The Tangled Web of Imagineering

Overview

As you work your way toward being an Imagineer, it will be helpful to begin to understand how Imagineering works.  For obvious reasons Imagineering is somewhat more complicated and somewhat less predictable than standard engineering.  These characteristics show up quite well in what I call the Tangled Web of Imagineering.

How Does a New Idea Come Into Being?

One thing is for sure.  What goes on in the world of real invention is significantly different from the highly over-simplified “lightbulb” explanations that we often get in everyday discussions of the invention process.  Let’s take a look at the possibilities.  Click on the number boxes down below.

Consider the Implications of the Tangled Web – No. 5

That Tangled Web shows a lot about how Imagineering really works.  There are the people and ideas that have come before you.  The prior ideas and innovators always contribute a lot to the current innovation.  Then there are your current team members.  And there are almost always current competitors as well.  It is not unusual to have competitors within your team as well as outside.  You may converse with competitors.  You may try to steal ideas from competitors and they may try to steal ideas from you.

You are working on an innovation which almost always has many unknown factors.  That causes the connections and conversations to go in many different directions.  Some of persons involved in the interactions are not involved in the innovation process but are simply decision makers.  And some of the interactions may even be accidental.  All of this tends to produce a very tangled web of innovation, and the better you understand this web the more likely you are to be successful.

Overview

As you have seen from the initial blogs on Imagineering, it is a subject that is rather complicated.  It has very many parts.  Each part itself may not be terribly difficult, but the problem is there are so many of them.  That is what makes teams so valuable to Imagineering.  The literature on Innovation does not recognize this as well as it should.  That is because that literature concentrates on creativity and creativity does not require as much team-work as the other aspects of Imagineering, even though even creativity can benefit greatly from teamwork.

Significant Benefits of Teamwork to Creativity

It does not seem to require a very large team to come up with important ideas.  Quite often a team of two is sufficient for creation of the key idea or ideas that start an innovation.  But teams of two seem to be much more effective at this than individuals.  A large number of the famous companies in Silicon Valley were started by teams of two.  Somehow the interaction of two brains talking to each other produces more and better results than one brain talking to itself.  That is not surprising when you think about it.

Highly Significant Benefits of Teamwork to Completivity

Teams tend to be extremely important to completivity.  That is the case because when an idea is realized that usually involves many elements besides the element defined by the key idea.  All of these elements have to be made to work, and then made to work together.  Some of the elements may involve creativity and some may not but it can be very hard to create them all, put them together, and make them work, without a team.

Significant Benefits of Teamwork to STEM

The imagineer leading the innovation process may be quite expert in his or her particular area of STEM.  But the usual complexity of a complete innovation almost always extends beyond the capability of one individual.  It is always helpful, and often absolutely necessary to have some other STEM capabilities available.  If these capabilities can come from your team that will provide the most convenient help.

Overview

There are an extremely large number of books on innovation.  The number is so large that it tends to imply that there is something wrong in the innovation book writing process, and that happens to be true.  What is wrong is discussed in this blog.

Innovation for Business, but not for You

The majority of books on innovation deal with how to make a busi-ness innovative, not with how you can become innovative.  More than 90% of the innovation books available are on this subject.  They do not teach you how to be innovative.  This probably happens because it is possible to make a good deal more money teaching businesses to be innovative than teaching individuals to be innovative.  It is unfortunate because the best businesses need outstanding innovators to make them the best.  And they are not always able to get as many as they need from the USA.

Creativity is Covered, but Completivity is Uncovered

As you explore the mass of books on innovation you first have to sort out the ones that are designed to deal with personal rather than business innovation.  But that is only the beginning of the sorting process because there are other serious problems as well.  As has been noted already, these books generally discuss creativity at some length, which is good.  But unfor-tunately they generally have very incomplete discussions of completivity, which is very bad.  They do not thoroughly discuss how you get the job done.  They do not do their job.

Innovation Books often Contain Innovation Myths

Innovation is a very popular subject of discussion and such subjects are often surrounded and impregnated with myths.  This is certainly true for innovation.  There is great variation in the quality of innovation books in regard to myths.  But it may be difficult for you personally to detect these myths.  Later on we will provide some help in this area, by introducing you to one or more books that specifically discuss the Myths of Innovation.

Overview

There are relatively few books on Imagineering.  I believe that is not a problem because in my opinion if you pick the right books you won’t need a whole lot of them. It would not be a bad idea to acquire about half a dozen books on the subject, but if you want to minimize your reading you can confine your attention to the two best books on Imagineering and still be quite well informed.  I see these books as being both individually excellent and highly complementary.  They are briefly described below.

Imagineering: How to Profit from Your Creative Powers

Michael LeBoeuf, Ph.D.

Michael LeBoeuf taught business management at the University of New Orleans for 20 years and retired at age 47 in 1989.  In 1980 he wrote this excellent book on Imagineering.  It covers both creativity and completivity.  It is detailed, well-organized, and easy to read.  It is written as a schoolbook and is both positive and relatively complete on its subject.  It is the best book of this type that I have found, and I have surveyed at least 50 books.

Imagineering: Illustrated by Ships That Have Wings

Joseph Chadwick, Ph.D.

I was an acting Imagineer rather than a schoolteacher.  I carried out Imagineering from 1950 to 2000.  My most important area of interest was marine engineering, and one of my early subjects was ship stabilization using wings.  The design coming out of that work is still in operation today, 60 years after it was first put into operation.  It is a required feature on almost all large cruise liners.

My book is a story book about this development.  Many key aspects of Imagineering can be found in the story.  And in the book I have added some other aspects as well.  So the book provides a rather full discussion of most of the issues in Imagineering.  And of course it puts you right down on the ground where the invention if actually taking place.

Complementary Nature of These Two Books

The approaches to the subject taken by these two books are quite different, and they are also very complementary.  LeBoeuf’s textbook is a very well organized, careful, and complete overview of the subject.  It is very easy to read and study.  It is very easy to browse for topics of interest.

My storybook on the other hand, has to accept the story as it happens, so it is in a sense not quite as well organized.  But by its nature it is very close to the ground and full of adventures and realities.  It provides a more vivid view of the chances and circumstances that are sometimes beyond your control when you undertake Imagineering.  It also inherently puts more emphasis on failures, and the importance of knowing how to deal with them.  That is very important.  And it actually and fully illustrates the tangled web of innovations.  I doubt you will see that reality anywhere else.

These two books are very complementary.  Together they add up to significantly more than either book alone.  They can tell you pretty much of what it takes to understand Imagineering.  At my blogsite I plan to discuss something on the order of 12-18 books on Imagineering, but these two are the best.