Host A Science Fair

“ABCD to ABCD: Always be collecting dots to always be connecting dots.”
— Danny Meyer, Chairman of the Board, Shake Shack and Union Square Hospitality Group

The winding road to innovation often only makes sense in retrospect. But that doesn’t mean you can’t bend the odds in your favor. There are prospective strategies an organization can employ. One of my favorites is the classic science fair. Have folks set up tri-fold poster boards, and share what they’re working on!

And while the temptation to showcase only “good ideas” is strong, it’s important to include stuff that doesn’t quite work, too. Legendary adhesives and office-product shop 3M’s willingness to do just that — spotlight the weird stuff alongside the winners — is the driving force behind an indispensable innovation: the Post-It Note.

Legend has it that one chilly morning in 1974, 3M engineer Arthur Fry was distracted during the sermon. He was rehashing his irritation that the bookmark he’d placed in his hymnal fell out of place as he joined the choir. “Everybody else started singing and I'm still trying to find what page we're on. I'm looking over the guy's shoulder next to me, trying to find the page.”

While loosely playing with the problem during the service, he remembered a seemingly useless invention he’d seen at work: an adhesive that didn’t really work all that well. Fellow 3M engineer Spencer Silver had demonstrated a bizarre invention at 3M’s Tech Forum, their annual science fair. Fry recalls, “It seemed like a dead-end idea, and I quickly put it out of my thoughts.”

But it came back to his mind while brewing over his choral frustration: that weak glue could be the perfect way to affix a bookmark to the hymnal for temporary place-keeping!

Of course, it took time to develop the eventual innovation. “It took close to seven years before I had this adhesive on a prototype product like Art developed,” says Silver. “And then it took him about six or seven years before it actually went out into the field.” But the seeds of innovation were sown at the company science fair.

I was reminded of this story as I’ve been invited to give a keynote before a company science fair later this week. What’s my advice to the leaders who are going to be milling about?

In a word, be sparkable.

When you’re standing at a particularly confusing tri-fold, instead of asking, “What do I think of this idea?” (which triggers all sorts of criticism and judgment) ask yourself, “What does this idea make me think of?” (which triggers the imagination)

Steve Jobs said, “Creativity is just connecting things.”

In that moment, consider what connections you could broker: Who could help this team? Who could this team help? What fact or tidbit could you lodge in your subconscious to court the muse? Instead of passing judgment, allow your mind to wander a bit.

If you’ll resist the urge to make a decision, but instead open yourself up to possible connections, you’ll find there’s value far beyond what’s readily apparent on the tri-fold poster board.

Related: Beat the Odds (Statistics)
Related: Be Sparkable (d.school)
Related: Make Connections (Steve Jobs)
Related: Wander (Jeff Bezos)

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