Imagine that you are a designer and that a major contemporary art center asks you to create — for the needs of its showrooms — original chairs. It is an important order for you, because it is an exceptional place, internationally known. So you need to find something “out of the ordinary”, that is to say “out of the ordinary”, that is, “out of the ordinary”.
Now ask yourself a question: what did you visualize mentally at the time you read these lines? Maybe you saw a chair. But how was this chair: red, white, black, how beautiful was it designed? It had four feet, wasn't it? If that's the case, it's perfectly normal... because most of us fall into the conceptual “chair = 4 legs” trap. This conceptual trap is what can be called obvious. This evidence comes from our habits, from our routines. To innovate, to do something different, you have to question these obvious facts. To then bypass them.
This conceptual trap is what can be called obvious. This evidence comes from our habits, from our routines. To innovate, to do something different, you have to question these obvious facts. To then bypass them.
Here is a fun riddle that — for the purposes of the demonstration — it is very important that you answer as soon as possible: “Imagine that when you were 6, your sister was half your age. Today you are 60 years old, how old is your sister? ” So? Answer? 57 years of course. She will always be 3 years younger than you.
This riddle is fun to ask those around you, asking them to answer as quickly as possible. You'll see that a lot of people say “she's 30! ”, and soon after realize that they were wrong. This spontaneous, rapid response is an “obvious” thought, and yet completely false. It's natural because your brain is programmed to provide obvious, quick answers. It is a mechanism inherited from the period when we had to run in the savannah to escape predators, and react quickly in the event of a dangerous situation, threatening our very survival. But this ability becomes disabling when it comes to questioning the evidence. Car questioning requires taking a step back from your own way of thinking. It is also one of the main qualities of an intrapreneur, a quality that is mentioned in any good intrapreneurship training.
A prenotion: a veil that comes between things and us and that masks them from us all the better as we think it is more transparent
- Emile Durkheim
In the Rules of the sociological method, Emile Durkheim presents the concept of “prenotion”. Our prenotions are the fruit of our experience and of standardization that move away from the singularity, the unusual. It is” a veil that comes between things and us and that masks them from us all the better as we think it is more transparent ”. By “transparent,” mean “obvious.” To challenge them, there's nothing like a good old critical mind! Methodical Cartesian doubt should be your weapon of self-defense: “Never receive anything for real [...] that I had no opportunity to question it” (Discourse on the Method, “On certainty”). The evidence is nothing but acts of intellectual laziness. So if you want to boost creativity and innovation in business, question them again and again. They are made to be “cracked”: any good intrapreneur, any creative person must also be a hacker!
Advice:
Practice questioning the obvious, in other words, questioning the existing. The why of things, the why these things are the way they are. Question what they tell you and pass off as “normal”, question the organization of your days, question the shape of objects. It is a pure designer approach.
