Getting Together | Brent Bushnell

Brainstorming. So, okay. The only thing I would request you guys do tonight is watch John Cleese's talk on creativity. This is— has anybody seen this before? You've seen it. Yeah. It's awesome, right? John Cleese, Monty Python, the guy is rad. And this talk is actually— I mean, it's almost like he's schizophrenic. He's giving 2 talks at the same time, and you don't actually know. I mean, he just switches back and forth between them. It's hilarious. I've seen it. But one of the things he talks about is intermediate impossibles. And this is a really important thing when it comes to brainstorming. So Disney actually had a whole codified method around this. And the idea is that at the very beginning of brainstorming, when we're trying to come up with what it is we're going to do, there's no room for cynics, right? And in fact, no room for physics and economics and all the constraints. You want to unconstrain the system as much as possible. And so the first room was the dreamer room. And this is where whatever thing we're trying to solve, whatever thing we're trying to do, we're going to just throw it all out there. And so we might be talking about medical devices and I say pirates. And you're like, pirates? What the hell? But somebody else is going to be like, wow, you know, that hook, you know, maybe there's a way we can use that inside the device. Mm-hmm. And now it's like all of a sudden this thing that was ridiculous, right? Pirates have nothing to do with medicine. That was the intermediate impossible that sort of let everybody else, sort of, you know, sort of provided enough random input for everybody else to sort of lead to some other new thing. Okay. So, so this is the Cambrian explosion room. As many ideas as possible. Okay. Now we go to the spoiler room. This is where, all right, economics and physics, like, what is actually not possible? Pirates, yeah. But this other hook thing, okay, maybe something interesting. So, so this is where we cut down that list into something sort of more manageable. And then finally, the realist room, right? This is like, okay, of all the things that survive the laws of physics, like, what are we actually excited about? What are we actually going to work on? What makes a lot of sense? lot of sense. The next one is access to tools. And there's sort of 2 sides of this. First of all, oh my God, there's never— it's never been a better time to be an engineer and be able to use these tools. You don't actually have to even be an engineer, right? We already talked about how easy it is to use CAD and electronics. You guys have access to TechShop and all these wonderful things, and in a weekend can build a lot of really awesome stuff. And so you can have one approach where you're basically like, hey, I've got all these tools, like, what should I build? And then the other one is, hey, I've got an idea, like, let me just prototype this thing and see if I'm crazy. And so both sides of those are really powerful. One is, hey, I've got the things, what can I land at? And one is, hey, I've got the idea, let me just make sure that it has any sort of realism, reality. Next is a stimulating environment. And this is one that's really been an active process for me at our company. We're up to 26 now, which is sort of right at the threshold where I like people come and I don't necessarily know their name all the time. But the stimulating environment has really been a powerful thing for us. So, you know, arguably a place is, you know, your business will be open 9 to 5. Maybe a bunch of, you know, nerds, it'll be 11 to 8 or whatever. But you've got this asset there, this building, and it's outfitted with lots of stuff. And there's weekends where maybe people aren't going to be there. Well, what other things can you do with that space? We started doing lots of stuff. We found local nonprofits that we loved, and we'd host special dinners, and we'd grab like like some local chef who wants to test a new thing, and we'd have these little pop-up dinners. That had two effects, right? A, we're helping the community. B, we're helping some you know local partner of ours. C, we're getting people who wouldn't necessarily be coming to our shop to our shop, and now they're interacting with our employees and trading ideas and whatnot. They're also learning about our what we do, and they're in a place that. that they might have not been before. We have a top secret nerd night. This is, I mean, it's not so top secret that I can't tell you about it, but like, we, you know, in this place we invite local hackers and whatnot to come and hang out, and like Fight Club, if it's your first time, you have to present. So the neat part is, is like every single person in the room at that point has all presented. You can always say, oh, what did you present on? But the other side of that is all of our engineers, all of our team are now getting Again, sort of exposure to other people. Lots of churn. More random input. More ideas. We've got a game night. We make games, right? We love games. Let's play as many games as possible. Board games, card games, whatever. Let's just try new stuff. Art walks, whatever. Just, what other kinds of ways can you get people playing together and interacting? Getting the community out to your place. Be more than just, we provide this one thing. How can we get sort of more churn into our environment? Mentorship. So this one's huge. Our current school system is not awesome, you probably know. And in fact, having 30 kids and 1 teacher was not there because it's optimal, right? It's there because it was the way that sort of made it work. But there's nothing like a one-on-one with a kid, right? Ridiculously valuable for the kid. But you know what else? Super valuable to the mentor. And in fact, you get oxytocin release for being a mentor. And, you know, one of the things that's super fun about it is kids come up with the wildest stuff. I've been— there's a wonderful group called the Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship, nationwide group, teaches kids how to be entrepreneurs. And I'll sit there talking with these kids and I'm like, God, that is a freaking amazing idea. Like, how did you even land at that? But they sort of don't have all the sort of baked-in constraints that we end up with. So, really, really powerful there. You know what's even more nuts? You get oxytocin for watching someone else be a mentor. So just being in the room watching other people, you know, I mean, that's like crazy awesome. You know, we've got mirror neurons just for that sort of thing. So mentorship, highly encourage you to do it. There's lots of opportunities all over the place, every city. Highly, highly encouraged. So, this kid. I found this picture on the internet. I have no idea what he's doing, what he's looking at. But I frickin' love it. I want more kids thinking like that. Because frankly, I feel like this is sort of really something we need, this kind of creativity, this sort of ridiculousness. Because out of play and non-constrained environments, things always start playful and not sort of the fundamental for the world. And then only after it is sort of adopted there and is fun can it possibly transition into something else. Thank you.