Recipe for Innovation

According to Swedish creative consultant and coach Fredrik Härén, the recipe for an explosive idea is Person (Know-ledge+Input). This means that brilliance is sourced out by combining what a person knows and an outside idea. As much as Fredrik is an innovator who has fallen love with his own idea, I am not surprised, after meeting the author, if he would be the first one to passionately embrace the man or woman who rendered his equation obsolete.

It is because Fredrik and his twin brother Teo are creatures of creativity. They are champions of the new and have put up their company Interesting.org to spread the message of letting your brain go where it has never gone before. They achieve this novel mission by teaching companies such as IBM, GE, and Pfizer how to be more creative in their business solutions. As twins, they split apart to achieve imaginative world domination. Fredrik is based in Singapore and is in the Philippines now to give talks, while Teo works in Stockholm for the European audience.

And like revolutionary Jehovah’s Witnesses, they preach with their creative black bible entitled The Idea Book, an idea journal that dares to question how books are made, sold and read. As you notice the cover, you won’t the find the names of Häréns on it because you are the author of the book. Also, this type of literature is a dialogue and not a monologue as you answer activities such as “design a cellphone for Ford” to “Give 50 uses for a red brick in 15 minutes.” Lastly, The Idea Book is meant to be shared but not borrowed as you wouldn’t want your peers checking into your zillion dollar Google type ideas, right?.

Obviously, with a lot ideas tossed around like caesar salad, what’s the big idea? I was lucky enough to get answers from Fredrik, who might be his twin Teo in disguise, about the origins of this visionary cause and how Asia is the next hub for that elusive iPhone-shattering idea.

A Net Of Possibilities

Fredrik started his journey into the creative in 1994 at beginning of the Internet boom. His web design company reached out to early-adopter companies who wanted their own websites. It was a net of possibilities because there were no standards or templates for how Nike websites should look like and the same for other industries. So, each project was like a divine creator playground as the rules were shaped by young web designers paid by old money.

While making these websites, Fredrik discovered that his team wasn’t only changing the digital world but the world outside as well. Travel agencies didn’t need to be in the malls and could be completely online. It was remaking the world in one big swoop and Fredrik wanted more of it. Thus, he and his twin Teo started Interesting.org in 2000 to find innovations not just in IT but in other forms like in book publishing and architecture. It was hunting the next Internet in other fields through igniting the creative spark within them. It was about introducing simple  but groundbreaking ideas like the bag stroller, which was only made in the 20th century even though wheels and bags were made over 3,000 years before. The outbreak spread successfully as Fredrik has given 1,000 talks about creativity around the world and consulted top companies open to the allure of the new.

Developed And Developing Ideas

Yet, Fredrik frankly admits that Westeners are not all Steve Jobs but possibly the opposite. It is because first-world countries see themselves glasses already saturated with solutions. Unlike developed countries, people in developing countries are hungry for change and see opportunity at every corner. For example, his own country Sweden created the Ericsson cellphone but up to today cannot use it as a digital wallet like in the Philippines. Another is the fact that microfinance has flourished in countries like ours and in India.

This is why he moved to Asia, first in China in 2005 and now he resides in Singapore to be in the center of the next innovative tsunami. Fredrik says that Asians, such as the Chinese, have been gifted to look with both eyes to the east and west for inspiration. As such, they can copy and meld ideas from the whole world and have potential to produce new global maelstroms. It is only a matter of time, says Fredrik, for the Chinese and Indians to get out of their duplicating and replicating ideas phase and produce original concepts that imbibe their own soul, style and ideals.

As for Filipinos, he sees true creativity in our humorous spirit. It is because humor is another form of innovation. Telling a joke is giving a plain old story and giving it an unexpected twist. It is reinventing reality with a single punch line. So, it is a tale of tapping into this ingenuity and making it shine in other areas of the Filipino life.

Unbottle Your Ideas

And as I mentioned, I believe that Fredrik wouldn’t mind anyone challenging his idea. So, I would like to end this article by adding to his recipe, by stating that new ideas do not exist in a vacuum or in a bottle. They are meant to be open sourced for public consumption. You  don’t need to look as far as Apple has allowed anyone with a technopreneurial drive to develop applications for the iPhone. I know, Fredrik would agree as he is looking for an investor to publish his Tagalog version of The Idea Book to give away for free.

How about you? are you willing to share your thoughts and dreams at no cost like Fredrik? or are you afraid that it will be laughed at? Do you dare reveal what you really think? Now, that is an idea I really want to see!

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The Idea Book is available at Powerbooks.

Check the website at http://interesting.org.

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Share your ideas at readnow@supreme.ph