All posts by Araceli Camargo-Kilpatrick

Enterprise, Enterprise, Enterprise, Creativity, Creativity

Tim Brown, author of a new book called Change by Design, has a background in industrial engineering. In it, he champions an ‘idea’ as something that must be worked upon until it is at the most efficiently functional it can be.

The reason this is of interest to us at THECUBE is because we treat IDEAS as products, and like products they need to be engineered. Those who undertake this task of engineering are Idea Engineers. These are the people who are able to take an idea from its very inception to the state of a fully functioning enterprise.

Let’s say, for instance, that someone has an idea to launch a fashion label. It’s common knowledge that this sector is, at best, difficult to break, and in most cases the achievement of any kind of longevity is impossible. The idea engineer would look at the existing industry and find the problems, common tripping-stones that often land fledglings in hopeless situations. Once these are confirmed, they then begin to look at solutions, ways around these potential hazards. From this they devise systems to be put in place in order to make the idea work at best capacity; if this means turning the conventional route for budding fashion entrepreneurs upside-down, or discovering entirely new ways of execution, so be it.

This is the crucial role of the Idea Engineer, making industries and ideas better – increasing their chances of survival. Once the idea goes through this rigorous process a stronger enterprise will emerge.

It is our philosophy that each creative idea should have an idea engineer. If we look at the idea as an airplane. The creator of the plane may have had the right mind to have conceived it, the imagination to envisage it, the correct tools to build it, but when it comes to flying it they have no expertise at all. Intent on getting it off the ground, they courageous pilot the plane down the runway. Some don’t even make it off the ground, some crash just as quickly as they take-off, some soar into the sky only to hit turbulence and crash to the ground. Good, well-constructed ideas shouldn’t end up as a flaming wreckage. This is why pilots, or idea engineers, exist: to steer these visionary vessels across the sky to success.

As a result of idea engineering, there would be more success stories rather than the elusive ‘they finally made it’ stories. It may sound as if we are insisting on stripping the creative process, reducing it to nuts and bolts, but we aren’t. We are simply giving it wings.

We relish the thought of bringing two worlds together – the rounded creative process with the linear engineering process. It isn’t a new idea, however. Leonardo Da Vinci was arguably the most famous of all idea engineers. He was almost compulsive about the structure of his creativity, and it was the creation of his engineered ratios that led him to create the great masterpieces like the Mona Lisa, The Last Supper, and even his anatomical drawing, the Vitruvian Man. He was a painter, sculptor, architect, musician, scientist, mathematician. He was also an engineer, an inventor, an anatomist, a geologist, a botanist, and a writer. He engineered his own ideas, coming up with concepts for a helicopter, a tank, a calculator, as well as outlining a basic theory of plate tectonics.

Idea Engineer is yet to be a profession, however, THECUBE will soon be launching it. We want people to be taught how to engineer their own ideas, we don’t want them to fail. Think how frustrating it would be to have a fabulous new car, beautiful, powerful, and technologically advanced in every way, but not having the means to drive it. We don’t want to be chauffeured around. With the right skills and training, each of us will have the not only the ambition, but also the expertise needed to pilot the ideas of tomorrow.

enterprise, enterprise, enterprise,enterprise

Written: Araceli Camargo-Kilpatrick
Edited: Russell Thomas