Larry Page and Sergey Brin
1996
The corporate empire that was to become Google began as a research project for two Stanford doctoral students, Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Page and Brin developed a formula for ranking websites based on popularity, and used it to build an internet search engine. When it was first launched, Google ran on a collection of linked computers in Page?s dorm room. As the popularity of their simple, user-friendly interface grew, Page and Brin left Stanford to build their company, which was incorporated in 1998. ?Google? is now a commonly used verb, and the company has become a multi-billion dollar enterprise with services including email, phone, video, satellite imagery, and more.
Our Thoughts...
The environmental challenge that led to the Google solution was
known to everyone. It was "one of computing's biggest challenges:
retrieving relevant information from a massive set of data" [cite].
But Page and Brin thought about the problem in a novel way--from an entirely different perspective. Their solution had to do with creating an algorithm that looked at the "back links" that pointed to a given website leading to their first prototype called BackRub.
Looking at a problem from a new or different point-of-view is a thinking technique that is known to everyone. Perspective taking is an essential part of creative thinking. Yet, we often get hung up when we think too long or too hard about which new point-of-view to take.
The unique reflective design of ThinkBlocks and the theory of "conceptual attribution" that underlies this design help us to be more analytical about in our creative process. That is, it helps us to turn the mysteries of creativity into a step-by-step process. It encourages us to spend less time thinking about which perspective to take and more time taking perspectives.
Because knowledge creation is an evolutionary process (see Stone Tools), taking perspectives can be more analytical and algorithmic than it is a mysterious creative process. Of course, there's no guarantee that you'll find that unique point-of-view that leads to the next corporate empire, but relative to waiting for divine inspiration, probability is on your side if you try a lot of things and keep what works.