Mark: You know that cliché, "think outside the box"? Michelle: Ugh, yes. The most meaningless phrase in business history. It’s right up there with "synergize" and "circle back." Mark: What if the problem isn't the box, but that we don't even know how to define it? Or that we're using the wrong tools to get out? We're told to be creative, but no one ever gives us the instruction manual. Michelle: That's exactly what Tina Seelig tackles in her book, Insight Out: Get Ideas Out of Your Head and Into the World. She’s basically trying to write that missing instruction manual. Mark: Exactly. And Seelig is the perfect person to do it. She's a neuroscientist by training and a professor at Stanford's famous d.school, the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design. She has spent her career reverse-engineering creativity, not as some mystical gift, but as a teachable, repeatable process. Michelle: I love that. A neuroscientist’s take on creativity. It promises a process, not just platitudes. So, where does she even begin to demystify something so… messy? Mark: She starts by giving us a map. A clear, structured roadmap she calls the Invention Cycle.

Michelle: Okay, but 'Invention Cycle'… that sounds a bit like a corporate buzzword salad. Imagination, Creativity, Innovation, Entrepreneurship. What makes this different from any other motivational poster? Mark: That's a fair challenge. The difference is that she proves it works in the most unlikely and constrained places imaginable. Forget Silicon Valley for a second. Let’s go to San Quentin State Prison. Michelle: San Quentin? The maximum-security prison? That’s not where I’d expect to find an innovation hub. Mark: Precisely. California has a staggering problem: 60 percent of inmates end up back in prison within three years. It’s a cycle of hopelessness. A couple of successful entrepreneurs, Chris Redlitz and Beverly Parenti, looked at this and saw an opportunity. They started a program called 'The Last Mile.' Michelle: The Last Mile. I like the name. What did they do? Mark: For six months, they met with forty inmates, twice a week. They didn't just teach them coding or basic job skills. They taught them entrepreneurship. They taught them Seelig's cycle. The inmates had to develop a business idea that used technology to solve a social problem. Michelle: Wait, they're teaching inmates to pitch tech startups? How does that even work without internet access or modern tools? Mark: That’s the genius of it. It forced them to focus on the process, not the technology. It was all about the mindset. They had to learn to communicate, to problem-solve, to build a business plan on paper. They had to go through the stages. First, Imagination: engaging with the problem of recidivism and envisioning a different future for themselves. Michelle: Okay, so that’s stage one. What’s next? Mark: Then, Creativity: applying that imagination to a challenge. They had to brainstorm actual business ideas. And the ideas were incredible. One group came up with 'Fitness Monkey,' a startup to help addicts replace drug addiction with a healthy fitness addiction. Another was 'The Funky Onion,' a business that would buy bruised, 'ugly' fruits and vegetables from farms and sell them cheaply to restaurants for soups and sauces. Michelle: That's brilliant. It’s tackling food waste and creating a business at the same time. Mark: Exactly. Then came Innovation, which Seelig defines as applying creativity to generate a unique solution. This is where they had to refine their idea to be something new to the world, not just new to them. They had to figure out the logistics, the pricing, the unique angle. Michelle: And the final stage, Entrepreneurship? Mark: That was the pitch. They had to stand in front of an audience of business leaders and fellow inmates and deliver a five-minute pitch for their company. This is where they had to persist and inspire others to believe in their vision. The program’s biggest outcome wasn't a dozen new startups. It was that these men started to see themselves as entrepreneurs, as people who could invent their own futures. It gave them a roadmap out of that 60% statistic. Michelle: Wow. So the program is basically a real-world, high-stakes version of her four stages. It proves the cycle isn't just for privileged Stanford students; it's a fundamental human process for creating change. Mark: That's the core of it. The Invention Cycle provides the 'what'—the four distinct stages that turn a thought into a thing. But that still leaves a huge question. What actually fuels the journey through that cycle?

Michelle: Right. It’s one thing to have a map, but you still need an engine to move the car. What powers you from Imagination to Creativity, and so on? Mark: This is my favorite part of the book. Seelig argues each stage is powered by deliberately pairing a specific internal mindset, an Attitude, with a corresponding external behavior, an Action. They have to be braided together. Michelle: An attitude and an action. Give me an example. Mark: Let's take the very first stage, Imagination. The attitude required is Engagement. You have to be paying attention, to be curious, to be immersed in the world around you. The action is Envisioning—seeing things that don't exist yet, imagining alternatives. Engagement plus Envisioning equals Imagination. Michelle: Okay, that makes sense. You can't envision a solution if you're not engaged enough to see the problem in the first place. Mark: And there's no better story to illustrate this than the transformation of Scott Harrison. Before he founded the massive non-profit charity:water, he was a high-end nightclub promoter in New York City. Michelle: I feel like I know where this is going, and it's not a pretty place. Mark: Not at all. He describes himself at age 28 in his own words, and it's brutal. He said, "I smoke 2.5 packs of Marlboro a day. I drink excessively. I am a coke user, an MDMA user... I have a gambling problem, a pornography problem and a strip club problem." He realized he was, in his own words, "the worst person I know." Michelle: Wow. That's an incredibly raw and powerful starting point. That’s a level of self-awareness that must have been crushing. Mark: It was. And that crushing feeling was the Attitude of Engagement. He was fully, painfully engaged with the reality of his life and the destructive legacy he was creating. He hit rock bottom. And from that place, he performed the Action of Envisioning. He asked himself a simple but life-altering question: "What would the opposite of my life look like?" Michelle: "What would the opposite of my life look like?" That question gives me chills. It’s not some gentle 'find your passion' advice. It's a radical reframing born from desperation. Mark: It's everything. The opposite, he decided, was a life of service. He started applying to volunteer for humanitarian organizations and got rejected by everyone. They looked at his resume—nightclub promoter—and said, "no thanks." But he persisted and was finally accepted by a non-profit called Mercy Ships, which operates floating hospitals. They sent him to Liberia as a photojournalist. Michelle: And in Liberia, his engagement went from internal self-disgust to external observation of suffering. Mark: Exactly. He saw thousands of people with horrific illnesses, and he quickly realized many of them were caused by one thing: contaminated drinking water. He saw children drinking from brown, parasite-filled swamps. His camera lens became his tool for engagement. He was no longer just looking; he was seeing. Michelle: So his initial attitude of engagement with his own misery transformed into engagement with a global crisis. Mark: Yes. And that deep engagement fueled the action of envisioning a solution. He came back to New York and founded charity:water with the insane goal of bringing clean water to the 800 million people on the planet who lack it. He used his old skills as a promoter to throw parties and raise money, but this time for wells, not champagne. He braided his attitude of deep empathy with the action of envisioning a world with clean water for everyone. That's the engine of the Invention Cycle. Michelle: That story is a masterclass. But for someone who isn't at that extreme, who isn't a nightclub promoter hitting rock bottom, how does this apply? How do you cultivate that level of engagement if your life is just… okay? Mark: That's a great question, and Seelig addresses it. Engagement doesn't have to come from misery. It can come from profound curiosity. She tells the story of Kate Rosenbluth, a Stanford fellow who was tasked with just observing in hospitals to find unmet needs. She spent months just engaging—shadowing doctors, talking to patients. She became obsessed with the debilitating hand tremors many patients suffered from. That deep engagement led her to envision a non-invasive wearable device to treat them, which became her company, Cala Health. The source of engagement was different—curiosity, not crisis—but the principle is the same.

Michelle: So it's a two-part system. You have the 'what'—the four-stage roadmap of the Invention Cycle: Imagination, Creativity, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship. And you have the 'how'—the engine of pairing specific attitudes with specific actions to move you through it. Mark: And that's Seelig's big contribution, and why the book, despite some readers feeling parts are familiar, is so unique. It’s praised by people like Adam Grant and Tim O'Reilly because it provides a truly integrated framework. She’s not just giving you a destination; she's giving you the vehicle and the fuel. It reframes innovation from a stroke of genius into a journey you can consciously navigate. Michelle: It takes the magic and mystery out of it, but in a good way. It makes it accessible. You don't have to wait for a lightning bolt of inspiration. You can start with the first attitude: Engage. Pay attention to something that bothers you, or something you're curious about. Mark: And then take the first action: Envision. Ask yourself, "What would the opposite look like?" or "What if this were different?" You don't have to solve the whole problem at once. You just have to start the engine. Michelle: It makes you wonder, what's one problem in your own life—at work, at home, in your community—that you could look at differently if you consciously applied just that first stage? Just Engage and Envision. Mark: That's the perfect takeaway. We'd love to hear your thoughts. Find us on our socials and share one small thing you could 'envision' differently this week. It doesn't have to be a world-changing idea. Maybe it's just envisioning a better way to run a weekly meeting. Michelle: Or a better way to get your kids to eat vegetables. The cycle applies everywhere. This is Aibrary, signing off.