Learning Activities: Familiar with These 7 Lessons From Da Vinci?

No doubt. We are big fans of the great thinkers. Our top thinker of all time? It has to be Da Vinci. Why do you ask? For his abilities in learning activities, without a doubt. A mathematician. A scientist. An engineer. An anatomist. A creative and learner. Always giving lessons in creativity and learning.

Check out our thoughts on team leverage.

There are three classes of people: those who see, those who see when shown, and those that do not see.

Leonardo Da Vinci

Imagine you could go back in time and give your 20-year-old self a bit of advice on investing in the creative process, coming up with new ideas, and producing good, fun work.

What would you say?

Do you see? Maybe the lessons from Da Vinci will help. So what would be the lessons in learning and creativity derived from Da Vinci?

In General Stanley McChrystal’s efforts to transform the Special Forces in Iraq, he ran into challenges trying to get diverse teams to work together. Yet he saw that by building connections between units he could build a “team of teams” that was able to effectively coordinate action. In One Mission, his aide-de-camp, Chris Fussell, describes two strategies used to achieve this effect.

The first was to leverage high-performing liaison officers to build personal connections among disparate units. The second, called the “O&I” forum, was a daily video conference that was designed to create informal connections between officers at an “operational cadence.” Since leaving the military, McChrystal and Fussell have had similar success implementing these strategies in civilian organizations at their consulting group.

Here are the ones we continually come back to:

Learning activities … sketching and note taking

Over his lifetime Da Vinci created 13,000 pages of sketches and notes. 13,000 pages. By hand, on individual sheets of paper. Design in the center, simple and done quickly, a label on top, annotations along the sides, arrows pointing to key content. Sometimes a summary on the bottom.

Types of learning activities … divergent thinking first

Alone for the first few iterations different thought. Time to generate lots of ideas, and to reflect. Incubate ideas. Ask himself lots of questions. Always observing and studying. Think about the age of Da Vinci … no computers, few books, and few experts in fields of his interests. Just his ability to see and observe using notes to record for further study.

Related: How Good Is your Learning from Failure?

Creative learning methodology … convergent thinking later

Da Vinci often reviewed his work with respected peers after he had finished incubating his ideas. It was an opportunity to refine his thoughts. Time to collaborate. He was way ahead of his day in most topics, so many of his good ideas were rejected. He didn’t lose his desire or his persistence by the rejections. But remember … 13,000 sketches led to at least three masterpieces. Persistence is a key, isn’t it? Perhaps this is the most important reason we have less creative people.

Related post: 10 Extraordinary Ways for Learning to Learn

Save and revisit later

Most of Da Vinci’s sketches were done on individual sheets of paper. Not in a constrained notebook. He understood the value of multiple revisits and connecting, reconnecting, and grouping related facts and observations. An analogy expert. And an uncanny ability to connect several different views and ideas to create new ideas.

Learning and creativity will defer judgment

His basis of the study was simple observation and notes/questions on his views. He withheld judgments, either positive or negative, for as long as possible. Particularly his own. He appreciated that judgment would be a block to creativity and new ideas.

“The greatest deception men suffer is from their opinions”

Curiosity and questions

Perhaps Da Vinci’s greatest asset was his insatiable curiosity. The more observations and connection of ideas, the more questions and interest. And creative ideas.

Stimulate imagination

Da Vinci used divergent thinking to create lots of ideas. Lots of ideas, questions, and curiosity to stimulate his imagination. He minimized the limitations and constraints when using his imagination to think of the solution space to his many questions.

The bottom line

Do you see? Very, very few of Da Vinci’s learning activities and abilities are in the populace. But that doesn’t mean you can’t learn to be creative … it can be learned. Can you use these lessons to learn to see or see better? Give it a try. Practice and be persistent. Stick with it, and over the long haul, you will see some real dividends.

Have you found additional ways for learning and creativity? Have a story on your experiences to share with this community?

Like this story? Follow Digital Spark Marketing on LinkedIn or Google+ for 3-4 short, interesting blogs, stories per week.

Need some help in capturing more improvements for your staff’s teamwork, collaboration, and learning? Creative ideas in running or facilitating a collaboration or continuous learning workshop?

Call today for a FREE consultation or a FREE quote. Learn about some options to scope your job.

Call Mike at 607-725-8240.

All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that struggle gets better every day you learn and apply new ideas.

When things are not what you want them to be, what’s most important is your next step. Call today.

Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.

Are you devoting enough energy continually improving your continuous learning?

Mike Schoultz is the founder of Digital Spark Marketing, a digital marketing and customer service agency. With 40 years of business experience, he blogs on topics that relate to improving the performance of your business. Find them on G+, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way. Call us for a free quote today. You will be amazed how reasonable we will be.

More reading on learning from Digital Spark Marketing’s Library:

The Nine Most Valuable Secrets of Writing Effective Copy

10 Extraordinary Ways for Learning to Learn

Continuous Learning Holds the Keys to Your Future Success

7 Imaginative Secrets of Creative Learning We Must Support

What is your choice for the top learning issues of the day? Secrets of creative learning are one of our choices. Taught in schools? We have not found many that teach it. We were very surprised by this finding.

Tomorrow’s illiterate will not be the man who can’t read: he will be the man who has not learned how to learn.

–Herbert Gerjuoy

Check out our thoughts on building innovation.

In earlier times, perhaps several generations or so ago, our great-grandparents and their parents faced an entirely different problem of learning to learn creativity.

In their environment, both generations shared the same problems and basically the same solutions.

Learning creativity in this environment was not a priority. Learning was simply a matter of transferring information (facts) from the older generation to the newer one.

Enter the industrial age where the world had begun to change very rapidly and grow in complexity.

Old solutions, old facts, were no longer enough. Learning needed to change to keep up, switching from learning old information to discovering and understanding new information, and being creative with new ideas. Clearly, a paradigm shift had begun.

Related: How You Are Destroying your Creativity and Imagination

In the information and internet age, learning problems have gotten much worse. The amount of new technical information is doubling every 2 years … doubling. We are clearly living in exponential times.

So how do we improve our ability for learning creativity in such a complex environment? We have defined 8 ways we believe are essential to achieving this goal. Let’s discuss each of these:

creative learning methodology — **Creative learning methodology.**

Learn by doing

Most of what we know, we didn’t learn in school. We learned it in the real world, actually doing, not reading or listening to about doing.

Confucius once said: I hear, I forget. I see. I remember. I do, I understand.

He appreciated that being a creator was the best way to learn. Make your learning be active learning and be creators as often as possible. We believe this the most critical of the 10 ways to improve your learning.

Learn creativity … create curiosity

If we have the guts to think about what we don’t know, confuse our learning, perplex ourselves, and evoke real questions, we can create curiosity. This curiosity can be used to tailor robust methods of blended learning and creativity.

Curiosity must come first. Questions can be fantastic windows to great learning, but not the other way around. Build your skill of curiosity … it is a necessity for good learning as well as creativity.

Creative learning … practice imagination

Albert Einstein once said: Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you anywhere.

He understood the complexities of the world today required imagination for the discovery of new ideas and solutions. Imagination requires lots of practice; it doesn’t just happen on its own.

So start working on this skill to add it to improve your learning.

Observe and reflect

By observing life’s experiences around us and careful reflection of what we observe, we can gather facts and information to learn new solutions and methods. Increase your ability to ‘connect the dots’ around you.

Take notes and revisit them often.

Embrace the mess of learning creativity. In this new world of continuous learning, we are all teachers as well as learners. We realize learning is often an ugly task. Accept that the process of trial and error is an acceptable learning process.

Here is an interesting article: 5 Surprising Ways Sleep Makes You More Creative

creative learning ideas — **Creative learning ideas.**

Employ novelty

Our brains pay more attention to things in the environment that are new to our experience.

So, seek out as many new experiences to try as you can handle and become an explorer. Learn from others’ creativity.

Change and contrast

People learn new things best when they are in contrast to other information in the environment or to things that are in contrast to previous experiences.

To improve creativity, work on your experience of change. Step out into the unknown as often as you can.

Connect and collaborate

Connecting with others in the internet world is a great way to share ideas and solicit feedback, new views, and ideas. Once you have found some interesting connections who share goals, try a collaboration project or two, especially ones on creativity.

Collaboration is an excellent way to expand learning in a sharing environment.

We have found two cool examples of leaning creativity recently that we will share. Here is the first:

In 2009, scientists from the University of Louisville and MIT’s Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences conducted a study of 48 children between the ages of 3 and 6. The kids were presented with a toy that could squeak, play notes, and reflect images, among other things.

For one set of children, a researcher demonstrated a single attribute and then let them play with the toy.

Another set of students was given no information about the toy. This group played longer and discovered an average of six attributes of the toy; the group that was told what to do discovered only about four.

A similar study at UC Berkeley demonstrated that kids given no instruction were much more likely to come up with novel solutions to a problem.

The second example is a piece of creative work from a high school student:

Hold onto your seat; don’t blink your eyes for a second! This is amazing. seventeen-year-old Joe Bush got a high school assignment to make a video reproduction. He chose history as a theme and tucked it all into two minutes.

He took pictures from the internet, added the track Mind Heist by Zack Hemsey and voila you have a very creative video.

You should watch this 2 minute video here.

Congratulations to Joe AND his teacher. You learn creativity by doing, don’t you?

The bottom line

If we as learners embrace the new paradigm of active learning, curiosity, and imagination, we could offer a spark to others around us and may even build a new movement.

The most explosive period of learning creativity occurs in the first years of life before we learn to read. There are lessons in that fact that our fixation on reading, and our stubborn insistence that play, art, music, theater, dance, and so on, are ‘frills’, keep us from understanding and appreciating.

Schools are still being built with classrooms rather than flexible workspaces.

Schedules are still being imposed that keep kids in their seats and isolated from the larger world for most of every day. We’re ignoring research and common sense about how humans learn. So what is really new with that?

Need some help in improving the creativity of you and your staff? Creative ideas to help the differentiation with your toughest competitors.

All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new creative ideas.

When things are not what you want them to be, what’s most important is your next step.

Try. Learn. Improve. Repeat.

Are you devoting enough energy to improving your creativity, innovation, and ideas?

Do you have a lesson about making your creativity better you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add in the section below?

Mike Schoultz is the founder of Digital Spark Marketing, a digital marketing and customer service agency. With 40 years of business experience, he blogs on topics that relate to improving the performance of your business. Find him on Twitter, and LinkedIn.

Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way.

Innovation Culture Requires These 13 Ideas in Place

Collaboration drives creativity because innovation always emerges from a series of sparks – never a single flash of insight. An awesome quote from D. Sawyer isn’t it? Success with building a creativity and innovation culture depends not only on coming up with great ideas and making them happen but also on establishing the culture with employees.

Innovation culture?

Check out our thoughts on building innovation.

It’s also important to recognize that culture comes from the people—it is the people. Think about the individuals within your organization—what are their personalities like?

Who are they outside of work? What tickles their fancy? All of these things lend to the culture of your organization, and ultimately your products and services.

We live in a business world accelerating at a dizzying speed and teeming with ruthless competition. As most of the tangible advantages of the past have become commoditized, creativity has become the currency of success.

One of the most often told stories about innovation is that of Alexander Fleming and his discovery of penicillin. Returning after a summer holiday in 1928, the solitary Scottish scientist noticed that a strange mold had contaminated the bacteria cultures he was growing. That single observation would change the world.

At least, that’s how the story is usually told. What really happened is that when Fleming published his findings, no one really noticed because what he discovered couldn’t have cured anyone. It wasn’t until a decade later that his paper was unearthed by another group of scientists who engineered it into the miracle cure we know today.

The truth is that the next big thing always starts out looking like nothing at all because it arrives out of context. Great innovations not only change the world, but the world also changes them and while that’s going on no one really knows how things will turn out.

A 2010 study of 1,500 CEOs indicated that leaders rank creativity as No. 1 leadership attribute needed for prosperity. It’s the one thing that can’t be outsourced; the one thing that’s the lifeblood of sustainable competitive advantage.

Unfortunately, most companies fail to unleash their most valuable resources: human creativity, imagination, and original thinking. They lack a systematic approach to building a culture of innovation and then wonder why they keep getting beaten to the punch.

Creative culture and passion for innovation could become the main strengths of your company and the pillars of its long-term growth and success.

Here are some useful tips on how to convert virtually any company into a creative one.

Encourage curious, imaginative minds

We are big believers in curiosity and imagination. They contribute heavily to creative minds. We’re first curious about something, and it’s that curiosity that drives us to create.

Try to think of inventors who created something without first being curious or imaginative. Difficult isn’t it?

There was a study done recently wherein jazz musicians’ brains were monitored while they were improvising during gigs. Long, boring, tedious, academic story short — these musicians’ brains had essentially learned to “turn off” that little thing in there that tells you that this won’t work or will fail.

So without that stopping them, their imagination thrived, and you’ve heard many of the amazing results.

Innovation culture … foster creative learning

Creativity culture can be taught. There are many courses that teach people different creative techniques. Give your employees the opportunity to acquire skills that will help them become more productive and proficient in what they are doing.

“Culture isn’t just one aspect of the game,” Lou Gerstner wrote in the memoir of his historic turnaround at IBM, Who Says Elephants Can’t Dance? “It is the game. What does the culture reward and punish – individual achievement or team play, risk-taking or consensus building?” Culture is, in many ways, is how an enterprise reflects its mission.

Yet all too often, culture becomes an excuse for uniformity. Managers hire people like themselves and encourage their people to see things the same way, which can hinder a team’s ability to take on new ideas. On the other hand, studies have shown that diversity can create discord that can make it hard to get things done.

Clearly, we need to balance diversity with cohesion, but that not as easy as it would seem. It takes more than just putting people of diverse backgrounds and perspectives together and seeing what happens, you need a strategy to help them to work together. So while building a diverse team is a worthy goal, we need to put some thought into how to make it work.

Innovation culture examples … freedom of creative speech

People should be encouraged and inspired to openly and freely share ideas. There should be no censorship in the creative process… welcome everyone to contribute with their ideas, from the couriers and drivers to the top managers.

Create tribal communities and spirit

Your employees should feel members of one big family. They are the biggest assets of your business.

Creativity doesn’t often happen in a vacuum. As the author Steve Johnson says, chance favors the connected mind. When people are together, talking, laughing, thinking, exploring — they’re going to throw out ideas.

These ideas trigger something in someone else’s mind, and it snowballs. Before long, this group of folks has developed a creative solution that wouldn’t have been possible without the collective collaboration.

Don’t fall prey to the myth that only some people are creative and you’re not one of the chosen few. We are all creative; it’s just a matter of figuring out in what way.

So find things you’re curious about and that are interesting to you, use your imagination a little, stay motivated and work at it, and surround yourself with others who are doing the same.

maximixe diversity — Always maximize diversity.

Innovation culture characteristics … maximize diversity

Ziba, a top innovation-consulting firm in Portland, has an “Ambassador Program,” which allows employees to spend three months working in other disciplines, known as “tribes.”

During that time, the ambassador team member participates as part of those teams. This helps to create an understanding of another world. That diversity of thought and perspective, in turn, fuels creativity. It also translates to better business results.

Diversity in all its shapes, colors, and flavors helps build creative cultures. The diversity of people and thought; diversity of work experiences, religions, nationalities, hobbies, political beliefs, races, sexual preference, age, musical tastes, and even favorite sports teams.

The more diversity the better.

Foster Autonomy

We all prefer control over our environments. According to a 2008 study by Harvard University, there is a direct correlation between people who have the ability to call their own shots and the value of their creative output.

An employee who has to run every tiny detail by her boss for approval will quickly become numb to the creative process.

The act of creativity is one of self-expression. Granting autonomy involves extending trust. By definition, your team may make decisions you would have made differently.

The key is to provide a clear message of what results you are looking for or what problem you want the team to solve. From there, you need to extend trust and let them do their best work.

Innovation culture … fuel passion

Believe in what you preach. Give yourself 100% to the cause. Be honest if you want to be accepted. Lead by providing the example. Do not just lead – inspire!

Passion is the most essential ingredient for building a creative culture. Every great invention and every advance of humankind began with passion. A passion for change, for making the world a better place. A passion to contribute, to make a difference. A passion to discover something new.

With a team full of passion, you can accomplish just about anything. Without it, your employees become mere clock-punching automatons.

Start small

ITW is a diversified manufacturing company that produces a wide array of products from industrial packaging to power systems and electronics to food equipment to construction products.

It is a highly profitable company nearly 100 years old. Yet this big, old company, which is nestled in a traditional industry, thinks small.

The leaders at ITW believe that being nimble, hungry, and entrepreneurial are the ingredients for business success. As a result, any time a business unit reaches $200 million in revenue, the division “mutates” into two $100 million units.

Like an amoeba, the unit subdivides so it stays hungry and nimble.

The company would rather have 10 independently run an innovative $100 million units than a single, bureaucratic, and clunky $1 billion unit. Guess what? It’s working.

Companies that can stay more curious and nimble, have a better ability to change and adapt more easily. They have a stronger sense of urgency and are not afraid to embrace change. They put their curiosity, imagination, and creativity to work.

Gain motivated attitudes

Most of the time, you’ve got to want to be creative to be creative. You’ve got to work at being creative to be creative. I don’t feel that I’m terribly creative. Odd? Sure. Unique? Yeah, just like the rest.

But every once in a while someone will walk into my office, look around at the walls and ask how I came up with some of the ideas. Or we’ll be in a meeting and something will click for me as I’m scribbling in my little black notebook.

What most people don’t know is that I actually work on it. Yes and I actually practice. I think people think you’ve either got it or you don’t, but I think everyone’s creative in their own way.

So I started doing things to challenge myself to be creative. Sometimes they were business-related. Other times they weren’t.

And now I have an arsenal of things that I do on a regular basis to stretch my mind. It’s trying to make creative thinking and practice a consistent habit.

Encourage risk taking

Zappos as a company is known as much for its culture as for its innovative business model. The company has built a business that is growing rapidly by allowing individuals the freedom to take creative risks without that overwhelming sense of fear or judgment.

They tell their employees to Say what you think, even if it is controversial. Make tough decisions without agonizing excessively. Take smart risks. Question actions inconsistent with our values.

Another interesting example: A software company in Boston gives each team member two “corporate get-out-of-jail-free” cards each year. The cards allow the holder to take risks and suffer no repercussions for mistakes associated with them.

At annual reviews, leaders question their team members if the cards are not used. It is a great way to encourage risk-taking and experimentation.

Think this company comes up with amazing ideas? Absolutely.

18 Awesome Ways to Improve your Creative Thinking Skills

Foster innovation

Always look for alternatives, improvements, and non-standard ways of solving problems. Many of the ideas that your team will come up with will be unfit, some of them will be excellent and a few will be brilliant.

Sometimes one brilliant idea is all it takes to make a huge business success.

Accept failures

There is no success without failure. Ask any successful person and they will confirm that they have failed in life but that their failures made them stronger and even more determined to go on.

It is perfectly OK to fail as long as we learn from our own mistakes. Your employees should not fear failure because it will kill their desire to create new and unusual ideas.

In many companies, people are so afraid of making mistakes that they don’t pursue their dreams. The simply follow the rules and keep their heads down, which drives nothing but mediocrity.

James Dyson, the inventor of the Dyson Vacuum cleaner, “failed” at more than 5,100 prototypes before getting it just right. In fact, nearly every breakthrough innovation in history came after countless setbacks, mistakes, and “failures.”

The great innovators and achievers weren’t necessarily smarter or inherently more talented. They simply released their fear of failure and kept trying. They didn’t let setbacks or misfires extinguish their curiosity and imagination.

Failing means taking risks and increasing the rate of experimentation… and exploring. Some bets will pay off; some will fail. The key is to fail quickly.

The speed of business has increased dramatically and every minute counts. The best businesses try lots of ideas and let the losers go quickly and with no remorse.

Celebrate successes

Social norms in any culture are established by what is celebrated and what is punished. Consider more narrowly how they function within an institution.

Nearly every business’s mission statement includes words about “innovation,” yet risk-taking and creativity are often punished instead of rewarded. Rewards come in many forms, and often the monetary ones are the least important.

Celebrating creativity is not only about handing out bonus checks for great ideas—although that is a good start. It should also be celebrated with praise (both public and private), career opportunities, and perks.

In short, if you want your team to be creative, you need to establish an environment that celebrating their successes.

As you can see, some of these ideas do not take much time and money to implement. Start from small and transform your company step by step.

Creating a creative culture is a process that takes time, but as the first creative ideas become reality, and the first results show up, both you and your employees will appreciate the positive effects.

Is your business devoting enough energy in each of these areas?

Do you have a story about creativity and business adaptation you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add in the section below?

Need some help in improving the innovation process for you and your staff? Innovative ideas to help the differentiation with your toughest competitors? Or maybe ways to innovate new products and services?

Call today for a FREE consultation or a FREE quote. Learn about some options for innovation workshops to get noticeable results.

Call Mike at 607-725-8240.

All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new innovative ideas.

When things are not what you want them to be, what’s most important is your next step. Call today.

Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.

Do you have a lesson about making your innovation learning better you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add in the section below?

Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way. Call us for a free quote today. You will be amazed at how reasonable we will be.

Mike Schoultz is a digital marketing and customer service expert. With 48 years of business experience, he consults on and writes about topics to help improve the performance of small business. Find him on G+, Facebook, Twitter, Digital Spark Marketing, and LinkedIn.

Learning activities … sketching and note taking

Types of learning activities … divergent thinking first

Creative learning methodology … convergent thinking later

Save and revisit later

Learning and creativity will defer judgment

Curiosity and questions

Stimulate imagination

The bottom line

What is your choice for the top learning issues of the day? Secrets of creative learning are one of our choices. Taught in schools? We have not found many that teach it. We were very surprised by this finding.

Tomorrow’s illiterate will not be the man who can’t read: he will be the man who has not learned how to learn.

–Herbert Gerjuoy

Check out our thoughts on building innovation.

In earlier times, perhaps several generations or so ago, our great-grandparents and their parents faced an entirely different problem of learning to learn creativity.

In their environment, both generations shared the same problems and basically the same solutions.

Learning creativity in this environment was not a priority. Learning was simply a matter of transferring information (facts) from the older generation to the newer one.

Enter the industrial age where the world had begun to change very rapidly and grow in complexity.

Old solutions, old facts, were no longer enough. Learning needed to change to keep up, switching from learning old information to discovering and understanding new information, and being creative with new ideas. Clearly, a paradigm shift had begun.

Related: How You Are Destroying your Creativity and Imagination

In the information and internet age, learning problems have gotten much worse. The amount of new technical information is doubling every 2 years … doubling. We are clearly living in exponential times.

So how do we improve our ability for learning creativity in such a complex environment? We have defined 8 ways we believe are essential to achieving this goal. Let’s discuss each of these:

Learn by doing

Most of what we know, we didn’t learn in school. We learned it in the real world, actually doing, not reading or listening to about doing.

Confucius once said: I hear, I forget. I see. I remember. I do, I understand.

He appreciated that being a creator was the best way to learn. Make your learning be active learning and be creators as often as possible. We believe this the most critical of the 10 ways to improve your learning.

Learn creativity … create curiosity

If we have the guts to think about what we don’t know, confuse our learning, perplex ourselves, and evoke real questions, we can create curiosity. This curiosity can be used to tailor robust methods of blended learning and creativity.

Curiosity must come first. Questions can be fantastic windows to great learning, but not the other way around. Build your skill of curiosity … it is a necessity for good learning as well as creativity.

Creative learning … practice imagination

Albert Einstein once said: Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you anywhere.

He understood the complexities of the world today required imagination for the discovery of new ideas and solutions. Imagination requires lots of practice; it doesn’t just happen on its own.

So start working on this skill to add it to improve your learning.

Observe and reflect

By observing life’s experiences around us and careful reflection of what we observe, we can gather facts and information to learn new solutions and methods. Increase your ability to ‘connect the dots’ around you.

Take notes and revisit them often.

Embrace the mess of learning creativity. In this new world of continuous learning, we are all teachers as well as learners. We realize learning is often an ugly task. Accept that the process of trial and error is an acceptable learning process.

Here is an interesting article: 5 Surprising Ways Sleep Makes You More Creative

Employ novelty

Our brains pay more attention to things in the environment that are new to our experience.

So, seek out as many new experiences to try as you can handle and become an explorer. Learn from others’ creativity.

Change and contrast

People learn new things best when they are in contrast to other information in the environment or to things that are in contrast to previous experiences.

To improve creativity, work on your experience of change. Step out into the unknown as often as you can.

Connect and collaborate

Connecting with others in the internet world is a great way to share ideas and solicit feedback, new views, and ideas. Once you have found some interesting connections who share goals, try a collaboration project or two, especially ones on creativity.

Collaboration is an excellent way to expand learning in a sharing environment.

We have found two cool examples of leaning creativity recently that we will share. Here is the first:

In 2009, scientists from the University of Louisville and MIT’s Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences conducted a study of 48 children between the ages of 3 and 6. The kids were presented with a toy that could squeak, play notes, and reflect images, among other things.

For one set of children, a researcher demonstrated a single attribute and then let them play with the toy.

Another set of students was given no information about the toy. This group played longer and discovered an average of six attributes of the toy; the group that was told what to do discovered only about four.

A similar study at UC Berkeley demonstrated that kids given no instruction were much more likely to come up with novel solutions to a problem.

The second example is a piece of creative work from a high school student:

Hold onto your seat; don’t blink your eyes for a second! This is amazing. seventeen-year-old Joe Bush got a high school assignment to make a video reproduction. He chose history as a theme and tucked it all into two minutes.

He took pictures from the internet, added the track Mind Heist by Zack Hemsey and voila you have a very creative video.

You should watch this 2 minute video here.

Congratulations to Joe AND his teacher. You learn creativity by doing, don’t you?

The bottom line

If we as learners embrace the new paradigm of active learning, curiosity, and imagination, we could offer a spark to others around us and may even build a new movement.

Schools are still being built with classrooms rather than flexible workspaces.

Schedules are still being imposed that keep kids in their seats and isolated from the larger world for most of every day. We’re ignoring research and common sense about how humans learn. So what is really new with that?

Need some help in improving the creativity of you and your staff? Creative ideas to help the differentiation with your toughest competitors.

All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new creative ideas.

When things are not what you want them to be, what’s most important is your next step.

Try. Learn. Improve. Repeat.

Are you devoting enough energy to improving your creativity, innovation, and ideas?

Do you have a lesson about making your creativity better you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add in the section below?

Mike Schoultz is the founder of Digital Spark Marketing, a digital marketing and customer service agency. With 40 years of business experience, he blogs on topics that relate to improving the performance of your business. Find him on Twitter, and LinkedIn.

Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way.

More reading on creativity from Digital Spark Marketing’s Library:

10 Different Ways to Enhance Creativity

Secrets to Understanding the Genie in the Creativity Bottle

How You Are Destroying your Creativity and Imagination

13 Motivators for Creating a Change and Adaptability Culture

Innovation culture?

Check out our thoughts on building innovation.

It’s also important to recognize that culture comes from the people—it is the people. Think about the individuals within your organization—what are their personalities like?

Who are they outside of work? What tickles their fancy? All of these things lend to the culture of your organization, and ultimately your products and services.

We live in a business world accelerating at a dizzying speed and teeming with ruthless competition. As most of the tangible advantages of the past have become commoditized, creativity has become the currency of success.

The truth is that the next big thing always starts out looking like nothing at all because it arrives out of context. Great innovations not only change the world, but the world also changes them and while that’s going on no one really knows how things will turn out.

A 2010 study of 1,500 CEOs indicated that leaders rank creativity as No. 1 leadership attribute needed for prosperity. It’s the one thing that can’t be outsourced; the one thing that’s the lifeblood of sustainable competitive advantage.

Unfortunately, most companies fail to unleash their most valuable resources: human creativity, imagination, and original thinking. They lack a systematic approach to building a culture of innovation and then wonder why they keep getting beaten to the punch.