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.

Introduction

This subject was discussed briefly at the end of Chapter 12, but I would like to take it up again here and add a few details because it is an important story.  The story implies that it is possible to make a million dollars carrying forward some of the ideas that have been discussed in this book.  That is only true, of course, if you have learned what you need to know about imagineering.

In the last part of the book you were introduced to folding cardboard boats, and how they performed or failed in cardboard boat races.  You were introduced to folding plastic boats as well.  The plastic material is similar to cardboard in that it is corregated to add strength and lightness.

Let’s talk a little more about the folding plastic boats.  They certainly are easy to build and inexpensive as well.  But perhaps you might suspect that anything so easy to build is likely to be worthless.

As a matter of fact, that is not true unless you believe that a million dollars is worthless.  Here’s the story.

Making a Million Dollars Each

Three young men became aware of folding plastic boats a few years ago, and decided that they had interesting possibilities.  They spent four years working on the design of a folding plastic kayak.  In the process they tried out hundreds of model designs and built more than 20 prototypes.

After they felt that they had achieved an elegant design they started building, and sold about 1400 boats over one year’s time.  Then the three young men took their design and sales achievements to the investors at the Shark Tank program on ABC and found an investor who gave them the $500,000 investment that they felt they needed to expand the program to full scale.

It seems very likely to me that they and their investor will each make at least a million dollars in the next few years.  The design has a lot going for it.  It is extremely portable.  It is good-looking.  It can be sold online and shipped to buyers.  And it could be sold on Amazon. That is a big plus.  Check out their kayak at the ctrl-click links below.  When the first link opens you need to scan down a little to get to the main video.

              An Origami Kayak

              ORU Kayak Among Sharks

 I need to point out that these three young entrepreneurs did not learn about either folding plastic boats or imagineering from this book.  They started working on their folding kayak project about four years ago, about the same time that I got serious about this book.  But the interesting thing to me is that no matter where they got their innovation education from, they have acted exactly as if they got it from this book.

This folding plastic kayak is a perfect example of innovation in action.  A design  that many people would feel is worthless or at least slightly crazy, has been turned into a million dollar product by a very serious trial and error effort.  Try, try and try again.  Notice that the leader of the design team obviously understood his subject.

What Does This Teach Us

What does this story teach us about innovation?  Here’s what I see.  It pays to be a little crazy.  It can pay to use old ideas in new ways (origami combined with strong foldable plastic). It pays to simplicate and add a whole lot of lightness.  It pays to test, test, and test again.  It pays to work very hard, and not be in too much of a rush. And it definitely pays to understand your subject.

These three young men built a better boat.  You could do the same, or you could build a better something else.  Innovation is a capability that can be applied to any problem that would benefit from moving ahead.

Innovation can be used to do many things besides making a million dollars, but if making a million dollars is your objective it can be very helpful.

What is Imagineering?

Imagineering is a word that can be used in a number of different fields but it usually has the same meaning: implementing new ideas using a combination of technical skills and a creative imagination.  But I like to use this term in a slightly extended way.  When I use the term it implies working with appreciable success on innovations, i.e. working in a way that accomplishes results.

Imagineering in this book has the meaning: implementing new ideas using a combination of technical skills and innovation skills. Remember that, as was outlined in Chapter 10, innovation skills include: creativity, conscientiousness, collaborative skills and combativeness  (when needed).

This definition is not really different from the original definition if implementation is given very strong emphasis. It just spells out the necessary ingredients a little more comprehensively. Or, you could say that it just introduces a little more toughness into the definition of  innovative engineering. Anyone who doesn’t realize that this toughness is needed in the real world of innovation has some learning yet to do.

Imagineering as used here means innovative engineering, and innovative engineering means engineering that accomplishes new, important results in spite of Nature’s resistance and the existing competition. At the top level in my definition of imagineering is the lead engineer who can get out in front and lead teams to successful achievement of complex innovations involving multiple inventions and multiple technical skills.

Side Note on the History of the Term Imagineering

The earliest recorded use of the term that I am aware of was by Alcoa in a 1942 Time Magazine advertisement. Arthur Radebaugh,  an innovative illustrator and comic strip artist, began to use the term extensively in 1947. Sperry Gyroscope Company applied the term to me in a 1957 recruiting advertisement, while I was working on ship stabilization. See that use by ctrl-clicking on the link below:

          Disney tried to trademark the term in 1967, claiming first use in 1962. Since that date was a significant number of years later than the actual first use, the trademark was not authorized.  Disney does make a very large use of the term imagineering.  And Disney himself was an extremely competent imagineer.

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