Innovation Is A Joke

It’s evening time. Finally, you have some time to relax. You and a few other friends are huddling together. The atmosphere is light, and everybody’s feeling happy. You are among friends, and the conversation is a bit edgier, a little less correct. The attention turns to one of your friends; she starts telling a joke and has everybody’s attention. And then, bam! Out of the left-field, she perfectly lands the punchline and sends the room roaring in laughter.  

What just happened? And what can jokes teach us about how to innovate better?

The Secret Of The Pro

At the start of my career, I wanted to be a cartoonist. I could see the funny side in most situations (still do), and I loved to draw. Not to blather the reader with tales of days gone, there was no internet, so to capture some life advice from a real-life cartoonist I had to go and speak with one in person. I finally caught up with Ranan Laurie, a Life Magazine cartoonist. He was a professional cartoonist; I wanted to become one. I asked for some guidance, shared my sketchbook and he offered the following advice. He asked if I knew the difference between an amateur and a professional. I said no, and he explained: a professional can deliver top-notch work, even when he doesn’t feel like it. “I am a professional,” he said, “you are still an amateur.”

The way I understood this piece of wisdom is that a professional holds a more in-depth understanding of his trade, they have a methodology on which they can rely to deliver output come rain or shine. Whether a professional feels like going to work or staying at home, when he or she puts pen to paper, their output will be stellar. Amateurs, on the other hand, need to find inspiration, to “feel like it”, to be in the mood, or they can’t produce excellent work. These limitations mean they can’t be relied upon to deliver the goods day in, day out. 

Funny, every time. Serial comedy is not random.

Funny People Are Pros

Let’s go back to the party at the start of this post. What happened that got everybody laughing? Jokes are mostly stories with an unexpected ending. You can pick your favorite comedian, and you will see that for a joke to be funny, some surprising right or left turn of events has to happen at the end of the story. If we can anticipate the ending of the joke, then it’s not funny. That is why hearing a joke for the first time can knock you out of your socks, while a second time can deliver nothing but a polite giggle or a “yeah, I’ve heard this one before, it’s funny..”.  

The reason why comedians can serially produce funny jokes is that they are professionals. They understand the underlying mechanics of joke-telling. To be a pro and write funny stuff every day of the week, one has to come up with some logic and methodology to follow that takes an everyday story and turns it into a joke with an expected ending.

It may seem random, but in reality, the mechanics behind humor have a set structure:

Innovation Is A Joke

Innovation has been proven time and again to be the source of business success. Where a thousand eyes looked at the same landscape of opportunities, one person managed to see things differently. Where everyone saw dead ends, that person saw a way out. From Akio Morita, the founder of Sony, who saw opportunities amongst the ruins of post-war Japan, to Steve Jobs, who saw a different ending to the story of what is a mobile phone. Innovators hear and see the same context everyone else sees, but they imagine a different and unexpected end.  Serial innovators, like serial comedians, train their minds to look for the unexpected endings, for the punchline that will surprise everyone.

To this end, there are many similarities between the mechanics of jokes and the mechanics of innovative thinking:

Here is one example. Every company is reliant on some constant that must exist for this company to thrive. Banks must deal with money. Energy companies must sell sources of energy, such as petrol or gas. Computer companies must build computers. Let’s consider such companies, but set up the context in a way that pulls a fundamental truth out of the story. What will a bank do when there is no more money? What will an automotive company sell when there are not more cars? What will a computer company do when it no longer builds computers? This type of exercise forces us to break the mold, set the context of these companies differently, and it forces us to rebuild their world. Instead of following the expected route, which leads to an expected ending (“oh, car companies sell cars..”), let’s force ourselves to consider the assets these companies have and imagine how they can lead us to a different and unexpected ending once we pull out a fundamental building block. Let’s open a door and let in the unexpected. 

The unexpected car company.

Such new realities are not far fetched. Banks today must confront a reality in which they no longer play a pivotal role in finance (“blockchain”). Automotive companies need to reconsider the business model of manufacturing cars as autonomous and electric vehicles define a different reality of car ownership; Computer companies as big as IBM have long stopped making computers, but are still very successful (Pros!)  

Consider The Unexpected

Many times we are told, “expect the unexpected.” Telling jokes and coming up with innovations are precisely that. Don’t just expect the unexpected, but consider it as a viable option. Try and tell the story in a way that makes the unexpected work. You just might have a new joke for your next party, or a great innovative idea to share with your team.