Category Archives: Creativity
To innovate: Steal don’t imitate
When no one knows what’s going to happen we’ll naturally look at other people for clues on how to behave. This is the basis of imitation, and it’s a survival tactic. Simply said, in an environment where the world is changing, the best strategy is lots of imitation. The problem with this is we’re rarely aware of how ‘much imitation’ is necessary and outright imitation is stupid plain and simple. It’s a balancing act to decide what to copy and what not.
Practice ‘Smart Stealing’
The best strategy is to ‘steal’ from different sources, ideally ‘the best’ sources outside your industry.
Examples abound of companies who have ‘stolen’ from others. Apple stole Xerox’s musical interface and mouse ideas. Facebook and MySpace stole Friendster’s social network idea. Microsoft stole Netscape’s browser idea. Kobe Bryant has stolen moves from other basketball greats. It’s even happening in the Venture Capital Industry where one popular VC firm models itself after a Hollywood talent agency. (more…)
Use constraints to fuel your creativity
Quickly think of as many white things as you can in ten seconds. Now think of white things in your kitchen. Did the more constrained prompt spark more ideas? Yes.
Recent research on the best approach to creating novel things says that the number one key to innovation is scarcity. In other words, constraints help you focus on what matters. Apple knows that embracing constraints helps them focus on what matters. Google is popular for using constraints to fuel their design and development process which have resulted in ‘perceived innovations’ in user experience. The ever popular 37 Signals, maker of online business management apps, pretty much runs their business on constraints.
So how does placing constraints to fuel creativity look like?
Fueling creativity
A few months ago a client of mine let me know that they’re in the process of opening another restaurant and that this one will focus on Mediterranean food. With months away before it opens, they asked me if I had any ideas on whatever.
I won’t go into full detail about our discussion, but what I will do is show you how placing constraints changes the ideas you generate by shifting your perception.
Time constraint
1st Approach: How much time does the average family spend at a restaurant? An hour to an hour and a half (we mexicans like to take our time).
- What if we created a concept restaurant experience so they only spend 30 minutes? What would that look like?
2nd Approach: What if the menu was composed of only five different meals?
- What activities would need to be done so the client stays an hour and a half with us? How would the
3rd Approach: How would Apple do it?
- If Steve Jobs walked in, what would be the ‘crappy’ stuff he would tell us to eliminate?
Money constraint
Another constrain often times is money. For example, how much does the average family spend at a restaurant? $50 – $80
- What if we have a policy that clients spend less than that? How would our plates change? Meals? People?
The questions above are things I thought out rather quickly with no real goal in mind, just thinking out loud. The answers will be all over the place but that’s the key, to unlock your brain you have to ask the ‘unquestionable’.
The key is asking the questions that actually matter. This is tricky.
Closing thoughts
The thing about constraints is it forces you to look at different angles to approach a problem. It’s also important to have balance and look at the opposite of placing constraints, creative stretching, for coming up with unseen ideas.
While my example applies to a restaurant, you can use constraints on anything. How have I used constraints? I’ve used it to accelerate my basketball conditioning in less time, to write short blog posts that get to the point, to tweet less stuff but that actually matters, to read less but get more out of it.
Fuel your creativity!
How do you use constraints in your work, life?
Unconventional marketing strategy starts with ‘what not to-be’
The element of surprise is the ultimate equalizer. Remember that? Here’s another clue, check it out…
I was reading 99 Percent’s interview with the founder of Slice Perfect, Miki Agrawal, an unorthodox pizzeria in NY. The interview is all about how he ‘surprised himself’ but the last question (about their marketing strategy) reveals an interesting answer:
It’s about being unorthodox, it’s about how you stand out. When you think about branding, you have to think about every touch point of a business. You can’t just change the ingredients because that’s not enough. You have to change the packaging, the marketing materials, the web experience. Everything has to change to create an impactful experience.
So we try to NOT look like a pizza place, but still have that familiar feeling. Our packaging is long, rectangular boxes; we serve the piece in four bite-sized pieces on a sushi plate. It’s a neat and clean, pristine experience; it’s not like you’re picking up this giant pizza slice. It slows down your eating. You’re not shoveling something into your mouth. You allow your stomach to catch up to your brain. It also promotes sharing. I can order a different pizza from you, and we can share.
So those are three differentiating elements: it’s neater and cleaner, it slows down eating, and it promotes sharing. So it’s a different experience.
Bingo! Meaningful difference is what I got from that answer. Anybody who hears that will ‘get it’ right away. What’s also awesome, is the way he puts it: We try NOT to look like a pizza place. That’s a good way to ‘surprise yourself’ and shatter expectations.
Want to do the same?
Here’s an exercise for you:
- Write ‘let’s try NOT to be like <insert your category here>’ on the biggest whiteboard in your office where everyone in your organization can see it.
- Next, let everyone know that you have a mission today to shake things up, tell them about how the message on the whiteboard will help you do that.
- Next, invite your peers to contribute ideas on all the possible ways you can be the opposite of your category. Some people will laugh, others may already have some ideas hidden somewhere in their brains. You can collect these ideas by email, on an internal wiki, internal blog or pieces of papers. What matters is that you do it.
- Once done, collect all these ideas and have a few people help you cluster them around ‘themes’ and put them where everyone can see.
- Next, it’s show time! Via votes (number of ‘likes’) decide which ideas are ‘meaningful’ and ‘doable’. It’s important that you get the list down to only a few things that really ‘make a difference’, this will be tricky but very important.
- Next, it’s time to action plan your ideas.
I know this is a fairly simplistic list, the intent is not to make it an activity so complex that people will lose interest. Remember, you’re asking people to get uncomfortable!
Thoughts?
Surprise yourself
We all have different likes and dislikes. That’s just how it is. A personal example how is I like video games and although I do have preferences for shooters, sports and espionage; I’ll give any genre a shot.
People often ask me why I like a certain game and depending on my answer, they’ll decide to play it. It’s as if they’re asking for my permission. That’s crazy! In an age where we can rent video games for a few days and ‘test’ them out, there’s no need to make a commitment to buying. If we don’t like them we don’t buy them. It’s that simple!
The same behavior exists in other areas like business where executives want to know if a new idea has wings before it’s even put into play. It’s not that expensive to try one new thing a week.
Some see this as wasting their time and that’s the problem. Instead ask yourself: what did I learn from this experience?
My point is that just like acquiring new knowledge and skills takes time, you have to surprise yourself and put yourself in uncomfortable situations because that’s the best way to learn new things. A few ways to do this are:
Change roles
A great way to do this in the work environment is to switch roles with someone for a few weeks. By doing this you’ll be exposed to challenges from a different angle and this will give you multidimensional perspectives you need to solve your own problems. Who knows you might come up with a fresh solution nobody would’ve thought about.
Read widely
Another way to acquire new knowledge is go to a Borders or Barnes & Noble, grab a handful of magazines you’ve never read before and sit in a chair. Dig through them and see what happens. Ask yourself what’s interesting about what you’re reading. Get curious.
Yesterday I had a few hours to kill and headed to Borders, grabbed magazines of rock climbing, celebrity gossip, military history, aviation, national geographic and weapons. Read most of them, skimmed through others. Don’t you think I acquired new knowledge in that short amount of time? Of course I did.
Be a Yes Man
That’s right, become a Yes Man!. There’s even a movie with that name on it that’s all about ‘surprising yourself’ and it stars none other than Jim Carrey. The idea is to say yes to doing things you would never have thought of doing before with the intent of surprising yourself. If you’ve seen the movie then you know exactly what I mean.
The bottom line is: more of the same leads to boredom. The element of surprise is always the ultimate equalizer 
How do you surprise yourself?
The flip side of uncertainty
When we present new ideas that are better or different to what currently exists they carry the weight of uncertainty. This is a problem we all face. What is uncertain is unappealing. And everything right now, everyone says, is uncertain. But just like there’s a flip side to everything the same applies to uncertainty.
See this exchange between Patch Adams and Arthur Mendelson from the Movie Patch Adams: (more…)
On starting from scratch
The old musicians stay where they are and become like museum pieces under glass, safe, easy to understand, playing that tired old shit over and over again…Bebop was about change, about evolution. It wasn’t about standing still and becoming safe. If anybody wants to keep creating they have to be about change. – Miles Davis
One post that caught my attention in the last few weeks was how U2 gets ideas for it’s songs, specifically this comment by Bono on why starting from scratch can be the fastest way to a solution:
“That song [Where the streets have no name] was recorded, so there was a version of it on tape. That version had quite a lot of problems. What we kept doing was spending hours, days and weeks… probably half the time that the whole album took was spent on that song, trying to fix this version on tape. It was a nightmare of screwdriver work. My feeling is it was just better to start again. I’m sure we would get there quicker if we’d start again. It’s more frightening to start again, because there’s nothing. So my idea was to stage an accident. To erase the tape so we’d just have to start again.” – Brian Eno”
Starting from scratch sounds like a big waste of time, yet starting from scratch is at the center of creative thinking. I’m dumbfounded when I get asked for practical ideas that worked for someone else (usually competitor) and how they can best replicate it. This is the opposite of creative thinking and what most people fail to understand is that starting from scratch is highly rewarding. It’s like reformatting your computer and then starting with a fresh new installation!
Do it as if nothing
As a Ninjutsu practitioner, I understand very well the concept of mushin (no mind). Unlearning what you’ve learned and being open to whatever a situation presents and being able to adapt to it without thinking.
When you first start out in Ninjutsu you will immediately notice that nothing goes according to plan. Most of the stuff that you’re taught at the beginning is meant to ‘de-routinize’ your mind. To see it free.
Much like in other domains, most students will learn techniques and try to implement them ‘as they learned them’. Meaning they look at a scenario with similarities to how that technique was taught. This is a big no-no for there are an infinite number or techniques and they can all be applied in any point in time, you just have to go with whatever comes and do it as if nothing. As if you’ve done it before.
Develop mental flow
True Nimpo is really practiced when you get rid of the technique, you never show your technique to your opponent. Your movements should be human like, not mechanical. They should flow. Techniques are taught to us and sometimes we’re more concerned in applying in them just as the book says or as the Sensei says. While you may get rewarded for having beautiful technique, in the real world applying it won’t be so. You have to keep your mind open to whatever situation presents itself and respond as fluidly as possible. Be in the moment.
The element of water is what best describes flow, as water easily adapts to the environment.
Keep the mind moving
To develop mental flow, think of the mind as a river: that faster it flows, the better it keeps up with the present and responds to change. The faster it flows, also the more it refreshes itself and the greater it’s energy. Obsessional thoughts, past experiences and preconceived notions are like boulders or mud in this river, settling and hardening there and damming it up. The river stops moving, stagnation sets in. You must wage constant war on this tendency of the mind.
Superior strategists see things as they are. They are highly sensitive to dangers and opportunities. Nothing ever stays the same, and keeping up with circumstances as they change requires a great deal of mental fluidity. Great strategists do not act according to preconceived ideas; they respond to the moment. Like children, their minds are always moving, and they are always excited and curious. They quickly forget the past because the present is much too interesting.
Closing thoughts…
Just like Martial Arts have unlimited techniques and all of them can be applied to any scenario, so it is in other domains such as business. They’re not mechanical in nature. You train to be perfect but in the real world where unpredictability reigns, you have to be in the moment and respond as if nothing.
Understand: the most creative strategists stand out not because they have more knowledge but because they are able, when necessary, to drop their preconceived notions and focus intensely on the present moment. That is how creativity is sparked and opportunities are seized.
Radical is just a matter of perception
What’s more radical, not getting married but live together or getting married after knowing someone for 1 month?
What’s more radical, setting up a gym inside your company and paying employees to use it or paying employee’s gym subscriptions outside the company?
What’s more radical, having two kids or ten in the modern day?
What’s more radical, having a customer wait until you decide to serve them or serve them when they want to?
What’s more radical, treating employees like cogs in a system and telling them what to do or trusting their judgment to make the right decision?
What’s more radical, designing products for people without asking them what they want (Apple) or doing what the customers asks (everybody else)?
You’re probably thinking these questions seem stupid but bear with me. Steve Denning recently pointed out that radical management in not really radical but common sense. It’s perceived as radical because we’ve been following the same rule book for so much time that the opposite seems well, radical.
For things to change, someone somewhere has to start acting differently. In five years what seems radical today will be normal. The system will get stuck again and somebody somewhere will do the opposite and then he’ll seem radical. And five years after that the same story will unfold. It’s a cycle.
Want to get radical with yourself? If you want to try something radical today, take a different route to work. Say hi and smile to everyone you see in the street even though you don’t know them. Shake someone’s hand like you really mean it and look them in the eyes with purpose. Be a true friend. Treat your customers with respect, like human beings.
I could go on with examples but I bet you get the message: What seems radical to someone is common sense to someone else.
Thoughts?
