Laughter Leads to Insight - Insight to Innovation - Innovation to Profit

We often say that we "Take our work seriously, but we don't take ourselves seriously."

A short article in the May/June Scientific American Mind written by Elizabeth King Humphrey points to research that backs up our sense that such a frame of mind lends support to our creative problem solving efforts.

Here's a synopsis of the research: Use the challenge of finding a relationship between three seemingly unrelated words as your "test". Show some folks a scary or technical video, and others a funny video (specifically in this case, some Robin Williams stuff). You might guess who did better on the puzzles. Three words:Connections, Laughter, Creates.

Get into some of the deeper science here and here.

Creative thinking, at its very essence, is the connecting of previously unconnected thoughts, which is a big part of how humor works too. Creative thinking can (if it leaves your mind and enters the world in some way) lead to Creativity which can (if you find a way to garner value from that creative thinking) lead to innovation. Every time we lead a creative problem solving session where the client wants to really go for innovation, we bring in trained brains, the best of which are also pretty laughter filled funny folks. This is why there has been a conference focused on Humor and Creativitysince the latte 70's. (Yes, that was originally a typo, but caffeine can help a bit too, so we decided to offer up a latte with the article. Enjoy. Don't burn your tongue)

There is an area of the brain, the Anterior Cingulate Cortex, (ACC) which seems to get active just before breakthroughs in thinking occur. Humor gets it active on an fMRI, and the thinking is that getting this area "warmed up" increases our ability to create well.

So, laugh your way to profitability today. :-)

Comments

[Alan]

this gives the cliche "laugh your way to the bank" a new valid meaning then?