Venkatesh Rao ☀️ pfp
Venkatesh Rao ☀️
@vgr
Feels like “invention” should be a distinct engineering subject. Most education is analysis and you’re expected to learn invention via limited exposure to project work supervised by faculty with little invention experience. Even worse is invention getting absorbed into “design” which is a distinct synthesis a
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Venkatesh Rao ☀️ pfp
Venkatesh Rao ☀️
@vgr
Design is the fulfillment of defined needs by people literate in a language of functional synthesis that features a grammar, vocabulary, idioms, and a history of patterns and precedents constituting a tradition It is the engineering equivalent of sustaining innovation.
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Venkatesh Rao ☀️ pfp
Venkatesh Rao ☀️
@vgr
Invention is seeing the possibility of a novel arrangement of known and new elements in light of new knowledge, creating a break from tradition. Often seeding an entire new language or at least a pidgin/creole from which a new design tradition can grow. It is the engineering equivalent of disruptive innovation.
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Venkatesh Rao ☀️ pfp
Venkatesh Rao ☀️
@vgr
Also I really dislike how, over my working life, “innovation” got established as the serious business-like superset of invention. Retvrn to invention in Edison/Tesla sense. Focused on the seed, not the potting soil of commercial motives.
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Venkatesh Rao ☀️ pfp
Venkatesh Rao ☀️
@vgr
I’m trying to learn pure invention. Like staring at a bunch of parts and trying to see novel arrangement possibilities rather than “solving a problem.” That comes later, if at all. Eg. I bought a box of assorted springs and have been idly trying to think up non-obvious spring mechanisms.
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Venkatesh Rao ☀️ pfp
Venkatesh Rao ☀️
@vgr
Invention is fundamentally harder because it is forward state—space search, while design is regression planning (working backwards from desired goals). You have to iterate between the two to get anywhere interesting, but modern technology practice seems to ignore the former almost entirely.
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Venkatesh Rao ☀️ pfp
Venkatesh Rao ☀️
@vgr
Ie it sticks to “how do I build a better mousetrap?” Not “what can I do with a box of springs and levers” Or even worse “how do I build an ethical, human-centric mousetrap that meets User Needs™” gah. Boyd got this with his snowmobile idea in Destruction and Creation, which should be required reading fo
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Venkatesh Rao ☀️ pfp
Venkatesh Rao ☀️
@vgr
My name is on half-a-dozen Xerox patents, and there’s glimmers of real invention there I’m mildly proud of which ended up in deadpooled products. But overall it feels like something I’ve never really done in a deep sense of experiencing a true Eureka! moment (invention/idea) as opposed to Aha! moment (analysis/in
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Venkatesh Rao ☀️ pfp
Venkatesh Rao ☀️
@vgr
The holy grail of invention is not the polished perfection of a Steve Jobs device, but the Rube Goldberg contraption. Pure exuberance of form over function. Elements working in concert in an exploration of raw possibility. The fact that the contraption might cook an egg in a convoluted way is almost an afterthought.
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Ed O'Shaughnessy pfp
Ed O'Shaughnessy
@eddieosh
Have you explored TRIZ? I'm surprised it's not more widely practiced but then I think that's because innovation is hard and doesn't fit well in the prevailing education model. https://www.mindtools.com/amtcc5f/triz
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Venkatesh Rao ☀️ pfp
Venkatesh Rao ☀️
@vgr
Familiar with it but I think it’s too high-modernist and structured I’m generally not a fan of frameworks for creative work. Methodological anarchy ftw. Frameworks can help rehabilitate thought out of an uncreative rut but shouldn’t be a main mode.
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