Transcript Creativity - Charles Warner

Kick-Start Your
Creativity
“May the Force Be With You…Always”
What is the Force?
Creativity



Adams: “The combination of seemingly disparate parts
into a functioning, useful whole.”
Picasso: “Every act of creation is an act of destruction”
and “art is a lie that makes us realize the truth.”
Einstein: “Imagination is more important than
knowledge.”
Three Creativity Perspectives



The creative person
The creative product
The creative process
The Creative Person

Six traits of creative people *:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
–
Self-confidence
Unconventionality
Alertness
Ready access to unconscious processes (incubation)
Ambition
Commitment to work
*Creating Minds: An Anatomy of Creativity Seen Through the Lives of
Freud, Picasso, Stravinsky, Eliot, Graham and Gandhi. (1996).
Howard Gardner. New York: Basic Books.
Three Creativity Elements
1.
2.
3.
Expertise: In-depth knowledge about a field
Creative skills: Problem-solving skills, creative
process skills
Intrinsic task motivation
–
Intrinsic rewards: Love of the work, the process
involved, not extrinsic reward such as money,
awards *
* Teresa Amabile, Creativity in Context, Westview Press, 1996
Four Roles Of The Creative Process
(von Oech) *
1.
The Explorer
–
2.
Gathers information, explores for knowledge in new
places.
The Artist
–
–
Experiments with new approaches, combinations.
Follows intuition, breaks rules, brainstorms, takes
risks.
* A Kick in the Seat of the Pants, Roger von Oech, Perennial Library, New York, 1986.
Four Roles Of The Creative Process
(von Oech)
3.
The Judge
–
4.
Evaluates ideas and solutions, critically weighs
evidence.
The Warrior
–
Takes the offensive, fights for implementation, sells
the ideas, has courage.
The Explorer


Know what the objective is.
Look in other fields.
–
–


Camouflage came from cubist art (Picasso & Braque).
Unbreakable code in WWII came from the Navajo
language.
Look for lots of ideas.
Look behind the first right answer.
–
“How do you stop a fish from smelling?”
The Explorer


Don’t overlook things right in front of you.
Look or ideas in places you’ve been avoiding.
–

The Adjacent Possible
–

The city and the web are engines of innovation,
created for creation, diffusion, adoption of ideas. *
Create or find Liquid Networks. *
–

The drunkard’s search
Sharing of ideas (open, collaborative) - double-entry
bookkeeping *
Use forcing mechanisms.
* Where Good Ideas Come From, Steven Johnson
Forcing Mechanisms


Matrix
Trigger concepts
–
–

Starbursting (Who what, where, when, why,
how)
–

See “Creativity Techniques” on my website.
Brainstorming
–

Creative Whack Pack and Oblique Strategies apps
Random words from a book
See “Better Brainstorming” on my website.
Write everything down
The Artist






Adapt
Imagine (“What if?”)
Reverse (backward, upside down)
Connect
Compare (metaphors, literature, music, art,
sports, warfare, gardening)
Exaptation *
–
Gutenberg, Apple
* Where Good Ideas Come From, Steven Johnson


Parody
Incubate
–
The Slow Hunch (Darwin, Tim Berners-Lee) *


Serendipity *
–

The 10/10 Rule – Ten years to develop a platform, ten years
to build an audience -- used to be. Google, Facebook cut it
in half because of the web.
In dreamwork.
Error *
–
Make mistakes.
* Where Good Ideas Come From, Steven Johnson
The Judge






Does it meet the objective?
Positives?
Negatives?
Probability for success?
Downside?
Upside?
The Judge




Timing?
Deadlines?
Biases? (assumptions)
Blind Spots?
The Warrior







Be bold.
Develop a strategy.
What are the consequences of failure?
Get started immediately?
Sell it.
Persistence
Learn from victories and defeats.
Creativity Blocks






Accepting conventional wisdom
Not taking time to investigate or elaborate
Seeking only to satisfy the perceived needs of
bosses
Having tunnel vision, compartmentalizing
problems
Looking for quick, yes-no answers
Fear of failure
Creativity Blocks




Expecting others to be creative
Being unwilling to question others
Being unwilling to accept others’ input
Being unwilling to collaborate
–
–
Darwin: “...those who learned to collaborate and
improvise...prevailed.”
The wisdom of crowds
Creativity Enhancers



Assume every experience can stimulate personal
growth.
– Look for positives, growth, opportunities:
Chinese character, “crisis.”
Clearly visualize a positive outcome.
Don’t react too quickly. Give yourself time
(incubation), have patience.
Methods For Killing Creativity

Evaluation
–

Fear of evaluation kills the love of creative activity.
Surveillance
–
Looking over creative people’s shoulder or policing
them de-motivates them.
Methods For Killing Creativity

Reward
–
–

Extrinsic rewards lower motivation.
Reward creative people with autonomy, the
opportunity to learn.
Competition
–
–
Win-lose competition kills creativity.
In a competitive environment, people think about
how not to lose instead of how to win.
Methods For Killing Creativity

Restricted Choice
–

Making choices for creative people or severely limiting
their options lowers creative output.
Extrinsic Orientation
–
–
External rewards such as prizes and money hurt
creativity.
Creative people love the intrinsic rewards of doing the
job.
Pixar’s Catmull’s Rules For Collective
Creativity
Empower your creatives.
1.
-
-
Give your creative people control over every stage of idea
development.
Development’s job is to find people who can work together.
Create a peer culture.
2.
–
Encourage people to help each other do their best work.
Free up communication.
3.
–
The most efficient way to resolve the numerous problems that
arise in any complex project is to trust people to address
difficulties directly, without having to get permission. So, give
everyone the freedom to communicate with anyone.
Craft a learning environment.
4.
–
Reinforce the mind-set that you’re all learning – and it’s fun to
learn together.
Get more out of post mortems.
5.
–
Most people dislike post-mortems. They’d rather talk about
what went right than what went wrong. Structure your postmortems to stimulate discussion.