Category Archives: Creativity

INNOVATION: Change your internal chip

in Creativity, Greatness, Innovation, Thinking

“Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius — and a lot of courage — to move in the opposite direction.” – Einstein

Yesterday I was with a client proposing some new initiatives and as always there’s a bottleneck to new ideas. Someone’s ego prevents them from seeing other alternatives to how things can be done, they’re so set in their traditional views that anything new is irrelevant. In thinking about this fact with some of the people there I said: Like computer chips that evolve and get better all the time, so must we.

Voila!

Do you remember how in the movie Terminator 2 Sarah and John Connor so it can can learn and stop following preset rules? Well that’s exactly what we have to do with ourselves, and people who are impervious to ‘there’s always a better way’ speak.…

What’s your creative thinking style?

in Career, Creativity, Innovation

Have you ever noticed how you come up with your ideas? Have you noticed how others come up with theirs? I’ve been thinking about this lately and seeing how on Twitter there’s no shortage of people tweeting ‘x ways to innovate’ back and forth (myself included!) it makes me think non-innovation people will get confused with so many ‘techniques’.

So how many ways are there really? infinite. This is a problem because most techniques are just designed to stimulate your brain to get it thinking in all sorts of ways but they don’t naturally come to you.

We must also remember that most people are put off by all of this ‘innovation’ talk, they just don’t care about the latest and greatest technique, they just care about the outcome and our job is to help them get there. So where do people like us who are trying to spread the religion of ‘innovation’ around start teaching the non-innovators? With what comes natural to us.…

Innovation is a habit

in Creativity, Innovation

Accepting reality has it’s advantages as it makes you focus intensely in the moment, but it also has it’s disadvantages because it puts imagination in the backseat!

Act different to think different. Easier said than done right? The truth is we’ve already , we just forget we did it. How is this possible? How is it that we lost that inquisitive mind? We just lost our imagination, threw the crayons away and got caught up in the reality of the adult world. That’s what happened!

Most innovations come out of some insight (aha! moment) someone had and it was all because this person was looking deeper and questioning the ‘believed’ truth of how something works. Just like kids, inquisitive people have a habit of questioning everything, looking for deeper insight by questioning the truth. Yet most people accept things for what they are, why is this? Because it’s safe, it’s that simple. We get trapped in automatic, mechanical thinking with no interest in asking why we’re doing whatever it is we’re doing and how we’re doing it.…

Disrupt yourself to change the game you play in

in Career, Creativity, entrepreneurship, Innovation, Strategy

disruption

If you can’t solve a problem, it’s because you’re playing by the rules. – Paul Arden

 

All a disruptor really does is change something from one state to another by breaking patterns. Google is a typical disruptor, they seek ways to ‘disrupt’ a familiar flow in how things get done to another and then change the rules by creating new ones that play in the new state.

 

Disrupt or be disrupted.

Like Google we must learn ‘to be disruptive’ starting with ourselves. We have to disrupt our own flow of how we do things, changing how we do them not just for the hell of it but because it’s the only way to stay relevant. This isn’t just for product development, marketing or sales, it’s looking at your business from 30000 FT and asking yourself: what can I change to be better and what can someone else change that could put me in a disadvantage?

A game-changer is a disruptor.

 

Where do you start.

– Be aware of governing schemas (mental models)

– Be aware of the patterns that shape behavior

– Be aware of the rules

– Be aware of trends

– Be aware of things that haven’t changed in awhile (rigid)

 

What do you do?

> Do the opposite

> See how you can change things from one state to another (ice to water)

> Blend it

> Find the in congruencies and make them congruent.

> Do the unfamiliar by making the common uncommon.

> Ask why?

> Ask what if?

 

A disruptor moves at a different pace than others, it constantly probes the system to get an insight because the faster this happens the more it learns and the faster it moves. Learn to fail fast and break away from everybody!

 

How are you disrupting yourself? How about your business? Who’s disrupting you?

Weekend innovation tip: Create new products and services using subtractive thinking

in Creativity, Innovation, Innovation tips

subtractive thinking

How do you create new products and services that deliver new value?

Using subtractive thinking by:

Additive

+ Create: Develop by designing from scratch
+ Improve: Build upon by enhancing what already exists

Subtractive

– Reduce: Minimize by taking down to the bare essentials
– Eliminate: Remove by doing away with entirely

Subtractive thinking applies to Business Models, Product Design and Brand Development. Here are some successful examples:

  • Saturn removed negotiations from the car buying experience.
  • Subway removed the traditional kitchen from the fast food restaurant.
  • Netflix removed the storefront from video rentals.
  • Little Caesar’s removed the restaurant from the pizzeria.
  • Apple removed complexity from the user interface.
  • Yellow Tail removed the pretension from selecting wine.

Credit:

A Halloween experience to remember

in Creativity

Halowen2003 005

Catch That Kid divx  

The Girl Next Door divx

Event Horizon dvdrip

Halloween is tomorrow. Are you ready?

This was my costume a few years back. The idea came from a wallpaper login I had of a green goblin with symbols in it’s face, I decided I wanted to replicate it but instead of having a green face I would use red.

My ex-girlfriend laughed at the idea and said she would create the masterpiece you see in the picture, she shaved my head (which is the only time I’ve ever done it!), painted my face red and drew the symbols in my head with her makeup.

T.A.C.T.I.C.A.L. film

Material Girls move Driving was the most fun and I took full advantage of it by showing my tongue any chance I could at other drivers hahaha, feeling my skull for the first time was equally interesting.

Journal of a Contract Killer dvd

At the end we laughed a whole lot, I won a couple of contests and had a blast!

An American Haunting dvd

Zzyzx dvd

Have a Happy Halloween!

Where do new business concepts come from?

in Creativity, Innovation

How did Apple come up with the idea of the iPod and later iPhone? How did Google come up with a way make money from their search engine?

The Living Sea film

The Good Shepherd divx

While there are enough books that can tell you the story of how it happened, they won’t tell you what happened inside the minds of the people or individual who came up with the idea.

While I was pondering this question I also to gauge people’s opinion, here’s the best answer I got:

New business concepts come from people. Those who have the ambition and where with all to discuss open topic issues with others, those who are willing to step outside the box of comfort and ask questions, research and try to think as if they are in the other persons shoes. Putting yourself “out there” and being focused at the same time while trying to figure out how your idea can benefit from your thoughts.

So where do new business concepts come from?

SIS trailer

The profound insight doesn’t come out of any strategic planning process nor does it come from some brainstorming session, it comes from a mix of individual desire, curiosity, ambition and need. But there also needs to be some foresight, a sense of where things might go.

Key Takeaway:

The Clique move

New business concepts come out of a mix of unexpected problems, novel experiences, random conversations and newly discovered facts. The fact is .

 

Where do you think new business concepts come from?

Honey, We Shrunk Ourselves full movie