Bran Ferren is a designer and technologist who discusses the art of innovation. He explains that true innovation requires multiple breakthroughs or "miracles" to come together, using examples like the Pantheon and autonomous vehicles. Ferren emphasizes that leadership in innovation is as much an art as a science, and that companies need to cultivate creativity by attracting diverse thinkers and massaging their ideas into valuable outputs for customers.

1. Cultivating people who can
create miracle
Insights from Bran Ferren Interview by S&B
“If you want 100 years of prosperity, grow people" - Proverb, Chinese

2. Bran Ferren
Bran Ferren is a designer and technologist
working in entertainment, product
development, engineering, architecture and
the sciences
Considered as Thought Leader (Source:s&b)

3.  Applied Minds and Applied Inventions now hold about 1,000 U.S.
patents between them; Ferren’s own name has appeared on more
than 500 during his Career.
 One patent, issued in 2005, was for multitouch gestures for
touchscreens

4. Innovation has a long history…
 From the outside, it didn’t look
particularly interesting,”
Ferren, the former president of
R&D at Walt Disney
Imagineering and the co-
founder of Applied Minds, says
on the TED2014 stage.
Pantheon, Rome-outside view

5. Pantheon-initial constructed view
Source: TEDtalk
The building of the Pantheon required five miracles,
says Ferren:
1.The Romans had to invent super-strong concrete to
allow for construction.
2.They had to be able to vary the density of the
concrete, using five rings of coffers diminishing in size.
3.They had to create the natural convection of air.
4.They had to recognize that light was a substance and
could be designed.
5.They had to understand the Venturi effect.

6.  To create a game changer one need to require pull off atleast those 5 miracles.
 “Rare visionaries have the ability to notice when others have provided enough of the
miracles to bring the goal within reach.” says Ferren
 Assuming Internet as “today’s Pantheon”!!No it is not!
 It’s the physical things that people will create with the Internet that will matter

7. Autonomous vehicles-Can be considered as Miracle!!
 Getting there will take five miracles, some of which are already here, According to
Ferren:
1.You need to be able to know exactly where you are and exactly what time it is.
(Thanks to GPS.)
2. You need to know where all roads are and what the rules of driving on them are.
(Check, in-car navigation systems.)
3. You need near-continuous communications with other vehicles nearby. (current
wireless technology, with modifications)

8. 4. You need restricted roadways that people agree are safe to use. (We could start with
HOV lanes.)
5. And you need the ability for machines to recognize people, signs and symbols. (For this a
car might need to wake up to ask its passenger a question, the answer of which it could
then share with all other vehicles.)

9. Innovations that change the course of history
Such Innovation requires several different innovations coming together.
Example:
 The Wright brothers took their invention to the U.S. Army and said,
 “This would be a great military device.”
 But The Army thought it had no practical military value.
 And now when all the technological inventions that has made the airplane usable
 And now there is an organization that had utilizing the invention of human flight as its
core mission.

10. The art of leading Company
 innovation process doesn’t give their leadership a context for thinking about profound
innovation.
 In conventional companies innovation process is often substitution for creativity and
thoughtfulness.
 Companies who crave for “disruptive innovation” seldom understand how it will help
them or what it rakes to embrace such thing.

11.  The business leaders are obsessed with getting the right answer, but they’re not
willing to put the energy into making sure they’re asking the right questions.
 There are leaders like Walt Disney who work on instinct. Their instinct comes, at least
in part, from the in-depth training that they get from immersion in creative work.

12.  One should have required skills (like relevant form of creativity) —preferably
one that combines art and science — and if one hone those skills, then they
have a reasonable sense of what they can accomplish in other types of
invention.
Innovation Judgment

13. “Creating and leading a great company is just as much an art as making a film is. It
is not science. And when you don’t understand the difference, you can end up
hiring engineers to do the job of an artist”.
Art of Creating and Leading

14. Business Innovation-reaching & Affecting
Audience
 Showmanship is an important ingredient.
Example:
 Steve Job revealing MacBook Air(2008)
 took it out of a manila envelope onstage.
 When he stood up with the envelope, nobody
knew a computer was going to slide out of it.
 single demonstration said everything that needed
to be said about that computer.
Photo Source:Youtube
Steve Job @ Macworld Keynote,2008

15. Teaching creativity @ Workplace!!
Hiring perfectly skilled MBAs, political scientists, art majors, and art historians, and saying,
“Guys, keep at it. You’re not Picasso yet, but we believe you’ll get there with enough
persistence and encouragement. We’ll just send you to creativity school or by imparting
training.

16. Creativity can be achieved when…
 There is different ways of thinking about things, and that it exists beyond the boundaries
one is accustomed to.
 Try to set a Context where high levels of creativity can flourish.
 Then leader have to attract someone whom you can communicate with easily, but who
has that additional dimension of thinking that leader don’t have, to help make your
thought process better.
 Then leader need a plan to execute new idea, without killing what makes it great.

17.  Or one can hire a Picasso. Or, better yet, one can hire several Picassos: Several
extraordinary people with complementary talents, who each have strengths that
the others don’t have.
 Even then one still have to take that creativity, massage it, and create an output
that’s valuable for a customer. Which is hard for most companies to do.

18. to be considered!!
 work with people you like; people you don’t like tend to misunderstand
what you do.
 do things that are good for the world.
 make more money than you spend.
 When you get an idea, we turn the idea into something valuable
 Bravery is often necessary for success in creativity,