Tag Archives: create

Learn What You Don’t Need To Get a New Feed

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Origami Crane from a newspaper

I learned to make an Origami Crane using a newspaper.

I am a big fan of learning. In fact, somewhere during high school, I figured out how to learn new things quickly. I’m not sure how it happened exactly but it may have had to do with the workload I had and trying to balance that with sports, working on my car, playing music, and a bunch of other fun stuff. In fact, I attribute most of my career’s success to the my ability to learn and learn quickly. I am constantly learning. I read, listen to podcasts, listen to people, ask questions, and try stuff on my own with reckless abandon. At times, I’m a bit scattered. There never seems to be enough time to try all the things I want to try. For example, I never really had much interest in origami, but one Saturday morning while sitting with my family after breakfast, I tore off a piece of newspaper, Googled “easy origami” and instructions on how to fold a crane came up. I loaded a good image of the instructions onto my iPad and started folding. I have no idea why I chose to do this. It just seemed like a quick thing to learn and do while enjoying my coffee. Well, after finishing the crane, one of my sons became interested and wanted to keep the crane, leaving my other son wanting a crane for himself. So, I folded a second one, gave it to him, and off the cranes went into the imaginations of two active kids. And that was that. I haven’t looked at origami since and really don’t have an interest in doing so, at least not at the moment.

So, why tell the tale of a newspaper turned crane? Well, I have found great success in just simply learning things. It doesn’t matter what it is. Just keeping learning anything. As I have expressed before, my theory on creativity is that new thoughts and ideas come from stitching other, past thoughts and ideas together. So, when you learn something new, anything new, you are adding to your library of ideas and thoughts. When will the paper crane come in handy? I have no idea, maybe never, but I can’t tell you how often I’ve pulled ideas from one discipline and married it to another discipline to get a completely unique idea. I once got an idea on how to design a unique software algorithm from combining a pulley system with a Plinko machine! Two independent mechanical concepts producing the key to a software program is just one example. I once designed a dolly that was to carry a Sidewinder missile housing from a workshop area to an aircraft using an idea I had learned about from bridge design and combined it with a concept I learned from looking at a monster truck.

The bigger your library of ideas and the broader the subjects carried in that library, the better chances you have of matching and connecting two or more ideas that would not naturally go together to form a new idea. In the simplest form, it is like the old commercial for Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. “You got your chocolate in my peanut butter.” “You got your peanut butter in my chocolate.” Voila! Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups are born. Here is one of those ancient commercials. Ok, well, you can’t really un-see that. Sorry. That is an overly simplified concept of what I’m talking about but it gets the point across. Mix and match to create something new.

Now to apply it. One of the best things I ever started doing was to listen to podcasts on my commute to work. I listen to all kinds of crazy stuff. The only requirement is that I must learn from it. I listen to podcasts on business, entrepreneurship, animals, history, technology, science, woodworking, biographies, beer making, and psychology to name a few. Not only does it make my commute far more interesting, but it is filling my library with all kinds of interesting material to pull from at a later time. It’s not like I remember everything either, but some sense of those things I’ve learned are in there and can prove to be quite useful. So, listen to some podcasts. Read some books on a topic you would never read about. I have one of the most eclectic libraries of anyone I know. Most view it as scatterbrained. I view it as filling my idea library. Here is another idea. Go to a very specific and focused museum and dive deep into it. Pick a modern art museum or a firefighter museum or other obscure topic and learn about it beyond just skimming the placards. However you do it, fill the library with information from all disciplines in art, science, language, history, math, engineering, music, documentaries, anything! Keep learning what you do not need to get a new feed of creativity!

Now go. Create. ~ The Mission Creative

Extrapolate the Future

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Original Photo by Keith Chapman.

Original Photo by Keith Chapman.

One of the best exercises to generate creative ideas specific to something you already know or are currently working on is to extrapolate into the future from the current state of that thing or item. Let me explain. New ideas are fundamentally based on other ideas. My theory on creativity is that at the most fundamental, common core level it is driven by establishing connections between things that have not yet been connected. When we see something new and think to ourselves, “wow, that is clever” or “wow, that is creative,” we are admiring the connection and mixture of things that already exist but in new ways which makes it seem like it didn’t exist before. If you look at how art has evolved over the centuries and if you look at how technology has evolved over the centuries, you will see connections from the first one we know about to the next one and the next one and so on. We get amazed when we know about an early one and look at a new one. We don’t see the steps in between, the evolution, and the difference is so large we give more credit to the creativity and muse of the person who created it. Fundamentally though, as a human race, we are building on what was built before us. This creates tremendous opportunity. As one person connects two things. Another may connect two other things or the same two things in completely different ways. So, as it may seem limited if all we can create is through combination of existing things or ideas, it absolutely is the contrary. The combinations of things, abstract or concrete, is how we create.

So, where am I going with this? I am asking you to chose an area in which you want to be highly innovative or creative, likely something you are working on or want to work on. Choose something that exists today that you admire and want to participate in as a creative force. Now, accelerate time in your mind by looking at that thing’s arc to existence. It came from something else so look a few iterations before it, back in time and determine the arc it took to get to its current state. Write these steps down until you get to the current status. Look at the evolution of the current thing that you are identifying. Now, what is the next step? Ask yourself how this item evolves in the next iteration. It doesn’t matter how small it evolves. It might just be a simple step or perhaps you see an obvious leap. Write that down below the current thing. Now assume that thing now exists and repeat the evolution in small steps. Keep doing this and add in “what if’s” to the equation and assumptions. Suppose one of your evolutionary steps relies on another technology or technique that doesn’t yet exist. Go with it. Assume it does. Keep evolving the item so you can hardly recognize it. Then keep going. You should at a minimum have at least 10 iterations in the evolution. You should extrapolate as many future evolutions steps as you possibly can. There are no rules here so you can leverage anything as long as it is an evolution beyond the current step you just worked on.

After you have defined several evolutions and have crested 10 iterations, go back and look at the evolutions. Evaluate them on likelihood of potentially happening and note those as possible innovations to develop or creative leaps that you should work towards actually taking. If the evolutions you determined are not all that spectacular or if they do not inspire a true creative spark then do the same exercise again but now use a mixture with something else involved in the evolution, add something to the mix, a technique, idea, technology or process. Now repeat the steps and review to see if you have stumbled onto an idea worth working on. Keep going or go further out until you land on something noteworthy. Extrapolate how art, science, technology, and anything else evolve into the future. Take a futurist’s view and you’ll find some creative things to perhaps pursuit. Now identify that one new thing that you chose as noteworthy and figure out if there is a path to actually accomplishing that with what you have in front of you. If not, then list out the things required to get there. There may be another step in this secondary outline that sparks a creative thought or innovation. Then work on that.

The process of extrapolating ideas into the unknown will inherently make you choose some things to attach to other existing things and create new things. Even if those new things are not quite feasible today. The steps you would have to take to make it feasible may very well uncover a creative idea you need to work on… right now! The process at the very least will open your thoughts into what could be possible. That alone feeds the creativity you need.

Now go. Create. ~ The Mission Creative

Independent Thinking

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Rebecca Bloom Photography

Image by Rebecca Bloom Photography http://www.bloomphoto.com

Happy fourth of July to my fellow Americans out there from The Mission Creative! Today Americans celebrate the independence of our country, the culmination of ideas opposing the previously accepted norm in the colonies at the time. Taking a note from the colonial playbook, we can apply this to our creative work as well to promote new ideas. When we work at a project for a long time or with projects that have the same parameters often, it sometime becomes very difficult to get out of the ruts we grind into the naturally creative paths we usually take. I have experienced this several times myself in product design where the category of the device you are designing rarely changes but the features and improvements of a particular product need to be innovative and refreshing. After designing the same type of product for years and years, it becomes second nature to iterate off of the designs in your past. Over time, that freshness customers expect in a product starts to erode and you end up with a very safe, not-so-innovative design on a product that probably needs it most. One way to combat this is to create an opposing view point in design as a guiding principle. Realize that the same old, same old may not be working this time.

Revolt! Revolutionize your ideas by taking an opposing viewpoint. Question why something exists the way it does as if you have never seen it before. Pretend you have no idea what the product does and question why each feature is there. In fact, get downright mean about it, adamant that there must be a better way and buck the norm. This independent and counter-intuitive thinking releases all of the design criteria you think you must have and allows you to start over with a fresh view. Your guidelines are the revolution of the norm so if you find yourself wandering back to a familiar path, revolt and head the other way. Go orthogonal to your usual way of thinking. In so doing you will find at least one item that you would not normally have crossed paths with that seems to actually be relatively great for the project. This is what you are looking for in revolting on your own design principles – that one opposing idea that actually makes things better, more creative, or at least more interesting. This can be applied to any creative process that you are intimate with to open new creative paths. It likely won’t create an entire new piece of work but it very likely will bring new input because you imposed new rules and guidelines for your own design thinking that oppose your norm. Become a contrarian to your own design thinking and open up a new creative path. Start your own design revolution.

Now go. Create. ~ The Mission Creative

Change Your Scene

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Image by Keith Chapman

Image by Keith Chapman

One incredibly easy and simple way to spark creativity is to change your scene. Change your surroundings. Where do you do your creative work? In an office? In a room? At a coffee shop? Take a look at where you are most productive and take a look at what is around you. If you are blocked, go elsewhere even just for one small creative session. When I was writing my first novel, I hit a major lull. Until that time, I went to write at a bar and grill type restaurant over lunches that granted me free wi-fi access. Then I hit a wall. I was lost in the book. I didn’t remember how I got into the weeds but in the weeds I sat staring at a blinking cursor.
Finally, I closed the laptop, gobbled down my food, and left. I went to a local coffee shop, ordered an afternoon coffee and sat down for just another 15 minutes and opened the laptop on a whim. Nope. Blinking cursor sucking my creative synapses right out from under me. Then, totally out of the blue, two well-dressed business ladies sitting near me had a conversation that I could not prevent from overhearing. One lady was complaining how their meetings were so unproductive because people felt the need to talk to fill the air. She went on to say if a meeting is scheduled for 30 minutes and it only needs to take 10 minutes, then be a doll and give the time back to your people. Oddly, this resonated in more ways than one. It well stood true in my own experiences with corporate life but deeper than that was the nudge I needed on my book. I was hung up on  making the dialog of my parody go through this entirely boring scene line by line. I ditched the whole section and summed up the many, many paragraphs by replacing it all with a simple, snide commentary. It shortened the chapter significantly, became more direct, and most importantly removed the logjam. This would not have happened as easily as it had if I had not relocated. Changing it up gives you a chance for newness. This means the muse in each of us gets new input which in turn can result in different outputs. If nothing else, it keeps you moving.

Constraints Unlock Creativity

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Image by Keith Chapman.

Image by Keith Chapman.

Contrary to basic intuition, complete freedom of design can greatly hinder creative design. Think of it this way. In your personal life, outside of your business or job, you can pretty much design or write whatever you want, at any time (non-competes withstanding). Total freedom of design. No constraints. Every possible idea is out there. Sit down with your sketchbook, your blinking cursor, or your canvas with nothing in mind. Now draw, write, or paint a masterpiece immediately. It’s difficult. You may end up with a doodle, an averagely boring sentence, or a blob of paint at best. Well, if this happens, then I guess you have indeed started something – a scribble, a theme, or a background but not very inspiring. Worst case, you remain staring at a blank page, screen, or canvas.

However, if you apply constraints within a scope of even a loosely defined project, you get a start, an inkling, or a basic concept no matter how primitive. The nice thing is that almost every project you get assigned or assign yourself will have built in constraints by the very definition of the project having some scope.

Now here is the catch. I strongly believe that the stronger the constraints, the more creative the result. Hear me out. This is counter-intuitive. A very loosely defined project scope leaves a large world of flexibility and ideas out there as candidates for the one result needed. Sifting through those ideas, heck, even generating those ideas is a daunting task and chances of you stumbling on a flash of brilliance is slim at best. Tighten the parameters on a design or scope and you limit the ideas and develop guardrails for your thoughts. This means focus. This means directed thoughts, condensed energy brought to a smaller concept which in turns mean that creative energy is no longer dispersed across a vast landscape of infinite possibility but driven towards a defined purpose.

Ideas are like a gas and the concept or project scope is the vessel containing that gas. Put those ideas into a very large vessel and you get very little pressure on the concept, little interaction, nothing noticeable. Make that concept a very small vessel and you get high energy interactions creating a very noticeable pressure. Perhaps you can make the vessel too small and leave no room for the gas at all… a vacuum… no room for ideas but that more or less defeats the purpose. That means the concept or project is complete and requires no creativity at all in the first place.

Here, try it for yourself. Whatever your art is… draw an equivalent. Draw, write, sculpt, design the following and see how your creativity increases with constraints. I’ll choose drawing for this example.

1. Draw a dog in a scene.

2. Draw a Dalmatian at a fire house.

3. Draw an older, aging Dalmatian named Buster at a frantic brick fire house in Queens, NY as the alarm bells are ringing loudly at 2AM.

I hope you find the level of detail in your drawings goes up as you consider each of the above project scopes or better the style of your drawings changed dramatically. This is usually where the nay-sayers come in and say “you’ve removed all creativity by defining so much”. Possibly, from one perspective in the sense of raw art, maybe. Maybe. But consider this. I did not specify what style, colors, materials to draw on or with, or many other important artistic parameters. You can certainly create a wonderfully creative work in the first and second project scopes but magic happens at the third and it is often quicker to arrive. Greatness is attracted to a well defined project. Also, consider that in most areas of creativity, we are trying to bring in some commercial value one way or another so arriving at the “one” early in the process has huge benefits.

So, do yourself a favor and next time you are assigned a project or you assign yourself a creative project, demand that as much detail as possible be defined before you start to create. Give yourself some sacred cows and golden handcuffs. Limit your parameters deeply and see what emerges quickly.

And one final tip. In my personal career, I have found great innovation, ideas and design emerge freely when I fictitiously add constraints to my project when I don’t get enough definition. You will know you do not have enough definition when you find yourself staring into space or that blank page for too long. Add your own constraints. For example, if you are designing a washing machine. Set a design goal whereby you cannot use any screws in the design. Now start the design. That constraint is unrealistic (most likely) but keeping your energy within that guardrail will prove to demonstrate amazing results. You rethink the norm. You force your energy into new areas and something you could never have thought of any other way surfaces immediately. Hold true to your constraints until that idea emerges. If it doesn’t add more constraints. The washing machine cannot use any metal material. No screws. No metal. Yikes… but these constraints free previously held energy. Now an idea emerges that has no screws and no metal. You redesigned something and it could actually be revolutionary. Now that you have that, release the constraints and get to the commercial, manufacturable and marketable design but with that one nugget of an idea to make the entire product revolutionary. It works. Try it and provide some feedback! I would love to hear if this helps you in your mission.

Now go. Create. ~ The Mission Creative

Brainstorm like a Boss, not like your boss

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Image by Rebecca Bloom Photography. http://www.bloomphoto.com

Image by Rebecca Bloom Photography. http://www.bloomphoto.com

How many times have you been told “we’ll have to brainstorm some ideas” or you are invited to a “brainstorm session” and first rolled your eyes, maybe actually suspended disbelief, and attended only to realize the brainstorm was really a meeting to listen to the boss’ ideas? Smile, nod, accept… move on. <sigh>

Or… perhaps you are in a healthier environment that is open to ideas and your organization can actually perform a brainstorm session that results in some new ideas. Is the quality of those ideas enough to engage resources on right away? Do you have a plan that will result in a creative or innovative result? Often not.

Here are some basic tenets and ideas on how to run an effective brainstorm session based on my years of design and research and development experience. This has worked well in my experience.

1. Keep the group small. A group under 6 people is ideal. Avoid closed minded people, distant stakeholders, and pessimistic people. If they want to attend they need to change some attitudes or get involved in more detail. Refuse to design by committee. It doesn’t work. Polarize! It is ok to have lovers and haters. Both will talk about your project.

2. Know what the goal is. Too many brainstorms have no goal, deliverable, or target in mind. The facilitators try to keep it “open ended” which translates to “delays” in the business world. Have a definitive goal defined at the start, like “We need to design a product that cuts the lawn shorter with little to no effort that is easy to clean and control.” Built into this statement is a goal with clear criteria outlined in an open enough way to provide leeway of new ideas. It doesn’t say a lawnmower but a product that cuts the lawn shorter – a subtle but important differentiation. If I say we need a lawnmower, you get an image in your head that is very much like what is out there already. However, if I say we need a product that cuts the lawn shorter, this opens the thinking process and may inherently question the norm because as long as the criteria of the lawn being shorter is obtained, the idea can be considered at this stage.

3. Actually facilitate with rules. Start the meeting with ground rules clearly explained to the group and hold them and yourself accountable to those rules. Suggestions include: Do not talk over one another. Do not criticize, challenge, judge, or nay-say any ideas until the idea creation time is completely exhausted. Know the difference between a complete idea and a component idea – both are welcomed. List and record all ideas. Ensure everyone on the team has multiple chances to talk and present ideas. Set a time limit for the session and stick to it.

4. Review all ideas and compare to all criteria. Identify the top 3 to 10 ideas that meet or come close to meeting the criteria of the goal or target regardless of how extreme it may seem at this stage. Revisit the criteria and consider modification of the criteria to improve results. Finally, compare final ideas to final criteria and determine which ideas are worth pursuing.

5. Create an action plan off of the results. Narrow the ideas down to the top 3 that satisfy or come closest to satisfying the final criteria. Create a plan to go execute each of the 3 ideas if they seem feasible to try. Otherwise, refine by having a secondary brainstorm session on each of the 3 main resulting ideas individually, refine the criteria of the goal with another layer of detail, and move closer to satisfying the criteria by brainstorming another level of detail on each of the main ideas.

6. Decide which idea is the best candidate to obtain the goal. The analysis might include cost estimates in resources, time, and money. It might include an evaluation of feasibility, availability, technology, and other component needs to accomplish the goal. One idea may be better than another in satisfying criteria but perhaps is too costly to develop. Compromises start at this level. The goals must prevail.

7. Make a decision. At the end of the brainstorm phase of a project, be sure to walk away with a clean decision, an action plan for the team with assignments, and buy-in from the creators. How creators feel about their creations often shape the outcome of the creations. In most cases, it is better to make a decision and pursue execution of the idea at this point than to sit in limbo with no clear direction. You can always change direction later or improve the project in a second phase or offering.

Now go. Create. ~ The Mission Creative