As someone whose life mission is to develop mastery in creating insights to solve real word problems, I thought it’s a good idea for me to break down the process and the conditions through which I arrived at the idea of founding Insight Dojo.
A stimulus that makes you think expansively
It was March 2013. I had left McKinsey & Company a few months earlier and was enjoying being a director in a customer insights company. My ex-colleagues, Jennifer Kelly and Takashi Takenoshita, invited me to talk about insight to their pharmaceutical company’s leadership team in one of their weekly knowledge sharing meetings. As the audience included people from other functions, namely medical, finance, regulatory affairs, and HR, they requested me not to focus only on marketing or customer insights. That was an interesting challenge, and so I presented the principles of insight development using example of scientific discoveries, business ideas, great works of art, and my hobbies – notably jazz piano and karate. I followed each principle with an illustration of its application to a business example, e.g., a product innovation, a customer segmentation, or creating a differentiated brand.
A creative environment
The audience was engaged and receptive. Despite being C-Suite leaders, they participated in various exercises with enthusiasm on a Tuesday afternoon in a corporate meeting room in Hammersmith. The interaction was surprisingly inspiring for both the audience and me. I was getting that buzzing sensation that you sometimes get at the brink of a new insight.
A trigger, a metaphor, and the first Aha!
The last page of my presentation was a drawing by Picasso of himself drawing Marie-Therese. I still don’t know why I chose it. But the sight of Picasso attempting to capture his own process on a canvas and the recursive nature of the drawing made me reflect on my own presentation. It was simultaneously an exposition and an illustration of the principles of insight development. Then an epiphany came with full force. My art form was developing insight to solve practical problems by cross-pollinating ideas from many fields. It wasn’t market research, martial arts, music or other disciplines I had pursued for many years. It was a liberating feeling and I felt euphoric.
A serendipitous meeting, a catalyst, and the second Aha!
At this stage, I was walking around in a dreamy state pleased with my discovery. A month later I met Melissa Dagless, who was in the audience in my presentation, for lunch at an Italian restaurant. She asked me why I wasn’t starting my own company. It was odd to meet someone with such conviction after barely two meetings. I was unprepared for this, and suddenly the coffee tasted irresistibly good. I must have ordered several cups and been there for hours. The idea of Insight Dojo was planted. I have always been grateful to Melissa for that.
Validation of the idea through multiple conversations
The first thing I did was speak with my wife about her views on my decision. We also discussed our finances. I also spoke with my family in India. I cannot stress the importance for any entrepreneur to have their family on board. Then I spoke with many well-wishers who provided confidence, e.g., Jen Kelly (“I have faith in you”), pressure tested my decision, e.g., George Whitmore (“I want to ensure you are not being impulsive”), gave practical advice, e.g., Caroline Webb, Gaurav Bhatnagar and Sid Simmons (“Here’s how to do it”), and made it concrete, e.g., Marco Renoldi, Melissa Dagless, and Takashi Takenoshita (“Here’s your first project”).
A lifetime of preparation and a slow hunch developing
The insight about Insight Dojo appeared on that day, but it had been incubating for many years. I had coined the term “Pragmatic Polymath” in 2008 to describe regular people whom we meet in our daily lives who are characterised by an openness to learn new things, immerse themselves deeply in different disciplines, and are adept at cross-pollinating ideas to create practical innovations. We usually associate the term polymath for geniuses such as Leonard DaVinci or Michelangelo. My intention was to create a more humble and everyday profile to accommodate ordinary people with diverse interests. I published a paper and delivered a presentation on the topic in an ESOMAR conference in Instanbul the same year. A year later a shorter version of the article was published in Research World. I also developed the idea further with two colleagues, David Honigman and James Naylor in McKinsey in the context of innovation. Even though I had researched the topic, my conviction came from the way I live. I immerse myself in various disciplines related to insight – traditional qualitative and quantitative research, machine learning, anthropology, design, behavioural economics, cognitive neuroscience, health psychology, and constantly draw inspiration from hobbies. Yet, only on that day in 2013 during that presentation, had I managed to connect my varied interests in a single unifying idea that led to the creation of Insight Dojo.
Implementation in the business context
It is easy to inspire people by showing them a Picasso painting or speaking about Zen meditation. It’s quite another thing to apply the principles of pragmatic polymathy to solve hard problems and deliver strong business outcomes. In the past 11 years, I have had the opportunity to make pragmatic polymathy one of Insight Dojo’s five core practices and create value for our clients in projects with my colleagues, notably with Jenny Hall.
The challenges with pragmatic polymathy
A polymathic approach is not without difficulties. I often find people writing about the topic, but their focus is on the “poly” part or having a range of interests rather than the “math” part which is about having sufficient depth. They underestimate how difficult it is to achieve competence in a single field, leave alone multiple ones, especially since we have such busy lives. Richness of any field lies when you go deep. It surfaces in the daily grind of practising scales, doing crunches or writing python programmes. Whilst a seasoned martial artist trains incessantly to improve a single technique, a self-help guru will impart “profound” lessons based on a reading of a martial arts book. I have experienced this in a corporate off-site event! Second, pragmatic polymathy is not everyone’s cup of tea. I’ve always pursued many interests not because I had to, but it was something I enjoyed. My childhood friend, Shakir, reunited with me on Facebook after over 30 years wrote, “I have been searching for this crazy guy Vivek who at school would learn something new every year with the same passion and then move on after mastering it... Be it singing, music, karate, boxing, Tennis and of course TT”. Nicely exaggerated, but nevertheless it was odd for me to see that that was the first thing that struck him. I had completely forgotten that there was a period when I used to do boxing every day with a bunch of army guys after school! However, many people prefer to be more single minded in their pursuits, and there is a lot to be said for that type of focus. In any case, the motivation must be intrinsic, and cannot be imposed top-down. Third, when you pursue many interests, you are less likely to define yourself by anyone of those. I personally love this aspect, yet it creates confusion for many people. My company Insight Dojo has been called a firm that focused on design, strategy, segmentation, innovation, qualitative research, behaviour change, data analytics or conjoint depending on the background of the person. This is especially problematic in a world with a low attention span. It is easier to convince someone that you are great at segmentation if that is the only thing you do rather than when it’s just one of the things you do. Fourth, making pragmatic polymathy work to deliver insights itself is an art. I have met people who are top class in many fields but just average on the capacity to generate novel insights. I’ve also seen the reverse situation many times where people aren’t particularly committed to any field and are simply brilliant at coming up with breakthrough ideas. That is the fascinating aspect of human beings – no single concept can capture the many ways we can be brilliant.
Where we are now
Because of my deep involvement with this topic, I come across many debates on the value of generalists vs specialists. From my point of view, these discussions have limited value. First, defining a generalist or a specialist is subjective, context-dependent, and difficult. Secondly, each side usually uses a super-reductive and exaggerated view of the other group. The generalist camp, instead of appreciating the phenomenal insight of deep masters in a field, attack “hyper-specialists” to make their arguments palatable. The specialist camp instead of admiring the integrative skills of generalists focus on their lack of depth in specific domains and their superficiality. The idea of pragmatic polymathy has been my humble attempt to offer a way forward especially for developing insights. Yet, it suffers from similar difficulties about definition.
Ultimately, we need to acknowledge the world has gotten very complex, and there is no sign that the pace of change will slow down. There are disruptions in every front – climate change, geopolitical challenges, and advances in science and technology with AI affecting every sphere of life. To make sense of what’s going on, one must be a genuine truth seeker, be humble, think flexibly and creatively, absorb knowledge from many disciplines, master technology and adapt to complex changes in the world. My focus for Insight Dojo is on how to accomplish this and pragmatic polymathy has been an overarching umbrella concept. The devil is in the details. Every idea becomes nuanced when you focus on execution.
Talk to me if the topic interests you and if you would like me to serve as a sounding board to test your thinking on this subject for yourself or for your organisation.