Unleashing Radical Creativity (2020) | Hacker News Reader

Unleashing Radical Creativity (2020)

blog.x.company

29 pointsHell_World13 comments

I remember reading once that Robert Frost was given a creativity test as part of an article for Newsweek or Time where he had to see shapes in clouds (or something similar, I read this a long time ago), he scored particularly low on this test and he remarked afterwards something to the effect that to be creative (or to benefit from creativity) you needed to be able to unsee the shapes in the clouds and ignore the incidental.

As a general observation whenever I see tools or methods discussed to increase creativity it always seems to be things designed to increase the incidental, that is to say processes to make non-creative people feel they are being creative, designed by non-creative people. Destined to fail.

this is probably badly remembered.

on edit: given the shortcomings of modern google I do not believe I can find the article anymore, so this hazy description will have to do.

Is this some sort of cleverly detailed parody of techbro "market disruption" startup types? The amount of cliched jargon between really ambiguous hype text is almost eye watering.

"Chaos pilots"? I mean seriously?

Stifled creativity is the dark side of learning to act "appropriately".

Sometimes an individual might "overfit" and limit their thoughts or actions too much.

But it's a fine line, everybody expects you to understand what's not to be said, without being told. It's all about the context, the frame.

We can see some of this in X itself. A capital intensive technological solution is appropriate work product, at X.

Radical schemes for reducing overall consumption or redistibuting wealth, would not be appropriate work product at X.

I had a similar thought while reading this. X is not looking for all kinds of creative and critical thinkers, they’re looking for people with an entrepreneurial, individualist mindset.

It’s an important distinction that typically goes unmentioned in tech.

Did any of the Google daughter companies funded by its money actually do something useful?

It seems like they don't have an idea of what to do and they just believe that some unspecified "innovation" of theirs will change the world.

They use all the corp speak and methods and achieve nothing except making execs rich beyond belief.

Sidewalk Labs arguably an impactful spinoff

I think this a symptom of only the most moonshot-y getting associated with X in coverage.

Google Brain, for example, started at X. So did a bunch of Google's wearable tech, if I'm not mistaken.

I love to hear about places like X, but what surprises me is that there are few places like X. You’d think in an industry where we’re constantly talking about “innovation” and “disrupting the market”, you’d see more of these types of places but I guess it’s more important to be make something safe and sells.

Innovation is really not the goal of most places. What makes RoE is extracting as much as you can from what you have and only innovate when needed (i.e. customer tells you/margin pressure etc.). If you can burn money then you can disrupt etc., but if you are measured on profitability innovation is mostly a drag (better to buy innovations you like).

Coming first isn't always the best place to be, sometimes being the last to enter is also quite a good spot.

This is the core problem of the current economy. Too many monopolies. In theory Pfizer should be able to innovate a lot due to their massive size as they are not afraid of failing and being poor + homeless, but all they do is lazy out and buy startups. What is the value of Pfizer except as a bank essentially? Same discussion can be made about many more S&P500 companies.

The problem is lack of constraint. You can build anything, but where does it fit in the world? That transition from derisked, innovative technology to useful product is particularly difficult and typically involves a handoff between two separate groups of people. Does the receiving group need or want an innovation? How well did the innovation group prep the technology for handoff? Was the innovation pulled through development by demand or was it pushed by the inventors? These are not trivial problems and any innovation shop like X is necessarily going to carry a lot of risk. You really only see that kind of innovation focus in organizations that can handle the risk (cash flow sufficient to recover from continuous failure from the innovation department). My (biased) opinion is that it is worthwhile to have innovation focused groups in your company, but management needs to be realistic about risk.

[source]: several years leading a design engineering R&D group

I have some follow-up questions I’d love to discuss one-on-one given your background; is there a way I might reach out to you?

If you don’t want to post contact details publicly (couldn’t find any on your user profile), you’re welcome to poke me instead (details on my profile).

One problem which stops massive everyone in innovation is psychology and culture. "Places like X" are made of people after all. People want to have kids, want to have stability, good things in life (vacations, luxury, etc). Innovation is a massive sacrifice of time that could have been spent enjoying life of luxury and/or stability. Even Bezos is spending more money and time on the yacht than with Blue Origin. What is an average person supposed to do?

Even if we went above the personal dreads societal dreads kick-in about the same topics of stability and reversion to the mean.

Also most of the startups are not 0 to 1 and not truly disrupting. Last mover makes more money at less risk than first mover. It is all about risk on every level.

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