【英文版 06】Creativity-Relevant Skills

One of the most important aspects of themindset of innovative people is what Teresa Amabile calls creativity-relevantskills. These are the skills that you need to connect seemingly unrelatedthings in new ways. Creative people are able to use their experiences to helpthem see new patterns and surprising relationships and to form new ideas. Thispremise is the secret behind one of the world's most famous designmethodologies, design thinking, which we will also often refer to throughoutthis course as human-centered design.

大家好，欢迎来到创意思维课。今天，我会继续带大家一起学习优秀创新者的思维方式。上节课我们已经谈到，在创新者们的思维方式中，有一种非常重要的特质，那就是他们都拥有“创造力相关技能”（creativity-relevant skills）。特蕾莎·阿马比尔（TeresaAmabile）在她的理论中也提到过这种才能，所谓的“创造力相关技能”，就是一种可以帮助你将看上去毫无关联的事物以全新的方式联系起来的能力。有创造力的人们常常能够运用他们的日常经验，来帮助自己观察到不同事物间新的规律以及之前并未发现的联系，并且由此产生新的创意。这也是全世界最著名的设计方法论，设计思维（design thinking）的原理，这个方法论在我们后续的课程中也会不断被谈到，我将它称作以人为本的设计思维。

We will learn about design thinking anddetail in the next few units, but basically it is a way of learning what peoplewant and need that helps you reduce the market risk of your ideas.

在接下来的几个单元中，我会为大家具体讲解设计思维的概念，简单来说，这就是一种通过了解人们的想法和需求，从而帮助我们降低创意的市场风险的方法。

Design thinking or human centered design,this methodology was created by IDEO, one of the world's most innovativeproduct design firms. IDEO has thousands of products and has worked with topcompanies in almost every single industry, including Apple, Nike, Polaroid,Amtrak, Crest toothpaste, Eli Lilly, Prada, and so many more.

我们上面谈到的设计思维，也就是所谓的以人为本的设计理念，是由IDEO公司创造的，IDEO是全球最具创新能力的产品设计公司，这家公司设计了上千种产品，并且几乎和每一个产业的顶尖公司都进行过合作，包括苹果（Apple）、耐克（Nike）、宝丽来（Polaroid）、美国国家铁路客运公司（Amtrak）、佳洁士牙膏（Crest toothpaste）、礼来公司（Eli Lilly）、普拉达（Prada）等一系列公司。

In 1994 and 1996, two researchers, AndrewHargadon of University California Davis and Robert Sutton of Stanford University,set out to understand what made IDEO so successful. They started with theresearch question "How does IDEO innovate routinely?" Their approachwas to use ethnographic research and embed themselves inside of IDEO on aweekly basis.

在1994年和1996年，有两位研究员决定着手分析让IDEO如此成功的原因，他们分别是来自加州大学戴维斯分校的安德鲁·哈加顿（Andrew Hargadon）和斯坦福大学的罗伯特·萨顿（Robert Sutton）。他们的第一个研究课题是“IDEO是如何做到不断拥有新创意的”，他们决定采用人类学的研究方法，每周都去IDEO公司内部进行一段时间的实地考察和调研。

For years, they watched how IDEO'sproduct designers work. Through their observations, Hargadon and Sutton foundthat IDEO's designers offered solutions to new problems by describing similarsolutions that they had seen in past products. The researchers would call thisprocess technology-brokering.

在接下来的几年中，他们不断观察IDEO产品设计师的工作方式，通过他们的观察，哈加顿和萨顿发现，IDEO的设计师往往会使用他们已有的经验去解决新的问题。研究人员将这个过程称为“科技嫁接”（technology-brokering）。

Here are just a few examples that theyhighlight in the study. They saw designers build a water bottle with aleak-proof nozzle for one client. This idea was based on a previous shampoobottle design from another IDEO project with a different client. They also sawdesigners create a new design for cooling personal computers for one client.And that idea came from design principles on an earlier project with adifferent client about ceiling fans. In another example, they saw designerscreate a desk lamp that used a ball and socket joint design, and this idea camefrom yet another project at IDEO that was with a different client where someoneon the team had learned about how human hip bone sockets work.

接下来，我会给大家介绍几个在这个研究中提到的例子。比如，他们看到IDEO设计师们为一位客户设计了一款防漏喷嘴水壶，而这个设计的创意来源，是来自于另一个项目里他们为其他客户设计的洗发水瓶。还有一次，设计师们为一位客户设计了一种新的个人电脑散热装置，这个创意的灵感则来自于他们之前的一个关于设计吊扇的项目。再比如说，他们看到IDEO设计师打造了一款使用球窝关节设计的台灯，而这个想法是由另一个项目的设计师提出的，因为他曾在一次项目设计过程中学习了人体髋关节的原理。

So, how does IDEO equip their teams tocome up with these ideas? First of all, IDEO explicitly recruits integrativethinkers into their organization. They look for what they call T-shapedpersonalities. These are people who have some knowledge across a very broadrange of fields and deep knowledge in at least one field. IDEO's project teamsare composed of team members who each have a different project specialty. Atypical team would have an engineer, a designer, and an anthropologist. Thegoal is for each person to have broad interests (this is like the top of theT), and specialized knowledge in one area (and this is the bottom of the T). Inaddition to this approach for recruiting, IDEO rotates team members. When a newclient project comes to IDEO, the firm assigns a newly formed team to theproject. They form these based on the firm's method of staffing projects withdiversely skilled team members. Because of IDEO's extensive client list thatcovers most domains and the fact that they form new teams for each project,their employees essentially rotate through a lot of different types ofprojects. This means their employees get exposed to many fields, and this makesit much more likely that they can spot opportunities to apply a technology fromone project to another project in the future.

听完这些具体的例子，接下来，我会带大家一起了解，IDEO究竟使用了什么方法来推动自己的团队想出这些创意的呢？首先，IDEO 会公开招募具有综合性思维和想法的人才进入他们的组织，这些人通常需要具有IDEO所说的T型人格，他们需要拥有跨越各个领域的广泛知识面，这就像字母T上面的一横，同时他们又至少要在一个特定领域拥有深度的专业知识，这就像字母T下半部分的一竖。IDEO的项目团队都是由拥有不同项目专长的成员组成，一般情况下，一个团队会配有一位工程师、一位设计师以及一位人类学家。他们中的每一个人都拥有广泛的兴趣，以及一个特定领域的专业知识。除了这种特殊的招募方式之外，IDEO 还会不断轮换团队成员。当IDEO要开展一项新的项目时，公司会将任务分给一个新成立的团队，这个团队都是根据公司的特定分组方式安排的，这样的分组方式能够保证一个团队中的每个成员都拥有多样化的技能。由于IDEO 的客户量极大，客户往往又来自不同的行业，并且公司会为每一个项目安排全新的团队，这就使得IDEO的员工会有机会轮流负责许多不同类型的项目。这就意味着，这些员工能够接触到许多不同领域，而这也会让他们更有机会将一个项目中的的技术运用到另一个项目中。

IDEO has built into their organizationthis concept that Hargadon and Sutton had called technology-brokering. Asimpler way to apply technology brokering in your own life is to increase yourexposure to lots of different types of ideas and also to give yourself time torecombine those ideas in new ways.

这种方法被哈加顿和萨顿称作“科技嫁接”，IDEO公司现在已经能够完全熟练地将“科技嫁接”应用到公司的每一个项目之中了。当然了，如果我们想要在自己的生活中运用科技嫁接，最简单的方法就是让自己不断地接触各种不同类型的创意，并且我们需要给自己充足的时间，让我们的大脑去思考如何能够将这些创意以全新的方式结合起来。

好了，今天我就讲到这里，谢谢大家的收听，我们下期再见。