and collapsing them as they go – inviting their friends into them and playing together – exploring and building again, refining and then abandoning them as quickly as they grew. Also they need little if anything at all to help them do this, stories, worlds, scenarios, predicaments and challenges can spring from them effortlessly – just spend some time watching children playing together freely.

Children use their imagination to explore both the things they know and the things they don’t.

Maurice Sendak – the author and illustrator of Where the Wild Things Are left an indelible mark on me as a youngster with his depiction of Max, in his wolf onesie and his imaginary world. We read the book when I was young and then for many years it drifted into my distant memory, returning with a significant bump when I became a teacher and I discovered the book in a class library whilst on teaching practice. I think it was the faces of the monsters that I remember the most, their beady eyes watching Max.

Sendak’s work perfectly captures how our young learners weave the tendrils of their imagination into and between the concrete world around them, not only shifting effortlessly between these worlds but blurring it too.

With Sendak’s words I will leave you and encourage you to see the world through the eyes of our youngsters. But also to continually consider how we can design conditions for learning that embrace these natural imaginative tendencies and present opportunities for children’s ideas and “What if’s” to have the impact on the world that they deserve.

9 Creative Strategies for Thinking Obliquely

TomThinking, FeaturedMarch 18, 2014August 30, 20203 Comments

In “The Rules of Genius, Rule #9: Approach answers obliquely“, Marty Neumeier outlines a range of thinking strategies (in the italicised sections below) to explore a challenge in new ways. These strategies are always great to have in your toolkit when exploring a period of enquiry with children or adults.

In an effort to build on Neumeier’s thinking and develop something new, I have expanded on the various steps he has outlined with some additional thoughts and links to help you approach your own creative exploration in a holistic way and to think obliquely.

Note: I have created a handy little graphic from all of these great strategies you can download it here for free.

(1) Think in metaphors

A metaphor is a link between two dissimilar things: “The world is a stage.” By equating the world with a stage, you can more easily imagine that we’re all actors playing a part an insight you might not have had without the metaphor.

There are some great further ideas on this post about metaphorical thinking:

When you use a metaphor to link two ideas together, you are combining elements that have little or no logical connection. By breaking the rules of logic in this way, metaphors can open up the creative side of the brain – the part that is stimulated by images, ideas, and concepts. So metaphorical thinking can help you with creative problem solving: To use another famous metaphor, it helps you “think outside the box”.

(2) Think in pictures

Visual thinking can strip a problem down to its essence, leading to profoundly simple connections that language by itself can’t make. The ability to draw stick figures, arrows, and talk balloons is all you need to think visually.

Visualising your ideas in a simple way is a strategy we regularly use when working with groups. We encourage them to draw their initial idea on a post-it note and share it quickly with a colleague.

This quick sketch and share, precludes us from investing too deeply in a given idea and does force us to be open to hearing how to make it better from our peers – as we don’t have all the answers, and our idea is only roughly formed we are more likely to be open to advice.

Take a look at this introduction to the “Basics of Visual Note-taking” for some other info.

You could also follow the “5 Sketching Secrets of Leonardo Da Vinci“: Look for new combinations; Engage your imagination; Collaborate with others when you sketch; Use annotations in your sketches; Sketch your ideas out 4-5 times.

(3) Start from a different place

When you grab for the “correct” solution, brilliant solutions will elude you. You’ll get stuck in the tar pits of knowledge, unable to free your mind of what you already know. The easiest way to escape this trap is by rejecting the correct solution—at least temporarily—in favor of the “wrong” solution. While the worst idea can never be the best idea, it will take your imagination to a different starting place.

Typically when we are exploring new solutions we have an invisible filter that is usually marked “safe”. Even with encouragement it is very hard to break that safe set and come up with a new set of ideas beyond the realms of feasibility. We rarely spend time in this fanciful place and so find it very difficult.

But coming up with your 5 Worst Ideas to solve a problem is a great way to let the pressures go a little, it often leads to lots of laughs and by inverting some of those negative elements there is often a kernel of something great there. Some nice little activity steps in this post about it.

(4) Steal from other domains

If you steal an idea cleverly enough, the theft will go unnoticed. While stealing is not the same as pure imagination, it does take a mental leap to see how an idea from one industry or discipline could be adapted to another.

One of my favourite stories that illustrates this method is from the reform work that occurred at Great Ormond Street Children’s Hospital in London.

Recognising the similarities with the handover disciplines (in emergency care) visible in the pit of a Formula One racing team, they invited the McLaren and Ferrari racing teams to work with them to examine how their processes could be more structured and effective. They went out to the pits of the British Grand Prix, met Ferrari’s technical managers at their base in Italy and invited some of them to come and observe their handovers at Great Ormond Street…The input of the Formula One pit technicians resulted in a major restructuring of their patient handover from theatre to the ICU.

It is a fine example of a group being able to see beyond their own discipline in order to seek out innovative ways to solve existing challenges.

(5) Arrange blind dates

Great ideas are often two ideas that haven’t previously been introduced. Using a technique called “combinatory play,” you can throw unrelated ideas together to see if the create a new idea. Look for combinations that have a natural fit.

Maria Popova shares a post on Brain Pickings about the elemental work of combinatory play in the creative process, of course referring to Einstein’s take on it: “Combinatory play seems to be the essential feature in productive thought.” However Popova shares a lovely introduction to the concept herself:

For as long as I can remember — and certainly long before I had the term for it — I’ve believed that creativity is combinatorial: Alive and awake to the world, we amass a collection of cross-disciplinary building blocks — knowledge, memories, bits of information, sparks of inspiration, and other existing ideas — that we then combine and recombine, mostly unconsciously, into something “new.” From this vast and cross-disciplinary mental pool of resources beckons the infrastructure of what we call our “own” “original” ideas.

(6) Reverse the Polarity

Write down as many assumptions about the problem as you can think of. Reverse them. Think about what it would take to make the reversed assumption true. Some of these may lead to new ideas.

Assumptions are often the baggage that we bring along on a journey of change. The way things have always been “done” has a powerful influence on the decisions we make and indeed the ambition we often hold for change. With too much room they can stultify organisational change.

When I am working in education there are many assumptions being made because the challenges we face are often deeply complex and involve different people. We need to be open enough to Name them and Challenge them.

Human nature is such that when we assume we know how to do something, we perform the act without much thought about the assumptions we make. History is replete with thousands of examples of what happens when people don’t challenge assumptions.

This is taken from What Monkeys Teach Us about the Assumptions We Make, by Michael Michalko the author of Thinkertoys: A Handbook of Creative Thinking Techniques. Make sure you explore the post and read the great story of where assumptive practice can blindly lead us.

(7) Ask simple questions

What else is this like? Who else believes this? What if I changed it slightly? What can I eliminate? What can I substitute? Is this the cause or the effect? What if I changed the timing? What if I made it bigger? What would happen if I did nothing?

No doubt this is linked with our ability to challenge those assumptions we hold, asking questions is, in my humble opinion, the pre-cursor to any creative process, rarely are they missing.

We could look to people like Da Vinci for his insatiable curious mindset that set him apart from his peers. Also you should look at the work of Eleanor Duckworth and her work on “Critical Explorers” which encourages us to use simple questioning to get out of the way of children’s thinking.

Additionally I would highly recommend reading Alex Quigley posts about questioning in the classroom, this popular post on strategies will help with the practical side of things. Furthermore his blog post: “‘Question Time’ and Asking ‘Why’” is an,

exploration of one of the simplest, but most fundamental, aspects of how students learn and how students display their learning in lessons: higher order questioning. It is simply about getting students to ask ‘why‘ and an exploration of the crucial value of such deep questioning.

(8) Watch for accidents

You can sometimes make the best discoveries when you’re searching for something else. Pay attention to anomalies, surprises, or feedback that confounds your expectations. These can open up exciting new areas of inquiry.

In this lovely exploration of accidental discovery in science on Brain Pickings, Alan Gregg is quoted:

One wonders whether the rare ability to be completely attentive to and to profit by, Nature’s slightest deviation from the conduct expected of her is not the secret of the best research minds and one that explains why some men turn to most remarkably good advantage seemingly trivial accidents. Behind such attention lies an unremitting sensitivity.

(9) Write things down

Not all your ideas will be worthwhile, but they might trigger new ideas. Make a list of your thoughts as you work through any problem. Keep a notebook, a sketchbook, a scrapbook, or an idea file. A pencil can be a crowbar for lifting ideas from your subconscious.

I like that description from Neumeier of the pencil being an idea-crowbar. In this particular field, Da Vinci has set us some incredible precedent as explored earlier.

Thomas Alva Edison has much to offer as well in this particular note-taking technique. In this post exploring Edison’s creative process in further detail it suggests that historians have discovered over 3500 detailed notebook belonging to him. In those books there is over four million pages of idea, sketches and notes he made.

What is immediately apparent is that Edison’s mind wandered through a vast spectrum of unrelated projects in an apparent free flow of associations. This is a critical point to understand. The mind grows through the number of connections it can make. Genius finds relationships between the most diverse things….Frequently, one of Edison’s inventions would spawn another in an unrelated field, which in turn would give rise to another in a different area of interest. It’s as though by pushing, experimenting and thinking in one direction, Edison simultaneously benefitted in all the other projects that he was working on. This points to the concept of the holographic mind. Affect one part and you affect all the parts. Nothing is wasted.

Whether we are exploring a period of curriculum enquiry with our class, tackling a challenge in our organisation or embarking upon a period of creative development, our thinking and the tools we use to do it, need to offer us as much breadth as possible. Typically we need to be able to see complex themes or challenges from as many different angles as we can.

Taking this type of multi faceted thinking strategy not only provides us a more comprehensive creative approach, it gives us all the best possible chance to break new ground and reveal opportunities that have yet to be discovered.

FREE Bonus Thinking Divergently Resource

My Thinking Divergently resource summarises these approaches in a useful little graphic format.

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Photos by Karol Kasanicky / Devin Avery / chuttersnap on Unsplash

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