Episode 15: Unleashing the Power of Creativity: A Deep Dive into Innovation and Problem-Solving

Ever wondered how the spark of creativity ignites the flame of innovation? Join me, Shawn, as we unravel this complex relationship, and I promise, by the end of our journey, you'll view problem-solving through an entirely new lens. We'll navigate the treacherous yet exhilarating path of risk-taking that's essential for true innovation, and why it's not just for artists – creativity is a muscle everyone can flex, regardless of your profession. Let's talk about how to harness your 'Eureka!' moments and whether it's our solutions desperately seeking problems, or the other way around, illustrated by a fascinating dive camera system project.

In this session of Full Circle, the focused narrative takes a deeper look at the iterative ballet of innovation, especially when it comes to developing products that resonate with real-world needs. I'll share stories that highlight the magic of having a fervent insider at the core of innovation and the unexpected results when outside perspectives are welcomed into the mix - because sometimes, the best submarine ideas don't come from sailors. Wrapping up, we'll explore the "see a need, fill a need" philosophy and how, with today's AI tools, even the grandest ideas are within reach. So, get ready to be empowered to take your concepts from fleeting thoughts to tangible, world-changing creations.

Transcript

Speaker 0: 0:00

Hello and welcome back to Full Circle with Sean. I'm your host, sean, and today we're talking about innovation and creativity in problem solving. Now, this is a big subject for me. This is what our team does, this is what I like to do, but I will try my best to keep it as minimalistic as I can, because, again, we're just trying to build some foundational building blocks for what we're going to talk about later on, foundational building blocks for what we're going to talk about later on.

Speaker 0: 0:26

So what is innovation? So innovation is a process, right? A process of implementing new ideas, creating dynamic products or greatly improving existing services. It's usually driven by market needs. Now, there is a whole mentality around are you building a solution to a problem or a problem to a solution? And we could talk about that more later. And what is it not? It's not merely a continuation of the current state with minor tweaks, so little tiny tweaks. And look, I've innovated. It's not always technology driven. It can also be conceptual process oriented or model based driven. It can also be conceptual process oriented or model based.

Speaker 0: 1:09

And one of the things that really frustrates me and I see it all the time is in the real world, we have conferences upon conferences on innovation, right? Everybody's so innovative, and we have meetings and we have awards, and if you look at it, though, it's not real innovation. It's an attempt of people for career building, for pat on the backs, for doing little tweaks as we said before, little tweaks without taking any risk. Innovation can be risky, and the level of that risk really depends on what you're doing, but there's always a level of risk, and people don't tend to like to take risks, so they make little tweaks, and oh, look at how innovative I am. It's one of my things. That really frustrates me sometimes.

Speaker 0: 1:58

What is creativity? So creativity is the ability to perceive the world in new ways, to find hidden patterns and to make connections between seemingly unrelated phenomena and generate solutions, creative solutions. Creativity involves original thinking and the ability to produce ideas that are both novel and valuable, and let me repeat that novel and valuable. What is creativity Not? It's not limited to artistic endeavors. It's a cognitive process that can be applied in any context, including scientific, business, mathematical, daily problem solving, and so on and so forth, and it's not just an innate talent. It can be fostered and developed with practice and a supportive environment. And now there's obviously the interplay between innovation and creativity, and it probably starts more with creativity. So maybe I should have said exploring the interplay between creativity and innovation, right? So a lot of creativity will come from your founders that have different visions, right, and it's their visions that they need somebody to help turn into an innovative product or design. And say a lot of creativity actually comes from sci-fi, right? So you have Motorola. So Motorola, they were the first ones to make the phone call. And where did the guy? When he was asked, he said where'd you get the idea? Where'd it come from? And he said I was watching Star Trek. So it's the.

Speaker 0: 3:29

You need the creativity, you need to spark that imagination in order to innovate, or there would be no new concepts to innovate, right To implement or innovate. The implementation of creative ideas through innovation often leads to further creative thoughts and further refinements. So you have to start with your creative idea, start to innovate, go back and make it. You know, change the creativity a bit and and it'll expand from there. And that's why I always say the hardest thing about a startup or the hardest thing about your new idea is getting started. Right? So you might have this, this great idea, and you've got this vision for something, but you don't, you don't know how to start, and I always say start, just start. Start with anything you might have 10 percent of of how you want to do it figured out. Start with that, because once you get started, then you know how to refine it, then you know how to grow it. You just need to start.

Speaker 0: 4:29

And I guess that's what I focus on a lot when I'm exploring new ideas, because I have ideas all the time and I actually keep a list of different things I want to build over time, right? So lots of different things I'm not going to go over them here because I don't want to bore you, but lots of different things I'm not going to go over them here because I don't want to bore you but lots of different ideas and I write them down. And I write down to the point where, if I was going to do this so here's my idea, here's my concept and if I was going to do this, this is the first thing that I will do. You know, I will build this board, I will print this thing, I will write this code. This is the first thing that I'm going to do to start it. And then I file it right. And if I get more thoughts later because that's how my brain works, I go back and forth with things then I might update that or write more into it, to pick one off the shelf. I can wrap my head around it again, decide that that's yep, that's what I want to do, but I have a starting point. I know exactly where to start. I know the first thing I'm going to do while I work through it.

Speaker 0: 5:31

Now, as we spoke a little bit about in the beginning, are you creating a solution to a problem or a problem to a solution? And there's kind of two different ways to look at that, right? So are you creating a solution to a problem that exists? So, if you go with, say, our dive camera system that we built, um, the divers had a problem with not having up-to-date um cameras, right, everybody's using old cctv technology and it's it's really hard for their clients to get that um video feed. It doesn't integrate into AI very well, so reporting is hard, it takes them a lot of time, a lot of backend time, and it's not that clear. So we had a problem.

Speaker 0: 6:14

Now, what's the solution? And then the whole innovative process around, the creativity around how are we going to build it. What's it going to look like? Why is it going to look like that? How are we going to seal it? You know we'd already built a submarine, so we had some of those processes already in place. We knew some of the tools that we were going to use to do it, but it took a lot of people time to really refine that and it was refined over years until we were super happy with it. It was already out with clients years until we were super happy with it. It was already out with clients. So we got to 95%.

Speaker 0: 6:48

We think this is exactly what we need. We know that there's there's um, there's improvements that can be made. We don't know what we should focus on right, because what we think is a problem might not be what the client thinks is a problem. So we needed to create the solution to the problem that the client actually had. And then if they came back and said, hey, I don't like this or or this isn't great, not not the normal problem you have with clients where they're not, nothing's ever good enough and you can get clients like that, but the ones where multiple people say, look at, can you maybe adapt this or I don't understand this and that's you know.

Speaker 0: 7:20

If your users don't understand how to use something, then that's a UI issue or and you should reflect on those things, but get. That's getting a little bit off topic. So then the other side of that is are you creating problems for your solution? So you you go, okay, well, look at, I think people have this problem and so I want to build this thing, because I want to build this thing. So you build this thing and then you have to go around and convince people that they have this problem. So that's creating a solution, a problem for your solution, and that's not good, because much harder to get the market to adapt to that.

Speaker 0: 8:04

And then you also have further is creating problems for your solution. So that's more where you build something to solve a problem or meet a market demand. Let's say iPhone right, say the iPhone was created and all of a sudden you have the problem because there's app demands, mobile banking, increased status, security, there's all these other things that now have to be dealt with because of the solution you've created, because of market demand or basically what people wanted. So that's different and that's not a bad thing. In most cases, in fact, it leads to more business or expanding business, or more suppliers or a bigger ecosystem where, like I said, you create problems for your solution, then it's really going to hurt you right off the bat. So we have a process and we try to understand, in every time that we build something is if we are creating a solution to a problem that we know about, a solution to a problem that we think exists, or a solution that we just want to build because it's cool, right, and sometimes you do that, you got to do that. That's the fun of innovation, but a lot of times.

Speaker 0: 9:25

So what I always say as well is, if you have somebody that's passionate in the industry that you're trying to innovate in, you can change the world. I've had that. I've had a person from a school who was very passionate about building a checking system that was more stable and secure than everything else in the market. They knew the frust and they knew the frustrations and they've been, you know, going through them for years and years and they were just fed up and they, they had a passion for that and they drove it and they drove how it, how it looked and how it operated, and and we drove the security side and it it was a really, really great solution and and they paid for it and they got it, and they're the only school that I know that has it. So it was a really great solution. But because we had somebody passionate in it, we had another person that was passionate in school lunches and that person drove.

Speaker 0: 10:22

What was the problem with online school lunches? And I can tell you what I buy school lunches for my kids and the system is horrible. So I would love to help them, but that's the whole. People are adverse to change or the cost associated with it, right? So is it really worth it to them to change? If I'm frustrated, my kids still gotta go to school there and I still gotta buy lunch there, there's nothing I could do about it, so they don't care, but that's another story for another day. So, really, at the end of the day, you you should really latch onto somebody or you know, have a good relationship or be in the field that you're trying to innovate to.

Speaker 0: 11:00

Now, another thing that that, in order to get the creativity really spurred within the team that that was set up, that I helped set up, and then, when the engineers came in, they grew that team. But one thing we did is we didn't hire anybody from the marine industry to build a submarine. And you might go wow, that's going to take you a while and it did. It absolutely did. But what we did is we redefined with new technology what is possible in the infrastructure of this robotic submarine, and that's why our submarine is not like anything else out in the market and we're not selling them or anything. This isn't like a sales pitch or something. We still use it. We have some other pieces of equipment as well, but we did not hire somebody in the marine industry because we wanted an outside the box kind of thought process and we got that. And that's why we are in control of everything from the hardware to the software, to the circuit boards and everything, because we didn't bring in people with their preconceived notions of no, you have to do it this way, no, it needs to be like this, no, no, no, let's reinvent this, let's start from the ground up.

Speaker 0: 12:19

And a lot of companies what will happen is they'll go, okay, innovate, but we want to add this capability or we want to do this thing right. But if you dig down into the infrastructure, if you dig down to the base of their technology that they're trying to change, or the base of their software that they're trying to change. That's the problem. It's old, it's outdated, it hasn't been updated and that's the problem and that's probably one reason why all these companies keep getting hacked, right Is they're adding all this stuff on top of the rubbish that they have, which wasn't rubbish 20 years ago when they built it. But it doesn't have the underlying infrastructure that's required to get them to where they need to be if they were to compete. And that's why so many companies can get displaced, because it would cost them a bit of money to go back to the start. But if they're already doing business and they already have market share, then they should have an R&D team or they should have some kind of an improvement team and they should be doing that stuff. But if they haven't done it for so long, they get so far behind and then it takes time, and sure they can throw a lot of money at it, but it takes time and they can be displaced.

Speaker 0: 13:30

So I guess what I'm trying to say is always find somebody within the area that you're trying to innovate in that can really give you the pain, because you need the pain. You need the pain that people go through in order to solve their challenges. You need to understand it. You need to. I spent one time I spent three months at a client, three months to understand what they were doing, to go through all of their departments. I looked at all their software and I really wanted to understand how they were doing things, because the executives were all frustrated and all the pain were all frustrated and all the pain and all the time constraints and everything that was going on within the company. And I found that there were ways to fix it. There were really great ways to fix it and we implemented a lot of that.

Speaker 0: 14:20

But I needed to talk to the people on the ground that felt the pain and had the passion to fix that pain. But, of course, that came from the top. The top had to say, yes, I want you to go around and I want you to find this pain and I want you to fix this pain. So sometimes the barriers can be lower level and sometimes they can be higher level, and what I found a lot of times is you'll find the one or two people within an organization that really want to change for the better, that are loyal, that are passionate and want the company to succeed or improve and unfortunately, a lot of those times, those people are knocked out. I've seen a lot of innovation managers in fact, one recently and they're in charge of innovation. They're in charge of innovation when it suits them, when they can blow a whole bunch of money, and they're not really innovative people at all. But the top doesn't understand innovation and they talk a good talk. So it's just things that we need to understand as we move through our journey of innovating.

Speaker 0: 15:33

Just because you say you're innovative or just because you have a title of innovation or you've won an award for innovation, does not mean you can innovate Not by far in today's society. Not by far in today's society. So, as you're moving forward in this, as maybe you're innovating or you're having your own thought processes and your thought experiments and creatively addressing different unmet needs or inefficiencies in the market, you also need to think about the things like am I creating a problem? Am I creating a solution? Do I have people that can help me or soundboard this in that field? Unless you are in that field, but then are you too close? Is this something that is just for you, just something that would make your life easier, but not so much as a whole. How marketable is it? Because, at the end of the day, I've seen amazing solutions, amazing innovation, amazing creativity on some things that have gone nowhere. They've gone nowhere and it's very unfortunate, but it does happen. So you need to make sure that there is actually a need in the market and that you haven't created new challenges for the customers that you're trying to bring on board, right? If you've created more problems for them, then it's probably not going to happen.

Speaker 0: 17:00

Now, if you work for a big company or a company, let's say, a medium to large company, then there are traditionally a lot of barriers in those companies to proper innovation and creativity, because most of those companies will be adverse to risk taking. It's just normal. But you can break those barriers down with good business cases. If you're doing it through somebody, you can, through research and through education, educating people on what innovation and creativity is, without lecturing them, because the old saying you get more with honey than with something else. Now, I guess we've spent quite a bit of time on talking about innovation and creativity with business-related things, but it's the same in your personal life.

Speaker 0: 17:52

Creativity could be something, like you know, thinking outside the box and finding unique solution to everyday problems From, say, organizing living spaces to managing your time effectively everyday problems from, say, organizing living spaces to managing your time effectively. Innovations can be seen in the application of creative solutions like developing a new app to manage your household chores or your kids' chores or the shopping list. I mean, there's so many different things that you can do and creativity really inspires personal growth by encouraging the exploration of new skills. Right, your new skills, new hobbies, new perspectives and I think we talked about that in an earlier episode is it is your perspective that is important to continue to grow. Individual and personal development might involve applying creative learning techniques to master new language or skill and or tailor traditional productivity methods to better suit one's own personal workflow. We can look at it in your relationships and your social interactions, so you can come up with novel ideas for spending time together or resolving conflicts. You might be using new technology or strategies to stay connected.

Speaker 0: 19:01

How about health and well-being? So, finding new and actually enjoyable ways to incorporate exercise I said enjoyable for exercise, right? Yeah, that's me Meditation or healthy eating, and you could develop a new fitness routine that's unique for you, for your interests, for your style and, heck, it could even help other people out. So there's a lot of ways that it's not all about business, it's not all about making money, it's not all about always finding different people. It's about you Reflect on you.

Speaker 0: 19:36

What do you think?

Speaker 0: 19:36

So I always have you seen the movie Robots, right? Okay, robots is a kid's movie. I don't know if it's a Disney movie, maybe a Disney movie. My kids like it. I've seen it a million times and I think he says see a need, fill a need. Yeah, his name was Rodney, actually, I think, and he works as a dishwasher, but it's real. It's good advice.

Speaker 0: 20:06

Okay, if you see a need, if you see a lack of something and it could be just for you, then find that creativity, find that innovation, blend it together and come up with a solution. And I've seen a lot of people say ah, if I had money, I would fix this, or I would do this, or I would build this app. Or, come on, there's AI. So there's AI that'll write your song. Or, if you're a songwriter, they'll play your lyrics, sing your song in any style that you want. There's ones that'll write code chat, gpt.

Speaker 0: 20:38

Write your blogs will help build your website. Write your blogs will help build your website. There is so much out there that you can do on your own that there is no reason why you can't innovate, why you can't at least conceptualize your idea and, yeah, you never know where it's going to go and even if it just benefits you or your family, wasn't it worth it? Of course it was. Absolutely of course it was. So, yeah, I think we're going to end it here for today. I really think that there's so much more that we can talk about, so maybe we'll end up doing a part two later on, but for now, we will end this and the next episode will be on motivation. So thank you very much for joining me on Full Circle with Sean, and I look forward to chatting in the next one.