clearly learn 1.12

Visual is Critical

by Keith Miles, Clear Future markerboards

January 2012

Your organization is innovating – finding new ways to survive and prosper. A recent Fast Company Design article reinforces one of Clear Future’s beliefs: that sketching an idea out or writing it down will remove ambiguity and help eliminate a barrier to innovation.

“Luke Williams, a fellow at Frog, argues that coming up with breakthrough innovation isn't just a matter of being brilliant. Rather, he lays out a systematic method for overcoming the usual barriers that hem in great ideas. [This is the third post in a series of excerpts adapted from Luke Williams's Disrupt: Think The Unthinkable To Spark Transformation In Your Business.]”

As a result, they [ideas] rarely escape people’s heads and instead remain there, unformed. The view from inside the company, however, is different. One of the most common phrases I hear from clients is, “We don’t need any more ideas; we have too many.” But, when I ask to see the documented ideas they have, they start back- pedaling: “Well, we don’t have them written down or anything. But, we discuss them a lot.”

That’s the problem in a nutshell. You can talk about ideas in general terms, at least for a while. But, abstraction makes it harder to understand an idea and remember it. So, to increase the potential, you have to stop talking about it and explain it in sensory terms. “Sketch it out!,” as Hartmut Esslinger, founder of frog design, used to say. (He wouldn’t listen to an idea if you hadn’t done so.) Ambiguity disappears when you describe your ideas in visual or written form.

Read this great article...
http://www.fastcodesign.com/1665442/the-3-biggest-barriers-to-innovation-and-how-to-smash-them

Keith Miles

Product Manager

See Clear Future's full line of unique clear markerboards here... www.clearmarkerboard.com