Picasso put it very succinctly: "Every act of creation is first an act of destruction."
Maynard Keynes put it slightly greater length:
The composition of this book [his General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, the operating manual for the economy of the western world through 30 very successful years] has been for the author a long struggle of escape, and so must the reading of it be...- a struggle of escape from habitual modes of thought and expression. The ideas which are here expressed so laboriously are extremely simple and should be obvious. The difficulty lies, not in the new ideas, but in escaping from the old ones , which ramify, for those brought up as most of have been, into every corner of our minds.
The same applies to innovation in business. Anything new has to destroy something that's already there. If you are a startup - like Uber aiming to destroy the taxi business, or airbnb the hotel business - that just adds to the excitement. But if you are an established business it isn't that simple. I have written before and will write again about how the destructive aspect of innovation will hold you back, but for now let's look on the bright side. Understanding that creativity starts with destruction gives us a way of being creative. If we need a new product or service idea, or a new business model, we can generate new ideas by systematically identifying the existing assumptions and breaking them. It's a form of controlled demolition.
For example, I was talking recently to someone in the world of advertising and communications. We identified five basic assumptions of agencies working in that world:
- Work is billed based on the number of hours involved;
- The agency creates the message;
- The agency controls the dissemination of the message;
- Creative ideas originate from "creatives" in "creative departments";
- New business is won by big "pitches" - elaborate, expensive dog-and-pony shows.
So now if you want new ideas for ways of doing business (an urgent need in this industry) you have a method of producing them.
Break one of the assumptions - this gives you 5 new ideas;
Break two of the assumptions - this gives you another 10, more radical;
Break three of the assumptions - another 10 ideas, more radical still;
Break four of the assumptions - another 5, yet more radical;
Break all five - one more, totally revolutionary.
So there you have 31 new ideas, ranging from fairly familiar (4 out of 5 basic assumptions the same as now) to completely revolutionary. That's helpful, but what is even more helpful is the other thing you have learned:
Creation and destruction are yin and yang, the two sides of the same coin. Understand this, and the challenge of innovation looks quite different.
