Let's Get Sticky!

by Dr. Anthony Paustian, the author of A Quarter Million Steps: Creativity, Imagination, & Leading Transformative Change

What do bank checks, package shipping, church bells, water, ballpoint pens, deodorant, computers, fashion, steering wheels, and a revolver have in common? Nothing…or perhaps everything. True discoveries seldom happen today by finding something new. Most often they are the result of “sticky thinking,” which occurs when people connect or stick things together in new ways for different or improved outcomes.

 Born in 1944 with a bone socket hip disorder called Calve-Perthes disease, young Fredrick Smith had to walk with the aid of braces and crutches for most of his childhood.  But through a high level of dedication and hard work, he was able to overcome the disease. In the early-1960s, Fredrick attended Yale University majoring in economics. For one of his classes, he wrote a paper detailing an idea he had after realizing that a future “automated society” required a completely different system of logistics. His professor didn’t like the idea since, at the time, it wasn’t economically feasible, but that didn’t stop him from thinking about its future possibilities.1

 After graduation, Fredrick went on to serve two tours in Vietnam as a platoon leader and narrowly survived a Viet Cong ambush. Upon returning from war, he wanted “to do something productive after blowing so many things up.” Fredrick took an inheritance from his father, raised an additional $91 million in venture capital, and used the idea from his paper at Yale to create what is today known as “FedEx.”

 Fred Smith’s story is arguably one of the greatest entrepreneurial successes of the last century. He’s currently worth over $2.3 billion, and FedEx now ships more than 10.2 million packages daily in 220 countries.2 But for me, the most amazing part of his story isn’t the outcome or even the incredible company he founded. It’s how he got to the idea in the first place.

 I believe that Fred Smith’s idea represents the definition of creativity: the act of “sticking” one thing with another in new ways. By sticking how the Federal Reserve processed checks in the late 1960s (a clearing process for an enormous quantity of checks drawn on a large multitude of banks) to the logistics necessary to “automate society,” he created an entirely new way of shipping packages overnight that didn’t previously exist.

 This process of sticky thinking has occurred throughout history. Sam Colt stuck the design of a ship’s wheel to the invention of the revolver; Helen Barnett Diserens stuck the concept of the ballpoint pen to a new method of applying deodorant (the Ban Roll-On); and Steve Jobs stuck fashion design to the boring world of personal computing.

 Creativity (or sticky thinking) is like a sport, in that it requires hard work to perform at a high level. Mastering the necessary skills requires a dedication to practice, practice, and more practice. Becoming a creative thinker requires the same level of dedication.

 In future articles, I will provide a number of tips, tricks, methods, and ideas about how to improve our creative thinking skills. Like anything, a person’s success is often tied to their level of commitment and effort.

 So, are you ready to get sticky?

 Practice Challenge:  Over the next few weeks (whenever you have a “free” moment), select two completely random objects around you and attempt to force connections between them (like trying to jam a square peg in a round hole). Don’t judge the quality of the ideas; just have fun with it and bring out your inner “MacGyver.”

 ©2014  Anthony D. Paustian 

 1(2008, October 9)  Fred Smith: An Overnight Success.  Retrieved November 9, 2014, from the Entrepreneur website: http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/197542

2Brown, Abram (2014, January 23)  10 Things You Might Not Know About FedEx Billionaire Fred Smith.  Retrieved November 9, 2014, from the Forbes website: http://www.forbes.com/sites/abrambrown/2014/01/23/10-things-you-might-not-know-about-fedex-billionaire-fred-smith


 PaustianLargeHeadDr. Anthony Paustian is the author of four books including his most recent, A Quarter Million Steps. For more information, please visit his website at www.adpaustian.com

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Sample Space Like Costco

Image
The AI-driven, robotic ping pong player from CES 2020. Credit: Paustian Each year, the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, Nevada offers a chance to see the most promising and impactful technologies on the horizon and look back at past shows to see the trajectories technology has followed. It is at once inspiring and overwhelming.  When I attended CES in 2000, many of the technologies we take for granted today—flash drives, Internet gaming, Bluetooth wireless technology, smartphones, and even cell phones with built-in cameras–– didn’t exist. Many products on display now incorporate artificial intelligence (AI), virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), automation, and robotics. This year’s line-up included voice-activated automatic frying pans, “bionic” floor cleaning machines that simultaneously sweep, mop, and dry floors, golf balls with Bluetooth trackers to make them easier to find, baby beds that monitor an infant’s vitals while rocking it to sleep, and weara
Read more

Get Out of Normal!

Image
Gene Roddenberry - Photo Credit: Getty (Used with permission) In   Star Trek , Captain James T. Kirk would close his voice-over at the beginning of each episode with the phrase “to boldly go where no man has gone before.” These words inspired a generation of engineers, scientists, mathematicians, and designers—including women and people of color who took greater risks to achieve success. They also inspired some people to envision a world living in peace and striving to understand its place in the larger scope of the universe. Star Trek  was the brainchild of Gene Roddenberry. Unlike many creators of science fiction, who tend to look at the future through the lens of the present, Roddenberry imagined an entirely different universe, one where people have put their differences aside and come together for the betterment of all. In contrast to his contemporaries, instead of asking, “What  can  we do?” he posited a different question: “What  should  we do?” For Roddenberry, it was impo
Read more

100 Years...If Ever (A perspective on reaching Mars)

Image
   Bill Anders, the Apollo 8 astronaut who took the legendary Earthrise photo while orbiting the Moon on Christmas Eve in 1968, was recently interviewed about his thoughts on getting people to Mars. As a member of the National Academy of Engineering for his contributions and research to nuclear engineering, including the study of space radiation, Anders understands the challenges and doesn’t believe we will be able to overcome the hardships of extended periods of time in zero-G or exposure to radiation in space on the human body. The part of the interview that really strikes a chord, however, isn’t about the rigors of travel to Mars, but his statement, “I’m not sure we will ever get humans to Mars. Maybe a hundred years from now.”   A hundred years from now, if ever?    What does a hundred years of innovation look like? Newspapers in the 1920s are full of articles predicting how things might have changed by the 2020s. While some of the predictions were way off, many have come true. Jas
Read more