View more posts by Think Jar Collective

View more posts by Scott Barry Kaufman, Ph.D.

Around the late 1930′s, a creative Ad man named James Webb Young had a knock on his door from a manager who shared an epiphany that success in advertising comes from selling ideas not things. Despite the manager’s insight, he had one problem, his team didn’t know how to get ideas; they were stuck.  So, they came to the successful James Young for ideas on how to get ideas.  This encounter led to Young creating a little book called  A Technique for Producing Ideas. I recently came across it and was impressed to find some advice that is as relevant today as 70 years ago. I recommend you buy the book, but below I’ve picked out the key points you can use right away.

If you ask me why I am willing to give away the valuable formula of this discovery, I will confide to you that experience has taught me two things about it: 

First, the formula is so simple to state that few who hear it really believe it.

Second, while simple to state, it actually requires the hardest kind of intellectual work to follow, so that not all who accept it use it. 

Core Principles of Young’s Technique

The first principle Young presents is the notion that an idea is nothing more or less than a new combination of old elements. In other words, ideas are just remixes and combinations of old stuff.  This notion is popular again today maybe due in part to Kirby Ferguson’s TED talk and great video series, Everything Is A Remix. 

The second principle is about what helps make new connections between old elements.  What fosters new connections is being able to see relationships between seemingly unrelated things.  Young recognizes that to some, seeing connections may come naturally and others may have to work at training it.

To some minds each fact is a separate bit of knowledge. To others it is a link in a chain of knowledge. It has relationships and similarities.

Five Steps To Young’s Creativity Technique

1. Gather Raw Material

If we are trying to solve a problem, we need to learn everything about the challenge we are working on.  Here, Young  suggests something which sounds a lot like a principle of design thinking, where the person needs to get out of their office, and connect with people that are having the problem you are trying to find a creative solution to. In this phase we should be like curious explorers.

He also suggests that there is the lifelong job of gathering raw material for creativity by being interested and curious about many diverse hobbies and fields.  As Young says,

Every really creative person has two noticeable characteristics. First, there is no subject under the sun in which he could not easily get interested-from say Egyptian burial customs to Modern Art. Second, he is an extensive browser in all sorts of fields of information.

This browsing of diverse information comes in handy for eventually having a critical mass of raw material to combine in new ways.   Young suggests finding some kind of system for filing and categorizing cool ideas and stuff one finds as one explores.  Now, we are lucky with all the tools in the digital realm which help us gather snippets,  quotes, pictures and interesting things we find as we browse.  We may have the idea today that we are inundated with too much information, however the upside of this is that we have lots of raw material to draw from for problem solving.  

2. Digesting The Raw Mental Material 

This is a tricky stage, where facts, ideas and raw material are looked at from many different angles and playful combinations are explored.  The creative person is trying to see relationships between the raw material one gathered.

Here a strange element comes in. This is that facts sometimes yield up their meaning quicker when you do not scan them too directly, too literally…When creative people are in this phase, they get a reputation for being absentminded. 

In this stage, half baked ideas will arise and Young suggests jotting them down right away no matter how crazy and impractical they may seem. After working a long time at this, usually a state of hopelessness will arise where everything will feel upside down, and there will be no clear insight anywhere. Young suggests this time of creative confusion is a sign one has worked hard enough and is ready for the next step.

3. Letting it Go

Here, you take a break. Try not to keep thinking about the challenge you’re working on.  Even though it may seem counterintuitive to what we’ve been taught in school, Young asserts that this stage of putting the problem out of your mind is just as important as the previous two stages. Today, in the world of exploring what fosters creativity, it continues to be recognized that we need a time of letting go; doing something totally different to allow for new connections in our brain to come together.

You remember how Sherlock Holmes used to stop right in the middle of a case and drag Watson off to a concert? That was a very irritating procedure to the practical and literal minded Watson. But Conan Doyle was a creator and knew the creative process (P.20). 

4. Out of Nowhere the Idea Will Appear

If you have been truly disciplined in the first three stages of the process, Young says that you will likely experience the fourth.  The fourth is that often creative solutions will arise when we least expect them and often when doing totally unrelated activities.  As Louis Pasteur said, “Chance favours only the prepared mind.”

This is the way ideas come: after you have stopped straining for them, and have passed through a period of rest and relaxation from the search.

5. Ensuring An Idea is Relevant

In this stage you have to take your new idea out into the world and see if it is truly a good one.  Young recognizes that when you do take the idea out, you usually find that it is not quite as amazing as when it first arose. At this point, disciplined critique to ensure your idea fits with the criteria of the challenge you are working on is necessary. It’s important here to share your idea with others and have them offer insight.  Young suggests that when you do ask for feedback you will find that a good idea has self-expanding qualities and can stimulate others to build on it.

Do not make the mistake of holding your idea close to your chest at this stage. Submit it to criticism of the judicious. 

View more posts by Ben Weinlick

Think Jar Collective founder Ben Weinlick: Thanks for taking the time today to chat. Glad to connect with another like-minded person doing work around fostering creativity. There seems to be something in the zeitgeist these days where people and organizations are recognizing the importance of creativity and seeing how valuable it is to develop and enhance.

Leslie Ehm: For us people who live it, breathe it, work and sleep it, we understand the power and the importance of creativity in a whole different way. Everybody is saying they want creativity but they don’t really know what it is or how to get it. And when you tell them you can help them understand and ‘get’ it, they say “great, can you put that in a package and give it to me in a half-day workshop?” Well, no you can’t. That’s not the way the way it works. There’s so much more to creativity – especially as a business tool.

BW: So, I know you were a former creative director at an Ad agency, but how did you get into creativity work?

Leslie Ehm: For me creativity was the excuse for my behaviour (Laughing). I was always a bit of a freak, one of those kids bouncing off the walls who wanted to do everything and just create. I loved to write and tell stories. I guess I was a ‘natural creative’. Eventually I went to a school that was for kids who were like me – a ‘free’ school as they called it and there I was able to thrive to a degree. But I was a musician at heart, so at 17 I moved out of my house, joined my first new wave band and was rocking a mohawk. That was in 1979. I really was uncontrollable. And back in the day the punk lifestyle that I chose for myself wasn’t understood by anybody. I was a suburban, Jewish middle class kid on the surface and yet lived a completely alternative lifestyle.

Creativity for me has always been a kind of lifeblood. I don’t think I was really capable of doing anything else, because the creative drive in me was so strong – and I was pretty hard to boss around (laughing).

I moved to the UK when I was 18 to pursue my musical career, and I ended up living there for 15 years – working in music, film and TV industries mostly. Ultimately I ended up as a TV host but didn’t find it terribly satisfying so I quit and ultimately moved back to Canada, and said “alright what’s next”. As I writer, I had freelanced for agencies and had loved the ad biz so I talked my way into an ad agency. I started working in digital, which was the place to be, the new frontier. I worked my way up the ladder until I became a Creative Director. This led me to a fascination with the idea of creativity on demand – or applied creativity. And my crazy passion for it led to training.

So creativity for me has always been a kind of lifeblood. I don’t think I was really capable of doing anything else, because the creative drive in me was so strong – and I was pretty hard to boss around (laughs).

BW: I can relate, I have a bit of a similar story with music and being a bit of an untamable kid.

Leslie Ehm: Yeah. Its funny in retrospect but when you’re going through it, it’s pretty freaking painful.

It takes a while to be a rebel with a cause because you start off just being a rebel. The trick is to find your ‘cause’. I think that’s part of what makes me really good at what I do now. All roads have led to this. I can speak the truth and fight the good fight of helping people become more creatively empowered because I’m not attached to anybody or anything. There’s no agenda or politics for me. It’s just my truth and my passion.

It takes a while to be a rebel with a cause because you start off just being a rebel. The trick is to find your ‘cause’.

BW: Boom! So, sounds like you’re quite fearless in your approach when you inquire and inspire creativity. When you’re leading people to develop these qualities of honesty and fearless creativity, what are some ways that you have worked to teach that to people?

Leslie Ehm: I’m all about creating experiences. For me, with training or learning of any kind you have to have the “a-ha” yourself. Nobody can make you have an “a-ha”. The person who’s creating the learning experience has to be smart and creative enough in their own right to create experiences that proves the theories – not just tell people what they should think, feel or believe.

For example, if you’re trying to teach people the difficult concept of deferring judgment, you can start by explaining how the brain works, why we judge, and why it has been fundamental to our survival as a species. It helps people to understand why their need to judge is incredibly powerful and that they’re not bad or wrong, or “judgmental” for doing it. But its when you put them through an experience devoid of judgment and then debrief it, that the magic happens.

You do this and then ask what it felt like and people report back things like, “I didn’t feel like I was going to get punched in the face every time I opened my mouth.” Then you ask, “So what were you then able to do as a result?” “Well, I was able to push a little harder and think a little bigger, and take some more risks.” “Excellent. So what if we all agree to try not punch each other in the face? Wouldn’t that be a good idea?” (laughing).

I’m all about creating experiences. For me, with training or learning of any kind you have to have the “a-ha” yourself. Nobody can make you have an “a-ha”.

That’s why I called my company Combustion. In combustion, there is a series of chemical reactions necessary to start a fire. Unless you have the right sequence in place, there can be no fire. You’re just going to ignite and extinguish, ignite and extinguish, ignite extinguish. To be successful and creative, all you have to do is to recognize what you’re doing that’s ignition behavior, and what’s extinguishing behavior. Then you’re opening the channel up for enormous creative potential. There’s no guarantee of anything. But imagine if you helped people to understand why, culturally, they may not be achieving what they could, and how to understand the rules, methodology, and the best practices for amazing collaboration? And then you give them some real hard core skills and tools – stuff they can tap into to get where they want to go? They would have an enormous chance for success.

We don’t believe in doing open enrollment workshops because if you send one person from an organization to training, that poor guy comes back with their brain on fire, and then promptly get smacked down by his colleagues, because that’s what organizations tend to do – adapt to the collective. Now he’s pushing these boulders up hill, these boulders of knowledge, and nobody’s interested. Nobody else has had the ‘a-ha’. So now we only go into organizations and try and train enough people to get a critical shift in thinking – get the whole team thinking differently. That’s what’s important.

We don’t believe in doing open enrollment workshops because if you send one person from an organization to training, that poor guy comes back with their brain on fire, and then promptly gets smacked down by his colleagues, because that’s what organizations tend to do – adapt to the collective.

BW: That’s awesome. So I love the stuff around deferring judgment, where in this collaborative phase of a creative thinking process you let your mind run wild. But how about in the convergent thinking phase where judgment is needed to see if an idea is relevant or not? It is easy to fall back into a style of judgment where you offer a few “punches in the face” or wet blankets. How can a creative team collaborate better when you’re sorting through ideas, because this is the area I find is most tricky to navigate and help a team sustain trust and not be afraid.

Leslie Ehm: Well you raise a bunch of really interesting challenges. Everyone has different styles and preferences for how they ideate. Some people are going to be more adept at recognizing a great idea. Some are going to really love bringing ideas to life. Other people are just going to want to generate ideas. So you’re always going to have that conflict on the back end, because people gain and lose interest at different stages. For example, those who are interested in generating ideas get more frustrated at the end in the convergent phase, because they don’t feel their super power coming into play the same way. They want to go back and start at the beginning. They tend to want to diverge, while everybody else is converging. And that’s always a challenge. So if they don’t recognize that that’s what’s happening they won’t understand their instinct and can’t learn to be more open to different parts of the process.

I think criteria for a creative challenge is also a really critical factor. If the criteria’s too broad up front then you may be able to be hugely divergent, but half the ideas may not be relevant. But if you’re too constrained, then people can be afraid to diverge fully because they are so concerned about immediate relevancy. The antidote to that is to develop really informed opportunity statements that define the challenge and desired outcomes really well. Tight and yet loose.

We tend to think that convergence is only about analysis and critique. Whereas I think in convergence, there’s a huge amount of room for really good, interesting brain processes and techniques to continue to build and grow ideas collaboratively. It helps when the ideas are an amalgamation of everyone’s thoughts and input because it’s harder to get precious about ‘your’ ideas. The secret is to use a critical eye, but not be judgmental. There’s a big difference. I have a process I use called GOOD that helps people analyze ideas critically but not judgmentally.

BW: That’s really cool stuff. How about when you are guiding people, or are talking to people about moving ideas to execution? The action plans, what are some tips or ideas there?

Leslie Ehm: There are lots of structured processes for bringing things to fruition and the challenge with action planning is that every organization has different processes and very often the ideas that you’re developing are things that are brought to life in different ways. Some things are just mindsets, others are big huge processes, and some require further research and development. But if the idea has been clearly articulated, anyone should be able to take it and move forward with it.

At the end of the day, its about accountability – who will do what, by when and who will check? If you really want to make something happen, you plan it and do it. Even if something on your list says ‘convince client to buy it’. It’s an action item like everything else.

I think criteria for a creative challenge is also a really critical factor. If the criteria’s too broad up front then you may be able to be hugely divergent, but half the ideas may not be relevant. But if you’re too constrained, then people can be afraid to diverge fully because they are so concerned about immediate relevancy.

BW: You’ve really gone through a lot of things around divergent and convergent thinking. I know you can’t just sum up creativity into a simple thing or process, but what would you say comes to mind at the moment that are the key pieces to fostering relevant creativity in organizations?

Leslie Ehm: Oh boy, a tall order. It’s about whether you have your ignition points in place. So, for example are your people all relatively equally skilled? Do they know how to collaborate effectively, and does the culture allow for that collaboration? Do they have the creativity and critical thinking skills? And then from a cultural perspective, is there an understanding, acceptance, and a commitment to opening all of those ignition points, to make sure that ideas can be moved all the way through the organization to fruition? Last but not least, they need to develop and foster creative confidence – the belief that they are capable of creativity.

Ultimately, if the organization, top down, believes that creativity is the necessary precursor to any innovation and the key to new and different solutions and not some pie in the sky magic pixie dust, they’ve got the ‘why’ of creativity down pat. If they have that, they’ll have a pretty good chance of succeeding – with the right training of course! (laughs)

BW: Reminds me a bit of a quote from I think Manray. He said something like, “there will always be those who look only at technique, who ask ‘how’, while others of a more curious nature will ask why .” The ‘why’ seems to be more about curiosity and understanding. When people understand why creativity is important and why we need times to defer judgment and times to critique then it leads to better results. We have that shift starting here at the organization I facilitate think tanks in. 

Leslie Ehm: People want and deserve to understand why they should bother with this stuff. Why invest their time? Why stretch their thinking? Why will it be of value and why will the process often be uncomfortable? Fair enough!

I recently I read a book by Teresa Amabile called the Progress Principle which was all about success for most people being defined simply by their ability to experience a sense of progress in whatever they do. They have to feel like they are moving things forward. And everyone’s notion and measure of progress is going to be different, but in some way shape or form, the team has to agree on what progress looks like. So if people don’t believe that developing their creativity and critical thinking skills is going to actively move them forward, they’re not interested. So it crucial that they understand the practical value – the big ‘why’.

Ultimately, if the organization, top down, believes that creativity is the necessary precursor to any innovation and the key to new and different solutions and not some pie in the sky magic pixie dust, they’ve got the ‘why’ of creativity down pat. If they have that, they’ll have a pretty good chance of succeeding.

Once they do, they start to play and experiment and bond. They get excited and inspired. That’s what makes creativity training so magical for me. I get to help people get to that place or exploration, help them trust that it’s going to be of benefit and then watch them solve problems and explore ideas in completely new ways. It’s a beautiful thing.

BW: That’s a great ending for the interview. Thanks so much for your time and look forward to more articles on creativity and innovation from you. You rock. 

In combustion, there is a series of chemical reactions necessary to start a fire. Unless you have the right sequence in place, there can be no fire. You’re just going to ignite and extinguish, ignite and extinguish, ignite extinguish. To be successful and creative, all you have to do is to recognize what you’re doing that’s ignition behavior, and what’s extinguishing behaviour  Then you’re opening the channel up for enormous creative potential.

 

View more posts by Ben Weinlick

“From my perspective, one thing that relates science and art is simplicity.  Often it is only at the minimum that either the theory or the mechanism is clear.  Whereas with complex systems, it is very hard to not only comprehend them but also to test them.”

James Hammarhead-Neuroscientist turned motorcycle builder

When you spend the majority of your time working on projects that require more cerebral power than muscle power, it can be refreshing to try to make something with your hands. Being raised by humanists and therefore never really learning how to do anything practical… I admit that I had to get some help from my friend and race bike builder Kevin Shupak to bring my design for this bike to life.  In the winter of 2010-2011, this sweet ride came to life.  I wanted to strip away the extras and bring out the raw power and design of this classic bike; a 1973 Honda CB750.  Honda CB750′s are considered the first super bikes and pretty much every sport bike that came after it has been based on it.  Cafe racer culture has gained popularity again and essentially it is about stripping a bike down to its raw elements, and making it go fast.  Hope you enjoy the pics and I hope you find projects to do both with your hands and your mind.

For an interview with master minimalist bike builder check out this interview I did with James Hammarhead of Hammarhead Industries based in Philadelphia.

View more posts by Ben Weinlick

If one particular thinking strategy stands out about creative genius, it is the ability to make juxtapositions that elude mere mortals. Call it a facility to connect the unconnected that enables them to see relationships to which others are blind. They set their imagination in motion by using unrelated stimuli and forcing connections with their subject.

Changing Thinking Patterns

In the illustration, Figure B appears larger than Figure A. It is not. They are both the same size. If you cut out Figure A, you will find that fits exactly over Figure B.

Juxtaposing the smaller arc of A to the larger arc of B makes the upper figure seem smaller. The juxtaposition of the arcs creates a connection between the arcs that changes our perception about their size. We perceive the arcs in terms of thought patterns that are triggered by what is in front of us. We do not see the arcs (equal in size) as they are but as we perceive them (unequal).

In a similar way, you can change your thinking patterns by connecting your subject with something that is not related. These different patterns catch your brain’s processing by surprise and will change your perception of your subject. Suppose you want a new way to display expiration dates on packages of perishable food and you randomly pair this with autumn. Leaves change color in the autumn. Forcing a connection between changing colors with expiration dates triggers the idea of smart labels that change color when the food is exposed to unrefrigerated temperatures for too long. The label would signal the consumer even though a calendar expiration date might be months away. Our notion of expiration dates was changed by making a connection with something that was unrelated (autumn) which triggered a new thought pattern which led to a new idea.

The metaphors that Leonardo formed by forcing connections between two totally unrelated subjects moved his imagination with a vengeance.

Example from an Engineer

In order to get original ideas, you need a way to create new sets of patterns in your mind. You need one pattern reacting with another set of patterns to create a new pattern. Recently, an engineer needed to place a large generator into an excavated area. The usual way to do this was with a heavy crane, which costs $8,000 to lease. Randomly leafing through a National Geographic magazine, he read about Eskimos and the construction of igloos. He connected igloos made of ice with his problem and came up with an ingenious solution. He trucked in blocks of ice and placed the ice in the excavated area. Next, he pushed the generator onto the ice and placed the generator over the location for it. When the ice melted, the generator settled perfectly into the location.

 You can change your thinking patterns by connecting your subject with something that is not related. These different patterns catch your brain’s processing by surprise and will change your perception of your subject.

Da Vinci and Connecting the Unconnected

I first learned of this “connecting the unconnected” thinking process from Leonardo Da Vinci who wrote how he “connected the unconnected” to get his creative inspiration in his notebooks. He wrote about this strategy in a mirror-image reversed script secret handwriting which he taught himself. To read his handwriting, you have to use a mirror. It was his way of protecting his thinking strategy from prying eyes. He suggested that you will find inspiration for marvelous ideas if you look into the stains of walls, or ashes of a fire, or the shape of clouds or patterns in mud or in similar places. He would imagine seeing trees, battles, landscapes, figures with lively movements, etc… and then excite his mind by forcing connections between the subjects and events he imagined and his subject.

Da Vinci would even sometimes throw a paint-filled sponge against the wall and contemplate the stains. Once while thinking of new ways to transport people, he threw a paint-filled sponge against the wall which produced a scattering of irregular shapes. Trying to make sense out of the meaningless shapes, he imagined one group of shapes to resemble a rider on a horse. He perceived the bottom half of the horse’s feet as resembling two wheels. Thinking of a horse on wheels, then of a structure that resembles a horse on wheels he realized people could be transported on two wheels and a frame that resembles a horse. Hence, the bicycle which he invented.

The metaphors that Leonardo formed by forcing connections between two totally unrelated subjects moved his imagination with a vengeance. Once he was standing by a well and noticed a stone hit the water at the same moment that a bell went off in a nearby church tower. He noticed the stone caused circles until they spread and disappeared. By simultaneously concentrating on the circles in the water and the sound of the bell, he made the connection that led to his discovery that sound travels in waves. This kind of tremendous insight could only happen through a connection between sight and sound made by the imagination.

Da Vinci’s knack to make remote connections was certainly at the basis of Leonardo’s genius to form analogies between totally different systems. He associated the movement of water with the movement of human hair, thus becoming the first person to illustrate in extraordinary detail the many invisible subtleties of water in motion. His observations led to the discovery of a fact of nature which came to be called the Law of Continuity.

When your attention is focused on a subject, a few patterns are highly activated in your brain and dominate your thinking. These patterns produce only predictable ideas no matter how hard you try. In fact, the harder you try, the stronger the same patterns become. If, however, you change your focus and think about something that is not related, different, unusual patterns are activated.

Da Vinci discovered that the human brain cannot deliberately concentrate on two separate objects or ideas, no matter how dissimilar, without eventually forming a connection between them. No two inputs can remain separate in your mind no matter how remote they are from each other. In tetherball, a ball is fastened to a slender cord suspended from the top of a pole. Players bat the ball around the pole, attempting to wind its cord around the pole above a certain point. Obviously, a tethered ball on a long string is able to move in many different directions, but it cannot get away from the pole. If you whack at it long enough, eventually you will wind the cord around the pole. This is a closed system. Like the tetherball, if you focus on two subjects for a period of time, you will see relationships and connections that will trigger new ideas and thoughts that you cannot get using your usual way of thinking.

Example From NASA

This is what happened to NASA engineer James Crocker when the Hubble telescope failed and embarrassed NASA. In the shower of a German hotel room, NASA engineer James Crocker was contemplating the Hubble disaster while showering and absentmindedly looking at the adjustable shower head that could be extended and adjusted in various ways for personal comfort and cleanliness to the user’s height. He made the connection between the shower head and the Hubble problem and invented the idea of placing corrective mirrors on automated adjustable arms that could reach inside the telescope and adjust to the correct position. His idea turned the Hubble from a disaster into a NASA triumph.

It is not possible to think unpredictably by looking harder and longer in the same direction. When your attention is focused on a subject, a few patterns are highly activated in your brain and dominate your thinking. These patterns produce only predictable ideas no matter how hard you try. In fact, the harder you try, the stronger the same patterns become. If, however, you change your focus and think about something that is not related, different, unusual patterns are activated. If one of these newer patterns relates to one of the first patterns, a connection will be made. This connection will lead to the discovery of an original idea or thought. This is what some people mistakenly call divine inspiration or “out of the blue.”

Da Vinci discovered that the human brain cannot deliberately concentrate on two separate objects or ideas, no matter how dissimilar, without eventually forming a connection between them. No two inputs can remain separate in your mind no matter how remote they are from each other.

Example from Dupont

DuPont developed and manufactured Nomex, a fire-resistant fibre. It’s tight structure made it impervious to dye. Potential customers (it could be used in the interior of airplanes) would not buy the material unless DuPont could manufacture a colored version. A DuPont chemist read an article about gold mining an how the mines were constructed. This inspired the chemist to compare Nomex to a mine shaft in a gold mine a subject that had nothing to do with Nomex. What is the connection between a tight structure and a mine shaft? To excavate minerals, miners dig a hole into the earth and use props to keep the hole from collapsing. Expanding on this thought, the chemist figured out a way to chemically prop open holes in Nomex as it is being manufactured so it could later be filled with dyes.

In nature, a gene pool that is totally lacking in variation would be totally unable to adapt to changing circumstances. In time, the genetically encoded wisdom would convert to foolishness, with consequences that would be fatal to the species survival. A comparable process operates within us as individuals. We all have a rich repertoire of ideas and concepts that enable us to survive and prosper. But without any provision for the variation of ideas, our usual ideas become stagnate and lose their advantages. For this variation to be truly effective it must be blind.

When we use our imagination to develop new ideas, those ideas are heavily structured in predictable ways by the properties of existing categories and concepts. We have not been taught how to process information by connecting remotely-associated subjects through trial and error. This is true for inventors, artists, writers, scientists, designers, businesspeople, or everyday people fantasizing about a better life. DaVinci’s thinking process provides a means of producing blind variation of ideas through the use of unrelated stimuli, such as random words, random objects, pictures, magazines and newspapers to produce a rich variety of unpredictable ideas.

CONNECTING THE UNCONNECTED

Click below to check out one of Michael’s useful creativity techniques called

A Random Object Technique

View more posts by Michael Michalko

The random object creativity technique generates an almost infinite source of new patterns to react with the old patterns in your mind.

Connecting The Unconnected

Random words are like pebbles being dropped in a pond. They stimulate waves of associations and connections, some of which may help you to a breakthrough idea. There are several ways to select a random object. You can retrieve random words from a dictionary by opening it, by chance, at any page, closing your eyes and randomly putting your finger on a word. If the word is not a noun continue down the list to the first noun, Another way is to think of a page number (page 22) and then think of a position of the word on that page (say the tenth word down). Open the dictionary to page 22 and proceed to the tenth word down. If the word is not a noun continue down the list until you reach the first noun.

You can use any other resource (e.g., magazine, newspapers, books, telephone yellow pages, etc.). Close your eyes and stab your finger at a page. Take the noun closest to your finger.

EXAMPLE: I usually retrieve five random words when I use this technique. Suppose our challenge is to improve the automobile. The group of random words we blindly drew from the Random Words list are:

• Nose
• Apollo 13.
• Soap
• Dice
• Electrical outlet

(1) LIST CHARACTERISTICS

Work with one word at a time. Draw a picture of the word to involve the right hemisphere of your brain and then list the characteristics of the words. Think of a variety of things that are associated with your word and list them.

For example, some of the characteristics of a nose are:

• Different shapes and sizes
• Sometimes decorated with pins and jewels
• Has two nostrils
• Can be repaired easily if broken
• Hair inside
• Decays with death

(2) FORCE CONNECTIONS

Make a forced connection between each characteristic and the challenge you are working on. In forcing connections between remote subjects, metaphorical-analogical thinking opens up new pathways of creative thinking. Ask questions such as:

• How is this like my problem?
• What if my problem were a…?
• What are the similarities?
• …is like the solution to my problem because…?
• How …like an idea that might solve my problem?

EXAMPLE: Connecting a “nose” has two nostrils with improving the “car”, triggers the idea of building a car with two separate power sources; a car with battery or electric power for city driving and liquid fuel for long distances.

(3) WHAT IS ITS ESSENCE?

What is the principle or essence of your random word? Can you build an idea around it? For example, the essence of a nose might be smell. Forcing a connection between a smell and improving the automobile inspires the idea of incorporating a cartridge in the auto during manufacturing that warns the driver of malfunctions with various odors. If you smell orange blossoms, for example, it’s time to have your brakes checked, or if you smell cinnamon, you might have a gasoline leak and so on.

For each random word, list the principle or essence, characteristics, features and aspects and force connections with the challenge. Another example is derived from the random word Apollo 13. Astronauts used the LEM as an emergency alternative power source in Apollo 13 in order to return to earth. Connecting this thought with the automobile led to the re-design of the automobile engine so that it can be used as an emergency power generator for the house during power failures. E.g., plug the house into the car.

(4) CREATE MANY CONNECTIONS

When using the Random Word list, use all five words in the group and force as many connections as possible. Allow yourself five minutes for each word when you try it. Five minutes should be ample time to stimulate ideas. You should find that long after the fixed time period of five minutes, further connections and ideas are still occurring.

ROULETTE

Imagine that you are invited to play roulette with someone else’s money. You can keep your winnings but your losses are paid for you. It’s a game of chance you can not lose. You can never be sure of winning on any particular bet, but you know that if you played long enough you would win, sooner or later. Chances are you would play as often as possible despite the unpredictability of the game. You would play as often as you could, in order to increase your chance of winning.

Using this model, it is possible to see what can be done about randomly connecting unrelated subjects in thinking. The first step is to be aware that there is the possibility of this thinking strategy. The second step is to learn how to do it. The third step is to use this strategy as often as you can and to get rid of any inhibitions which interfere with your using it. The more times you use it and the more different ways you use it, the more you increase your chances of coming up with original ideas and creative solutions to problems.

View more posts by Michael Michalko

Everyone expects me to do certain things. It puts a ceiling on your progress. You’re blocked by your pride. To get good, you have to throw your board around and fall.

Rodney Mullen (B.1966) is widely regarded as one of the most important skateboarders of all time. In fact most of the tricks you see people doing on their boards in the streets today were invented by Rodney. For instance, he was the first to “Ollie”, which is a basic trick where the skater jumps up with his board seemingly attached to his feet.  Rodney was the first to do a lot of things in the sport of skateboarding and is still contributing to it. To do truly original things no one in history has thought of or done before takes a unique creative perspective that very few people have. His perspective may come from being a kind of skateboarding savant, or simply from his hard work, fearless creativity and discipline. Regardless, he has some really interesting things to say about creativity.  Even if you’re not into skateboarding, there is a ton to learn here from Rodney that you could apply in your domain.   Recently, Rodney was asked by the Smithsonian Lemelson Center For the Study Of Invention and Innovation to speak about creativity and innovation.  The video below is of him schooling the Smithsonian. Enjoy.

Also check out the Bones Brigade documentary

View more posts by Think Jar Collective

Following are twelve things about creative thinking that I learned during my lifetime of work in the field of creative thinking that I wished I had been taught when I was a student but was not.

1. YOU ARE CREATIVE.

The artist is not a special person, each one of us is a special kind of artist. Every one of us is born a creative, spontaneous thinker. The only difference between people who are creative and people who are not is a simple belief. Creative people believe they are creative. People who believe they are not creative, are not. Once you have a particular identity and set of beliefs about yourself, you become interested in seeking out the skills needed to express your identity and beliefs. This is why people who believe they are creative become creative. If you believe you are not creative, then there is no need to learn how to become creative and you don’t. The reality is that believing you are not creative excuses you from trying or attempting anything new. When someone tells you that they are not creative, you are talking to someone who has no interest and will make no effort to be a creative thinker.

2. CREATIVE THINKING IS WORK.

You must have passion and the determination to immerse yourself in the process of creating new and different ideas. Then you must have patience to persevere against all adversity. All creative geniuses work passionately hard and produce incredible numbers of ideas, most of which are bad. In fact, more bad poems were written by the major poets than by minor poets. Thomas Edison created 3000 different ideas for lighting systems before he evaluated them for practicality and profitability. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart produced more than six hundred pieces of music, including forty-one symphonies and some forty-odd operas and masses, during his short creative life. Rembrandt produced around 650 paintings and 2,000 drawings and Picasso executed more than 20,000 works. Shakespeare wrote 154 sonnets. Some were masterpieces, while others were no better than his contemporaries could have written, and some were simply bad.

3. YOU MUST GO THROUGH THE MOTIONS.

When you are producing ideas, you are replenishing neurotransmitters linked to genes that are being turned on and off in response to what your brain is doing, which in turn is responding to challenges. When you go through the motions of trying to come up with new ideas, you are energizing your brain by increasing the number of contacts between neurons. The more times you try to get ideas, the more active your brain becomes and the more creative you become. If you want to become an artist and all you did was paint a picture every day, you will become an artist. You may not become another Vincent Van Gogh, but you will become more of an artist than someone who has never tried.

4. YOUR BRAIN IS NOT A COMPUTER.

Your brain is a dynamic system that evolves its patterns of activity rather than computes them like a computer. It thrives on the creative energy of feedback from experiences real or fictional. You can synthesize experience; literally create it in your own imagination. The human brain cannot tell the difference between an “actual” experience and an experience imagined vividly and in detail. This discovery is what enabled Albert Einstein to create his thought experiments with imaginary scenarios that led to his revolutionary ideas about space and time. One day, for example, he imagined falling in love. Then he imagined meeting the woman he fell in love with two weeks after he fell in love. This led to his theory of acausality. The same process of synthesizing experience allowed Walt Disney to bring his fantasies to life.

5. THERE IS NO ONE RIGHT ANSWER.

Reality is ambiguous. Aristotle said it is either A or not-A. It cannot be both. The sky is either blue or not blue. This is black and white thinking as the sky is a billion different shades of blue. A beam of light is either a wave or not a wave (A or not-A). Physicists discovered that light can be either a wave or particle depending on the viewpoint of the observer. The only certainty in life is uncertainty. When trying to get ideas, do not censor or evaluate them as they occur. Nothing kills creativity faster than self-censorship of ideas while generating them. Think of all your ideas as possibilities and generate as many as you can before you decide which ones to select. The world is not black or white. It is grey.

6. NEVER STOP WITH YOUR FIRST GOOD IDEA.

Always strive to find a better one and continue until you have one that is still better. In 1862, Phillip Reis demonstrated his invention which could transmit music over the wires. He was days away from improving it into a telephone that could transmit speech. Every communication expert in Germany dissuaded him from making improvements, as they said the telegraph is good enough. No one would buy or use a telephone. Ten years later, Alexander Graham Bell patented the telephone. Spencer Silver developed a new adhesive for 3M that stuck to objects but could easily be lifted off. It was first marketed as a bulletin board adhesive so the boards could be moved easily from place to place. There was no market for it. Silver didn’t discard it. One day Arthur Fry, another 3M employee, was singing in the church’s choir when his page marker fell out of his hymnal. Fry coated his page markers with Silver’s adhesive and discovered the markers stayed in place, yet lifted off without damaging the page. Hence the Post-it Notes were born. Thomas Edison was always trying to spring board from one idea to another in his work. He spring boarded his work from the telephone (sounds transmitted) to the phonograph (sounds recorded) and, finally, to motion pictures (images recorded).

7. EXPECT THE EXPERTS TO BE NEGATIVE.

The more expert and specialized a person becomes, the more their mindset becomes narrowed and the more fixated they become on confirming what they believe to be absolute. Consequently, when confronted with new and different ideas, their focus will be on conformity. Does it conform with what I know is right? If not, experts will spend all their time showing and explaining why it can’t be done and why it can’t work. They will not look for ways to make it work or get it done because this might demonstrate that what they regarded as absolute is not absolute at all. This is why when Fred Smith created Federal Express, every delivery expert in the U.S. predicted its certain doom. After all, they said, if this delivery concept was doable, the Post Office or UPS would have done it long ago and this is why the experts at IBM said there were no more than six people on earth who had need of a personal computer. Thomas Edison is quoted as saying “His greatest blessing in life was the lack of a formal education. Had he been educated,” he said “he would have realized that what he accomplished in life was not possible to do.”

8. TRUST YOUR INSTINCTS.

Don’t allow yourself to get discouraged. Albert Einstein was expelled from school because his attitude had a negative effect on serious students; he failed his university entrance exam and had to attend a trade school for one year before finally being admitted; and was the only one in his graduating class who did not get a teaching position because no professor would recommend him. One professor said Einstein was “the laziest dog” the university ever had. Beethoven’s parents were told he was too stupid to be a music composer. Charles Darwin’s colleagues called him a fool and what he was doing “fool’s experiments” when he worked on his theory of biological evolution. Walt Disney was fired from his first job on a newspaper because “he lacked imagination.” Thomas Edison had only two years of formal schooling, was totally deaf in one ear and was hard of hearing in the other, was fired from his first job as a newsboy and later fired from his job as a telegrapher; and still he became the most famous inventor in the history of the U.S.

9. THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS FAILURE.

Whenever you try to do something and do not succeed, you do not fail. You have produced a result. It’s what you do with the result that’s important. You have learned something that does not work. Always ask “What have I learned about what doesn’t work?”, “Can this explain something that I didn’t set out to explain?”, and “What have I discovered that I didn’t set out to discover?” Whenever someone tells you that they have never made a mistake, you are talking to someone who has never tried anything new.

10. YOU DO NOT SEE THINGS AS THEY ARE; YOU SEE THEM AS YOU ARE.

Interpret your own experiences. All experiences are neutral. They have no meaning. You give them meaning by the way you choose to interpret them. If you are a priest, you see evidence of God everywhere. If you are an atheist, you see the absence of God everywhere. IBM observed that no one in the world had a personal computer. IBM interpreted this to mean there was no market. College dropouts, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, looked at the same absence of personal computers and saw a massive opportunity. Once Thomas Edison was approached by an assistant while working on the filament for the light bulb. The assistant asked Edison why he didn’t give up. “After all,” he said, “you have failed 5000 times.” Edison looked at him and told him that he didn’t understand what the assistant meant by failure, because, Edison said, “I have discovered 5000 things that don’t work.” You construct your own reality by how you choose to interpret your experiences.

11. ALWAYS APPROACH A PROBLEM ON ITS OWN TERMS.

Do not trust your first perspective of a problem as it will be too biased toward your usual way of thinking. Always look at your problem from multiple perspectives. Always remember that genius is finding a perspective no one else has taken. Look for different ways to look at the problem. Write the problem statement several times using different words. Take another role, for example, how would someone else see it, how would Jay Leno, Pablo Picasso, George Patton see it? Draw a picture of the problem, make a model, or mold a sculpture. Take a walk and look for things that metaphorically represent the problem and force connections between those things and the problem (How is a broken store window like my communications problem with my students?) Ask your friends and strangers how they see the problem. Ask a child. How would a ten year old solve it? Ask a grandparent. Imagine you are the problem. When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.

12. LEARN TO THINK UNCONVENTIONALLY.

Creative geniuses do not think analytically and logically. Conventional, logical, analytical thinkers are exclusive thinkers which means they exclude all information that is not related to the problem. They look for ways to eliminate possibilities. Creative geniuses are inclusive thinkers which mean they look for ways to include everything, including things that are dissimilar and totally unrelated. Generating associations and connections between unrelated or dissimilar subjects is how they provoke different thinking patterns in their brain. These new patterns lead to new connections which give them a different way to focus on the information and different ways to interpret what they are focusing on. This is how original and truly novel ideas are created. Albert Einstein once famously remarked “Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.”

And, finally, Creativity is paradoxical.

To create, a person must have knowledge but forget the knowledge, must see unexpected connections in things but not have a mental disorder, must work hard but spend time doing nothing as information incubates, must create many ideas yet most of them are useless, must look at the same thing as everyone else, yet see something different, must desire success but embrace failure, must be persistent but not stubborn, and must listen to experts but know how to disregard them.

…………………………………………………….

Michael Michalko is the author of the highly acclaimed Thinkertoys: A Handbook of Creative Thinking Techniques; Cracking Creativity: The Secrets of Creative Genius; ThinkPak: A Brainstorming Card Deck and Creative Thinkering: Putting Your Imagination to Work. His web site is: www.creativethinking.net

View more posts by Michael Michalko

Surrounding yourself with great people is half the creative battle, for me at least. I had the pleasure of sitting down next to Ben Weinlick at a pre-accelerator startup course that we had both enrolled in. It didn’t take long for us to realize that we both enjoyed getting weird with creativity…and bombing around on motorcycles twice our age.

So, where do I foster creativity?

(1) I surround myself with weirdos

When I say weirdos, I don’t mean those oddballs that shave various patterns in their facial hair. Weirdos are people doing something different. Pushing the envelope.

Sitting in a cubicle, or at your house alone, can be limiting to the creative process. Get out and work in different places. If you can afford to rent a desk at a collective workspace, do it. It’s worth every penny.

(2) Coffee. Coffee. Coffee.

One of the most valuable things we’ve done for our business is reaching out to people we respect in the design community, and sitting down with them for coffee. Ask them what inspires them, or what stumps them. Find out the story of their brand, and tell them yours.

(3) Inject Humor

Not every project you work on is going to be interesting, so inject humour into your designs to keep the creative juices flowing. For example, when we were designing the digital presence for the BC Liberal Party, I used the blog headline “xxxxx Sleeps with Obamas Wife” in the design file. Obviously, this wasn’t true. But by plugging in little nuggets of humour, instead of using Lorem Ipsum, we were able to keep the project lighthearted on those more boring days. (In this case the client actually saw the headline by accident and luckily had a good laugh… DO NOT make this mistake)

(4) Get a hobby that doesn’t involve a computer

My passion/job unfortunately requires me to sit at a laptop 75% of my life. I realized quickly the importance of finding hobbies outside of the digital space. Motorcycles stole my heart a few years ago, and they continue to keep my brain creative outside of the office. Whatever you choose to do, challenge yourself constantly with it.

(5) Visit somewhere unknown

I walk to work everyday, and I walk home from work everyday. The same route. Same shit, everyday. So much of what inspires creativity is our surroundings, so it’s not very helpful if you never change the scenery. Try and take a little different route everyday if possible. On a larger scale, visiting somewhere you’ve never been can be extremely helpful. Especially small towns, untarnished by popular design, and full of crazy cool custom lettered signs.

(6) Don’t limit meetings to meeting rooms

If you’re feeling stumped by your surroundings, get off your ass and change them. Blank walls, or familiar walls, are probably the least inspiring thing in the world. Go for a walk, go for a drive, go on the roof. Anywhere for a change of pace, and a change of scenery. The extra 30 minutes it takes to have a meeting in an different location, will be well worth the creative juices pouring out of everyone involved.

(7) Be Motivated by Competitors, Not INTIMIDATED

Every industry is bursting with talent, most of it undiscovered. From the traditional definition, they are all your competitors. But there is always going to be someone more talented than you, pushing the envelope harder and faster. So, be social and friendly, and embrace them. Meet the people around you doing great things. Learn from them, get inspired by them. Shit, inspire them yourself. Maybe you’ll end up collaborating on a project.

Over the last 2 years, we’ve developed a large network of talented colleagues, simply by reaching out to designers from around the world that we respect and look up to. It’s just like sports. It’s gonna be much easier to excel at basketball if you’re practicing with Lebron James instead of your beer gut restricted uncle that calls himself “White Chocolate”, no?

If you can truly harness collaboration within your industry, there really is no such thing as competition.

________________________________________________________________________________________________

To see Part 1 by Ben Weinlick click this

View more posts by ONST Creative