#Secret 1: Imperfecto — The secret behind random small wins in product innovation
#Secret 2: Nirvana — The secret of immortality in brand innovation
#Secret 3: Dependent Origination — The secret of creating fortunes in culture innovation
Artistry is long considered as the industry of fortune and originality. How art affects human emotion and the mental world still remains a triggering question for humanity. Even to the most outstanding art elites, to define the art success factor of Mona Lisa, compared to its esteemed Renaissance contemporaries is a bare guess out of blue. Leonardo da Vinci’s master “sfumato”, chiaroscuro and sophisticated choice of canvas material to create a lifeful presence to La Joconde and her enigmatic smile which till now still remains a mystery can be a part of the story. Mona Lisa — a globally popular celebrity beyond time even among non-art lovers stands for its author’s passion to try and experience new things. At the outset of interest in Renaissance in the 19th century, Leonardo da Vinci was depicted as genius painter and also a visionary inventor whose later-on discovered prefigured inventions have been mythologized as the symbol of creation. However, it is only one side of the coin. Despite its existence since 1507, the painting ignited its enormous glory as one of the most valuable artworks of humanity of all time only until the frenzy theft in 1911, in which Picasso was even accused as one of the suspects. Stirring around chains of unfortunate events, Mona Lisa, however, got her public attention, not through scandals. The curiosity to truly understand what made her so valuable to be stolen set the first fire on greedy eyes, then centuries later spread a quest on finding a mystery to masterpieces and ambiguity of how our individual brains “feel” differently towards the painting. The Mona Lisa effect or the urge to explore further and deeper in scale. Similarly, behind every success of innovation lies a complex architecture of operation structure, human planning and resource development, which can only be enabled at the core of co-creation process. To create culture innovation, we need more than a sole star of luck.
Originality — Create less from more within your ride
It is universal knowledge to accredit one invention to an individual. Stan Lee for Marvel, Elon Musk for Tesla, Steve Jobs for Apple, Mark Zuckerberg for Facebook. Legendary innovators are pictured as “the chosen one” blessed by gods of creativity with unique, life-changing million-dollars ideas. However, the truth turns reverse, going to the deepest extent: Nothing is original. We are living in a world overrating original ideas with the imagination of inventions wholly and only built by their creators’ super-minds. In reality, these innovations got roots from people around these genius, including colleagues, friends, families, and especially competitors. All ideas take root from others and the most powerful inventions come from daily mundanity. What if Mark did not meet his fellows at Harvard who contributed and built up the initial version of Facebook from Facemash — a simple dating site for Harvard students? Innovation should be always a collective work because a solution expected to fit for all should be fed by all. Originality comes when you learn to ride the wheel of life with your peers to get your vision regardless of its change of turn. Innovators create less from more.
Now, the tricky challenges arise: How to streamline the outcome of collective innovation?
To create an amazing dance performance, beautiful body movement is only the tip of an iceberg. Imagine your brand as a group dance performance, there are always two main models to follow: Classical and Contemporary. Both require hard work from research to execution. Traditionally, start with meticulous planning and strict execution procedures as the 2008-Beijing opening ceremony. This approach works best when your operation team can function with military-grade and high precision 24/7. Otherwise, build up a sense of cohesive and collaborative community to get collective genius. A freestyle Step Up flash mob sequel with agile structures must ensure relationships between dancers. The movie stood for a manifesto of dance art revolution to create a visually stunning combination of the old and new. To successfully convey this message, Step Up choreographer had to spend time understanding dancers’ bodies to let them leave their imprints and vibes on the performance among themselves. Only when your crew deeply get connected on why the performance existed, would they start to propose unheralded beyond humanly possible abilities. Step Up started with a simple combination of ballet and hip hop. Sequentially, thanks to the contribution of all performers ideas, the final Step Up was a masterpiece of All In evolved into a visual firework with a grab-bag of diverse dances styles from ballet, jazz to hip hop, popping and locking, from contemporary to street dance. The remaining work is to stick the landing by agreed principles of shared values along with rules of engagement. Strategist’s work has the heaviest lifting to do to fuse everything together beautifully then innovation takes place.
How to build a sense of innovative and collaborative community
The question is not “How do we innovate?” but “How do we set up the stage for innovation?”
Coming to masterwork La Sagrada Familia, the mutual biggest question stays why it takes 147 years from 1882 supposed to 2026 to finish this gigantic architecture Antoni Gaudi. The construction was continued century after the death of its master architect. Surprisingly, this centenary pace of construction, contrary to common belief, was calculated by Gaudi himself. Indeed, he believed his design would take generations to complete and incarnated the spirit of the work. As he said “great temples have never been the work of just one architect”, Gaudi already planned to involve new generations of artists by providing samples and guidelines throughout his finished projects. The Nativity facade, the only part built by Gaudi in the church, can serve as a huge catalog for his naturalistic Art Nouveau building solutions and Venetian trencadís mosaics.
What if brand strategist can follow Gaudi’s genius? To build a brand lasting 100 years, the very first stones to set up must be conscious, instead of focusing on how-to, layering to create how-together. Industrialized linear operation process seems to be no longer sufficient in era of digital transformation because of its low agility. New disruptive and technology-inspired integrated operating models are in high demand to discover additional significant sources of revenue, deepen relationships with consumers and unlock unreachable supply. Let’s imagine your innovation ecosystem as a seed incubator where the planter must guarantee the production of high-quality seed with physical quality, genetic purity, germination, and its health. If originality, as physical quality and genetic purity, is the only considered factor, you have just missed half of the picture. Transformation fitness, serving as germination, represents scalability, helping boosting growth in the real market application. This following supply-and-demand guide from McKindsey ignites food for thoughts to draft your innovation transformation platform.
Digital strategy framework from McKindsey & Company
Whether Mona Lisa is sad or happy, which direction she is gazing towards, or if smart and playful Picasso figured out the secret of getting fast fame via “advertising” behind curiosity stirring thanks to the unfortunate theft accusation incident; the answers are open for individuals’ interpretations. What may stay true regardless of controversies is the talents and innovation seeds that legendary artists created and passed down generation to generation. Starry Night (Vincent Van Gogh), Persistence of Memory (Salvador Dali), Mona Lisa (Leonardo da Vinci), Ma Jolie (Pablo Picasso), La Sagrada Familia (Antoni Gaudi) and many of art masterpieces are forever immortal inspirations to the world. Perhaps, the “Red, Blue, Yellow Composition of Square and Line” Piet Mondrian probably got his seeds from both Van Gogh and Picasso whom he was much impressed by, then brought abstract art to life and so on. Imaginably, the wheel of dependent origination will go on as long as we keep exchanging idea seeds and know our own best areas of creation in correlation with our co-creators.
Build good products, encourage positive mindsets and habits, then step up to spread the good seeds of your brands. Fortunes will yield.
A dancing scene in Step Up
“Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you are going to get.” — Forrest Gump
Authors: Nguyet Nguyen (Azurie) & Hoang Ha (Sylvie)
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