Ripping Apart Magazines
Posted on | December 4, 2009 | No Comments
Okay, I admit it. I was the guy that ripped an article out of the in flight magazine at seat 16A on the Dash 8 plane from Paris to Birmingham yesterday early evening. There . . . confession is good for the soul! Here is the little article I pulled out:
“I made 5127 prototypes of my vacuum before I got it right. There were 5126 failures. But I learned from each one. That’s how I came up wiht a solution. So I don’t mind faulure. I’ve always thought that school children shoudl be marked by the number of failures they’ve had. The child who tries strange things and experiences lots of failures to ge there is probably more creative.
We’re taught to do things the right way. But if you want to discover something that other people haven’t you need to do things the wrong way. Initiate a failure by doing something that’s very silly, unthinkable, naughty, dangerous. Watching why that fails can take you on a completely different path. It’s exciting, actually. To me, solving problems is a bit like a drug. You’re on it, and you can’t get off. It can take a very long time to develop interesting products and get them right. But our society has an instant-gratification thing. we admire instant brilliance, effortless brilliance. I think quite the reverse. You should admire the person who perseveres and slogs through and gets there in the end.”
James Dyson (inventor of the bagless vacuum cleaner)
As I think about Lauren and the creativity that at times seems to be locked inside her, I want to foster this kind of fearlessness in her. She already runs around without fear and I don’t ever want to rob her of that (although hoping she learns that grabbing dishes off the counter to break on the floor isn’t creativity, you’re just plain gonna hurt yourself and upset your parents)!
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