![\"THE](\"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/b7errpahx1asjlshwov5-300x200.jpg\")
A few years ago, Kaggle, an online community of data scientists, posted a problem that was sponsored by NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA), and the UK\u2019s Royal Astronomical Society. These agencies needed a new mathematical algorithm capable of parsing the distortions caused by dark matter in the photographic images of galaxies.<\/p>\n
Just ten days after this problem was posted, Martin O\u2019Leary, a Cambridge University Ph.D. student who had zero background in astronomy or space science, submitted an algorithm that turned out to be considerably more predictive than what was already in use. \u00a0O’Leary was studying to be a glaciologist, and his formula was based on techniques developed to map glaciers from satellite images.<\/p>\n
Shortly after O\u2019Leary’s posting a graduate student in computer vision, again with absolutely no astronomical background, posted a different\u00a0algorithm that boosted accuracy even more. And almost simultaneously after this a mostly non-astronomical university team from Australia and Qatar improved on the algorithm\u00a0again.<\/p>\n
As the\u00a0Kaggle website<\/a>\u00a0says, this process was \u201cillustrative of why competitions are successful: They encourage people who would normally focus on specific problems in one field to apply their techniques to analogous problems in new fields.\u201d<\/p>\n Competitions like this take advantage of what is probably the single most important ingredient of creativity \u2013 the \u201csecret sauce\u201d that powers nearly all innovation:\u00a0diverse perspectives<\/em>. Whenever you have a creative idea yourself, it\u2019s almost always the result of combining multiple perspectives in your own mind. Something that makes sense in one area is applied or tweaked until it makes sense in another area, as well.<\/p>\n A\u00a0great deal of individual creativity is fueled through social connections, because the more diverse your connections with other people are, the more likely you are to encounter\u00a0those “Eureka!” moments. People who are connected to diverse groups of others often seem to be teeming with creative new\u00a0ideas, in fact. But, as Clay Shirky put it in his book\u00a0Here Comes Everybody<\/a><\/em>,<\/p>\n This is not creativity born of deep intellectual ability. It is creativity as an import-export business.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Exactly. Creativity is an exercise in the import and export of perspectives, from one venue or domain to another. Over and over.<\/p>\n Indeed, the fact that computer technology connects us\u00a0all so much more efficiently today means that we have much more latent creativity to be harnessed. We can combine and compare our different individual points of view and frames of reference\u00a0more efficiently than ever. And this, of course, fuels the accelerating pace of technological change, which means that creativity and innovation become\u00a0even more crucial.<\/p>\n So if your company needs to break out of its old ways of thinking, if you simply your people to be more creative and innovative, the fastest route to this result is to set up situations where employees\u00a0can tap the combined creative powers of other employees, customers, and people.<\/p>\n You need to create a culture of innovation\u00a0that thrives\u00a0on dissent, contrary points of view, connections made with diverse perspectives, and respectful disagreement. Employees must trust each other to the extent they feel free to disagree, but they do so\u00a0respectfully. It’s\u00a0the only way to\u00a0ensure that the pace of innovation at your firm keeps you ahead of the pack, supplying your company with more useful innovations, faster, than your R&D department would be able to manage by itself.<\/p>\n It won\u2019t be easy, but the alternative is obsolescence, which these days will sneak up on you faster than you can text \u201cOMG.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A few years ago, Kaggle, an online community of data scientists, posted a problem that was sponsored by NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA), and the UK\u2019s Royal Astronomical Society. These agencies needed a new mathematical algorithm capable of parsing the distortions caused by dark matter in the photographic images of galaxies. Just ten days… The \u201cSecret Sauce\u201d of Creativity and Innovation<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":80,"featured_media":2247,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[81],"tags":[1041,1040,2],"class_list":["post-2246","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-strategy","tag-creativity","tag-culture-development","tag-innovation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2246","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/80"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2246"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2246\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2248,"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2246\/revisions\/2248"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2247"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2246"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2246"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2246"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}