And other innovation stories…

This particular story about exaptation starts with Dave Snowden and ends with the guitarist from Steely Dan, ‘Skunk’ Baxter.

Before we start you might like to listen to ‘Rikki don’t loose that number’ by Steely Dan (*highly recommended).

To begin at the end…

So, this week the You Tube algorithm pushed in my direction ‘Rikki don’t loose that number’ (featuring Skunk Baxter on guitar). No problem with that.

There are plenty of things to say about Steely Dan, like one reference to them as ‘obscurantists’, which I’ll come back to in another post.

Send it off in a letter to yourself. The lyrics of ‘Rikki don’t loose that number’ is where I’m focussing.

I’ve been thinking that the lyrics might have influenced one of my behaviours, specifically ‘send it off in a letter to yourself’.

Back in the days when ‘backing up your data’ was an irksome, but necessary, part of digital life I used to routinely send some things in emails to myself.

Just for safekeeping, or as a reminder.

Even in the current world of ‘automatic backups in the cloud’, I still email some things to myself.

Yes, I know there are dozens of productivity tools that would do a better job for me. But, I get a curious sense of comfort from the manual act of ‘sending it off in a letter / email to myself’.

Does it make me less efficient and productive? Who knows, and bottom line, I’m not that fussed.

To be honest, the emails I send myself are probably the ones I enjoy the most.

But enough of my peculiarities, the point here is the fact that I use emails for a purpose they weren’t really intended for. Instead of a straightforward communication tool, they have become a sort of comfort blanket / storage device.

Not as romantic as ‘sending it off in a letter to yourself’, but I hope you get my drift.

But is it expatation?

Psychedelic Rock Guitarist Counterterrorism Consultant.

This ‘repurposing’ of things is something where Jeff ‘Skunk’ Baxter has made a parallel career.

Beyond being an accomplished guitarist he’s moved into the world of Defence Consulting.

This article in Far Out Magazine explains how an interest in recording equipment and military data compression algorithms led to him developing a proposal for converting an anti-aircraft missle into a missle defence system (sounds complicated to me).

The music scene has always been good at innovating, including taking things created for one use and repurposing them for something else. As Skunk (Jeff) pointed out, ‘turntables were originally used to just play records, until someone decided to create music with them’. It’s even got a name, Turntablism.

This quote from Far Out magazine explains the link to Counterterrorism.

“My big thing is to look at existing technologies and try to see other ways they can be used, which happens in music all the time and happens to be what terrorists are incredibly good at.”

Now, that feels a bit more like exaptation.

Exaptation and Flightless Chickens.

My first introduction to the concept of exaptation came from Dave Snowden around 2012.

At the time Dave explained exaptation using an example from biology, where the term originates. In the example, feathers that were originally developed as a cooling mechanism were used for the purposes of flight. A radical innovation.

I’ve written a few things about exaptation including this on innovations during floods in Thailand where I was fascinated by how many things can be done with a simple plastic bottle.

The Cynefin Wiki gives additional examples of exaptation and also uses the phrase ‘radical repurposing’.

It’s always perplexed me that exaptation (or even radical repurposing) doesn’t find itself part of everyday innovation language.

I wonder why?

Finally, I’m not sure my example of sending emails to myself should make it onto the Cynefin Wiki Exaptation, but maybe something from Skunk Baxter will feature.

Ironically, the chicken in the picture above considered himself to be the ‘coolest’ in our run, but was incapable of flying.

For Donald (that was the Chicken’s name), maybe it was a bit of reverse exaptation, giving up flight to look cool?

So, What’s the PONT?

1. Exaptation is the act of using something for a purpose it wasn’t intended. Radical Repurposing.

2. Exaptation can result in radical innovation. If you think about it and look around, you can probably identify examples.

3. Given the impact, and potential of exaptation for innovation, why don’t we use it more explicitly?