Only impossible ideas help us push the limits of possible innovations. What is your impossible idea?

Sometimes we forget in product innovation that we need an idea that we can not actually carry out, physically and intellectually, too. We need an unreachable point that pulls us to the actual limits of the possible. I am not talking about an abstract vision. Only if we dream of unreal innovations and impossible ideas, we can touch the limits of realistic innovation and perhaps even push them. We can only implement the complete possibilities that a real situation offers because we see something that is unreachable, something that lies beyond those real possibilities. For example, only because we think “function” we can transcend formalistic thinking -our natural attachment to material- and produce more than simple gadgets, or go beyond stereotypes. (This is not meant to condemn gadgets. I like gadgets. And of course, gadgets have functions, too. They are “fun” and they have a very strong “social” function.)

Here is an unreal innovation, an impossible idea. Nicolas Sierro drew on his note pad a mobile phone while listening to the conference of Thierry Weber and Frederic Sidler at TechnoArk (26 November 2009 in Sierre/Siders) last year. His funny drawing hit me: That’s it! This is the ideal version of a mobile phone and of any electronic device. We will be free from the object “computer” – and of the cables? – if we had intelligent surfaces – or is it the pen? – where we can literally draw the object that executes the needed function. Or, let’s go further, if we just could tell an “intelligent unit” to become a mobile phone or become a robot that will perform the desired task.

The following article in German Die Kinder der Revolution (Digital, NZZ Online) “The Children of the Revolution” talks about the iPad, the history of tablet-computers and how they appeared in Stanley Kubrick’s “Space Odyssey, 2001” (1968), the link that exists to the philosophy of the Hippies as shared, so it seems, by Steve Jobs and the third of Clarke’s 3 laws of prediction: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” (Arthur C. Clarke , “Profiles of The Future“, 1961.). The iPad is still too attached to the metaphor and the real object of “the tablet”. (NZZ article on the PC-Age by Stefan Betschon.) But there are already other examples. One of Pranav Mistry and a second of Frederic Kaplan.

To discover that there are other people having similar crazy ideas – or called it dreams – is an excellent motivation to push the limits of the realm of impossible ideas, too. Pranav Mistry is the inventor of SixthSense, a wearable device that enables new interactions between the real world and the world of data. Full bio and more links

At TEDIndia, Pranav Mistry demos several tools that help the physical world interact with the world of data — including a deep look at his SixthSense device and a new, paradigm-shifting paper “laptop.” In an onstage Q&A, Mistry says he’ll open-source the software behind SixthSense, to open its possibilities to all.

So I thought, around last year — in the beginning of the last year — I started thinking,.. “How about I take my digital world and paint the physical world with that digital information?” Because pixels are actually, right now, confined in these rectangular devices that fit in our pockets. Why can I not remove this confine and take that to my everyday objects, everyday life so that I don’t need to learn the new language for interacting with those pixels?

Here is another great innovation of Frederic Kaplan, founder and CEO of OZWE, Switzerland going in a similar direction. He wants “computers to live with, not to live inside”. He invented an interface that is the space around us and a robot “that does not look like a robot”. Watch more videos of Frederic Kaplan.

To finish this post, let me put it in a more general way. We need a frame that help us innovate. This is true. A frame can be purely mental, or factual like technological constraints, budget limitations or working conditions of today’s society. But without a point outside this frame, I’ll never explore its limits. And perhaps, I won’t never jump over that line. We may even feel lost in a frame we created ourselves. Simon Sinek describes this situation in his post “The Problem with Goal Setting“. To be exclusively focused on the goal – and of course it is hard to get there – can cause deep frustration after having achieved it because you don’t know what to do next. You are trapped in your own mental frame.

Something similar can happen with the frame of possible ideas. We need a well defined frame in order to create any product. But if I don’t see that me innovation is just a step towards an impossible goal, my innovation will not tap the full potential. Now, what is impossible can become possible. Therefore, to see other people like Pranav Mistry and Frederic Kaplan having carried out some incredible ideas, motivates one to push the limits of the impossible ideas, too.

May be you ask yourself what is the impossible idea of the idea detective? Well, here it is: Like in art, EVERY idea can become a business model. This impossible idea guides my whole work.

What is your impossible idea?

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