Omaha Think Tank, Inc.

Omaha Think Tank is a privately owned technology research and development facility. We provide innovative engineered and prototyped solutions for new products and in-house developments, whether software, electronic, mechanical, or any combination.
 

Do you need to develop a product that has no current solution, or do you think an existing product doesn't do the job it should? Omaha Think Tank exists to perform revolutionary development, so these are exactly what we do.

Do you need people to think outside the box?

"The box" is conventional wisdom. It is taught in universities, and its limits are explored in continuing education and professional organizations. Think of the box as "all that is currently known or accepted" within a field of work. To think outside the box is to ignore selective parts of the conventional wisdom, to arrive at a better solution.

There are two types of technology innovators: evolutionary and revolutionary. An evolutionary innovator is a specialist, having a strong grasp of the conventional wisdom of his field, and applies that conventional wisdom to problems. This creates iterative improvements. A revolutionary innovator is a generalist, having useful knowledge of many fields, and applies abstract concepts to problems. This creates brand new technologies. Both are valuable, but for different purposes. The differences are overcomplicated in most peoples' minds, and look like magic to many.

A revolutionary innovator is best at core research, making discoveries or creating new technologies that will likely become part of the collective of conventional wisdom. An evolutionary innovator is best at improving existing technologies after their creation.

The evolutionary innovator is much more comfortable in the corporate world. A company's core technology may be held together by paper clips and duct tape, but if it is profitable, the company won't want to change that. An evolutionary innovator can accept the notion that "we'll eventually get around to fixing that". In contrast, the revolutionary innovator cannot stop thinking about the best possible alternative to the paper clip and duct tape technology until it is replaced.

It is a given that a revolutionary innovator will want to improve things the company doesn't see as broken. This is the best reason to isolate research and development from normal operations. Many companies try to circumvent this though, because to a finance wizard, it seems unnecessary to have two separate technology departments. They hire only evolutionary innovators, as they more readily stay on the same page as the rest of the company. Then, they occasionally tell their evolutionary innovators to think outside the box. Obviously this doesn't work, because the evolutionary innovators have trained their minds to depend upon the conventional wisdom.

To create successful new technologies, the company will have to do one of two things - create a separate research and development department, or outsource their research and development to dedicated revolutionary innovators. In either case, there is a difficult trick to identifying core researchers. When you hire your usual evolutionary innovator, you look at their formal education and work experience. If you do that with researchers though, you'll get evolutionary innovators that want to be revolutionary (but won't be). To recognize excellent core researchers, you must look for those who are continually and successfully self-educated. To do this, you must analyze their accomplishments and determine their ability to self-educate. Whether or not they have a degree is immaterial. In fact, some famous autodidacts have said their formal education interfered with their self-education.

To exemplify the difference, assume you have two candidates for employment. The first candidate has a degree in the field in which your company specializes, and experience from one or two projects within that field. The second candidate has no degree, but a diverse range of experience in various technologies across at least a dozen unrelated projects. Some of his projects were in your technology, but others were not, and you can't see the connections between those projects. The first candidate is a better choice for an evolutionary position, supporting and improving on the company's existing technologies. The second candidate is obviously a better choice for a core revolutionary position, researching and creating brand new technologies.

When you know you can identify revolutionary innovators, the only question remaining is whether you want to staff an isolated research department or outsource that work. The answer to that question is highly dependent upon the company's short and long term goals.

To discuss the potential for researching a revolutionary innovation you need, email Steve Hitch at stevehitch @ omahathinktank.com (remove the spaces), or contact us: CONTACT.