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Tina Seelig: The Inventure Cycle

Name: Tina Seelig: The Inventure Cycle
Uploaded: 2014-10-17T16:50:02+00:00
Duration: 2 min 24 s
Channel: GHION.AI
Description: In this talk, Tina Seelig introduces the "Inventure Cycle," a four‑stage framework that links imagination, creativity, innovation, and entrepreneurship…

17 Oct 2014 · 2 min

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2:24

In this talk, Tina Seelig introduces the "Inventure Cycle," a four‑stage framework that links imagination, creativity, innovation, and entrepreneurship. She defines imagination as the ability to envision things that do not yet exist, creativity as the application of imagination to solve a problem, innovation as the application of creativity to produce something truly new to the world, and entrepreneurship as the act of bringing an innovation to life and inspiring others’ imagination. The cycle is circular because successful entrepreneurship must spark new imagination in others. Seelig likens the progression to language acquisition—babbling, words, sentences, stories—illustrating how each stage builds on the previous one. She then suggests that each step can be parsed into specific attitudes and actions required for success, encouraging the audience to examine what is needed at each stage to move forward.

Chapters

So let's start. Let's start with imagination. Imagination, I define very simply, is the ability to envision things that don't yet exist. Do you guys buy that? Yeah. Okay, right? I can envision someone coming down the aisle with a plate of cookies or the Stanford Band coming in and playing a fun song. A fight song. Okay, so imagination is the ability to envision things that don't exist. Creativity then is applying your imagination to solve a problem. People often confuse or conflate imagination and creativity, but creativity is actually the application of your imagination. So I can envision things, but if I use that ability to solve a problem or address a need, then I'm being creative. Innovation then is applying your creativity to come up with a unique solution. So if I invent a peanut butter sandwich, that's creative, but it's not innovative. Innovations are when I push through and come up with things that are actually new to the world. Entrepreneurship then is applying our innovation to bring those ideas to life, to bring them to fruition and to the rest of the world. So if you have this set of definitions, which I call the Inventure Cycle, you end up with these four pieces of this scaffolding. Now, how come it's a cycle? It's a cycle because entrepreneurship, to be successful, requires you to inspire the imagination of other people. You can't do it alone. So think of this framework as very much like learning how to talk. Babies naturally babble. They apply those sounds to make words, those words to make sentences, and those sentences to make stories. It's the same sort of hierarchy, right? You start with some basic skills that are very natural like imagination and then you layer on other things that get you further down the line. So do you buy this? Does that sound— make sense? Okay. Once you have this cycle here, now what you can do is you start parsing it. You can break it apart and look at what has to happen at each one of these steps. What are the attitudes and the actions that have to take place at each part in order to make you successful and to move on to the next one?