Keep A Bug List

April 20, 2023 Jeremy Utley

“Don’t bring me problems; bring me solutions! ” said no innovative leader, ever.

The reality is, every innovation begins with a problem. And great leaders know that.

Legendary Stanford professor Bob McKim used to give design students a simple assignment: “keep a bug list.” This was decades before computer programming rose to prominence, and before that term meant what it does today.

What McKim meant was, keep a running list of the things that bother you - the things that “bug” you. He knew that these lists would be a rich source of opportunity areas for students focused on creating innovative new products. And indeed, many of the early design programs innovations can be attributed to students working from such a list.

Cultivating an attention to things that could be better is a fundamental trait of entrepreneurs from Elon Musk to Laura D’Asaro, the incredible co-founder of Chirps.

Laura is a serial entrepreneur I had the pleasure of teaching while she was a student at Stanford GSB. Her track record includes saving a local park as a teenager, breaking a world record for cancer research, and you know, starting a Cricket-powder snacking company. She’s also got several promising businesses in the hopper, and so I was eager to turn the tables and get to ask her some questions.

One things that stood out was her favorite tool to generate new ideas. She said, “The biggest thing is, I’m hyper-aware of problems. Anytime I find myself feeling annoyed, I write down the problem and think about what I might to do solve it.” She gave the example of an observation she’s made being a newbie to the Bay Area: pumpkins rot pretty quickly around here during the scary-season. Annoyed at this, she’s already planning on “buying 100 pumpkins next Halloween and trying a bunch of things out to see what will prevent rot. I don’t know if it’s a combination of salts, or chemicals, or what, but I’m going to try to figure it out!”

There were MANY points of inspiration in our conversation, but I wanted to call special attention to this simple tactic: keep a bug list. Write down the things that annoy you. Whether you let go, or use them as ideation fodder, either way, it’s a simple habit to pick up to fuel your creative practice.

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