Tsebeqe = It’s beautiful
(Source: macdaddyc, via sweetbabyjoos)
The Trinity of Innovation consists of only three ways to create things. Any design can be seen in the forefront of one of these three patterns. Recognizing the pattern is key to escape into smarter ideas.”
— Thank god for LALIAFLIA
The Ability to Face the Unpredictable
I love love people who have the ability to describe phenomenons in life in a way that hundreds of open questions are being answered in ONE sentence: The ability to face the unpredictable.
Here is the most striking reason WHY few people are innovative. It’s not because of their age, culture or education. It’s because some are used to face the unpredictable and others are not.
Now who is better prepared to face the unpredictable?
People who have travelled a lot in their life, or people who have lived in an unusual family like: father missing or parents missing.
I was on a highway from the Netherlands to Cologne. Makele and I were giving a ride to a random guy who turned out to be a highly creative architect. I instantly guessed that he grew up without his father. When I asked him, he would verify my assumption immediately.
I was somehow shocked about his response, because I have been able to geuss it right in the past too many times.
This notion doesn’t come from me. It comes from Csikszentmihalyi, a psychologist from the University of Chicago.
“The ability to face the unpredictable” can be found in many entrepreneurs who have co-founded innovative companies like Google, eBay, Sun Microsystems. Sergey Brin migrated from Russia, Pierre Omidyar from France and Vinod Khosla from India.
When I look back at my creative class mates at MADS I still remember that most of them moved a lot in their childhood.
Now why the hell is facing the unpredictable one core trait that makes up innovative mind-sets?
I believe it’s because moving around, especially as a kid, gives you the idea that there are different ways of being, different ways of thinking, and different ways of enjoying life.
While others struggle to unleash themselves from their cultural boundaries, you can explore ideas unconstrained. You can face ideas that never existed before, because you are used to the unpredictable. You are literally not afraid of exploring new ideas that force you to go into unknown territories.
Those who don’t like to cross borders and those who are afraid to explore new places have the same constraints when it comes to generating and executing new ideas. They simply stick to the ideas (places) they are familiar with.
That’s probably the reason why people who are better prepared to face the unpredictable like to ADD new ideas to your idea, while those who are not better prepared to face the unpredictable constantly compare your idea to familiar ideas.
Being innovative is exciting, but knowing why you are innovative will always boost your confidence.
Beqele = It is growing
By what karma is the larva for a princess chosen? And who chooses the chooser?”
— K.K.
When we reject the single story, when we realize that there is never a single story about any place, we regain a kind of paradise.”
— Chimamanda Adichie
(via fred-wilson)
Replicators Replicate Replicators
More and more people talk about “organic growth” when they get in touch with growth strategy.
A couple of month ago I had an insight that there is nothing else but organic growth. Imagine you look at a baby and talk about anything else but organic growth.
This topic is related to organic growth and extends it to a level of generations. Growing your start-up organically has two dimensions one when you deal with each individual and two when you deal with the community as a whole.
I have been writing about innovative movements before, but this was more a passive perspective on the matter. When you have to enforce an active growth, you need to look into phenomenons of life.
In the morning, when I was standing at a train station I had the insight that any living thing comes to life with the ability to replicate itself. This is nothing new. But when you apply this living phenomena to your start-up it means that any element you create has to involve a replicator before it’s creation.
You design your system in such a way that the replicator has the ability to replicate another replicator. When you do that you end up with generations that look constantly into the future.
Organic growth might be a decent way of growing, but replicating elements (not viral) are the ultimate accelerators for growth.
Anqè’è = He woke up
The Universal Place to Be
Normally I am not a big fan of universal principles, because they give me the feeling that things are predetermined, but when I take a look at our current start-up, which I call “THE INFINITE GAME”, the principles behind the concept seems to be something inevitable.
“The Universal Place to Be” is an idea that we pursuit. It is deeply rooted in the subconsciousness of humanity or even in every living thing. This is not a pseudo philosophical statement. It’s a fact.
Now what’s interesting is that the most beautiful part of our startup is sooooooooooo small that it’s hard to see for most people.
Most people have actually the natural understanding about our concept, but they can hardly free themselves from social and cultural conventions.
One friend of mine said to me “Everyone is talking about it, but no one actually offers it”. Up to this day, it is clear to me that there is no single individual, company, organization that can offer what we are working on, if they did, they were part of our team.
“The Universal Place to be” is a concept that I developed to illustrate that the idea that we are working on deserves to be in a place where it’s full potential can come to life.
When you are working on a start-up like this the most challenging part is to know this “Universal Place to Be” and to guide yourself towards the maximum potential of the idea while avoiding any distraction along the way.
To get to this “Universal Place to Be” you need to mix up many different living phenomenons, insights and feedbacks.
Chasing the INVISIBLE “Universal Place to Be” and running the necessary marathon to get there under any circumstances is your one and only reason why you can claim to be the only team in the world to make the idea happen.
Re’ay = Observe
All great entrepreneurs exhibit a character trait (you’re fitting in it right now): Everything that happens in the world is an affirmation that their product and their vision is exactly right!”
— Fred Wilson to Me & The Dream Team
When the World Turns Into a Muscle
Two days ago my friend Makele came to Cologne to meet up with the team and talk about the future of #theincredible and our role in it.
Since there is no limit to imagination, we could imagine that our startup is less a social network or a digital platform. The dictum “After the web (nerve) comes the muscle” always meant that our startup is not just there to connect people but to help them influence their environment.
Apparently, the most predictable technology most people think about nowadays is a web-platform and an application on a smart phone. For our “Infinite Game” these two “channels” seem to be a limitation rather than a nourishment.
Smart phones are being abused to accomplish tasks that are not related to speaking only, like navigation. The actual device that helps you navigate without any junk application is of course the “GPS” device.
Three years ago someone from the innovative company Frog Design was brainstorming out loud and called a smart phone “The Thing”. It seems like that “The Thing” is called phone even though it is not a phone anymore. This is like calling the world “China” because China makes up a large part of the world.
After developing LALIAFLIA, abstracting what “The Thing” actually is and what it can be is pretty simple for me.
If a telephone is an abstraction of speaking and hearing, what are the other applications actually doing? For the most part they are there to render files and some few real-life processes.
Now, what I was thinking while having a conversation with Makele is that “The Thing” a.k.a smart phone is limited to it’s ability to render files. What if “The Thing” would start to render real life experience only? Would it turn into a remote control for the physical world?
An Operating System is build based on it’s technical ability to process virtual items. If we start to ignore that, the Operating System would be actually more useful to render real life items and ideas.
The “WiTract” is born. A device that simply works like a remote control for everything we want.
Through the eyes of LALIAFLIA this device is again an abstraction of living phenomenons. The device is basically an externalized version of what we can find in any aware living thing. It’s impact on other people and our environment will be insane.
The origin of the “WiTract” came from the notion that everything in our startups needs to be locally responsive. The “WiTract” would centralize all responsive locations to one spot. It would be independent from any known Operating System and even from any computer device. Nevertheless, the “WiTract” would be based on the same virtual architecture of our startup.
Some have argued and will continue to argue that we should go by the “one device for everything” notion, but I believe that the “WiTract” will be able to accomplish tasks that are not even 1% comparable to other devices and applications.
The vision for the product is there, it’s feasibility seems to be possible as well. Financing it is another story. However building the product on the conceptual level will also help us iterate our startup better.
