Innovative Brain Food from New & Improved

Story of a 50 year old boy

From clay toys to cartoons to innovative gadgets

Have you ever wondered if you're hindering your children’s creativity when all you intended to do was just the opposite? Meet Irfan Sayar and his legendary cartoon character Porof Zihni Sinir. Ifran started making clay toys when there was nothing else to do. Then he found the power of humor and started making cartoons. Today he is producing all kinds of innovative gadgets originating from these cartoons. He's also providing an enabling environment for children to put their creativity to use.

When I was young, children didn’t have many toys in Turkey. Those lucky enough to have some relatives living abroad would have the best toys. However, I remember spending hours with my friends in a room with either no or very few toys, but we would still have a great time. We would make horses out of brooms, helmets out of salad bowls, houses & cars out of boxes and wires. We would literally make our own toys. Now, I realize how this naturally nurtured our creativity. We would SCAMPER all the time. For those of you unfamiliar with the term SCAMPER, it’s a question checklist that jumpstarts idea generation by asking what you can Substitute, Combine, Adapt, Magnify or Minimize, Put to other uses, Eliminate and Reverse or Rearrange whatever you have at hand.

Today we want to introduce you to Irfan Sayar, father of a million crazy creations/innovations. Being the son of a farmer, he says he had no toys when he went to the village so he started making his own out of clay. This became such a passion for him that afterwards he never took the same joy from manufactured toys and always made his own. He started his career as a cartoonist and then started turning his cartoons into real gadgets. He has a famous cartoon character called Porof Zihni Sinir who is a very practical, curious and obviously humorous imaginary professor. Today when somebody really comes out with a very novel and weird idea in Turkey, it’s called a Zihni Sinir project.

I am a big fan of Porof Zihni Sinir who in reality is Irfan Sayar, his creator. First of all he's a great observer and is always attempting to find creative solutions to everyday problems. These problems are mostly a part of Turkish daily life. We accept them as a part of our DNA. We complain about them all the time, but never think about how we can solve them. They are like the organizational difficulties that we’re all used to just living with. Porof Zihni Sinir points out to these cultural dysfunctionalties and then offers crazy solutions. Turkey is a very proud nation and we don’t like people making fun of us, but when one of us does it in such a clever and funny way, we make that person our hero.

Here is a quick look at some of Porof Zihni Sinir Projects:

What kills creative ideas?

An alligator's reaction to newness in its environment is to eat it, attack it, or run from it.  Humans, like alligators and other reptiles, have a brain stem, the part of the brain that controls the fight/flight reaction.  At New & Improved, we refer to the brain stem as the "gator brain."  Reacting to newness or new ideas from the gator brain is a sure way to kill creativity in yourself and others around you.  Humans are so quick to disregard new ideas that don't fit their conventional ways of thinking.  If an idea does not fit what we know, our "gator brains" throw it away.  We train people to shift from their "gator brain" to their neo-cortex where we can shape novelty into something useful.

There is some new research that shows that there is something else that kills creative ideas--a bias against novelty.  In an article by Mary Catt, titled "People are biased against creative ideas, studies find",  she reports findings from a research study, “The Bias Against Creativity: Why People Desire But Reject Creative Ideas” (Goncalo, Mueller, Melwani) that will be published in a future issue of Psychological Science. The studies findings include:

• Creative ideas are by definition novel, and novelty can trigger feelings of uncertainty that make most people uncomfortable.
• People dismiss creative ideas in favor of ideas that are purely practical--tried and true.
• Objective evidence shoring up the validity of a creative proposal does not motivate people to accept it.
• Anti-creativity bias is so subtle that people are unaware of it, which can interfere with their ability to recognize a creative idea.

According to Goncalo, one of the researchers, "Revealing the existence and nature of a bias against creativity can explain why people might reject creative ideas and stifle scientific advancements, even in the face of strong intentions to the contrary. . .The field of creativity may need to shift its current focus from identifying how to generate more creative ideas to identify how to help innovative institutions recognize and accept creativity.

So, it seems that individually, we need to learn to tame our "gator brains" and organizationally, we need to learn to create a climate that is more conducive to creativity and innovation.

POINt to Change the Energy

As facilitators we often talk about the energy in the room, and we ask questions like:

• How might we change the energy?
• How to increase the energy?
• In what ways might we use the energy in the room?
• What might be all the ways to keep the energy positive?

We were working with a Pension Fund advisor recently, with its institutional real estate investment team: a group responsible for buying real estate property for pension funds.  We were debriefing the first day of their annual strategy meeting using POINt, a debriefing and feedback technique the team had just learned.

Steve Jobs is Dead. What's NeXT?

 The budget office bought me a Macintosh computer to cut what they viewed as exorbitant costs for the typography services I was purchasing for the agency's public documents. It was 1984, shortly after the famous Superbowl ad depicting the unnamed heroine smashing "Big Brother", saving humanity from conformity. I was furious. I was passionate about "real typesetting" having apprenticed with a graphic designer who was a master typographer. After a few weeks using the Mac I changed my tune. The flexibility to change type on the fly transformed how I approached design, the time from idea to execution evaporated.

Over the next few years I was able to purchase Macs for my entire department's staff. Strung together through AppleTalk and connected to the organization's PRIME mainframe system we produced astounding results. Our reports and presentations were ahead of schedule, contained the most recent data, and were visually elegant. This from a state juvenile justice agency!

I had heard of Steve Jobs during that time but didn't pay much attention. But by the time he was ousted from Apple and started NeXT I was ready to embrace his next offer, a different computer design, a sleek black box workstation that again changed the game and continuing his vision of integrating beauty and functionality without compromise. While the NeXT computer was a retail failure it provided the foundational thinking for the next wave of Macintosh operating systems when Jobs returned to lead Apple the second time. And my experience went on like that.  One beautiful functional tool after another from the inside out including the packaging, marketing, selling process, and Apple store experience.

With his recent death it has me wondering how his main characteristics as an innovation leader match those we at New & Improved belief are essential. What do you think?

• Passionate - he sure was that about what he cared about.
• Integrity - seems so.
• Tenacity - off the charts!
• Curiosity - about all kinds of things.
• Courage - took lots of what turns out to have been smart risks in the long run.
• Humility - after his first fall from the Apple tree, he got some.

I re-listened today to his 2005 Stanford Commencement Speech where he tells his life story and encourages the graduates to follow the guidance on the back cover of Steward Brant's Whole Earth Catalog: "stay hungry, stay foolish". I believe this provocation from the 70's remains on target to inspire innovation leaders today. Jobs ends his speech with "don't let the noise of others opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition." Another way of expressing what we at New & Improved belief are essential attributes for innovation leaders.

His death has me asking myself , What do I want to be remembered for? What do I wish my legacy to be?

So we ask you - have you considered yet what you want to be remembered for?

The Difference Between Mistakes and Chronic Stupidity

First test passed. A good sign. We know it’s hard work to make time for new learning these days. But you’re choosing to do so. Keep it up.

We’ve often pointed to the research telling us that creativity flourishes in an environment where it’s OK to make well intentioned “misteaks” New neurological research, published in the prestigious journal Wired ignites some interesting sparks in this particular area. (Yes, we know Wired is not a scientific journal, but it makes good science easily understandable in this case, might be a great way of widening your reading range, and is accurately describing some research soon to be published in Psychological Science).

Here’s the insight: There are a number of different neuro-electrical responses to mistakes, which can be measured, can be potentiated, brought into some degree of voluntary control and which are predictive of productive learning from mistakes.

Two measurable (yet variable) responses occur immediately after a mistake. First, (on an Electroencephalogram -EEG) we can see a signal called Error Related Negativity (ERN) , which is mostly involuntary and arrives about 50 milliseconds after a conscious recognition of some failure in your self-expectation.  Following quickly is a signal known as Error Positivity (Pe) in about the 100-500 millisecond range. More intensive ERN signals, and longer, steadier Pe signals correlate with better learning. Better improvement. More growth in wisdom.

And you can consciously attend to strengthening both in a way that serves your future.

It seems the variable that is within our control is something researcher Carol Dweck (Who has had a significant impact on the lives of the partners and families at New & Improved... read on...) called “The Growth Mindset.” This mindset is characterized by a desire to grow and learn from mistakes, coupled with a belief that this is possible. Dweck found that if a person believed that they were capable of learning, capable of working hard at solving problems, they learned more rapidly than if they thought they were just smart. Once again, humility creates the basis for success, and is followed by the curiosity that sets us up for great learning. The Kids in her research, all of whom solved a problem, did better in the future when they were told “You must have worked really hard at this”, rather than “You must be smart at this”.

Carol gave these kids a choice of an additional test after their first success with two options: an easy one or a more challenging one. The “hard working” kids consistently chose the harder one, and learned more because of it. By the third round, the “hard workers” were up 30% in their scores from baseline, while the “smart ones” were down 20%.

We ran in the same circles as Carol when she was doing her original research, and it’s why those of us at New & Improved who are helping raise children never tell them they're smart. We point out that they're great learners. After almost 20 years of using this strategy with the kids we’ve all helped raise, and still working with kids who have not been raised this way, the impact is evident.

If you’ve been reading this, you’re a “good learner” too. You do work hard to feed your creative brain! Keep it up. And have a cookie. You deserve it.

Tell Your Boss: Daydreaming Is Important for Creativity

In a recent column in Wired, Jonah Lehrer shares the results of some research reported in Science magazine that demonstrates that people who daydream the "right" way (called "mind-wandering," more on which later), score higher on tests of creativity.

This, of course, flies in the face of what we've been taught to believe by parents, teachers, managers, and anyone else who has caught us thinking about something other than what we're "supposed to" be paying attention to.  As Lehrer says, "When people are immersed in monotony, they automatically lapse into a very special form of brain activity: mind-wandering. In a culture obsessed with efficiency, mind-wandering is often derided as a lazy habit, the kind of thinking we rely on when we don’t really want to think. It’s a sign of procrastination, not productivity."

"Mind-wandering" describes the daydreaming that correlates with creativity.  And it refers to the simultaneous activation of the "executive function" and the "default network," or the part that's doing the non-focused wandering. This suggests that what's really happening is that the two supposedly opposing parts of the brain are actually working together in a very special -- and useful -- way, with the executive function monitoring the daydream to see if there's anything useful showing up, such as a big new idea.

It's important to note that this is not the brain just "shutting down," and in fact, mind-wandering is a metabolically intense process -- lots of energy is consumed. 

Want to get the most value from your energy use?

In one of the studies quoted, researchers at UCSB found that the people who were NOT aware of their mind-wandering don't exhibit increased creativity.  So to make it productive, we advocate the practice of "focused concentration," more of which is described here.  Being aware of the mind-wandering is the distinctive skill which makes it useful, rather than just a lazy waste of time and energy.

An interesting side note in the article is the result of a study that, using an iPhone app, found that people were mind-wandering at least half of the time, which to me seems a bit low, but then maybe that has more to do with my facilitation/training style? Hopefully, I'm kidding.  Can you guess the only time they were fully concentrating? Not when my colleagues are training, but rather while engaged in love-making.

So what can you do to prompt more useful mind-wandering? Well you could avoid having sex, but that's not what we're advocating here.  Instead, try the following:

•  Put away the smartphone when you're sitting around with nothing to do (e.g. on the train/bus, in an airport, waiting for someone, at lunch, etc.). 
• Consider doing some of your workouts without your iPod (when I exercise outside, I don't use the iPod, but when trapped in the gym, I frequently do). 
• Turn off the TV when you're making dinner. 
• Avoid the radio for a period of time when you're in your car (one of our partners will sometimes deliberately drive to client engagements that are far away because it allows for lots of new ideas, some of which are quite good!).

In what other practices do you engage in order to induce productive mind-wandering?

POINt: Why it's a great tool if you want to be a creative leader

Imagine you are teaching a child to ride a bicycle. You make sure his helmet, elbow and knee pads are on correctly. You help him onto the bike and give him a gentle push and he peddles away for the first time.

Fifteen seconds later, the bike starts to wobble and the child falls off the bike. You catch up to him in a few seconds. He is unharmed and is looking up at you, waiting for you to give him feedback.

Would you say something like? “I can't believe you fell off. You made a mistake. You’ll never learn to ride a bicycle!”

Of course you wouldn’t.

You’d probably focus on what worked and give a suggestion for improving. Maybe you’d say something like “Way to go. You rode the bike for 15 seconds. Try again and this time try to hold the handle bars straighter.”

Now, why is this second approach much more useful to a child? Because it encourages him to continue to do what's working and tweak what’s not.

And here’s the thing, this same principle applies to the people you are leading in your organization. If you want more creative thinking from them, give them feedback in a way that supports them.

And one of the best feedback tools you can use as a creative leader is POINt.

What is POINt?

POINt is a creative thinking tool that is especially effective for giving people feedback in a way that encourages creative thinking. It is a simple structure that is easy to use.

Each letter in the name of tool has a meaning:

• The first P stands for Pluses – what's good about the idea?
• The second O stands for Opportunities – if the idea succeeds, what positives might result?
• The I stands for Issues - phrased as an open ended question that starts with How to...
• The Nt stands for New thinking – brainstorm ideas for overcoming your issues.

When you, as a creative leader, want to give someone feedback on a new idea or on an ongoing project use POINt. Here’s an example of how to use it.