If you didn’t do this at least once in each of the three previous exercises (fix, modify, and make something), you weren’t doing them hard enough, but you still need to break something on purpose. […]
Category: Innovation
Innovation Inspiration #011—Make Something
It doesn’t have to be complex or fancy. It might even be the first thing you’ve ever built. But it must follow these rules: It must be your original design It must be scratch-built It […]
Innovation Inspiration #010—Modify Something
Once you’ve fixed something, the next step is to take something apart that’s not broken, so you can make it adapt to your personality, instead of you having to adapt to it’s designer’s guess of […]
Innovation Inspiration #009—Fix Something
I know you have something broken, somewhere around the house, office, garage, or in storage. Pick something you care about too much to discard, but not quite enough that you’ll be crushed if your fixing […]
Innovation Inspiration #008—Turn Off The Radio
No, I don’t mean turn the volume down or hit mute (which isn’t always a mute; sometimes it’s a mislabeled attenuator button that lets just a wee bit bleed through). Off. Part of the time […]
Dealing With Your Inner Absent-Minded Professor
(Not really part of my I² series, partly because today’s the wrong day of the week, and partly because I don’t yet know enough about the topic to consider the advice below all that innovative […]
Innovation Inspiration #007—Pursue Laziness
Today I finished the first draft of a 4-page document whose purpose is to distill an 80-page one, for a much less-technical audience. The last half-page took me a more than half the day, but […]
Innovation Inspiration #006—Go to the Fair
I’m working on a 4-page document, that is essentially a summary of an 80-page document. No small task, if you’re familiar with the old adage of “Sorry I didn’t have time to write a short […]
Innovation Inspiration #005—Share Incomplete Work
It’s OK to be a perfectionist. But it’s not OK to not share your work until it’s perfect. The point to sharing in-progress work early is to obtain input, inspiration, and innovation that will make […]
Innovation Inspiration #004—Ask Questions
Ask questions. Ask lots of questions. Ask stupid questions. Keep asking until you find and understand the answer. This is how we learn. If you want to ask a question, it’s because you don’t know the […]