There are No Rules of Architecture for Castles in the Clouds
By Jeff Finkelstein
“Know the rules well, so you can break them effectively.”
— Dalai Lama XIV
“Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist.”
— Pablo Picasso
“There is a fine line between insanity and innovation.”
— me
In this month’s installment I write about a popular buzzword, “innovation,” by not writing about innovation directly. I am not going to discuss how to innovate as there have been volumes written about that. What I will wax poetic about are my rules and taking chances.
With the quotes above as a guide, let’s get to it…
Jeff’s Rule #16: Think outside the box, but never forget there is a box.
I have realized there are two main kinds of innovation. The first is the “aha” lightbulb moment when a scathingly brilliant idea pops into our head, quite often when we least expect it. Hopefully when that does happen it gets written down, so it is not forgotten. I often carry a small notebook to scribble things down as you never know when an idea will pop into the imagination portions of your brain, which is where the wackiest ideas are created (from a study done at Dartmouth in 2013 if you want to read more about it). A good rule of innovation to remember is that “every idea is a bad idea until it becomes a good idea.”
The second kind of innovation is the grudging, plodding, hard work required, concept that takes a lot of work to become a usable innovative idea. Whereas the former is how many believe innovation works, the latter is how it works most of the time. You must first completely understand the problem you are trying to solve whether past, present, or future. Then you can come up with some unique and creative ways of solving for it.
However, there is a very important rule to follow before we should break the rules. As rule #16 states, there is a box that defines how things work in our companies. This box defines the boundaries that we all live with daily. These limitations help to keep us focused on the business side of things but should also allow us to think of new and unique ways to solve problems. Some companies are focused on operational aspects of their business, which can make it difficult to innovate as change is often looked on as “something others do.” We hear most companies talk about innovation, but they do not all provide support to innovators. Innovation becomes something you do in your spare time as your daily job rarely allows time to think and ponder.
Simply put, serendipity and hope are not a business plan. As I am writing this article, I realize it is an important reality that we often forget. We are responsible for keeping things within the boundaries we must live in from a financial perspective, but the “aha” ideas are few and far between. It is the heads-down daily grind that generates many of the business impacting innovations.
As innovators we must live within the margins created to run our businesses, but we can push those limitations while “thinking outside the box.”
Jeff’s Rule #13: The first few are art.
If you have ever taken art classes such as painting, photography, musical composition, dance, or other artistic endeavor, you know all too well the agony of learning new skills and having people critique your talent. It has always bothered me the number of people who when asked to draw, dance, or sing, will say “Oh, I can’t do that.”
The reality is we can all express ourselves in an artistic fashion. However, when we were children trying to do just that someone somewhere told us “You can’t draw/dance/sing.” As a result, many of us had our development in those right-brain skills end then.
Ask someone to draw a person and you will typically get a stick figure. Why? Because when young they were told they can’t draw. Ask someone to sing or dance, and you will get a similar result.
It is those who had support learning right-brain skills that succeeded. Innovating is similar in many ways as you need a support system whilst you work on finding new ways to solve problems, those who will allow you to fail in your quest for solutions understanding it is a process.
Similarly with innovations, the early phase of creating requires us to look at things differently. Compare that to the great artists of the ages. As can be seen in the transformation from Romanesque to Baroque, from Realism to Impressionism, and from Dadaism to Minimalism, each period was a new way of seeing things.
Thus, is innovation. Sometimes it is a simple step beyond what is out there today. Other times it is a giant leap into a new way of being. There will always be those who don’t want things to change. But they will.
And that brings me to the third quote, which is something I learned the hard way over the past 30+ years in my cable career. There have been many significant innovations during all our careers, many of which we were told would never work. Which leads me to my favorite rule.
Jeff’s Rule #22: Calculate the odds of succeeding versus the odds of doing something incredibly stupid, then go ahead anyway.
As I already said, creating innovations is an iterative process that typically involves quite a few failures along the path to success. It is not for those who want instant gratification or who don’t want to have others see them fail.
A cool and relevant quote from one of the great innovators, Thomas Edison, sums it up nicely.
“I have not failed 10,000 times – I’ve successfully found 10,000 ways that will not work.”
Or as one of my music teachers once told me:
“You never learn anything by getting it right.”
It is the very act of trying things that helps us learn what does and does not work. Once upon a time I decided I wanted to learn how to roller blade. I was over 50, had never skated, but as I lived on the largest park in Atlanta with almost five miles of trails and saw older folks skating quite often, I decided to give it a go. What I learned is I suck at skating. But I kept at it and over time I sucked less. I still skate today. Not quite as often, but I still enjoy it. And I still fall, just not as often.
The same with innovations. It took me over five years of talking about extending the spectrum available for DOCSIS. Day in, day out. I was told it would never work and that I would ruin my career if I kept talking about it. And yet, here we are with most operators worldwide committed to deploying it in one form or another.
All of which can be summed up in one of my latest rules.
Jeff’s Rule #67: Sometimes it is the very people who no one imagines anything of, who do the things that no one imagines.
Be that person and you may be surprised at what you can accomplish.
Jeff Finkelstein
Chief Access Scientist,
Cox Communications
Jeff.Finkelstein@cox.com
Jeff Finkelstein is the Chief Access Scientist for Cox Communications in Atlanta, Georgia. He has been a key contributor to engineering at Cox since 2002 and is an innovator of advanced technologies including proactive network maintenance, active queue management, flexible MAC architecture, DOCSIS 3.1, and DOCSIS 4.0. His current responsibilities include defining the future cable network vision and teaching innovation at Cox. Jeff has over 50 patents issued or pending. He is also a long-time member of the SCTE Chattahoochee Chapter and member of the Cable TV Pioneers class of 2022.
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