DANGEROUS IDEAS

The book I decided to read for INNO58 was Dangerous Ideas (Finnish title Vaaralliset ideat) written by Alf Rehn.  I have read this book earlier, and I found it very usefull back then. Now when i read it second time it gave me even more than for the first time. 

Dangerous ideas is not quite the classic book about creativity and innovations. Normally these books always follows the same pattern, the same creativity exercises and claims how fun and easy creativity is. Alf Rehn slightly disagrees. He believes that creativity is hard, and if you want to create something truly new and creative, our brains need to work so hard that it hurts.

True creativity is anything but a little fun gameplay. It's dangerous, disgusting and uncomfortable, and above all difficult and exhausting. Creativity which really is close to creating new ideas forces our lazy brains to work in new unpleasant ways. In reality, the ideas which arise among the group easily without any effort and which are accepted by the team without any criticism, are very conventional ideas. Ideas that have been around for ages and ideas competitors already use.  

Our brains are extremely comfort-loving and good at generating passion and feelings of success to keep us focusing on the things we know already. Particular concern about all of this is in the fact that although the company thinks it is developing to a new level, our customers have found these tricks of the trade a long time ago. In this case the company is not creating new and innovative changes. 

New ideas should always be tested well before any action is taken larger. If your idea makes the listener protest by saying things such "That would not work in our markets!” or "Who the hell would want to use this service anymore if we did like you are considering, ridiculous thought", there is an opportunity to develop something really NEW and innovative. If negative reactions are born the idea should be tested by the person who can question the idea from many perspectives but still gives the inventor of the idea room for develop idea further so that it will take the later attacks and criticism.

I believe this book helps me and my team in our project whatever the assignment will be. I hope every team member is open-minded for the ideas that will born in Kunstenniemi and we can create something really new, something that has never seen before. Sad but true the fact is that "something" has to make us feel uncomfortable! :)

-Sanna-