Looking for Something New in Creativity?

What I lack in natural writing talent I make up for in experiences. Over the years, I have worked in a number of different businesses and business cultures. that led to something new in creativity. I also read widely and have worked with some really talented and smart people. That gives me a lot of raw material to work with.

Scott Barry Kaufman and Carolyn Gregoire find the same thing in their new book, Wired to Create. “Openness to experience, one of the “Big Five” personality traits, is absolutely essential to creativity,” they write. “Openness to experience comes in many forms, from a love of solving complex problems in math, science and technology to a voracious love of learning, to an inclination to ask big questions and seek a deeper meaning in life.”

So one simple way to improve your creativity is to simply try to get more out of life. Seek out things, people and places that you wouldn’t usually encounter in your ordinary routine. Truly great creativity comes from synthesizing across domains, not just drilling down in one single area.

Many people assume that there is an inverse relationship between quantity and quality and, logically speaking, it would make sense to focus on fewer projects rather than to spread your energy over many. It would seem that would allow you more time to concentrate on the work most likely to make an impact.

However, creativity researchers have consistently found just the opposite. The more work you produce the more likely you are to come up with something truly creative. Part of that is probably just the numbers game. A masterwork is a low probability event, so those who produce more increase their odds.

Yet there is also another factor at work. The more you produce, the more skilled you become and the more you can experiment with different combinations. Those experiments invariably lead you to see more possibilities and try them out. So producing a lot will help you see things that others don’t and increase your ability to pursue new possibilities.

The truth is that creativity is hard work. There are no silver bullets. The only way to create successfully is to get your ideas out there, find the flaws and get to work fixing them.

Einstein once said that “If I had 20 days to solve a problem, I would take 19 days to define it.” It’s important to build in constraints that will frame a possible solution and, as Robert Weisberg points out in his book Creativity, brainstorming often fails for exactly this reason.

The evidence on this point couldn’t be clearer. Successful creative people spend years learning their fields before they begin to change them. So if you want to create something truly new and different, your best bet is to start by learning your field extremely well.

As I’ve written before, breakthrough innovation happens when ideas are synthesized from more than one domain. Pick any important discovery, whether it is Darwin and natural selection, Picasso and cubism, Einstein and relativity and invariably they used concepts from two or more fields.

Remember, creative geniuses tend to be less the ones with the quickest answers and more the ones who keep working till they get it right.

Learning Creativity, Change, and Our Education System

Have you ever done any reading about learning creativity or ways to improve our educational system?

Unless you walk out into the unknown, the odds of making a profound difference are pretty low.

– Tom Peters

One of the outside interests of this agency is learning creativity. We want to start this article with a very creative 3-minute video done by a young student. His subject? The need for change in our education system.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KwYSMwrAczo

We are ones that believe that not enough is being done to increase the learning of creativity in our schools. So, therefore, we like to read and engage in discussions on ideas on learning reform and creativity in our schools.

Change and learning creativity.

Banks used to open and operate between 10 and 3. Now, who can bank between 10 and 3? The unemployed. They don’t need banks. They got no money in the banks.

Who created that business model? And it went on for decades. You know why? Because the banks didn’t care. It wasn’t about the customers. It was about banks. They created something that worked for them. How could you go to the bank when you were at work?

It didn’t matter. And they don’t care whether or not a customer was upset he couldn’t go to the bank. Go find another bank. Yes and they all operate the same way, eh?

Now, one day, some crazy banker had an idea. Maybe they should keep the bank open when people come home from work. They might like that. What about a Saturday? What about introducing new technology?

And so technology can contribute to change. Things can change. Yet not in education. Not even with the introduction of technology. Why?

Poor kids lose ground in the summertime. The system decides you can’t run schools in the summer. Why?

You know, I always wonder, who makes up these rules? Did we ever do it? Well, it just turns out in the 1840s we did have, schools that were open all year. They were open all year because we had a lot of folks who had to work all day. They didn’t have any place for their kids to go. It was a perfect place to have year-round schools. So this is not something that is ordained from the education gods.

So why don’t we?

Educators and those who want to contribute, there’s some stuff we can do. And we’ve got to do better. We have to start with kids earlier, we have to make sure that we provide support to young people. We have got to try new things much more often. We’ve got to be creative and we have to let the students be creative to learn creativity. We’ve got to give them all of these opportunities.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0pZE8WW_Ro&feature=youtu.be

Today’s reformers seem unable or unwilling to grasp the instructional implications of those differences and that complexity. They treat kids as a given, undifferentiated except by grade level, with the core curriculum the lone operative variable.

It’s dumping creativity on the street.

So here is the thing. Our students recognize the problem. Why can’t education leaders?

Remember … we can truly understand facts about learning only in contrast to other facts.

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6 Lessons the Lego Brand Teaches About Branding a Business

Why are brand stories and brand messages so important? Simply because they are the representation of all your business’ messages and images … all representing opportunities to draw customers into your brand’s world. They represent your ability to influence how people see you, feel about you, and talk to others about you. The words and images you use, then, should reflect who you are, what makes you distinctive, and the brand values you want to represent to all your stakeholder communities. This is a blog what the Lego brand can teach you from its brand values.

The Lego brand is a creative leader.

Check out our thoughts on creative marketing.

The front line of any brand in the marketplace is not the advertising, packaging, or product design. It is the interaction that the customer experiences that determine the brand’s reputation to a large degree.

It is human and emotion, and at that critical time when a customer engages with one of your employees or someone in your channel or even one of your products, your brand will either be enhanced or diminished.

I am a big fan of the Lego Company and its products. The LEGO brand is more than simply a familiar logo. It is the expectations that people have of the company towards its products and services, and the accountability that the LEGO Group feels towards the world around it.

The LEGO Brand values, as they define them for their customers:

Imagination

Curiosity asks, “Why?” and imagines explanations or possibilities (if… then). Playfulness asks what if? and imagines how the ordinary becomes extraordinary, fantasy or fiction. Dreaming it is a first step towards doing it.

Free play is how children develop their imagination – the foundation for creativity

Creativity

Creativity is the ability to come up with ideas and things that are new, surprising and valuable. Systematic creativity is a particular form of creativity that combines logic and reasoning with playfulness and imagination.

Having fun with Lego.

Fun

Fun is the happiness we experience when we are fully engaged in something that requires mastery (hard fun) when our abilities are in balance with the challenge at hand and we are making progress towards a goal. Fun is both in the process and in the completion.

Fun is being active together, the thrill of an adventure, the joyful enthusiasm of children and the delight in surprising both yourself and others in what you can do or create.

Learning

Learning is about opportunities to experiment, improvise and discover – expanding our thinking and doing, helping Lego see and appreciate multiple perspectives.

Caring

Caring is about the desire to make a positive difference in the lives of children, for our partners, colleagues and the world we find ourselves in, and considering their perspective in everything we do.

Going the extra mile for other people, not because we have to – but because it feels right and because we care.

Caring is about humility – not thinking less of ourselves, but thinking of ourselves less.

Lego and quality.

Quality

For us quality means the challenge of continuous improvement to be the best toy, the best for children and their development and the best for our community and partners.

Lego certainly creates a great brand image, don’t they?

When you tell your creative branding story for your business, the Lego Brand experience teaches us to create a distinctive voice with unique words, feelings, emotion, and images … dare to create differences with your communities.

Please share a creative branding message and/or story with this community.

Need some help in capturing more customers from your branding design strategies? Such as creative branding ideas to help the differentiation with potential customers?

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 fight 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 to improving your continuous learning for yourself and your team?

Do you have a lesson about making your brand marketing 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 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 at how reasonable we will be.