A few weeks ago, I listened to The Rewatchables team discuss The Martian. So, then I re-watched the movie. Obviously. The story of marooned astronaut Mark Watney, played perfectly by Matt Damon, is chock full of creativity, problem solving, and collaboration. Mark survives and NASA rescues its favourite botanist because of everyone’s ability to innovate amidst unprecedented challenges. Here are seven innovation lessons from The Martian that you can apply to your work and life.
Work the problem
First, commit to not dying. Then solve the most important problem in front of you. This is Watney’s modus operandi in the film. By addressing the most important challenge in front of him, Watney eliminates the complex and overwhelming problem of being stranded on Mars because he breaks such a really big issue into manageable pieces.
The best learning experiences of our lives are difficult. When things are hard we grow the most, which is why committing to working the most important problems right in front of you, while honouring the bigger picture (not dying in Mark’s case), pays off in the long term.
Ask powerful questions
We hear a lot of statements like “now here’s the rub” from Watney, which results in a problem statement or question. The Martian is chock full of great questions. I’m paraphrasing, but they sound like “how do I make water on a planet with no water?” or “how do I travel 3,000 miles in a vehicle that is designed to travel 35 miles?” or “what do you think about me trying to Iron Man my way across space to close the distance between my tarp-covered space pod and the careening Ares III spaceship?”.
Asking powerful, open-ended questions raises awareness and shifts perspective. According to HBR’s Alison Wood Brooks and Leslie K. John, “Personal creativity and organizational innovation rely on a willingness to seek out novel information. Questions and thoughtful answers foster smoother and more-effective interactions, they strengthen rapport and trust, and lead groups toward discovery.” Watney, the Ares III crew, and the team at NASA are exceptional at asking and answering powerful questions that advancing learning, uncover insights, and activate positive change.
Do the math
Math is beautiful for a lot of reasons, one of which is that it’s a universal language that works as well on Mars as it does in NASA Headquarters or Bruce Ng’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Here’s Mark Watney beginning his calculations for survival “on a planet where nothing grows”:
Know the history
Understanding history helps put modern events in context. When Mark Watney starts using rocket fuel as a catalyst for innovation on Mars, he does so with the knowledge of how happenstance played a role in the founding of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and, eventually, NASA:
JPL’s beginnings can be traced to the mid-1930s, when a few Caltech students and amateur rocket enthusiasts started tinkering with rockets. After an unintended explosion occurred on campus, the group and its experiments relocated to an isolated area next to the San Gabriel Mountains, the present-day site of JPL.
Knowing the history of your community will help you understand what kind of innovation practices will resonate and which ones will get you laughed out of the Zoom meeting. Testing and learning are clearly part of NASA’s history.
Always experiment
“So, yeah, I blew myself up,” says Watney after, well, blowing himself up (just a little). Experimentation is a foundational component of innovation. When we imagine work as a living laboratory of testing and learning we are more likely to create high quality products and services at pace. By tinkering with features of the habitation pod and “MacGyvering” the rover to make “the 90-sol journey to Schiaparelli”, Watney demonstrates his knack for experimentation.
According to Forbes’s William Craig, “when it comes to fearlessly trying out new ideas and pushing the envelope, leaders can’t afford to be overly prescriptive about how their team members accomplish their tasks or the tools they use.” Through flexibility, tools and a lack of micromanaging, Watney is able to innovate and problem-solve through experimentation, which happens on the Space Station all the time.
Take another point of view
Adopting different perspectives or changing our daily routine cultivates creativity and mitigates bias. From faking a commute when you’re working from home or saying ‘no’ to more things, there are simple, weird, and transformational actions that we can do everyday to develop more innovation. For Watney, this means thinking like other scientists on the Ares III mission or taking the perspective of folks back home when he shares his story through video recordings.
Design thinking asks us to take the end-user’s perspective. This means understanding a service, product or experience from a member or client’s point of view. Skills like empathy, analysis and storytelling are on full display when Watney narrates how he sees his teammates’ styles and skills applied to his problem solving.
Innovate together
Mark Watney is alone as he innovates to create new tools and features to help him survive on Mars. He is supported, however, by a team of genius problem-solvers from NASA and its partners who expertly combine collaboration with innovation. Vincent Kapoor’s Mars Missions team tackles incredibly complex tasks together against nearly impossible timelines. While you might not be trying to figure out how to slingshot a spacecraft around the moon, you might be working on a complex problem in your community.
The simple act of drawing and brainstorming together enhances creativity and connection on teams. You can take this to virtual spaces with .GIFS or the chat function of MS Teams or more robust tools like Miro. It takes a diverse and awesome team to achieve interstellar hexadecimal-based communication and to support our teams and communities during these unprecedented times.