Stereotype...

For a living, I help teams to innovate. How?… is a long story with loads of jargons and justifications, but so far it has worked…and let me not drag the ‘how’ part further. But some of the jargons which are pretty much inevitable and synonymous to innovation are creativity, problem statement, best practice, reuse, benefit and $ value (sounds like $ is the only currency world over).  Pondering on the multiple calls on the day, with enthusiastic young gals and lads explaining what their team has done and articulating every possible benefit to weave a large dollar value to it…after all Innovation is to do with evangelising your solution and branding it. Well, my little grey matter pondering for a longtime and slowly drifted towards ‘what exactly is innovation…or even further what exactly is creativity?’. 

We have heard it a hundred times over and often referred to the great domain pundits as ‘something different which has a benefit tagged to it’. Okey agreed, then how on earth is reuse and best practice connected with being creative. I always though reuse and best practice were stereotypes, but never voiced it out since I have also justified that these stereotypes may still be an unknown commodity for someone else…and thus its different and gives the desired benefit. 

With thoughts revolving around the stereotype and an upcoming client visit (which I later came to know was cancelled)…i drove down the road and into my parking lot. Up the stairs and into my house which had an unusual calm, a voice speaking a word in Tamil and my daughter repeating it. Exams nearing and my wife had summoned the maid to help her in teaching Tamil. I was more than eager to break this spell of monotonous repetitions and get some freedom for the little one. Only to see my wife with finger on lips and a glare to indicate ‘shut up and go to your room’ and like any other obedient husband slowly slipped past, unnoticed by the little one. 

Kindergarten with Tamil, Hindi, English, Moral Science and even Maths that too with operations like additions and subtractions, I was wondering if this was going too far. My subconscious mind was still picking up the repetitive words which now has become questions and my little one trying to answer. The bold one that she is, would never care if she answered it wrong and then allow correcting her; but had her own control mechanism that will not allow any stern correction. The teaching now moved to naming of animals in Tamil. My little one was picking up the rhythm, yaaa-naei (elephant), puu-neai (cat) swaying her head from side to side she was picking up a few more with the two syllable words coming one after another. My wife on one side and maid of the other, my little girl swayed her head once to my wife with the first syllable and the other side with the second syllable. 

Kuthi-raai (horse), maaa-duuu (cow)…my Wife and maid were getting a sense of satisfaction and wanted to test the little one further more. This time the maid came up with an idea of pointing out random pictures of animals and not in a particular sequence…well, it was working puu-lee (tiii-geeer), otta-gum (caaa-meel), paal-lee (liii-zard), aaaa-maiiii (tuuuu-rtle) the swaying getting heavier from side to side. She was clearly enjoying this and now my Wife and maid got into the swaying as well. 

Few more random animals, non of us expectied what was coming, the two happy teachers pointed to a picture of a dog and my little one happy swayed naaaa-yeeeaaaa (you’re a dog). Stunned silence and then the laughter from two of them. For those who don’t know Tamil, dog has to be single syllable word, if made to sound like a two syllable word would give a completely different meaning and this time ‘you’re a dog’. I am not sure were she picked it from but the two syllable stereotype definitely triggered it. 

My pondering to ‘stereotype’ being creative was absolutely made certain and tagged with benefits, if not directly, definitely…on a lighter note...fringe benefits 😜