The Innovation Engine Podcast: Breakthrough Insights from Rowan Gibson – Part 5

This is a transcript and audio file from the popular podcast “The Innovation Engine”, hosted by Will Sherlin, featuring an interview with Rowan Gibson, author of “The Four Lenses of Innovation.” 

“Welcome to the Innovation Engine podcast, I’m Will Sherlin, and on this week’s episode, we’ll be looking at the 4 lenses of innovation – what the 4 lenses are and how they can be used to drive corporate innovation, and how they can be employed to emulate the mind of the innovator.

Here with us today to discuss all that and more is Rowan Gibson, a world-renowned innovation expert who has served as a keynote speaker on the subject of innovation in 60 countries around the world. Rowan is the internationally bestselling author of the forthcoming book The Four Lenses of Innovation. He has previously written two major books on corporate innovation and business strategy: Innovation to the Core and Rethinking the Future, which is published today in over 20 languages. Rowan is also the co-founder of Innovation Excellence.com, the most popular innovation website in the world, built by an international group of over 26,000 members from 175 countries. And if you’ve been a long-time listener of this podcast, you’ll remember him from the 13th episode of “The Innovation Engine,” when he talked about Building a Blueprint for Innovation.

You say that it’s important to change the way we think in order to be truly innovative. That’s a relatively tall order. What are some ways listeners can go about changing the way they think?

You’re right. It’s very difficult to break those ingrained and habitual patterns of thinking. That’s why we need a tool to help us. You know, if you have to drill a hole through a concrete wall, you can’t do it with your fingers. You’re going to need a powerful drill. Likewise, if we want to break through these mental walls and see what’s on the other side, we need a systematic tool or methodology that can help us do that.

Thankfully, human beings are toolmakers. And so I like to think that of “The Four Lenses of Innovation” not as a book but, as I said earlier, as “a power tool for creative thinking.” You might remember that in the early days of Apple, Steve Jobs used to think of the computer as a “bicycle for the mind,” in the sense that it acts as an enabling tool that vastly amplifies our natural capabilities. So, again, I think of the Four Lenses as “a power tool for creative thinking” because of the remarkable way these lenses extend our capacity for creativity by helping us to think along completely new lines.