Here is a correspondence that I had with Bob Clareborough who wrote a great article in The Space Review.
Bob - thanks for taking the time to answers my questions and best of luck in the future with your interesting work!
From: Howard Oliver [mailto:holiver@whatifwhatnext.com]
Sent: September 18, 2006 9:50 AM
To: 'bobclarebrough@aol.com'
Subject: Question on Aloah from Mars piece
Hi Bob:
I write a blog called http://prmeasure.blgoware.com that explores emerging marketing communication technologies. Can I ask you a few questions about your fine article - “Aloah from Mars!” (http://www.thespacereview.com/article/707/1). I would love to post your answer to the blog with a link and attribution.
1. “Around 300 AD a fisherman beached his canoe on the shore of an island. He had completed one of the most incredible voyages in human history. He was a Polynesian named Hawai’iloa—the Big Island of Hawai’i bears his name.”
It is amazing that we still have a memory of Hawai’iloa and his story. What part did the story telling culture of the Polynesians play into preserving his adventure?
2. You are interested in how innovative industries are pioneered. Do you agree that exploration, innovation and commercialization are the leading forces in the expansion of the human spirit and condition?
3. Your rule of thumb is interesting: “The more counter-intuitive something seems, the more likely you are to make an amazing discovery!” I wonder about the word “counter-intuitive”. A person who has an intuitive basis for an opinion probably cannot immediately fully explain why he or she holds that view (source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intuition_(knowledge)) . Don’t breakthroughs come from immersing yourself in an environment, an experience or a pool of data and then using your intuition and creativity to see things in new ways? Is it not counter-intuition but intuition that comes into play? Isn’t that the way old Hawai’iloa crossed the Pacific?
Hope we can have this conversation.
Cheers!
Howard Oliver whatifwhatnext | 416-638-8582
Hi, Howard,
Thanks for your note - glad you enjoyed the piece in TSR - also some good questions which I'll try to answer:
STORY TELLING CULTURE
Without a written history, the only way that the ancestors' exploits and achievements could be passed down through the generations was through story-telling. An important communication tool in any culture, the art of story-telling has been identified as a critical skill for business leaders as they strive to build the culture in their companies. Compelling stories that are well told let people know where they came from, how they got to where they are today, and what they should expect to do next.
EXPLORATION, INNOVATION, AND COMMERCIALIZATION
These are fundamental to the advancement of human beings. We only have to look at the dismal failure of communism to understand that the freedom to pursue dreams and accept the risk of failure is what makes us who we are. On another level, we human beings are the only creatures on the planet who ask questions, who wonder about the unknown and then spend the rest of our lives searching for the answers. Doing that leads us into new places where we make discoveries and share the benefits with each other through the medium of trade. Some leading-edge economists are now theorizing that economics is itself an evolutionary process and that, in effect, homo sapiens was the first creature to have a "trading" gene.
COUNTER-INTUITIVE DISCOVERIES
In the business world, managers tend to look at the familiar in the search for ideas or solutions to problems - what their colleagues are doing, what their competitors in the industry are up to. Sometimes the answers lie elsewhere. For example, Southwest Airlines wanted to find ways to dramatically shorten the turnaround time for its planes once they landed. They found the solution by studying the way NASCAR pit crews operate. The success of McDonald's was based on Ray Kroc's introduction of Henry Ford's production line technique to the business of preparing food. Ford was influenced by the hog "dis-assembly" lines in the
I hope these answers go some way to addressing the questions - what do you think?
Best regards,
Bob Clarebrough