Assignment 01 – CS407

1751048 – Khuu Kien An

The world is running and turning around us. Seeing the stuffs changing by time makes me
curious to them, wonder what really they are, how they interact, change in the environment.
For me, the most important discovery skill is observing. You always use this skill first to find the
points in a problem before solving it. For example, students like me when the assignments are
given, will observe them first, find out the critical points to understand clearly.

So innovators are the same. They traveled, walked around, noticed the strange, miraculous
thing then they had asked themselves some question about the things they had seen. Ratan
Tata, who is chairman of Tata Corpotation, had seen the a family soaked while riding a two-
wheel scooter in a rainy day in Mumbai of India, in 2003. He asked himself a question about
that situation. After that, an idea sparked in his head like adding more parts for the scooter,
later, making a small four-wheel car so that nearly all people can afford to buy it [1]. When his
team bring their product to market, he observed again in the need of customers so that the
team can sell the product easily with more additional services like insurance, license [2].

Also that, cofounder of Intuit, Scott Cook saw his wife have some trouble on book-keeping, time
management about the finances. This is the way of Cook have some ideas on Quicken and
QuickBooks projects[3]. Creative people, innovators have some new ideas, thoughts after they
observers things on their road, their life. Their insight has been widen more, the more they
observe carefully, the more knowledge they gained in their head to make the world turns
crazily. The robot-assisted surgery product of Intuitive Surgical is an object that can turn the
craziness of the world into reality. Having the background of surgeon, Fred Moll put the idea on
a robot can do the surgery precisely with amount of experience on that background [4]. It is
another type of observation, an important discovery skill, you don’t have to run around the
cities, countries to find things to observe for the ideas. Instead, you can use your experience,
study to combine things together and make insane stuffs, over than expectation.

And Steve Jobs, former chief executive officer(CEO) of the famous cooperation Apple, is
another intense observer. He built his operating system, Macintosh User Interface. He had a
chance of visiting the copier company, called Palo Alto Research Center(PARC) to observe how
PARC computer run its operating system, how the mouse interacted, the icons, menu, and
windows. That visit maked him have an idea to build an operating system, the ways of object-
oriented programming performs[5].

For another founder related to the computers, Michael Dell, CEO of Dell Technologies. In his
past, he had done the crazy stuff what you did not expect at that time when the computer was
so much expensive. He dissambled his personal computer, got angery from his parents, though,
he saw the inside of its to do experiment, did the exprimenting, and upgraded [6].

Observation is so essential that you actually do that everyday. You look the problems, strange
things, every-day stuffs can be changed, then you dig the observation more, you see the
changing, lessons. The observation is look like you do the gold-digging, you must do it better,
deeper, to find the gold, the beauty of things, the attractive of changing [7]. And to sharpen the
observation skill, you should focus four discovery skills, corporate them with observation to be
the best.

References:
[1]
: Jeff Dyer, Hal Gregersen, Clayton M. Christensen. (2011). The innovator’s DNA Mastering the
Five Skills of Disruptive Innovators. Dyer et al. Page 89 - 90.
[2]
: Jeff Dyer, Hal Gregersen, Clayton M. Christensen. (2011). The innovator’s DNA Mastering the
Five Skills of Disruptive Innovators. Dyer et al. Page 90 - 92.
[3]
: Jeff Dyer, Hal Gregersen, Clayton M. Christensen. (2011). The innovator’s DNA Mastering the
Five Skills of Disruptive Innovators. Dyer et al. Page 95
[4]
: Jeff Dyer, Hal Gregersen, Clayton M. Christensen. (2011). The innovator’s DNA Mastering the
Five Skills of Disruptive Innovators. Dyer et al. Page 201 - 202.
[5]
: Jeff Dyer, Hal Gregersen, Clayton M. Christensen. (2011). The innovator’s DNA Mastering the
Five Skills of Disruptive Innovators. Dyer et al. Page 19.
[6]
: Jeff Dyer, Hal Gregersen, Clayton M. Christensen. (2011). The innovator’s DNA Mastering the
Five Skills of Disruptive Innovators. Dyer et al. Page 144.
[7]
: The video clip with title The importance of observations of Eden Chen on Youtube Channel
TEDx Talks can be found at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFaJsZcrz_0&