Category Archives: Creativity

Do you love creating?

Last week I asked if it’s possible to innovate without loving what you do. There were plenty of comments and the reactions were mixed. Most think it’s not possible because people have to be passionate about the work they do. I’m not going to argue with that.

What I will argue is that you can become passionate about just about anything if you have the right intent in mind. The context, topic, initiative is just the vehicle towards your purpose.

With that said, I think the next obvious question to ask is: Do you love creating?

I love to play.

For me it’s not so much about creating, what matters to me is making a meaningful impact. Period. If no meaningful impact is delivered, it’s a failure.…

Is it possible to innovate without loving what you do?

Jorge in Creativity, Innovation

I spotted this question on a Linkedin group and thought I post it here.

My answers is: Yes, it’s possible.

Interestingly, HBR posted an article about why you shouldn’t do what you love last week. I encourage you to read it if you haven’t already.

Here’s the thing about innovation:

Most people who are considered innovative don’t really set out to ‘innovate’. They set out to solve a problem they have/saw because they either see nobody doing anything about it, or they are personally dissatisfied.…

Imagination: one of the most important qualities of an innovator

Jorge in Creativity, Innovation

Kid pretending to be superman

If one of the most important qualities of an innovator is the ability to imagine, it is hardly surprising that children should be among the world’s most important innovators.

Bingo!

A few days ago I was on a train when a mom and her two children (both girls about 5 and 7 years old) sat next to me. One of the girls (the 5 year old) asked the other: What phone number do you want when you grow up?

The other girl gave her answer. It was looong number.

This whole interaction brought a smile to my face. To a typical adult, this is a kid being a kid. Asking dumb questions. But if we want to innovate, these are precisely the types of questions we should be asking and the type of ‘what if’ attitude we should be encouraging and practicing.

Imagine if we could choose our own phone number. Wouldn’t it be cool? This attitude brings up all kinds of questions and interesting thoughts. Just imagine if we could personalize our whole life.

What if our clothes, cars and everything we use daily would be personalized for us?

We could go on and on with this exercise and find all kinds of ideas that we could turn on their head. The point is to think without constraints and let your imagination free. Ask yourself, why, what if and why not.

Every once in awhile think like a kid and start asking dumb questions, the world needs you to.

Fail Harder

Jorge in Creativity

Ad house Wieden+Kennedy created the above mural. Over 100,000 thumbtacks were used over 351 hours to create this typographic mural that spells out Fail Harder, a message that underlines the importance of failure during the creative process.

First time I saw this mural was on the movie Art and Copy, which I watched again a few hours ago. I felt inspired to post it here and share it with you!

Here’s to the crazy ones 🙂

Is subtractive thinking the new normal?

Jorge in Creativity, Strategy

Creativity is subtraction

Apple is on everybody’s minds these days. Yesterday, along with my partner and new team member (@dario_rivera), I was talking to a client about a few observations we had about some processes in their restaurant operation and how we think they are creating bottlenecks.

Our conversation ended up being about how there seems to be a race towards simplicity. It seems us humans are hardwired to keep on adding stuff and quite scared of eliminating.

But when everyone competes on ‘out-featuring’ (adding) the other guy, your best bet is to do the opposite and subtract (reduce/eliminate) features. It’s not that simplicity is the new normal, it always is.…

Making creative connections: What matters is that you make them

Jorge in Creativity, Innovation

While there are a lot of organizations that aggregate trends (see Trend Hunter and Trend Watching to name a few), people often ask me how believable those trends are and if they should be arriving at the same conclusions while doing their own trend hunting.

The answer is no.

The assumption is that is you give two people the same information and put them in separate rooms to formulate strategy, they should arrive at the same answers. This is flawed thinking. If anything, they should come out with more questions or different answers.

There are times when validation is great (predictable outcomes like in Manufacturing) but when creating the new, we have to look for evidence that doesn’t support our case, because if we don’t we risk falling into the confirmation bias trap.

Don’t fall into the trap of trying to make the same connections everybody else makes, make new connections and feel proud that only you see them. It takes courage to move in a direction nobody else is moving, but it’s also exciting.

If you’re making new connections between unrelated ideas already that are different from everyone else, King’s to you.

Remember: One of the key skills that distinguishes innovators is the ability to ‘associate’, to make connections across seemingly unrelated questions, problems or ideas. Cultivate it and make it your new key creative skill to master.

The wheel gets reinvented all the time

Jorge in Creativity, Innovation, Strategy

“Let’s not reinvent the wheel” How many times have you heard that? How many times have you said it?

For practical purposes, people don’t like to reinvent the wheel. It’s better to do, follow, use what is already there because it saves us a lot of time and grief by letting us see blind alleys and lost trails of others who have worked in our area.…