I was recently teaching a class on Innovation for a large company at one of their locations. When I walked into the building, there was quite a long approach to the security desk. The word "INNOVATION" was written in very large and colorful letters on opposite walls. On one of the walls there was a timeline of innovations spanning nearly 50 years of the company's history. It was quite impressive and a grand sort of entrance for an Innovation trainer!
At one point during the course, I asked the 16 participants, who all work at that facility and walk through the grand entrance five days a week, who can tell me what’s on the walls as they walk into the building. Guess what? Not one person in the group was able to say what was on the walls. They simply did not know! Hmm! What is this about?
How are your observational skills? In the video below see if you can count the number of passes the people in the white shirts make.
In the test video you were asked to count the number of passes between team members playing basketball as a person in a gorilla suit walks through the scene. In a study by Simons and Chabris, 50% of the subjects who viewed the video did not see the gorilla. This phenomena is referred to as inattentional blindness or perceptual blindness -- not being able to perceive things that are in plain sight. "It is caused by an absence of attention to the unseen object and is clear evidence of the importance of attention for perceiving. Without attention we are as if functionally blind" (Wikipedia).
So, back to the walls of innovation. Those employees are so focused on going to work and getting to their office that they miss something that is so obvious. It's as if they have turned off their peripheral vision. What else are they blind to in their environment? What are they missing? Maybe some critical data that would effect their job, or maybe some great ideas to solve some tough challenges. Now I have a new element to add to the Innovation course! By the way, what are you missing?
My question is: Why is there an "S" on the wall?
Posted by: Bob Eckert | 10/03/2011 at 06:43 PM