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Innovation Begins by Developing a Capacity for the Obvious
by Rex Miller
Great ideas too often stare us in the face.
Mindshift began as a simple dialogue about the current and future state of design and construction. It took a little time for our conversation to get beyond the thinking that the current state was a simple fact of life. When we looked outside our current system we arrived at the following conclusion:
Conventional design and construction is broken. It seems obvious. We all say it to ourselves and express our exasperation at our various networking gatherings. The odd dynamic is that when you get a room full of stakeholders together – for the first time – we talk as if we came from some alternative reality. Our projects all go smoothly, on-time and within budget.
I like to quote one of the executives from our first Mindshift gathering; “We all have good companies, good people and happy clients. We begin each projects with good intentions and high hopes. For some reason there is something about the system that gets in the way of all of our best efforts.”
The system clearly creates a lot of waste and conflict. That seems obvious. What was less obvious is that this waste and conflict is the result of a system that is fragmented, assumes distrust and is designed to defend against that distrust.
So here was our “aha!” We asked, “How do you create a system that assumes trust and is designed to foster it and lead toward integration?”
That is the story told in The Commercial Real Estate Revolution.
This video enhances the theme – innovation through developing a capacity for the obvious. This is Paul Bennet presenting at the TED conference.


