【英文版 07】Domain-Relevant Skills

Since creativity isabout making surprising connections between experiences, if you want to getmore creative more often, you need to collect many diverse experiences and togive your mind some time to brew them into new combinations and new ideas.

大家好，欢迎来到今天的创意思维课。在上节课中我们提到，创造力就是将不同的经历以意想不到的方式联系起来，因此，如果你想要更有创造力，你不妨多积累一些不同的经验，然后给自己的大脑一些时间，让这些经验重新进行组合，并且产生全新的创意。

So far, we've learnedthat creativity is about making surprising connections between experiences. Ifyou want to become more creative more often, you need to collect many diverseexperiences, and you need to give your brain time to later explore andrecombine these in surprising ways that can inspire innovations. Technologystartups can be a good place to look for examples of founders who did not haveexpertise in their core concept before they started their product.

我们可以一起来看一下科技初创公司的例子，这些公司的创始人在开始生产产品之前，他们常常并没有关于产品核心概念的专业知识，我们可以找到许多这样的例子。

Let's take the Uberfounders from our earlier example. They weren't even working in transportationat the time that they started Uber. They did not see a gap in thetransportation industry because they weren’t embeddedin it. Rather, they saw an opportunity as a result of their informalexperiences with the industry. They were just trying to get a cab in Paris.

现在，我想带大家回顾一下之前讲过的优步创始人的例子。在成立优步的时候，他们其实没有任何交通运输业的工作经验。正因为如此，他们看到的并不是行业的不足，相反，由于那一次意外的经历，他们在这个行业中看到了机会，虽然他们当时只是想在巴黎打辆车而已。

At the time when theidea for Uber was born. Kalanick had recently sold RedSwoosh, a technology toefficiently transfer large files of digital data. Camp was co-founder of adifferent technology startup called StumbleUpon. This was a discovery andadvertisement engine that pushed web content recommendations to its users. Thetwo co-founders had the technical expertise from prior experience to bringtheir ideas to life, but it was their experience outside of tech that led themto their initial idea.

在优步的创意最开始成形的时候，卡兰尼克（Kalanick）刚刚卖掉他发明的Red Swoosh软件，这个软件能够有效地分享大型的数字数据文件。那时的坎普（Camp）也是另一家科技公司StumbleUpon的联合创始人之一，这是一个能够进行内容发现和推荐的引擎，它可以为用户推荐他们感兴趣的网页内容。这两位联合创始人的早期经历让他们拥有了丰富的科技专业知识，从而帮他们将自己的想法变成了现实，但是，最初让他们产生优步创意的，却是科技行业之外的生活经历。

My point here is thatyou'll need high exposure to ideas outside of your expertise in addition toyour existing expertise and domain skills. Teresa Amabile says that you needdomain-relevant skills in addition to the ability to look at the world in differentways and come up with new ideas. This is where talent, expertise, and specialability come into play. Sometimes this is a natural ability in the way thatsome people pick up music, math, art, or a new language faster than others.However, this doesn't have to be a natural ability. Amabile's theory says thatdomain-relevant skills can be developed through education, experience, andtechnical skills, and know-how.

给大家讲这个故事，是因为我想要告诉你们，如果你们想要进行创新，除了需要掌握现有的专业知识和技能之外，你们还需要更多地接触自己专业领域之外的知识。特蕾莎·阿马比尔（TeresaAmabile）认为，作为一位创新者，你除了需要学会从不同角度看世界，学会提出新创意之外，你还需要掌握所谓的“领域相关技能”（domain-relevant skills），而想要拥有这种技能，就需要你的天赋、专长以及特殊技能发挥作用了。有的时候，这种技能是天生的，比如你会发现，自己或许能比别人更快地学会音乐、数学、艺术或者新的语言。但是，获取这些技能并不一定需要天赋，根据阿马比尔的理论，我们也可以通过别的方法来获取它，比如说通过教育、经验，以及学习技术技能和实践知识。

If you already have anidea or a domain that you know you want to work in, you should focus on thatdomain for things like technical skill building and formal education, but youshould always make time for experiences outside of your industry that can sparkyour creativity. If you spend too much time in one field, you can get toocomfortable, and it becomes harder to see new things. You're going to needdiverse perspectives to approach problems in new ways.

如果你已经有了一个自己想要进行探索的创意或者领域，那么你应该注重了解那个领域的技术技能或者进行正式的学习，但同时，你还需要找时间体验这个行业之外的生活，由此激发你的创造力。如果你在某一个领域花费了太多时间，那么你可能会进入一个舒适区，在这种情况下，你发现新事物的几率就会大大降低。但是在创新过程中，非常重要的一点是，你需要学会从不同角度去思考，用全新的方式解决问题。

For example, Hargadonand Sutton found that designers at IDEO seemed obsessed with learning aboutmaterials and products that they had no immediate use for. They were frequentlylooking outside their own industry for inspiration in unconventional places,like the example of the lamp designer who drew inspiration from the way thatthe human hip bone works.

我可以给大家举一个例子，比如，根据哈加顿和萨顿的观察，IDEO公司的设计师们都非常喜欢学习不同的知识，虽然这些相关的材料和产品知识可能并不会立刻派上用场。通常，他们会在非常规的领域进行探索，从自己的行业之外寻找灵感，比如那一位通过学习人体髋骨工作原理来获得台灯灵感的设计师。

Airbnb provides anothergreat example of combining ideas from different domains to create somethinggenuinely innovative. Airbnb founders Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia were notexperts in the hotel and hospitality industry. Instead, their idea was born outof desperation for money after they moved to San Francisco with no jobs in2007. When a large design conference was coming to the city and the hotels wereselling out, they saw an opportunity to make quick rent money. They purchasedseveral air mattresses and turned their apartment into what they creativelycalled an "air bed and breakfast." They set up a simple website andcharged their first three guests $80 a night for an air mattress and breakfast.This quick-cash plan turned into one of the most successful tech startups inthe United States in the past decade.

接下来，我会和大家分享另一个故事，那就是爱彼迎（Airbnb）。爱彼迎的创立也是一个很好的例子，因为它也结合了不同领域的概念，并且创造出了一个全新的创意。爱彼迎的两位创始人，布莱恩·切斯基（Brian Chesky）和乔·杰比亚（Joe Gebbia），他们都不是酒店服务业的专家。在2007年，他们一起搬到了旧金山居住，那时的他们没有工作，急需用钱。当时，旧金山正要举办一场大型的设计会议，而附近的酒店却快被订光了，于是他们发现了一个快速赚钱的机会，那就是出租床位。他们购买了几块充气床垫，将自己的公寓打造成了他们口中提供“气垫床和早餐”的简易旅馆。他们创建了一个简单的网站，并且通过为三位客人提供气垫床和早餐，获得了每人每晚80美元的收入。这个简单的快速赚钱计划，使爱彼迎最终发展成了在过去十年里美国最成功的科技初创公司之一。

An easy way for you totry this at home is to make a habit of frequently trying new things: learn newskills, take new classes, have new experiences, increase your technical skills,try lots of things, and join communities that share ideas, projects, andexamples. In some ways, it doesn't matter if you even finish these new thingsthat you take on. It's about developing a bias toward trying new experiences.It's also important that you don't forget your observations of these experiences,so collect your notes about these experiences somewhere. A simple notebook willdo.

那么对我们来说，有什么好方法能让我们养成不断尝试新事物的习惯呢？很简单，你可以学习新技能，参加新课程，获得新体验，你也可以提升自己的技术技能，参加各种活动，或者加入一个会常常分享创意想法、创新项目和故事的社群。在一定程度上，你并不一定需要完成每一件你尝试的新事物，你只需要培养自己享受全新体验的爱好就可以了。当然，你还需要记住这些体验和感想，最好的方法就是及时将你的体验记录下来，这很简单，你只需要准备一个笔记本就够了。

In addition to seekingnew experiences, you need to provide your brain with some downtime to processthose. Creative ideas take time to brew. They begin to appear when your mindhas had some time to digest and explore and make new and surprisingconnections.

除了寻找新体验之外，你还需要为你的大脑准备一些放空时间来处理这些信息。创意的诞生需要时间，在放空时间里，你的大脑会不断消化、探索这些信息，并且将它们以意想不到的方式联系起来，最终产生新的创意。

So, if we know thatcreativity is about making surprising connections between experiences, if youwant to become more creative more often, you need to begin collecting morediverse experiences, and you need to give your mind some time to begin brewingthose into new ideas. Once you start to have an idea that you keep coming backto, you're ready to experiment with it a little bit more. Try explaining it toa friend or sketching out how it might work on a simple piece of paper. This isa very basic form of what we call prototyping. This is just a way of developingyour idea by describing, illustrating, shaping and iteratively rethinking thatidea. When you do this, be sure to keep several ideas alive before locking inon just one.

现在，既然我们已经知道了，创造力来自于不同体验之间的全新联系，那么，如果你想要拥有更多创造力，你不妨尝试多积累一些不同的经验，然后给自己的大脑一些时间，从而酝酿出全新的创意。一旦你开始有了一个不断出现在脑子里的创意，你就可以开始进行一些尝试了。比如，向你的朋友解释这个想法，或者在一张纸上简单画出这个创意可能的工作原理。这些行为其实是一种简单形式的原型开发，用这种方法，你可以通过描述、说明、塑造和反复思考这个创意，让它得到进一步的发展。不过要记住，当你在进行这个过程时，你最好在确定最终方案之前，多保留几个可能的方向。

In 2010, I was a researcherat the time at Stanford University. Our team studied whether it was better toprototype serially, which is to make one idea at a time as was often the norm,or in parallel, which just means to make more than one idea at a time. We foundthat there are many benefits to parallel prototyping. You're more creative. Youhave more diverse ideas and higher quality ideas when you practice parallelprototyping. So, remember to keep multiple ideas alive as you're combining andrecombining your ideas. Parallel prototyping has some other benefits that wefound. It has positive effects for the environmental context of your work,which you'll remember was part of Amabile's componential theory of creativity.

在2010年，那时的我还是斯坦福大学的一名研究员。我们的团队想要研究在进行原型开发时，是应该采用序列式的开发方法，也就是更加常见的一次钻研一个创意方向，还是采用平行式开发，在开发过程中同时研究多个创意。我们发现，平行式的原型开发有许多优点。在这样的开发过程中，你会更有创造力，也会产生更加多样化并且质量更高的创意。因此，大家在对自己的想法进行整合和重组的时候，记得一定要同时多考虑几个不同的创意。我们还发现了采用平行式原型开发的其他好处，那就是它会对你的外部环境产生正面的影响，而且你们一定还记得，外部环境因素也是阿马比尔创造力成分理论中的一个重要组成部分。

To recap what we coveredin this lesson, there are a few tricks that you can use to have more creativeideas more frequently. One is to work on your domain expertise. Another is toexpose yourself often to new ideas in your industry as well as outside of yourindustry. Another is to find regular time for your brain to relax and recombinethe experiences that you're having into new concepts and ideas. And the lastthing is that as promising ideas begin to emerge, you want to keep exploringand prototyping more than one and at a time.

最后，让我带大家一起来回顾一下这节课的主要内容，我们分享了几个能够帮助你产生新创意的小技巧。

首先，你需要在你的专业领域内进行钻研；

其次，你需要让自己接触更多的新想法，这包括了所有行业领域的各种知识；

接下来，你就需要让自己的大脑有规律地进行放空，让它有机会将之前获得的经验进行重新组合，从而让你产生新的概念和创意；

最后一点，就是当一个有前景的创意开始出现时，你可以同时进行多个原型的探索和开发，来帮助你获得最好的创新结果。

今天这节课我就讲到这里，谢谢你们的收听，我们下期再见。