A match made in heaven?
Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey is one of those films that most folks have seen once and most people remember one or two famous scenes from. If you’ve ever watched a movie or TV show that had an evil computer who talked very calmly while trying to kill a couple of humans, it’s a parody or tribute to 2001.
The music is one of the more memorable parts of the film. Folks usually remember the scene of a human-like ape killing another with a bone to the tune of Richard Strauss’ “Thus Spake Zarathustra.” Or maybe shots of ships drifting through space and a flight attendant walking on the ceiling to the tune of the waltz “The Blue Danube” by Johann Strauss (no relation). Or maybe even the scene where a slowly dying computer sings “Daisy,” which you may know better by the lyrics “bicycle built for two.”
There’s always been another piece of music seared in my memory from that movie: Aram Kachaturian’s ballet Gayane.
Let’s Dance…in Space
Watch this first.
The music is eerie. It’s beautiful on the one hand, but sad or lonely as well. There’s something just a little uncomfortable about it. That’s exactly why it fits so perfectly under this long, quiet scene. First, we just see a slow-moving space ship (from our perspective–in terms of raw speed it’s basically screaming through space) all alone among the stars. Then we see two humans moving through humdrum daily routines without any speaking, punctuating their loneliness even further.
It’s a pitch perfect choice of music to create tension and foreboding for the part of the movie coming next. But the original ballet had nothing to do with space or computers.
What was Gayane actually about?
Armenians like two things: bright colors and dramatic poses.
Gayane is a long ballet about a lot of things happening in old Armenia, but a focal point it returns to often is the strained relationship of the title character Gayane and her husband Giko. When this music plays in the story, Gayane has been abandoned by her husband so he can better pursue his life of crime. You read that right. Their relationship was coming between Giko and his dream of being a successful smuggler. How does Gayane know he’s leaving? Giko stabs her and runs off.
Gayane (who survives) is contemplating her abandonment and what she will have to do to recover from the mess Giko made of her life.
The magical thing is how Kubrick took the loneliness and despair of Gayane and translated it to space. That’s cool enough on its own. But you can do the same thing in your business.
Why Kubrick’s space ballet matters
Henry Ford’s assembly line came from sandwich meat. Kind of.
Many great business ideas in the past have come from looking at a totally different business category and translating their insights to something you can use in yours.
Henry Ford supposedly came up with his idea for a car assembly line from watching folks do much the same thing in a meat-packing plant (in truth he observed a whole raft of other industries and drew insights from all of them). They had been packing meat on an assembly line for decades and no car manufacturer had ever thought to use the same concept.
He wasn’t the only one. In the early 2000s, the Great Ormond Street Hospital, a children’s hospital in London, studied Formula 1 pit crews of all things. They were trying to reduce the number of errors made in the high-risk handoffs between surgery teams and the intensive care units where patients made their recovery. This research program and the new process that came out of it reduced errors and delays in the handoff by 66%
So what does this mean for you?
Usually when you look for the next “big thing” for a business, you’d look at what your competitors are doing. That’s not a bad idea, but it does mean you’re playing catch-up instead of leading the field. You should consider looking somewhere totally different.
You work in one business, but you’re a customer of many, many more. Take stock of how they’re organized and how they solve problems. Ask everyone you meet what they do and what challenges they face. Read the autobiographies of entrepreneurs to uncover their best ideas. See if the seed for your next big idea is planted as you search.
And if you need help pinning down that big idea or just making it happen, you should give us a call. We love sparking big ideas. Or making your existing big idea into reality.