I bought a new tent the other day. Well, a tent-hammock. Just see for yourself. It’s made by two Ontario folks, funded on Kickstarter, borne out of a desire to make a better woods experience. The intersection of innovation and the outdoors is where start this week’s journey.
From winter camping in -40, soloing a canoe on a multi-day multi-lake trip, kayaking the ancient voyageur routes of Georgian Bay, (photo below) or throwing a couple of chairs and a cooler in the car for a night, camping is part of who I am. I never bring my phone, rarely a watch, but always too much pepperoni and peanut butter.
(Shooting the Dallas Rapids in the Old Voyager Channel)
There’s no better reminder of the insignificance of the daily news cycle than when you’re off the grid.
It’s a good way of unwinding, tuning into what matters, engaging in the tactile arts, and appreciating the lost art of daydreaming. [Ed fun fact: several new business ideas, including the early foundations of our team were sketched out on a scrap piece of kindling by the campfire.]
Whether you’re a weekend warrior or a serious survivalist, here’s what time spent outdoors can teach us about innovation.
You pack your fears
Show me your pack and I’ll show you what you’re afraid of. 3 extra pairs of socks? You’re scared of being cold. 5 flashlights? You’re wary of the dark. Family size jar of peanut butter? You never want to go hungry.
Camping magnifies our decisions. Pack size and weight are fixed, making it a zero-sum game. Overcompensating in one area means you’re allocating risk to another area. We do it so intuitively, we don’t notice it. Until it’s a torrential downpour and you skimped on the rain gear to bring an extra pillow. Life, and strategy, are choices.
In innovation, building an MVP means leaving things out.
More revealing though is what we leave in. How much confidence do we have in the product? Do we overdo the marketing language to sell it, revealing our fear of rejection? Or do we squeeze in extra features, lest someone think we’re a one-trick pony?
As innovators, the more we make rational tradeoffs, the better prepared we can be.
(P.S. Always bring an extra pair of socks.)
Weight, durability, price; pick two
The magic triangle of impossible choices.
Nevermore visible and painful than when shopping for new gear. If you want strong and light, your titanium spork won’t be cheap. If want cheap and light, better get good with field repairs. And if you want durable and cheap, good luck portaging that cast-iron skillet.
The ultralight crowd is a good example. They will gladly sacrifice usability for miniscule weight savings by snapping off the handle off their toothbrush. At some point, chasing one dimension at the expense of the others becomes a pointless exercise. You cease to be camping and instead are full-time project managing out in the woods.
All three dimensions shouldn’t be treated equally. If it’s too heavy, you won’t use it. If it breaks, well, you can’t use it. Price is the negotiable one. Buy nice, don’t buy twice, is common advice. The incremental upfront cost affords decades of enjoyment, while being more sustainable.
Avoid something mediocre across all categories. You’ll get no joy in using it, and the cost savings will be forgotten by the next trip.
Innovation has its version of the magic triangle.
Desirability, feasibility, viability. Do people love it? Can we build it? Should we build it?
The tradeoffs here are usually between different internal teams. The strategy team wants the business case to show promising revenue projections. The technology team has concerns about technical debt and system integration. The designers want it to look beautiful and solve all the world’s problems.
Like camping, we don’t need to treat all three factors equally. Desirability should always come first, and by a wide margin. If people don’t love it, don’t build it. How many ideas had solid P/L projections, but failed to capture imaginations? Look at any TV remote made by Panasonic and marvel at what happens when technical considerations come first.
It’s all about the next step, not the last step
The beginning of a long journey can seem daunting. “Are we there yet?” is the wrong question. Better “can I take one more step?” or “what’s the next step, based on the information I have?”
Thinking in increments makes the miles melt away.
Likewise, only focusing on the destination blinds you from facts on the ground. Cold front coming in, bringing rain? 3-foot waves cresting into whitecaps? An early morning windless window to make up lost ground? The trip plan can only be as good as the flexibility of the tripper.
Know where you need to be, and by when, and the rest will take care of itself, if you focus on the next step, and the next one. Agile camping.
Innovation works best at the extremities, too.
Innovators need to quickly spin up concepts and get early feedback within days; or peer over the horizon decades out. The middle ground will sort itself out.
Plan your next step based on the facts on the ground. What are we seeing, feeling, hearing? Should we pivot, charge ahead, or take a ‘wind day’ and let external factors blow over?
Likewise, innovators need to know what good looks like. Why are we building this thing, how does it fit with our thesis on the world, and how does this get in the way of macro trends we’ve spotted?
Focusing on the next step with broad definition of destination is how you play the infinite game.
Nothing is more permanent than the provisional
Camping affords intimacy with geography and geology. You appreciate how little rivulets forged mighty rivers, carving through Canadian shield over millions of years. You see how one enterprising deer’s shortcut becomes a forest superhighway. One fallen tree allows five others to grow.
There’s inertia to decisions made when camping. The best campsite is the one you’re at. The best seat is the one you have. The best stories are the ones you hear under the stars. Temporary shelters become gathering points. Small choices shape the entire trip.
Throwaway decisions early in innovation projects magnify the success or failure of a project down the line.
Decisions made because of resourcing, vendor selection, or simple politics have ripple effects throughout the project. Humans are even better at being lazy than adaptable. We follow the path of least resistance, irrespective of why that path exists, or where it leads. I type this on a QWERTY keyboard…
Consider the impacts of every decision and leave yourself options to divert. It’s never too late to change course.
Leave the campsite better than you found it
Inevitably, we ended here. It’s what camping, and innovation, are all about.
Camping makes you more of who you are. If you’re a conscientious person, you’ll leave extra firewood covered by pine boughs. You’ll pack out others’ garbage. You’ll douse your fire.
If you’re not this type of person, you will become one the moment you pull into a site late at night, in a downpour, and stumble upon the glorious kindling pile left for you by a distant stranger.
Nature belongs to everyone but needs friends of the park to manage the big stuff. It’s hard to best nature, though.
Innovation too should be a democratic process, with a few dedicated keepers of the flame.
Be a good ancestor. Innovate things your grandkids’ grandkids will appreciate. It applies to global issues like climate change, but also individual innovation decisions. Are you building for broad accessibility, for future adaptability, and in line with deep human values? Rather than capturing value, create it sustainably.
It’s hard. Many of the things you do to leave something better than you found it don’t show up on a balance sheet. Or worse, they show up as a cost. (Odd, since the economic value of ‘ecosystem services’ conveyed by natural land outstrip any human development on it. See the Dasgupta Report commissioned by the UK Government.)
The camper and the innovator should always ask – will my addition be better than what’s already there?
This our challenge as innovators – how do create a system where it’s easier to leave the campsite better than you found, vs. doing the opposite?
From product to the planet, the answer will shape our future.
As always, nature is the best innovator. Let’s learn all we can.
Onward.
(Strategizing on Fox Island)
[Photo credits A.T. Godfrey at Hunting Headwinds.]
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What we’re reading (and listening to)
Why we gloss over great ideas – and invest in bad ones - Research shows people rarely assess the value of their own ideas accurately – and often jettison the best ones. But there are ways to avoid this mistake.
Shaping The Future: Technology And Geopolitics –The future emerges from the convergence of domains – and there is no more powerful collision happening than between technology and geopolitics.
All designers are futurists: Why Bruce Mau still believes design can change the world – “if you think about the unquestioned human-centered design methodology, it really misses the big picture, misses the fact that it’s an ecology, it’s an economy, it’s a complex system and you have to begin to work in context and not as a discrete object.”
Why People Distrust ‘the Science’ – By pitting science against nature and human experience, we rob it of its moral power.
Colorado Tried a New Way to Vote: Make People Pay—Quadratically - The state legislature used a method that's designed to capture the intensity of a voter's preference as a way to fix some of traditional voting's big problems. [Ed note: remarkable to see this idea finally get practical application. I wrote my thesis on reimagining urban planning based on the quadratic voting mechanism.]
Last word
“There’s no room for bravado when you’re alone in the bush.
- “Survivorman” Les Stroud