Connecting the dots – innovation

This is the third blog in the series of Connecting the dots… which started from way off the track blog on cricket.

You see how things and ideas connect to one another. I was wondering about cartoon channels. These channels show many foreign based cartoon series and the characters are very famous amongst children. Ask kids – “Pokemon, who is this?” and see their reaction as if you are an alien, ‘oh! you don’t know Pokemon?’ And “world becomes their stage” they would show all the trademark actions and dialogs of the key characters of the series. Well, I don’t see any issue to this however it made me think on a tangent. The tangent resulted in an earlier blog on Cricket… another on “Amar Chitra Katha” and finally here I am writing on innovation. I connected the dots and here I am. The dots are as below –

Cartoon Channel -> Blog on Cricket -> Amar Chitra Katha -> an article by Darrell Mann -> Blog on Innovation.

Once in a tutorial Dr Darrell Mann (a renowned TRIZ expert and professional) created a solution space for Better Mobile Phone starting from an Elephant. Surprised! Yes he did that in 2006 in a tutorial session. And if one knows how to connect dots one can design/formulate or conceptualize faster and better.

I started thinking in the following fashion –
‘why we do not have any local Indian Character?’ I asked myself. Then answered to myself – ‘Hello! do people know that Chess and Badminton are conceptualized in India? Well in India Cricket is a sport rest are time pass. Perhaps true! How many notice, that the first archery competition in world happened during the time of Mahabharat, when Arjuna hit the eye of a fish. Oh! Olympics, from 1996 onwards in each Olympics India brought at least one medal home’.

1996 – Peas
2000 – Karnam Malleshwari
2004 – R S Rathore and
2008 – a few… who were they? Let me ask people if they recall names of these sports men/women

Mahabharat, cartoon characters and kids not knowing about the Indian Mythologies – wow! that was what was the premise on which Amar Chitra Katha was born.

Innovation requires flow of thoughts, flow of thoughts from different directions to a solution or an offering (Product/Service). However, we cannot rely on random thought and free-will for solutions. We need solution better and faster. Innovation requires open mind, ability to connect dots and think and look beyond obvious. At the same time it does not mean innovation is a play of experts, if someone is open and willing to learn one can learn approaches to be innovative. All the freewheel thoughts were the random stimulus and I connected them in the form of blogs – Cartoons, Cricket and Amar Chitra Katha.