Insight - What is it?

We often speak of ‘Insight’ driving ideas, products, or services – but what is ‘Insight’?

Let’s look at some definitions.

According to The Concise Oxford Dictionary definition its about ‘Penetration’ (into character, circumstances etc.) with understanding. Digging deeper, when you look at the Longman Synonym Dictionary it lends further nuance with terms like ‘intuition’, ‘flair’, ‘ingenuity’. ‘common-sense’, ‘clear vision’, ‘awareness’, ‘eye opener’ and ‘wit’.

I like ‘wit’ as it lends a playful creative element to ‘insight’. It speaks to something uniquely human and engaging…and ultimately we’re speaking about the spark that engages human connection and sometimes consciousness.

Perhaps it can be distilled down to a simple curiosity and the desire ‘to see’, observe, and to put aside ego.

Humility is an essential ingredient to allow us to get to the truth of a product, service or brand, which in a 'business' context needs to emotionally engage with the relevant audience. In many circumstances it’s akin to a creative revelatory ‘eureka’ moment which allows us to perhaps look beyond the obvious. Moreover, 'Insight' is key to much of our human interaction as it lends relevancy and richness to life. Below are hopefully some examples that help to shed further light on that shared journey and relevancy.

The thread that binds all these great minds and their observations is the ability to distill down to a core essence.

Within music and popular culture, The Rolling Stones Keith Richards alludes to this when he references the extraction of raw material by being attentive and mastering the art of observation. In Richards biography the rock icon references a fast-paced production process which triggered a kind of virtuous cycle of creativity (no doubt aided by illicit Colombian marching powder), putting him in a trance-like creative state of flow. Perhaps, unwittingly this enabled him to master the art of observation allowing him suddenly to be more attentive to the world and better able to draw from it the raw material for song writing.

By mastering the art of observation he was suddenly more attentive to the world and better able to draw from it raw material for songwriting. In other words, it fine-tuned his combinatorial creativity or what Einstein termed “combinatory play.”

Colin Chapman the influential English design engineer, inventor, F1 Constructor, and founder of Lotus Cars, described it as a process to "Simplify, then add lightness”. These are all masters in their separate fields ranging from literature and art to science and music and engineering...

As an avid ‘automotive person’…  (or more accurately, a-hem, a misplaced adoration of charismatic1960's Alfa Romeos), I’m a big fan of the ability to reduce components to the essentials. Be it the joy of the ‘analog drive’ or an experience in its purest form, stripped of artifice or excess.

I love the term, ‘lightness’, both as Chapman intended in the engineering context and in terms of the human emotional connectivity which tends to resonate more powerfully if the noise is reduced, and key components minimized to the essential.

Insight helps us get there.

A little like a 30 second spot.