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Occasional ObservationsWe don't need more founders
Building over founding
Occasional ObservationsThoughts on "How to Build a Car"
Reading through How to Build a Car, a few product-related themes flow through the entire book: • The constant search for advantages. Poring over the newly released rulebooks to find gaps & technicalities to creatively exploit. Examining other domains for cross-over insights. Every team isn’t just racing on the track, the design/engineering teams are racing each other to identify the smallest of levers before the next team. • The car is a system, not merely an object. The interconnectedness of...
Occasional ObservationsMercedes & Microsoft
"Let's put that in the parking lot"
Occasional ObservationsWe don't need more founders
Building over founding
Occasional ObservationsThoughts on "How to Build a Car"
Reading through How to Build a Car, a few product-related themes flow through the entire book: • The constant search for advantages. Poring over the newly released rulebooks to find gaps & technicalities to creatively exploit. Examining other domains for cross-over insights. Every team isn’t just racing on the track, the design/engineering teams are racing each other to identify the smallest of levers before the next team. • The car is a system, not merely an object. The interconnectedness of...
Occasional ObservationsMercedes & Microsoft
"Let's put that in the parking lot"
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That's a working definition I've been playing with and I'd like more input on how it can be refined. Here's what's underneath it:
Ingenuity is applied imagination; there's a meaningful amount of creativity and originality combined with resourcefulness against a given challenge. It's adjacent to, and carries more significant impact than mere invention. Ingenuity is also more than modernization and meeting competitive standards; that's just treading water. Without this sort of novelty, there's no differentiation above alternatives.
Scaled reinforces the idea that it's not just an idea, proof-of-concept, or pilot — it's in the wild. While those are often necessary components — especially in large organizations — they aren't innovation in and of themselves. That said, "scaled" doesn't necessarily mean massive, but adopted at appropriate levels; Spotify's definition of scale is probably different than yours. More subtly, scale suggests that the concept has generated enough value in one way or another to continue.
Ingenuity without scale is akin to solutions looking for problems; scale without ingenuity is a lower-leverage investment.
Sure, the world probably didn't need yet another flag-in-the-ground thinkpiece on innovation, but I did. Innovation has a bad rap in part because of how it's been diluted by a focus on ideas that are too clever and/or too disconnected from the territory they've promised to help us navigate.
And yet, real innovation generates progress beyond incremental steps. Without differentiated, practical, and adopted solutions to real challenges, teams and organizations will struggle to stay in the game — let alone get ahead.
•••
Cover photo by Etienne Girardet on Unsplash
That's a working definition I've been playing with and I'd like more input on how it can be refined. Here's what's underneath it:
Ingenuity is applied imagination; there's a meaningful amount of creativity and originality combined with resourcefulness against a given challenge. It's adjacent to, and carries more significant impact than mere invention. Ingenuity is also more than modernization and meeting competitive standards; that's just treading water. Without this sort of novelty, there's no differentiation above alternatives.
Scaled reinforces the idea that it's not just an idea, proof-of-concept, or pilot — it's in the wild. While those are often necessary components — especially in large organizations — they aren't innovation in and of themselves. That said, "scaled" doesn't necessarily mean massive, but adopted at appropriate levels; Spotify's definition of scale is probably different than yours. More subtly, scale suggests that the concept has generated enough value in one way or another to continue.
Ingenuity without scale is akin to solutions looking for problems; scale without ingenuity is a lower-leverage investment.
Sure, the world probably didn't need yet another flag-in-the-ground thinkpiece on innovation, but I did. Innovation has a bad rap in part because of how it's been diluted by a focus on ideas that are too clever and/or too disconnected from the territory they've promised to help us navigate.
And yet, real innovation generates progress beyond incremental steps. Without differentiated, practical, and adopted solutions to real challenges, teams and organizations will struggle to stay in the game — let alone get ahead.
•••
Cover photo by Etienne Girardet on Unsplash
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In a thought-provoking blog post, @trh explores the concept of ingenuity, framing it as applied imagination that goes beyond mere invention or modernization. Emphasizing that true innovation must also be scaled and practically adopted to generate real value, the author argues that without these two elements, initiatives risk becoming oversights. The post challenges readers to consider innovation not as complexity for its own sake, but as the introduction of differentiated solutions to genuine challenges in a competitive landscape.