1. What Is Creativity, Innovation?

2. “May the Force Be With You…Always”
What is the Force?

3. 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.”
Robinson: “Creativity is the process of having original ideas that have value.”
Richard Florida: “Human creativity is the ultimate economic resource.”

4. Creativity
Traditional teaching methods are worse than useless – they stomp out creativity by trying to eliminating mistakes.
We are never as creative as when we were three.
Becoming creative is getting in touch with our inner child.
And getting rid of inhibitions
We become creative by making mistakes.

5. Creativity Creativity can be learned.
We’ll learn about the creative process.
And some creativity-enhancing techniques

6. Three Creativity Perspectives
The creative person
The creative product
The creative process
We’ll focus on the process.

7. Three Creativity Elements
Expertise: In-depth knowledge about a field
Creative skills: Problem-finding and 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

8. Innovation
Innovation is the result – the working solution – of the creative process.
Innovation is the most dominant trend in business … the key to success
Non-profits, too.
Innovation = problem finding and problem solving.
Most of all, innovation is fun.

9. The Creative Person Six traits of creative people *: 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.

10. Four Roles Of The Creative Process (von Oech) *
The Explorer
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.

11. Four Roles Of The Creative Process (von Oech)
The Judge
Evaluates ideas and solutions, critically weighs evidence.
The Warrior
Takes the offensive, fights for implementation, sells the ideas, has courage.

12. 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?”

13. The Explorer Don’t overlook things right in front of you.
Look or ideas in places you’ve been avoiding.
The drunkard’s search
The Adjacent Possible *
The city and the web are engines of innovation, created for creation, diffusion and adoption of ideas.
* Where Good Ideas Come From, Steven Johnson

14. Create or find Liquid Networks. *
Sharing of ideas (open, collaborative) - double-entry bookkeeping *

15. Forcing Mechanisms Trigger concepts
Creative Whack Pack, Creative Strategies and 75 Tools for Creative Thinking apps
Matrix
Random words
words.php

16. Starbursting (Who what, where, when, why, how)
See “Creativity Techniques” paper on my website.
Brainwriting and cyberstorming
See “Better Brainstorming” paper on my website.

17. Brainswarming Hockey Puck (Google)
arming-because-brainstorming-doesnt-work
Hockey Puck (Google)

18. 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

19. Parody Incubate Serendipity * Error *
The Slow Hunch (Darwin, Tim Berners-Lee) *
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.
Serendipity *
In dreamwork.
Error *
Make mistakes.
* Where Good Ideas Come From, Steven Johnson

20. The Judge Does it meet the objective? Positives? Negatives?
Probability for success?
Downside?
Upside?

21. Timing?
Deadlines?
Biases? (assumptions)
Blind Spots?

22. The Warrior Be bold. Develop a strategy.
What are the consequences of failure?
Get started immediately?
Sell it.
Persistence
Learn from victories and defeats.

23. 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
Adult thinking

24. 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
Where Good Ideas Come From, Stephen Johnson

25. 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.

26. 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 many people think about how not to lose instead of how to win.

27. 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.

28. 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.

29. Pixar’s Rules For Collective Creativity
Empower your creatives.
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.
Encourage people to help each other do their best work.
Creativity, Inc. Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration. (2014). Ed Catmull. New York: Random House.

30. Craft a learning environment.
Free up communication.
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.
Reinforce the mind-set that you’re all learning – and it’s fun to learn together.

31. Get more out of postmortems.
Most people dislike postmortems. They’d rather talk about what went right than what went wrong. Structure your postmortems to stimulate discussion.

32. Number-one creativity rule:
Get in touch with the child you once were.