At breakfast, my 6 year old daughter wanted to draw a peacock, so I pulled up a picture from Google. Her goal was to draw, and like most children, she has no challenge being creatively expressive. The teaching lesson became one of how to see, not how to draw.
A few minutes later, I glanced at AVC and saw Fred and the community talking about learning and teaching writing.
And now I am on the train reading Bill Buxton’s Sketching User Experiences and saw this quote:
“And so I did it; [learned to draw]. . .I realized, however, that something else had happened along the way. Yes, I had learned to draw; but more importantly, I learned to think. My whole method of thinking experienced a complete switch. I began to see the world more clearly. As my hand sketched the lines, my mind revealed a whole new method of thinking that I had not known before. Being able to visualize things gave me a tool that I could use in all facets of life. What happened to my mind was much more important than the sketches I produced.” (Hanks & Belliston 1990)
If that didn’t sum up this morning’s unplanned theme, I don’t know what could.
Learning to draw and learning to write are about more than communication, observation and expression. They are about learning how to think.
In some ways, this is how I view Lean Startup. It’s helped me “think” about innovation at a whole new level.