Visualization for Innovation and Zen

A recent IdeaScale Blog article by Nick Jain—“Unlock Your Inner Genius: 10 Creative Problem-Solving Techniques You Need to Try Today” (March 24, 2024)—cites “Visualization” as one such method.  Jain states:

Visualization: Visualization involves mentally imagining potential solutions to a problem. This technique can be particularly effective when combined with relaxation techniques such as deep breathing or meditation. To use visualization, imagine yourself in a future state where the problem has been solved and then work backward to determine the steps needed to reach that outcome.

Visualization and Zen Practice

Visualization can be aided in particular by Zen Buddhist meditative practice in two general steps:

• Clear the mind through quiet meditation, such as seated Zazen, including deep breathing. Only10-30 minutes may be needed.  This improves concentration and focus.
• Then, take the time to allow a complete, possibly complex visualization—of a product, service or lifestyle image—to form. This may include contradictory elements that can be resolved later.

Zen training (koans, for instance) is designed to produce insights that run counter to typical linear-rational thought patterns.  Zen can thus facilitate disruptive, non-linear visualizations of future consumer lifestyles.

A holistic, Zen approach to entrepreneurial vision would be to take one’s time, “go deep” or “outside the box,” and come up with different visualizations of future (hopefully sustainable) consumer lifestyles and product preferences, even visualizations that may initially seem to conflict.  Opposing preferences may turn out to embrace similarities when analyzed from the standpoint of more fundamental consumer or design values.

Steve Jobs, for example, developed an iPhone that conveyed, in Zen fashion, both elegance and minimalism in external physical design.  This communicated to prospective customers that his device would be easy and enjoyable to use.  In effect, Jobs was adding a final visualization touch to draw consumers in.

Disruptive Innovation May Imply Disruptive Visualization

The front end of innovation does not have to be fuzzy.  To innovate in the present, start by—and collaborate on—visualizing the future.  The more consumer lifestyle detail, the better.  Strong visualizations can clarify and reinforce the strategic vision underlying an innovation project.

A book by the noted author, Thomas L. Friedman (Thank You for Being Late, 2016), argues that we live in an “age of accelerations.”  If social, economic and technological change in the 21^st century does proceed at an exponential pace—implying greater uncertainty about future consumer lifestyles—then visualization should become a more critical element of the innovation process in the future.  In effect, visualization is likely to become more disruptive of existing future scenarios, leading, in turn, to innovation that is more disruptive than incremental.