Chutzpa- We Need it to Innovate!

What does it take in order to create something radically different and innovative? Chutzpa!
Gall, brazen nerve, incredible guts. The New Joys of Yiddish by Leo Rosten

Chester Carlson had it big time. He built a working model of his new copier and spent years knocking on doors and being rejected by all the leading companies in the office equipment field. He was told that his invention was not needed!...

But he didn't give up.. and finally he met another person with chutzpa, Joseph C. Wilson, the head of Haloid Company, a small company in Rochester, NY, who "took a chance" on this radical new device. The company changed its name to Xerox.

Just to show you how little chutzpa I had in 1959...
I was working in the Product Design Department at Polaroid. One day, I walked past Sid Whittier's drawing board. Sid was a bright eyed 60 something and a look a like for Ernest Hemmingway. He said, "Swersey, you seem like a bright young man. Cheap copies. If you could design a machine to make cheap copies, you would really have something."

My brilliant response-
"Sid, whenever I need copies I can put carbon paper into the typewriter. And in the rare instance when I need to copy something that already exists, I can use the Kodak wet copier on the first floor." Well, I used that wet copier only once, and I still have stains on my hands.

How did Sid have the vision to see what was needed and how did he have the nerve to ask for it?
Who else has chutzpa? And how can we develop it in ourselves and others? Let us know.

Identify and Strive for the Ideal- Learn from Edwin Land

I had an interesting discussion with students in my IED/ sophomore design class yesterday.
I urged them to determine what would be ideal for the user and then commit to doing that, without knowing how they would do it, or even if it was possible.
I said that this was the time and place to develop the courage to take risks... and if they followed all the right steps, worked dilligently and documented their work, they would receive a good grade, even if they failed to achieve the ideal.

The students were working on the design of an inexpensive means to purify water for people in the developing world. I asked, "What functions are missing in existing designs? Look at your Brita filter. What is the assumption... Water that comes out of the filter is safe to drink."

But there is no means to actually verify this. How about designing a device that-
1) Indicates that the water is safe
2) Does not allow water to come out unless it is safe.
Isn't this what is really needed?

My first engineering job was at Polaroid Corporation in Cambridge, MA. Dr. Edwin H. Land, the brilliant leader of Polaroid, insisted on aiming for the ideal solution, even though to many of us, that seemed to be impossible. I left Polaroid in 1960, but several years later, when the SX-70 came out, I was amazed to see that it did things that had never been done before. Polaroid engineers found that Land was right and that they could achieve the ideal, even though it was impossible.

Think of all the good that we could do for people in need, if we all learned Dr. Land's lesson.