Unit 2 Individual Project
Game-Changing Ideas
ThienSi (TS) Le
Colorado Technical University
CS 875-1602C-01
Professor: Dr.
Imad Al Saeed
30-April-2016
Game-Changing Ideas
At
one time or another, an individual may experience something so big and so
impactful that literally changes the landscape. It is an ah-ha moment when he
or she sees something extraordinary; others don’t. It is a transformational
magic that takes a person from ordinary to exceptional (Myatt. 2010). In this
document, a quick research will be performed for two game-changing ideas that
articulate the social impact of change within an organization. These two
accidental game-changing ideas will be discussed with the supporting forces
that drive the impactful inventions. This document will describe the work of
the blog creation in six sections as follows:
A. What are a game-changing idea and its process?
B. Game-changing stories
C. Supporting forces
D. Summary
E. References
Source: Adapted from Gamechangers.com, (n.d.)
A. What are a changing-game
idea and its process?
In general, a game-changing idea is a thought or
concept that completely changes accidentally the way that something is done. For
example, maternity leave or paternity leave is a leave of absence from a job for a mother or father to care for a new baby. A period of paid absence from work, in the UK currently two weeks, to which a parent is
legally entitled immediately after the birth of his or her child. Now, some
people want to have maternity/paternity leave even though they have no child.
It is called “me-maternity.” If this concept is honored by companies, then it
would be another changing-game idea.
Folch (2013) believed that
implementable game-changing ideas tend to start with a refusal to accept
the status quo. His idea
generation process that is a powerful framework consists of five stages as
follows:
1. Idea generation
The initial idea is
created and improved from new insights.
2. Distillation
Distillation eliminates
unrealistic sub-ideas and keeps the core ideas.
3. Digging deeper
At this stage, a game
changer focuses on solidifying and expanding a few core sub-ideas.
4. Questioning assumptions
The game-changer
questions assumptions made in envisioning this idea.
5. Micro tests
This stage
involves finding ways to test any “deal-breaker” assumptions cheaply, simply
and quickly.
These five steps
are repeated until the overall idea becomes noticeably more resistant to being
broken or improved for innovation.
B. Game-changing stories
Quick research on Internet and CTU library
provided twenty products that came from game-changing ideas accidently that
articulate the social impact of change. Two of game-changing ideas are
described below:
1. Matches
Perhaps, humans have
played with fire in hundred thousand years, but no one could figure out a
quicker way to start a fire than a British pharmacist John Walker, who tried to
clean his stirring utensil.
In 1826, John Walker mixed
a pot of chemicals such as sulfur, phosphorus when he found a dried lump that had formed on the end of the stirring
stick. When he tried to scrape off the dried gob, and it suddenly ignited. He
called the first strike-able matches as “friction lights” and made them in
three inches long in a small box with a piece of sandpaper then sold them to a
local bookstore. Since Walker did not care about patenting the idea, his friend
Samuel Jones copied the matches, made them in a smaller cardboard box for easy
putting in the pocket, and sold them under the name “Lucifers”. French chemist
Jean Chancel invented the first self-igniting match in 1805. His matches
included a wooden splint tipped with sugar and potassium chlorate dipped into a
small bottle of concentrated sulfuric acid. The mixture of chemicals that
produced a yellow smelly gas chlorine dioxide that explodes when it contacts
with anything is dangerous and unpleasant.
Recently, Johan Edward
Lundstrom discovered matches made with non-poisonous red phosphorus. Today, the
Diamond Match Company was the first to sell “safety matches” in the US,
forfeiting their patent rights to allow all matches companies to produce safe
matches.
2. Ice cream cones
The cornet or actual ice
cream is a cone-shaped edible ice cream holder. It invention was still a
controversial mystery and an accident.
In the early 1900s, ice
cream became popular when its prices were dropped rapidly. Ice cream vendors
were on streets across the US and in Europe. The competition was ice cream
flavors and what they put the ice cream in the holder. Cups, plates, glasses,
etc. made by paper, glass, metal were common to hold ice cream. Vendors would
scoop ice cream flavor of the day into a glass for hungry customers who would
pay a penny to lick the glass clean before returning it to the vendor. It was
not the cleanest way to eat ice cream but also customers kept breaking the
glass or incidentally walked away with them. Antonio Valvona filed the first patent in Britain for an
edible ice cream cup in 1902, then an Italian immigrant Italo Marchiony filed
another patent for ice cream bowl in New York. Historians that did not agree
where the cone-shaped ice cream holder came from recorded that in the 1904
World’s Fair in ST. Louis to celebrate the centennial of the Louisiana
Purchase, there were 50 ice cream vendors and waffle stands. In the hot
weather, ice cream vendor Arnold Fornachou ran out of cups, paper dishes.
Ernest Hamwi, who sold “zalabia”, a waffle-like pastry, wanted to help
Fornachou by rolling up one of his waffle pastries and giving it to Fornachou who put ice cream in it. So, the first
ice cream was sold in this incident. Other vendors did the same, and each of
them claimed that he or she invented this game-changing idea. In this crowded
and hustle of the festival, no one really knew who invented the cone first for
sure. Many patents were filed after the fair
for “waffle-rolling” machines, And vendors still took the credit for this accidental invention in 1904.
C. Supporting forces
According to Myatt (2010), a blueprint for
manufacturing ah-ha moments includes three factors:
1. Relentless pursuit
Game-changers come up with
the proverbial big idea because they proactively focus on pursuing game changers.
They never satisfy with the ordinary or mundane.
2. Be original
Game-changers have no
patience for status quo. They focus their efforts on shattering the
status quo. Game changers refuse to allow their organizations to adopt
conventional orthodoxy and bureaucracy. Being original is great but making the originals new and different cut a
lot of time (Grant, 2016).
3. Develop a clear purpose
Game-changers possess
a refined blend of intrinsic curiosity and extrinsic focus. They understand the
value of serving something beyond themselves.
In general, the forces that support game-changing
ideas may come from human behavior, culture, society, economic, and technology. The accidental inventions such as matches
or ice cream cones from game-changing
ideas appear to happen by chance in the suddenly certain situation.
- For the strike-able matches,
the force driving this invention is human
behavioral and cultural. In a society with a culture of innovation, humans like
to improve human life and the environment. The British pharmacist John Walker
worked on the mixture of chemicals for his work and discovered the ignitable
compound when he cleaned the tool by scraping it off. The behavioral and cultural
force with curiosity drives this game-changing invention to make human life
better and convenient.
- For ice cream cones, the force
driving this invention is human
behavioral (curious) and economical. With the popular demand of ice cream
in the hot weather, ice cream vendors in the festival who ran out of the
glasses, cups to hold ice cream, the game-changing idea by using a roll of
pastry in a funnel-shape to hold ice cream was simple and brilliant in that
situation. The behavioral and economical force drives this game-changing
invention to a big success.
Source: Adapted from linkedin.com, (2015)
D. Summary
This Unit 2 individual
project document briefly described implementable game-changing ideas and
iterative 5-step process and discussed two game-changing stories (i.e., matches
and ice cream cones) that came from error and accident. The framework of the
accident inventions was constructed with three factors (a) relentless pursuit,
(b) be original, and (c) develop a clear purpose. The supporting forces that
drove these accident inventions were human behavioral, economical, cultural,
and curious. And the references were provided at the end of this document.
E. References
Cyran, P. &
Gaylord (2012). The 20 most
fascinating accidental inventions. Retrieved April
26, 2016 from
http://www.csmonitor.com/Technology/2012/1005/The-20-most-fascinating-
accidental-inventions/Ice-Cream-Cones
http://www.csmonitor.com/Technology/2012/1005/The-20-most-fascinating-accidental-inventions/Matches
Folch, M.
(2013). How to generate game changing ideas. Retrieved April 26, 2016
from
http://www.marcfolch.com/
Grant, A. (2016). T.E.D Talks: the surprising
habits of original thinkers. Retrieved
on April 06, 2016 from http://www.ted.com/talks/adam_grant_the_surprising_habits_of_original_thinkers
Myatt, M. (2010).
6 steps for creating a game changer. Retrieved April 28, 2016 from
http://www.forbes.com/sites/mikemyatt/2012/10/10/how-great-leaders-create-
game-changers/#4205fdea7ea0
Thanks for sharing such a beautiful blog.....
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