Pop quiz!

Was the breakthrough technology behind the original Nike running shoes inspired by:

A) An old mattress

B) Tire treads

C) Sushi

D) Gecko feet

The answer (which will be revealed in just a moment so you have a chance to guess) has profound implications for your next creative breakthrough! 

P.s. More action awaits you in our archives, including how Steve Jobs cultivated great taste, the personality trait shared by 1381 millionaires, and 40 principles relied on by the world’s greatest creatives. 

OK, ready?

The answer is…

C, Sushi!

In his memoir, Nike’s cofounder Phil Knight reveals that Tiger Shoes—whose innovative sole design would later inspire Nike's groundbreaking footwear—got its breakthrough when its CEO, Mr. Onitsuka, experienced a random flash of inspiration at dinner:

“Mr. Onitsuka told Bowerman (Knight’s cofounder) that the inspiration for the unique soles on Tigers had come to him while eating sushi. Looking down at his wooden platter, at the underside of an octopus’s leg, he thought a similar suction cup might work on the sole of a runner’s flat. Bowerman filed that away. Inspiration, he learned, can come from quotidian things. Things you might eat. Or find lying around the house.”

One of the most iconic breakthroughs in running shoe technology, one that would pave the way for one of the world’s largest companies, was discovered by a random fluke.

Or… was it?

Random flukes are common sparks for creative leaps

See I’ve noticed something suspicious about flukes. 

I was reading Andrew Chen’s book The Cold Start Problem the other day and check out how one of the most famous gestures of our generation—the swipe right/left on dating apps—was invented:

“It was only later that the left and right swipe would be added, almost as an afterthought by Badeen, the iOS developer at the time. Jon described to me how he landed on the swiping insight: ‘I had a deck of cards at my desk, and would play with them while I coded. I’d fiddle around with them between coding, and decided one day I’d add it in as a fun feature. It felt good to swipe left and right, but at first, it wasn’t meant to be the main way people would use the app.’”

Who knows how many billions of swipes originated with that fateful deck of cards?

But it’s not just athletic shoes and dating app gestures that were sparked by flukes. After studying hundreds of breakthroughs in sport, the arts, business, science, and beyond, I’ve noticed a fascinating trend: these random flukes, when taken together, are not flukes at all—they are the norm.

Whether it’s Henry Ford’s assembly line, Dyson’s bagless vacuum, Newton’s apple, Grace Hopper’s compiler, Howard Schultz’s (Starbucks) Italian vacation, Figma’s swimming pool, Dell’s PCs, etc… an absurd number of history’s greatest ideas, breakthroughs, and innovations were sparked by a seemingly unrelated idea in a far-flung place. 

Randomness shall set you free (from precedent paralysis)

Neuroscientists and psychologists who study creativity are well aware of this phenomenon although they’re still struggling to explain it. Studies published as recently as 2024 and in the most prestigious journals conclude the neuroscience that explains our ability to generate creative ideas is “poorly understood” and “remains elusive.”

(We do know that creatives are better at drawing connections between distant ideas and have unique brain architectures that reflect this difference)

One theory that may explain the power that randomness has to spark breakthroughs is the way it helps us overcome what I describe as “precedent paralysis.”

Let’s turn to the invention of James Dyson’s bagless vacuum cleaner as a remarkable example. 

In the decades prior to Dyson’s innovation, household vacuum cleaners relied on filters. They would suck air through a filter and the filter would capture the dust and debris. The problem was that the filter would get increasingly clogged over time and so the performance of your vacuum would deteriorate fast.

This poor experience would often leave James Dyson personally “simmering with anger” but he didn’t have a better solution. Until, one day, a fluke struck while he was working on an unrelated problem. 

Dyson was building a wheel barrow (of all things) but needed a way to clear away the fine powder that he was coating his contraption with. As luck would have it, someone suggested he visit a sawmill to see the giant cyclone fans they used to remove dust from the air.

As Dyson gazed up in awe at the mill’s 30 foot fan, not only could he see how the cyclone technology would solve his wheel barrow problem, but he also recognized how it could revolutionize the vacuum cleaner.

Rather than getting to work on his own company (that would someday generate billions of dollars), he rushed off to the largest vacuum cleaner companies to give away his idea. 

Did these incumbents spring into action to capitalize on the new billion dollar opportunity? Nope, they blew off Dyson’s idea as a non-starter and kept their focus on building better filters—the decades old precedent. 

“Look,” one person chided Dyson, “if there was a better vacuum cleaner, one of those big vacuum cleaner companies would have done it.”

The so called experts were all blinded by precedent paralysis. 

While old precedents are wonderful at solving old problems, they often fail at solving new ones. The issue that experts in a given field often run into is they confine their search for solutions to the historical precedents that they’re familiar with. 

Until, that is, someone randomly gets shaken awake by a solution in a far-flung field. Like in a saw mill. Or a sushi restaurant. When Mr. Onitsuka was eating his squid, one of the tentacles got stuck to the bowl because of the suction cups, and—Ding!—the clouds cleared and a superior idea that broke free of precedent was discovered. 

It turned out that adding suction domes to the sole of a shoe adds a superior adhesive to the grip rather than simply offering friction through a textured surface. This especially delighted basketball players who were constantly slipping and falling while making abrupt movements. The Japanese basketball team who were the first to wear Onitsuka’s sucky shoes won their next championship with ease.

Randomness has the power to shatter precedent paralysis and deliver revolutionary ideas to us if we’re willing to keep an open mind.

And it’s not just revolutionary breakthroughs that randomness can aid with—it’s essential for the day to day creativity required in creative jobs.

Randomness is a treasure trove of creativity

Months after signing a big Netflix deal, writer/producer Shonda Rhimes (Grey’s Anatomy, Scandal, Bridgerton) was “seriously stressed” because, as she revealed, “it wasn’t like I had a treasure trove of ideas in the back of my head that I’d been hiding and saving, so the panic overtook me for a while.” But then, as the New York Times reports, “she [randomly] read a magazine article about a female con artist, and everything clicked. She snapped up the rights to the story from the journalist who wrote it and was so inspired, she dreamt up seven more shows. Wowza.”

Many of our best ideas that fuel our creative work are not generated by force or cleverness, they are gifted to us at a random time and place of fate’s choosing.

But if randomness is so… random, how are we supposed to take advantage of it?

After all, Dyson couldn’t have known that his vacuum solution was hiding in a saw mill. Onitsuka couldn’t have known that his solution was hiding in a sushi restaurant. Rhimes could’ve known seven shows were hiding in her magazine article.

Do we break out our favorite rain dance and pray for our next miraculous fluke to appear?

Well, while you can’t force specific moments of random inspiration, you can make those moments more likely to strike. 

You can defend and even encourage the presence of randomness in your life.

(by developing a…)

Bias for random

If you’re in the business of creativity, you can’t confine yourself to a purely monotonous routine.

You must shamelessly fall down the occasional rabbit hole and follow threads that have absolutely nothing to do with your profession.

Go out your way to make randomness a habit and don’t feel guilty about it. 

For example, perhaps you…

• Arrange a random conversation with someone outside of your field each week.

• Read books that have nothing to do with your job.

• Attend an event each month for no other reason than it provokes your curiosity. 

You don’t want to add so much randomness that you get distracted, but at the same time, keep this guideline in mind:

If your work involves even a modicum of creativity then you have an obligation to adopt a bias for randomness.

Accept that many of your best ideas cannot be summoned on command and instead will hit you from somewhere surprising and often when you least expect it.

Your job is to make space for these magical happenstances and to keep your mind open such that you don’t overlook random solutions when they pop up.

Turn yourself into a conduit for creative flukes and then trust fate to do the rest.

We’ll leave you with this…

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