248. Unlocking Innovation feat. Jeremy Utley

Feb 17, 2023

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When we think about the greatest innovators of our time (Benjamin Franklin, Steve Jobs, Frank Lloyd Wright) we often hear about their work ethic. But one thing that all of these innovators have in common is their ability to walk away from the work. They nap, they garden, and they go shopping to give themselves a break from the problem they are working on and look for inspiration in the real world. They gave themselves space to let inspiration come to them, rather than trying to force it.

In this episode of unSILOed, Greg talks with Stanford professor Jeremy Utley about his new book Ideaflow, which gives readers a strategy to come up with better ideas and determine which ones are worth pursuing.

Jeremy Utley is a Director of Executive Education at Stanford's renowned Hasso Plattner Institute of Design (the d.school) and works with leaders around the world to untap their abilities to innovate better and more effectively.

Episode Quotes:

How you perceive your problems matter

02:44: Inspiration is the disciplined pursuit of unexpected input. And every one of those words matters, but being disciplined in your pursuit of input is the way to solve problems. When you think about problem-solving as the big problem, we believe that idea flow can solve the problem of solving problems for good. Because you realize it's actually about how you think about the problem that matters.

04:02: The most innovative individuals have this instinct to go and seek input, that drives fresh thinking when they're stuck.

39:16:Our default assumption is to think that the majority of ideas we have are good, commercially viable, and successful. The opposite is true.

Problems have solutions when you choose to find them

30:15: Just because you don't know how to solve a problem doesn't mean it hasn't been solved in the world more broadly. And a lot of times, if you're thoughtful about where you go looking, you stumble upon novel solutions that you never would've seen in your own industry.

What is the right way of thinking about idea flow?

50:33: When you think about idea flow, it's not a measure of how many good ideas you can generate at any moment. That's an output metric. It's a measure of how many ideas you can generate at any moment and how many ideas are being generated.

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