What you get when you see the obvious again

To create new innovations, you need to access the essence. It's usually about looking at something familiar from a different perspective, and it takes practice to get good at it. In the planning team of a large company, they have an exercise where they look up the etymology of a word before they start planning for something. Some might think this is a waste of time, but it's a way to get to the essence.

For example, how would you talk about the difference between planning and scheming? If you look at the kanji for planning, there are people involved. But planning doesn't have a person. The idea is that planning is something people do, and planning is something people don't do. If we approach these familiar words carefully, we can find new facts that we didn't know before.

Insights don't come to those who ignore them because they seem simple. Think of it this way: something that seems simple to you now is thousands of pieces of knowledge that have been distilled, organized, and stripped down to their essence. If you look at it carefully, you'll see that it gives you a different perspective.

The simpler and more straightforward something seems, the more carefully you approach it, and this attitude can give you insight. Question things that have been around for a long time, like why the search bar is now a white box. Thinking about how your favorite app or service was created can give you a new perspective.