Connections

Just finished watching Cloud Atlas, which main theme is the intertwining of life and energies and… connections. It is funny that all the major religions harken us to recognise our fellow man, life and nature as being part of the same web of life, but all us religious freaks  destroy each other in the name of those same religions. Don’t even get started about race and nationalities. The point is that we choose to ignore connections that are right but unprofitable, but cultivate connections that are wrong but profitable.

Which is what innovation’s new definition is trying to change.

The new definition of innovation, and perhaps an idealistic one at that, supports competitors and nurtures a climate where everyone can benefit and none need to suffer. It supports the notion that you can make money, and be happy and to never have to look over your shoulder or to lie awake at night wondering what evil tomorrow brings. Does that sound laughable and improbable?

What is wrong with that utopian view of not needing to have currency, and to instead ensure everyone is happy and contented? Does that automatically mean that drives and wills will vanish? Will the human spirit and determination to always want to see what lies over the next mountain or around the next bend be quenched?

Are currency profits really at the end, the only factor that is the bottom line for organisations and the driving force for all processes? Design Thinking would like to propose that this is not so, and that there sometimes is no need to climb a mountain, but to instead just look at it from base camp and admire the view. Let someone else gain the honour of climbing that mountain. There will always be another mountain somewhere else that affords a better climb.

CERN’s discovery using the Large Hadron Collider of the Higgs boson particle, more famously called the “God particle”, also gives credence that we truly are all connected at the energetic level. Noetic sciences are trying to provide empirical evidence for the existence of the soul and for the theory that “thought has mass”. This would have been laughed off the board a very short time ago, but the more man discovers science, the more we seem to go back to theories that have been and are being proposed by spiritual (I am not talking religion. Spirituality and religion have no connection) science fiction writers and enlightened souls like The Buddha.

So…CONNECTIONS…

Perhaps it is time for the title of the blog to change to “Design Thinking in a connected VUCA world”. It may even be not so presumptuous of me to insert connect into the design Thinking process…Empathise, Define, Ideate, CONNECT, Prototype & Test.

That new process just might ensure that Design Thinking spreads the wealth and real ownership right at the bottom where it came from; among the individuals in communities and among the employees where the methodology is used. That truly would be innovation at work.

Any takers for this type of community based innovation, where all you get as the Designer and Innovator, is a good night’s sleep, satisfied that you have loads of great Karma headed your way?