When Jawbone’s UP first launch was a disaster, they did not cut losses and shelve the product. The CEO assembled a war room bringing together experts from Engineering, Manufacturing, Design, Data Analytics, Marketing and Customer Service to discover what has gone wrong and redesign the bracelet from scratch. They papered walls with flowcharts and product design diagrams and mapped out potential problems, dissecting every angle. When relaunched, it became a breakout success. How did Jawbone catapult out of a tricky situation? They networked minds.
It’s the difference in how we think, what perspectives we bring to a problem, and the steps we take to tackle difficult challenges that, when combined, unlock breakthrough results. Creators network minds to tap varied perspectives. This powerful act delivers novel solutions.
When faced with issues, we rarely deviate from past approaches (local search). Creators build on each other’s ideas to overcome these constraints. They harness cognitive diversity by assembling all kinds of thinkers. We often think of diversity in terms of race, gender, economic status etc. Cognitive diversity, however, refers to what goes on inside our heads: how we interpret a situation, categorise information, and envision a set of possibilities.
It took language experts, military strategists, mathematicians, engineers, cryptographers, historians, philosophers, even crossword puzzle aficionados, working feverishly to crack the Nazi Enigma Code during WW 2.
When we encounter problems, we don’t know where we will find the answer. Our differences in experience, education, personality, and other traits help teams device solutions from various angles.
The era of lone geniuses is ending. Issues today are far too interconnected to be tackled by a single individual, and no one person can synthesize all the information around us.
altLearners 