Innovative Brain Food from New & Improved

Doodle for Innovation: How to Draw Out New Ideas with an Incubation Break

We've talked about how to deliberately train people to think creatively, but where do new ideas come from?  Graham Wallas answered that question in 1926 with his useful articulation of four stages of the process by which creativity emerges:

1) Preparation -- focusing on the challenge, gathering data, and articulating the nature of what requires creative effort

2) Incubation -- "walking away" from the problem and doing something else

3) Illumination -- the "aha" or "Eureka" or "satori" moment when the idea jumps into your mind

4) Verification -- thinking through the solution to ensure that it makes sense, and then testing it.

It's that second stage in which we often forget to engage deliberately, especially when we're under pressure.  There are many strategies for doing this including: taking a walk, getting a cup of coffee, engaging in another task, taking a shower, intentionally shifting to another project, talking to a friend/associate, taking a nap, or engaging in a any other energizing task.

Here's a quick energizing task with a key message that's entertaining and creative to boot: draw a stickman!  (thanks to Marci Segal for sharing this link!)

What else do you do to encourage new ideas to burst forth in your innovative brain?

Creative Thinking in-the-Box

Have you ever noticed when you start talking with people about real change in your workplace that you often hear comments like these;” We don’t have time to change this!” “They will never give us the resources for that!” “They won’t approve that kind of idea.” “They never listen to us.” “We can’t do that here.” Sound familiar?

These are situations when what is needed is some “In-the-Box Creativity.”  The commenters believe they are in the box with limitations or constraints. Something or someone is blocking them from getting what they want – their goal.

When something blocks us like this we generally think of three actions we can take. We can give up and walk away from our goal. We can pretend the constraint isn’t there and live in denial. Or we can try to fight the constraint and act as if we can succeed in spite of it.

If this is a real constraint none of these strategies result in the desired outcome. What can work is to figure out what aspect of the constraint is real, cannot be changed and instead fully embrace it. Yes, fully accept it as something that must be included as a central part of achieving your goal! If that is the given reality what can you do to innovate within that context? How might you use the constraint as a springboard for a new solution?

For example: the Wright Brothers are famous for being the first in human flight – 1904 Kitty Hawk, NC. (Technically they were credited with the first controlled, powered and sustained heavier-than-air human flight, but we digress).This was an amazing feat in itself but the back story is even more amazing. Given the resources and capabilities of the competitors working to be the first to fly an airplane Orville and Wilbur Wright would be the last team you would expect to win.

The brothers both had full time jobs in their bike shop; manned flight was their hobby. They had no significant financial supporters and no formal training. At the same time there were several well financed groups of “experts” who had been working on this challenge for years before the Wright Brothers even got started.

So how did the Wright Brothers embrace their limitations and succeed? After building a few full size planes that failed they realized they couldn’t afford to keep experimenting like that – they lacked the time and the money. So they invented and built a wind tunnel in their bike shop from scrap wood and other odds and ends. The wind tunnel allowed them to try out hundreds of small-scale prototypes until they hit upon the right design elements for human flight before any of the others.  The other groups were building and testing one full size plane at a time.

Another recent example: at a creativity conference, Mindcamp, a young street artist, Sid Marquez, was creating large graphic art pieces on stretched translucent plastic on the lawn outside of one of the buildings.  As the pieces evolved Sid thought it would great if they could be illuminated at night. The conference staff purchased several outdoor lights for his use. When the lights arrived the cords were too short to light the pieces from the front as intended. But he found they were just long enough to light the art pieces from the back. The effect was fantastic, like stain glass in a cathedral with the sun pouring in. And thus was created the first rear lit street art. By taking advantage of this limitation he came up with an even better solution.

As you think about your own life experiences what stories can you remember where you’ve successfully innovated because you transferred a constraint into an opportunity. We’d love to hear any of those kinds of examples you would be willing to share with us.

So, as you think about a current challenge how might you embrace what you see as in your way to innovation? How to engage in in-the-box creativity? One great place to begin is to actively energize your curiosity. Check out our newsletter article: Energizing Curiosity in Your Innovative Brain for more on this.

The Creativity Bias factor: Why you and your organization might be unconsciously killing creativity

 
In 2010, an IBM global study found that top CEOS ranked creativity as the number #1 leadership skill they needed for their people and organizations to thrive. Yet while most people and organizations say that they want creative ideas, recent research shows that many people actually behave just the opposite – rejecting creative ideas almost instinctively. The reason: uncertainty.

In a soon to be published paper, Jennifer Mueller, Shimul Melwani and Jack Goncalo, report their findings on two creativity experiments held at the University of Pennsylvania with more than 210 participants.

The study found that:

• Creative ideas are by their very nature novel and the more novel an idea, the more likely the idea will evoke uncertainty in people.
• To reduce this sense of uncertainty, many people tend to pick practical ideas over creative ones.
• When people are uncertain, they have an implicit bias against creativity in favor of practicality. They find it easier to subconsciously reject creative ideas than to deal with their continued uncertainty.
• Most people aren’t even aware of this creativity bias.

According to the authors, “our results show that regardless of how open minded people are, when they feel motivated to reduce uncertainty either because they have an immediate goal of reducing uncertainty, or feel uncertain generally, this may bring negative associations with creativity to mind which result in lower evaluations of a creative idea.” In another words, the more uncertain the person is, the more likely they are to reject creative ideas.

In fact, in one of the experiments conducted, subjects who were experiencing a high level of uncertainty were shown an idea that had been previously evaluated by a control group (who were not experiencing uncertainty) as highly creative, novel and practical. These subjects had a very negative response to the idea of a nanotechnology shoe that could adjust the thickness of the fabric to cool feet and reduce blisters.

The authors conclude, “the field of creativity may need to shift from identifying how to generate more creative ideas to helping organizations recognize and accept creativity.”

Leaders take note. If creativity is really the number #1 leadership skill, how might you help your people recognize and tolerate uncertainty? After all, the answer to this question may help your people generate and keep creative ideas alive.

For more in depth information download the full IBM study or a pdf of Creativity: Why People Desire but Reject Creative Ideas.

The Coming Innovation Backlash

 
On a long interstate drive yesterday, we saw innovation everywhere. Not the real kind, but rather the brag kind. We drove past a truck from the trucking line “Innovative Logistics Group” transporting who knows what, and we’re sure they were doing it well... But innovatively? A short time later, another truck line, “InovaTrans” was pulling its cargo quite well too. A quick Google search turns up “Innovative Transport Solutions” near Minneapolis, an “Innovative Trucking” in Houston, and even an “Innovative Collision & Accessories” in Texas. The Innovative trucking lines must all go there for their repairs. Now don’t get us wrong here. These are all fine businesses with happy customers, or they wouldn’t exist. But it is a sign of the time, and a cause for worry.

And then, driving into Chicago, we passed a billboard reminding us that it was important to innovate. We blew by it too fast for me to catch who was cajoling us.

We’re reminded of the companies in the 1950’s who used the word “Acme” somewhere in their name. (Acme: The Pinnacle, the top...)

There will come a time of accountability for such brags. When even the cajoler will need to know exactly what they are asking for. Here is our worry: The word innovation will become meaningless mush, or worse yet, a cartoon characterization like “Acme” in Road Runner. Perhaps we’re even contributing to that with our Gnu & Improv Ed cartoon.

We are seeing Boards of Directors beginning to hold their CEO’s accountable to building a culture of innovation that is real. We see analysts make long term investment decisions based upon a mature understanding of what drives innovation. At the same time we are seeing a real differentiation beginning to occur in commerce: Those who are serious about innovation, and those who use the word as marketing. Only the former will prevail. Look closely at the truck in the photo. Which way is it going? The German text asks “Are you going the wrong way?” It’s a good question.