North Korean Innovation

A North Korean Architect was commissioned to draw a futuristic version of North Korea with zero limits on both financial feasibility or even

structural integrity.

The result? In what seems straight out of a 1963 ‘The Jetsons’ episode, the architect seemed to produce drawing after drawing stuck in an era of decades past. Simplistic treehouses, ancient decor and ordinary footbridges made up a few of the images created.

So why with such an open remit did the architect produce such backward thinking results? Maybe it was purely the individual, maybe they misunderstood the brief, or maybe this is a glimmer of what happens when innovation is stymied by a lack of injected ideas.

1963 Jetsons apartment

The secret to innovation isn’t just having the time to think freely, but also having a great depth of material to draw on. This architect was not influenced by decades of shifts and ideas in architecture.

So the next time you think that innovation is all about having 20% downtime or having hackathons, think about the learning culture you are creating instead. Are you creating a learning culture to enable innovation or are you just enabling the creation of more Jetsons apartments?