The magic of a first draft is that the first draft is always perfect. It doesn't matter if it's rubbish, if it's messy, if it doesn't flow, if it lacks personality, or if it won't work. The job of a first draft is to be a draft and get the process started. So however it turns out, the first draft has done its job perfectly.

In the illustrated art collection by Dr Seuss you can see some of the first drafts and iterations of text and images that go to refine the seemingly effortless rhythm, rhyme and combination of text and images from his wacky illustrations.

Donald Schön, in his classic The Reflective Practitioner, goes further by sharing his analysis of design as a reflective conversation – observing each mark sketched on paper informs the next you make. You don't know how it will turn out until you put pen to paper. Seeing what comes out allows you to adapt and modify as you go in a back-and-forth of discovery and evaluation.

Don't worry about your first draft — it'll be perfect.

I read this for the first time in an article by Casey Fowler that's no longer live. Most likely, it originates from the novelist Jane Smiley:

"Every first draft is perfect because all the first draft has to do is exist. It's perfect in its existence. The only way it could be imperfect would be to NOT exist."

The first draft is always perfect

Chesterton's fence put simply is: Don't take a fence down unless you know why it was put up.

It is tempting, in a spirit of progress, to want to do away with old designs, laws, policies, or institutions that no longer help. To think, perhaps, that the people that made them weren't maybe as smart as we are, or seeing things in the right way. Yet institutions, policies, or fences, weren't usually made by accident — they require effort and action, even putting up a fence. Chesterton's fence, after GK Chesterton, is a reminder that before we remove the old and perhaps replace it with the new we would do well to at least understand why the original was put in place.

Once we understand why the fence was there in the first place if we still think it's of no use, then by all means pull it down.

Read more on Chesterton's fence, including its origins.

Chesterton's fence

On 17 December 1903 at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, the Wright brothers took the first short flights in their Wright Flyer. It's the original Kitty Hawk moment: when the impossible becomes possible. The first radio transmission, the first autonomous vehicle journey, the first sub-2 hour marathon could all be Kitty Hawk moments.

A Kitty Hawk moment as a metaphor doesn't have to be big or as clear cut — it could be your first 5k, the first video call with an elderly relative, or the first sale for your business  — it just needs to help to break a barrier and show what's now possible.

In a lovely article on The Kitty Hawk moment, after Burt Rutan's SpaceShipOne flight, Bob Clarebrough highlights that not everyone will see the significance of a Kitty Hawk moment. And it was nearly 24 years before the first plane crossing of the Atlantic. Like Bill Buxton's idea of the long nose of innovation there may be a lot of work left before the new development hits the big time.

Kitty Hawk moment

Durable dynamic systems have elements, or layers, that change at different rates. The fast layers that change quickly provide the innovation, while the slower layers stabilise and remember.

In his short article Pace Layering: How Complex Systems Learn and Keep Learning, Stewart Brand gives this evocative example of the time hierarchy of a coniferous forest:

"Take a coniferous forest.  The hierarchy in scale of pine needle, tree crown, patch, stand, whole forest, and biome is also a time hierarchy.  The needle changes within a year, the crown over several years, the patch over many decades, the stand over a couple of centuries, the forest over a thousand years, and the biome over ten thousand years.  The range of what the needle may do is constrained by the crown, which is constrained by the patch and stand, which are controlled by the forest, which is controlled by the biome.  Nevertheless, innovation percolates throughout the system via evolutionary competition among lineages of individual trees dealing with the stresses of crowding, parasites, predation, and weather.  Occasionally, large shocks such as fire or disease or human predation can suddenly upset the whole system, sometimes all the way down to the biome level."

It's an example of his wonderful framework of pace layers which he applies as the working structure of a robust and adaptable civilisation.

Time hierarchy

When it comes to innovating, counterintuitively, I think the surest way to produce something new and noteworthy is to start by replicating the work you admire.

If you're making music, first play the music from your favourite artists, then make music like theirs. Only when you've mastered that do you need to go your own way.

If you admire Hemingway, practice writing like him, and your own voice will likely develop by itself.

Before helping develop cubism Picasso was first an accomplished artist.

It's easy to look at the best and think you have to be different. But standing up first makes it easier to stand on the shoulders of giants.

What's more, copying is much lower pressure.

I learned this idea while working at Jump Associates

Replicate then innovate

A remarkably common pattern for the evolution of many things. You see it all the time in the evolution of technical things, but also many systems in general.

When you start to reach the top of the limits of what one system can do you’ll start to see a focus on efficiency, cost reduction and small improvements and optimisation. This is great because it forces a new creative solution to arise in order to make any real progress. An image search gives a few examples.

Also, see some related sketchplanations: The long nose of innovation, designing for adoption, understanding the chasm.

The S-curve.

I love this concept from Stewart Brand, that different aspects of the world change at different speeds. So, fashion and art changes and cycles faster than commerce which is faster than infrastructure, and in turn governance, culture and finally Nature. The outer layers tend to innovate faster and so pull along, or be stabilised by, the lower, slower layers. At the boundaries you get constructive turbulence, say between Uber and governance, or how the growth in video streaming requires Internet infrastructure to come along with it. I’m sure you can find counter examples, but as a framework for thinking about big complex things I find it quite handy.

Pace layers

Nifty water camouflage practised by dolphins, porpoises, some fish and other neat sea creatures. The simple strategy: look light like the sky for anyone below, and look dark like the sea for anyone above. 

Counter-shading

Cheat sheet for Crossing the Chasm by Geoffrey Moore

Understanding the Chasm

Maslow’s is interesting, but not terribly helpful if you want to use it for something. This one however, I still find a very useful framework when designing (read about it in the DMI paper System Logics). Your sweet spots for the exciting innovations are the context and activity level needs. 

Patnaik’s Hierarchy of Needs

I love Bill Buxton’s Long Nose of Innovation theory that basically a ton of small incremental work precedes what feels like a wow innovation moment. Computer mice, touchscreens, robotics, CNC machining, haptics etc were all around for decades before they hit the big time.

The Long Nose of Innovation

Having played the piano most of my life I only started composing when I started spontaneously dropping by the music practice rooms at UC Berkeley in the middle of the day. Without any music I was practically forced to start making things up. Every now and then it’s new and nice. You can listen to a few short piano pieces on youtube.

I strongly believe in this as advice, but it does presuppose years of copying and playing others’ music as well as the basics of music theory. Replicate, then innovate

More sketches about starting and getting started

Get my new weekly sketch in your inbox

Category: innovation