Key 3

Envision Great Opportunities

 

 

"No use trying," Alice said. "One can't believe impossible things."
"I daresay you haven't had much practice," said the Queen.
"When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day.
Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things
before breakfast."

—Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass

In 1895, Marie Curie obtained her undergraduate degree in physics from the University of Paris. As a woman at that time, she would not be considered for a doctoral degree, even though she was at the top of her class. However, she knew that if she made a breakthrough scientific discovery, she might have a chance (figure 3-1).

X-rays, a form of invisible light, had just been discovered by Wilhelm Röntgen. Using her scientific expertise, Curie predicted that the element thorium might emit invisible light. She bought large quantities of pitchblende, a naturally occurring ore that contained small amounts of thorium. She chemically separated thorium from the ore and found that it did emit an invisible light.

Then Curie made a crucial observation. After the thorium was removed, the remaining ore emitted more invisible rays per pound. Further separating the ore, she discovered a new element that she named polonium. Then there was a further surprise: The ore remaining after the extraction of polonium was thousands of times more radioactive than anything she had seen. She named it radium. To prove that it was a new element, she had to separate it from the ore.

For four years, Curie crushed and chemically separated two tons of ore. As each compound was removed, the remaining material increased in radioactivity. Her husband Pierre became so excited by her findings that he abandoned the work he was pursuing and joined in her research. Then, one fateful day, after hundreds of separations, only a few ounces remained. She finished her last separation and waited anxiously as the chemicals worked.

When the reaction finished, as Curie looked for the remains in the bottom of the reactor, she found nothing. The final separation apparently had eliminated the entire compound. She was devastated. At home that night, she wrestled with thoughts of what could have gone wrong. Maybe her detractors were right. They said she was looking for something that didn’t exist. She couldn’t sleep. If her theory that radiation came from the center of the atom was correct, it couldn’t have been destroyed chemically. In the night, she returned to the laboratory.

When Curie opened the laboratory door, it appeared as if a light had been left on. She walked quickly toward the glow. It was coming from the glass dish that held the remains of her last separation. The residue, invisible in the daylight, glowed intensely. She weighed it. It had no detectable weight, but it was highly radioactive. She was jubilant. She had extracted enough pure radium to prove that it was a new element.

In 1902, a doctoral examining board said that Curie’s findings were the most significant ever presented in a doctoral thesis and awarded her the first doctoral degree ever presented to a woman in Europe. Later that year, she became the first woman to win the Nobel Prize in physics, for her discovery of radium. A few years later, she was awarded a Nobel Prize in chemistry—becoming the first person to win a Nobel Prize in two different categories. The invisible rays from radium were later used for X-ray imaging and for treating cancer.

To understand why people like Marie Curie see opportunities that others don’t see, we have to answer three questions:

• What are the most creative behaviors?
• How can we see into the future?
• How can we visualize great opportunities?

Our research discovered answers to each question.

What Are the Most Creative Behaviors?

In Creating Minds (New York: Basic Books, 1993), Howard Gardner defines a creative person as one who regularly solves problems, develops products, or defines new questions in a way that is initially considered novel but ultimately becomes accepted. Curie had all the valuable creative attitudes and behaviors of the great opportunity finders:

• Put a high priority on creating and a low priority on consuming.
• Search for original opportunities to create.
• Learn expertise with healthy skepticism.
• Challenge assumptions and rules.
• Create a life that is a creative journey to the very end.
• Create like a child, persevere like a soldier.
• Leverage risk with expertise.

Let’s discuss each of these. The most common behavior of a person with a creative mind is based on his or her priorities.

Put a High Priority on Creating and a Low Priority on Consuming

Curie was not only focused and hard working, she prioritized her use of time so that she spent most of it creating. An activity is creative if its end goal is a seized opportunity—such as creating or improving a product, service, system, or organization. For example, those who watch a football game are consumers rather than creators. The creators are the coaches, owners, players, halftime producers, television producers, directors, cameramen, ad agency staffers, and the architects and contractors who built the stadium. Creative people have more passion for creating than for consuming.

Search for Original Opportunities to Create

Early in his career, before he sculpted David, Michelangelo applied for work at a commercial studio. In the book The Agony and the Ecstasy (New York: Signet, 1961), Irving Stone dramatizes the differences between Michelangelo’s creative attitude and the attitude of the owner of the commercial studio. The owner tells Michelangelo that his deliveries are never late because he knows “within a matter of minutes how long each panel of fruit or spray of leaves will take to carve.”

Michelangelo asks what happens if a sculptor thinks of “something new, . . . an idea not carved before?” The owner replies, “Sculpture is not an inventing art, it is reproductive. If I tried to make up designs, this studio would be in chaos. We carve here what others have carved before us.” Michelangelo again asks him what would happen if a sculptor wanted to “achieve something fresh and different.” The owner says, “That is your youth speaking, my boy. A few months under my tutelage and you would lose such foolish notions.”

Of course, Michelangelo didn’t take the job. He was searching for an opportunity to do original, creative work.

Learn Expertise with Healthy Skepticism

Each year, before 1952, 50,000 people were paralyzed for life with polio—the same number as were killed in automobile accidents. It was believed at the time that a person had to experience a live virus to be immune. But Jonas Salk was skeptical of that theory. So he deactivated a live virus with ultraviolet light and injected it into humans. It worked, and a vaccine was developed that decreased the cases of paralytic polio to less than 10 a year. Salk received the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his achievement.

According to studies, there’s a difference in the way creative people like Salk learn. Those without a creative attitude absorb knowledge without question, but those like Salk digest knowledge with a questioning attitude. One of Salk’s mentors used to ask him, “Damn it, Salk, why do you always do things differently?”

Salk saw incongruities where others saw order. He learned expertise and questioned it at the same time—questioning not so strongly as to prevent learning but strongly enough to see opportunities to create new knowledge.

Leonardo da Vinci also was a healthy skeptic. The most frequent words in his journals are “I question.” He learned from the giants of the past, but he questioned them and himself as well. He accepted nothing blindly. Likewise, Galileo never took anything for granted. He once said, “In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual.”

Challenge Assumptions and Rules

Many automobile-racing rules were rewritten over the years because the Penske Race Team challenged them. For example, because many auto races are won by differences of seconds, shaving time from pit stops is a valuable endeavor. On one occasion, the Penske team members were trying to shave time from the 13 seconds it took to refuel during a pit stop. They knew they could increase the flow rate by increasing the fueling pressure, but pumps were illegal under the rules of the racing association (figure 3-2).

So, with the help of Sun Oil engineers, the Penske team members constructed a 20foot tower with a large gas tank on top and a large fuel hose hanging from it. When a car drove in for refueling, they put the fuel hose in the tank, opened a valve on the fuel line, and filled the car’s tank in 3.5 seconds. It was so dramatic that the driver, Mark Donohue, said he felt the back of the car suddenly sink as the fuel poured in.

But within two races, the powers that be had rewritten the rules to outlaw the Penske invention. To Penske’s opponents, the rules were the rules; the Penske team saw them as boundaries to be pushed. They asked, “What don’t the rules say?” The Penske team followed the first rule of innovation: There are no absolute rules. They won the Indianapolis 500 a total of 12 times—a record.

Create a Life That Is a Creative Journey to the Very End

The researcher Mihalyi Csikszentmahalyi says that creative people create their own lives; see his book Creativity (New York: HarperCollins, 1996). Their opportunity finding and seizing usually is rewarded, and their services are increasingly in demand. Their influence expands and leads to a wider set of opportunities. Csikszentmahalyi says they often create other sides of their personalities if that is needed to accomplish their goals. He says they learn to be objective, passionate, or both. They can be imaginative but rooted in reality as well. When they don’t have the expertise needed, they collaborate with others who have it.

Creative people often create to the very end. Eight days before he died at the age of 88, Michelangelo was working on the Rondanini Pietà, a radical new work based on an entirely new concept. Pablo Casals, the great Spanish cellist, was developing and practicing a new piece of music on the day he died at the age of 97. Years after Marie Curie won the Nobel Prize, she was still creating.

Create Like a Child, Persevere Like a Soldier

Creativity is a tightrope. You must be as free as a child to create and, at the same time, you must discipline your mind. Beethoven expressed it well when he said, “To make music, one must have the spirit of a gypsy and the discipline of a soldier.” The same is true for corporations; a Stanford University research team concluded from its study of public corporations of the 1980s and 1990s that corporations with the largest performance improvements developed the cultures of entrepreneurs and the discipline of soldiers; see Good to Great by Jim Collins (New York: HarperCollins, 2001).

If you watch small children at play, you will observe that they mostly do what’s fun. When it becomes difficult, they get frustrated and begin something else. Most children are playful, curious, and full of energy—but easily distracted. They do what gives them pleasure or satisfies their curiosity. The great innovators had fun and satisfied their curiosity while focusing energetically where their efforts would produce high returns. Unlike children—who quit when the activity becomes difficult or unpleasant—the great innovators persevered.

Leverage Risk with Expertise

Each time Curie discovered new knowledge, she saw more clearly the potential of her opportunity and she increased the amount of time and energy she applied. This is not risk taking; it is expert risk taking. What Curie did would be a waste of time for anyone without her expertise.

When the great achievers didn’t have the expertise they needed in their work and when they knew they would dilute their efforts by taking the time to learn it, they leveraged their risk by teaming with others who had the expertise. Steve Jobs had marketing expertise, and Steve Wosniak had expertise in using microprocessors and in creating small computer hardware. They teamed up to create Apple Computer Corporation. Gates and Allen, Hewlett and Packard—these were great pairings because they took advantage of complementary expertise.

The Creative Paradox

Throughout life, you have experiences that shape your attitudes, opinions, beliefs, and standards. You learn architectures, patterns, processes, and representations and store them in your brain. On the plus side, these help you to automatically drive to work, organize plans, and disassemble engines. They allow you to make many simple decisions and judgments without lengthy study. These patterns and principles are the sources of your creativity.

On the negative side, these fixed ways of thinking can imprison your creativity and close your windows to opportunity. You may limit the options you see, filtering anything that doesn’t “fit.” Even the great achievers sometimes closed their minds to opportunity. Thomas Edison and Bill Gates provide examples of this. While the rest of the world converted to alternating current, because it could be generated at low cost in large power stations and transmitted long distances efficiently, Edison opposed it. Later, after the world had passed him by, he admitted that he was wrong.

Initially, Gates wouldn’t invest in Internet software because he couldn’t see how he’d ever get the money back from a free network. However, when he saw that the Internet was bearing down on Microsoft like a freight train, he admitted that he was wrong and began a major effort to build Internet support into the company’s software and to establish Microsoft on the Internet.

When the world changes and you continue to use models that are slow, error prone, costly, and inflexible, you become a victim of your own expertise.

Great innovators refuse to be stopped by fixed ideas. When Fred Smith started FedEx, federal law prohibited his company from carrying loads on his planes that were large enough to make money. He persuaded the government that allowing him to carry larger loads would increase competition, thus benefiting the consumer. The government changed the law, despite protests from the major airlines.

So there is a creative paradox: No significant new achievement is possible without stored expertise, nor is it possible without going beyond existing expertise.

You also must get beyond any limiting thoughts.

Finding and Changing Limiting Thoughts

Have you ever had what you thought was a great idea but then immediately put it aside, thinking “Somebody has probably already thought of that” or “It’s too big for me to pull off” or “Nobody will listen to such a crazy idea”?

About 20 years ago, Judy Anderson had a great idea for starting her own business. She believed that name badges could be powerful marketing tools if they projected the right images in people’s minds. She decided to quit her job and focus on her goal. She identified retail businesses for which she thought creative name badges would have a large impact. Then she designed and sent samples of name badges that would enhance their images with customers to these businesses.

Months went by with no responses. Finally, when Anderson was out of money and her credit cards were at their limits, she received a call. “How are you?” a deep voice asked. “This is Sam Walton. I have your samples on my desk, and I like your work. But it’s not what I’m looking for.” Anderson swallowed and said, “Mr. Walton, what do you want to say to your customers when they walk through the door?” Walton replied, “I want our customers to know that our people make the difference and that you can trust us on a handshake, and I want to have Wal-Mart on the badge.”

“I’ll make some new samples and send them to you in a few days,” she said.

Anderson spent the rest of the day producing a variety of drawings with “Our people make the difference” and the Wal-Mart logo. She shipped the samples overnight to Walton. He loved the samples and ordered 280,000 badges. From that beginning, Anderson’s company, Identification Systems, has grown into the largest custom-badge manufacturer in the world.

What if Anderson had allowed limiting thoughts, such as “Wal-Mart is too big; it won’t even look at an idea from someone who isn’t in the name badge business” or “If I quit my job and I fail, I won’t be able to get another job as good as the one I have”?

How do we know when we have thoughts that limit us? The answer is “not easily.” Most of the time, we’re not aware of our limiting thoughts and beliefs. An expert in behavioral change, who helps a person or an organization find and change limiting beliefs, will begin with an analysis of recent unsatisfactory performance, lack of success, and/or unhappiness. The expert will try to determine if a limiting belief was the cause. When a limiting belief is identified, the expert helps the client to recognize situations in which that belief comes into play. Then the client is asked to rethink the reactions that led to failure and to create new positive responses.

Sometimes our beliefs limit our ability to see future threats as well as opportunities. Unless we can identify and change our reactions, we’ll be limited.

Creative Organizations

Creative organizations usually are founded and led by creative individuals who have all the attitudes and behaviors discussed above and a few more. They are disciplined yet entrepreneurial, as Collins notes in Good to Great. The leaders of these organizations encourage open exchanges of ideas, yet they ask everyone to rally behind the opportunities that are selected for action. They set expectations of high creativity.

Creating Responsibly

Theodore Levitt, a professor emeritus at Harvard Business School, says in his article “The Innovative Enterprise” that ideas are useless unless implemented (Harvard Business Review, August 2002). So it’s not enough just to come up with novel ideas. A person who comes up with a new idea needs to do two things:

• First, the person should understand that the leaders of organizations continually are bombarded with problems and may not welcome new ideas.
• Second, in presenting the idea, the person should include at least a minimal indication of what it involves in terms of costs, risks, labor power, time, and perhaps even specific people to carry it through.

Levitt says that this is responsible behavior, because it is easier for the executive to evaluate the idea, which increases the chances that the idea will be used.

Along with developing their creative behaviors, the masters developed their visioning abilities, which enabled them to see and create the future. Our next master anticipated what large numbers of people would want in the future and led his company to create a whole new business.

How Can We See Into the Future?

In February 1979, the aging honorary chairman of Sony Corporation, Masaru Ibuka, asked the product development department to build a small tape player so that he could listen to stereo recordings on long plane flights. The engineers modified a small tape recorder, adding stereo circuitry. When they connected it to earphones, they were surprised. Instead of a small, narrow-band sound, the sound was full and wrapped itself around the listener.

Two weeks later, Ibuka carried it on a flight and was delighted with the sound. When he returned, he gave it to the acting Sony chairman, Akio Morita, who took it home for the weekend. That Saturday evening, as Morita entertained guests for dinner, he passed the player around and invited everyone to try it. Morita laughed as each guest showed amazement.

Morita presented the player at the next executive meeting. The executives considered it a toy, so it shocked them when Morita proposed that they have it ready for sale in four months, at a time when students went on vacation. He set the price at $125. Morita was so enthusiastic and certain about it that the other executives reluctantly went along with his “crazy idea.”

Sony’s engineers said that they would have to manufacture 30,000 units a month to make a profit at a price of $125. The salespeople argued that they sold only 15,000 units per month of Sony’s most popular tape recorder and that they could never sell a tape player that didn’t record. Morita persisted and said that he would resign as chairman if the 30,000 units didn’t sell. He believed that many people would buy something they could listen to privately and while running or exercising.

Sony named the new tape player the Walkman. For a month after it hit the market, there were no sales, which confirmed the predictions of the sales department. Then the sales began; there were 30,000 in the next 30 days. The Walkman made Sony a world leader. For more on Sony, see the book Sony, the Private Life by John Nathan (Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, 1995).

People who see into the future

• base their thinking outside the box on expertise inside the box
• analyze trends, create future needs, and set high goals
• never say it can’t be done.

Base Your Thinking Outside the Box on Expertise Inside the Box

We have to go back 25 years to understand why the Walkman breakthrough was based on expertise inside the box. In 1953, when Ibuka heard that Bell Labs had invented the transistor, he realized that transistors would revolutionize electronics. So he sent Morita to America to purchase a license from AT&T to manufacture them.

With the transistor, Sony produced the first hand-held radio and led the world in miniaturization of radio products. By the time Morita had his vision for the Walkman, Sony had hired people who had expertise in miniature circuitry and had the capacity to build thousands of miniature tape recorders and radios. Sony was able to move quickly to dominate the portable tape player market because it had the engineering, manufacturing, marketing, and distribution expertise. Morita didn’t create the Walkman; his organization did.

Thinking outside the box begins with concepts, patterns, principles, and processes inside the box. Out-of-the-box ideas like electric lamps, relativity, and the Walkman don’t come from nothing. All the mind-freeing, brainstorming, and radical thinking won’t get you out of the box with a great opportunity if you don’t have expertise inside the box to bring ideas to fruition.

Analyze Trends, Create Future Needs, and Set High Goals

In Managing for Results, Peter F. Drucker wrote that “the best way to predict the future is to create it” (New York: Harper, 1964). Predicting opportunities is a key to creating the future, for both individuals and organizations. Organizations can analyze where their competitors are making large profits, and they can search for markets their competitors are not serving or that they are serving but would not likely defend. They can study changes in customer behavior that could be opportunities. They can then create visions to take advantage of the identified opportunities.

There was no explicit customer need for the Walkman until Morita introduced it. People thought they needed it only after they saw it. Morita created a need. Many needs that we take for granted today were not obvious in their time—see the sidebar.

Never Say It Can’t Be Done

In 1714, after a fleet of British ships was sunk as a result of a navigational error, the British Board of Longitude offered a reward of £20,000 (over $1 million in today’s money) to anyone who could invent a method to measure longitude while on a ship at sea. The greatest scientist of all time, Isaac Newton, emphatically stated that no clock could be invented that could keep time precisely enough to do the job and that the only way to do it was with an astronomical instrument. Forty-five years later, John Harrison invented a type of clock called a chronometer. It measured time so accurately that it became the standard for longitudinal measurement for two centuries until satellite global positioning systems were invented.

How Can We Visualize Great Opportunities?

The great innovators visualize opportunities that others don’t see because they

• focus on opportunities first, then creatively solve problems
• sometimes set obviously unattainable goals
• find new opportunities through creative synergies
• prepare well for a breakthrough
• incubate ideas.

Focus on Opportunities First, Then Creatively Solve Problems

It’s important, before going further, to explain the difference between opportunities and problems. Jonas Salk creatively solved the problem of polio, a disease that crippled and killed people. But Sam Walton, Thomas Edison, Bill Gates, Akio Morita, Marie Curie, and Harland Sanders weren’t solving problems—they were finding opportunities:

• Walton recognized that many consumers were attracted to lower-priced merchandise.
• Edison knew that offices and homes would want safe, practical lighting.
• Gates saw a computer on every desktop, running his software.
• Morita envisioned students carrying their own music and privately listening to it.
• Curie knew that science would advance if the source of the mysterious rays were discovered.
• Sanders knew he had a great fried chicken recipe.

Each of these innovators first found an opportunity and then solved the problems that stood in the way of seizing it.

When Curie found the opportunity to discover a new element, she was faced with many problems. Great quantities of radioactive ore had to be acquired. Chemical processes to separate the compounds and a device to measure low-level radioactivity had to be invented. After Gates and Allen found the opportunity to create software for a personal computer, they had to solve hundreds of problems before they could seize it. After Morita found the opportunity to provide mobile entertainment for people, his company had to solve many problems to seize the opportunity.

These innovators first searched for and found opportunities. Then they identified the problems—the barriers or obstacles—that needed to be surmounted to seize the opportunities. Then they focused their time, brainpower, and resources on solving the problems that stood in the way of seizing the opportunities. When you find an opportunity and compare it with the way things currently are, you discover problems that must be solved creatively to seize the opportunity.

Many people believe that necessity is the mother of invention. They say that you should look for the greatest pain or need that people have. Necessity is a mother of invention, but not the only mother. True, Salk solved the problem of pain and death from polio. But was it necessary for Walton to offer discounts, for Morita to produce a Walkman, or for Curie to find radium? You could argue that Gates filled a need for a few eager computer enthusiasts, but most people didn’t have the need until they saw what the software could do for them. If you simply solve the problems presented to you or try to find problems to solve, you will miss many great opportunities.

Breakthrough Opportunities

Searching for and finding breakthrough opportunities is the highest form of visioning. Breakthrough visions—like the printing press, the steam engine, wireless communication, penicillin, the transistor, the computer, and the Internet—changed the world. It’s important to know how to find breakthrough opportunities so that you can make jumps in progress that leave others behind. More than any other great achiever, Michelangelo embodies the nature of breakthrough visioning.

To see Michelangelo’s genius, let’s visit the Galleria dell’Accademia in Florence. As you enter, you smell the odor of aged wood and tapestries. You walk through an antechamber into a long, wide hall. The sight that awaits you as you enter the hall will be permanently etched in your mind. On each side, white marble bodies of half-carved men appear to struggle to get out of the stone that holds them. At the end of the hallway, standing majestically in a stream of light from a skylight, is the sculpture of David.

The half-carved men on each side of the long hallway are called The Slaves. They show Michelangelo’s remarkable expertise. Before he began to carve, he was able to see the finished form inside the stone.

Master sculptors say that Michelangelo intended to finely finish some parts and leave other parts with a rough finish. Maybe he wanted to show us in our personal prisons. As you walk down the hall, you can hear the hushed voices of the people gathered around the great statue.

The Florence Board of Works gave Michelangelo a 17-foot-high block of white marble that was so thin and so badly gouged by a previous artist that no one wanted it. All earlier masters had sculpted David “after the battle,” with one foot placed triumphantly on Goliath’s severed head. Michelangelo didn’t believe that standing triumphant over a dead enemy was the essence of a great man. Instead, he portrayed David moments before the battle, as he studied the enemy, dealt with his fears, and focused his mind and body.

When you look up at the towering giant, you will see that his brow is furrowed with resolution and his eyes are shooting like daggers. If your reaction is like ours, you will hear yourself breathe (figure 3-3).

Michelangelo had an exceptional visioning ability:

• He was able to see in his mind a David capable of slaying Goliath.
• He was able to see clearly the completed sculpture David in the damaged stone before he began to carve.
• He saw how to remove the excess stone to free David.

For more on Michelangelo, see The Agony and the Ecstasy by Irving Stone (New York: Signet, 1961).

Although there are many ways to set the stage for exceptional visioning, here are a few to consider:

Set Obviously Unattainable Goals

Les Wexner, a retail pioneer and founder of The Limited clothing stores, uses visioning techniques and obviously unattainable goals to push others outside normal ways of thinking. Once, while discussing the marketing of a Shetland sweater that was projected to sell 250,000 units, Wexner said to his staff of retailing experts, “Humor me for just a minute. How would we sell a million sweaters?” Everyone in the room insisted that there was “no way.” The Limited had 80 stores and would have to sell an average of 12,500 sweaters per store. Wexner listened to the objections and then said, “Just pretend. What would it take?”

Then the team members formed mental images of selling a million sweaters, which would require a bigger resource base, more manufacturing plants, more colors in the assortment, a buy-one-get-one-free offer, incentives for stores, and so on. By implementing many of these ideas, they sold 750,000 Shetland sweaters—three times the original projection.

Wexner knew that you can stimulate people’s ability to create visions with questions such as:

• “What would you do if you had the power to make anything happen that you wanted to happen?”
• “What would magic look like?”
• “What would the ideal solution be?”
• “What if?”
• “Why?”
• “Why not?”
• “If you had a wish . . . ?”
• “What will it take to make us great?”

Our imaginations are stretched by setting obviously unattainable goals, like Wexner’s goal to sell sweaters. If goals are set so high that normal means can’t achieve them, and if they’re taken seriously by organizations that have the expertise, a breakthrough vision often appears.

Find New Opportunities Through Creative Synergies

The story of Wexner’s team also demonstrates the value of synergy in the creative process. The team had a great deal of expertise inside each member’s head. During the brainstorming and imaging sessions, each person’s ideas stimulated ideas from others, and new combinations of ideas were formed.

Wexner led the team members to create big mental images that were greater than the sum of the expertise stored in their individual minds. In other words, he led them to find new opportunity through creative synergy. Brainstorming is most effective when it is done in the pursuit of an opportunity, like “selling a million sweaters.”

Prepare Well for a Breakthrough

On a chilly evening in 1865, a Flemish chemist, Fredrich Kekulé, watched the patterns of flying sparks in his fireplace. As he slipped into half-sleep, he imagined that the sparks were linked in a circle, like snakes biting their own tails. He woke with a picture of hydrogen and carbon atoms in a ring and realized that this was a likely molecular structure for benzene.

Many decades after Kekulé’s death, other scientists finally accepted his description of the benzene structure. People who write about creativity often use Kekulé’s vision to show that visions happen like a magician’s “poof.” Actually, however, the moment of illumination comes only after long-term preparation and incubation. Before Kekule saw the benzene ring in the fire, he was a professor of chemistry for nine years. He had extensive expertise in atomic-bonding principles and the patterns of chemical compounds. This story is related by Graham Wallas in The Art of Thought (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1926).

There also is a period of intense, short-term preparation in the days, weeks, and months preceding the breakthrough. During this period, the focus is usually narrowed to a specific area of opportunity, such as Curie’s focus on finding radium and Edison’s focus on a practical filament. So the lesson is: Prepare well if you want a “poof.”

In summary, during long-term preparation, the mind is stocked with work expertise and opportunity-finding expertise. During short-term preparation, the specific area of opportunity is deeply studied and analyzed.

Incubate Ideas

Incubation is a period of time in which an intent or a goal in an area of opportunity percolates with all the long-term and short-term expertise stored in the subconscious.

Breakthroughs often are described by their creators as mental images that occur after periods of incubation. Einstein imagined that he was riding on a beam of light and asked: If I were going at the speed of light, would the light reflected from my face be able to get back to me so that I could see myself in a mirror? His answer led to his theory of relativity. Beethoven once said, “I always have a picture in mind when I’m composing.”

Scientists say that we don’t see the world around us as it is. Instead, we take the pieces that our optical systems collect and create images with them. We all have the mystical ability to create images. The American Heritage Dictionary defines “vision” as “a mental image produced by the imagination”; it defines “imagine” as “to form a mental picture or image”; and it defines “see” as “to have a mental image of, to visualize, to understand.” All these definitions are related to your ability to create mental images. So if you want to improve your chances of creating breakthroughs, you should improve your ability to create mental images.

Once you allow potential opportunities to creatively percolate in your mind, illumination often occurs when you’re not directly trying to see. It usually happens when you’re at the edge of consciousness, in a near-dream state. It’s as if the goal becomes a spotlight, sweeping through the caves of your unconscious mind, locating and combining bits and scraps until it finds answers.

Often, after long deliberation, an insight comes suddenly when you’re not consciously searching. It may come in the midst of a long drive or walk, in the shower or bath, or on a vacation. It comes to the surface because reducing signal levels to your brain through relaxation increases your access to your subconscious mind. That’s why creative people get away from the quest and do something relaxing or diversionary.

Einstein’s sister said that, when he had a deep physics problem on his mind, he’d play the violin. Often, while playing his violin, he’d suddenly come to a stop and declare, “Now I’ve got it.” Edison as well as Einstein used the same trick to access the subconscious: After allowing a problem to percolate in his mind for a while, each would sit in a chair with his hands hanging down, holding balls or rocks. When he dozed and dropped a ball or a rock, he’d jot down the first ideas that came to him.

Of course, each person must search for his or her own incubation techniques. Keep in mind that the incubation phase will not produce a vision without the expertise that comes from good preparation and good goal focus.

Once you have honed your knowledge and skills through experience and have developed your visioning techniques, you and your organization will find many opportunities. To maximize your chances of success, you will need ways to sort out and choose only the opportunities that will produce the highest level of success for the time, effort, and resources you must spend to seize them. The next master is the role model for key 4, high leverage.

Self-Evaluation Visioning Exercise

A. If there were two things that you could wish for in your business and know that they would be granted by the following Monday, what would they be?

B. If there were two things that you could wish for in your career and know that they would be granted by the following Monday, what would they be?

C. Can you envision what it would take in the real world to make your A and B wishes come true? If you can envision what it will take, what is the first step?