Before & After : Creative thinking in business

Look around you. Look at all the good ideas. All the good stuff. Products. Services. Art. Entertainment. Try to find great stuff.

Voltaire said, “Good is the enemy of great.”

When it comes to creative thinking in business, I believe the reason most people don’t come up with great ideas is because they come up with a good idea, and then they stop.

In all fields, we see too many people, even pretty creative people, stop at their first good idea too often. Is it because they are too busy? Too lazy? Their standard is too low?

Take advertising, the business where I made a living for 20 years as a player and the past dozen or so as a coach; by today’s standards, most work that was done 20, 30 years ago was pretty bad. Back when the average American was exposed to fewer than 1200 messages a day, the best advertising stood out, as much as anything, because most of the work was not very good.

Today, the average work that appears in the media is much better. I’ll even say it’s good. But what good is good? When the average American is exposed to over 3,000 messages, how many are making an impact? Even if you say 10% (which I think is a high estimate at 300), still 90% of the work is invisible or forgettable.

“But it’s pretty good!” you might protest. And I say, “it doesn’t matter. If it isn’t great, it’s not worth much in the ad sweepstakes.”

Good is seductive. Good is too often good enough to feel like you’re finished thinking, but not good enough to win big in the marketplace. (more…)

In an interview with Kid Rock he was asked if he had ever dreamed he would make it as big as he has. His answer? “Every bleeping day.”

In the same program it showed the dingy underground recording space, Whiterooms Studios, where he worked as a janitor in trade for session time and a place to crash. Where he dreamed “every bleeping day.”

This was after he had struggled mightily, releasing records from his own basement studio, after he had suffered a number of career disappointments and all out setbacks, like being dropped by major label Jive Records. The times when he could only dream of making it big, “every bleeping day.”

Kid Rock’s undefined-genre of rap, country and rock simply didn’t make sense to the mainstream music community, and many in the so-called open-minded indie world.

But “every bleeping day” he dreamed. “Every bleeping day.”

What more do you need to know about succeeding? Vision. Sacrifice. Hard work.

A guarantee? No. But probably as simple and as focused a formula as there is; whether in business, science, medicine or in a yet-to-exist music category where success was ultimately achieved by an I’ll-wash-toilets-if-I-have-to kid who dreamed “every bleeping day.” Kid Rock.

I find the above statement both absurd and undeniable at the same time.

I mean, how can creative genius actually rub off on an individual? So, any idiot hangs around with da Vinci and he gets brilliant? Yeah, right. And if I spend enough time with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar I’ll get taller, too.

But wait a minute. I’m a working-class kid growing up in a small industrial city. I can hang around with the wrong guys on the corner and probably wind up in jail before my 20th birthday. Or, I can hang around with these other guys with leather jackets, only they have guitars, too, and, if my name is George Harrison, I can grow up to be a creative genius.

Yes, this is hypothetical. But, hey, it’s fun to speculate sometimes. (more…)

Have you ever gotten an idea that could improve lives, drive a company, shift a market, even make billions, and then forgotten it entirely?

How do you know?

Ever get just a fragment of an idea that could have led to any of the above? Again, if you don’t recall, how do you know?

As much as I believe in the “blink!” theory, and try to practice it whenever I can, I also know that often that moment of creative truth comes after much mulling and ruminating and prodding and cultivating of a previously processed observation or insight.

Sometimes the creative process is just that, a process. And, as with any process, if you leave something out, like a pivotal idea in the thought chain, well, the entire process could be derailed.

There is a simple way to insure against some of this creative waste. (more…)

People often think there’s a lot of mystery around creativity. Great ideas only happen when the stars are in alignment. There are only so many truly great ideas. Only the chosen few are creative. Bunk. Bunk. And bunk.

There are a chosen few, all right. And I think they are the ones perpetuating these myths.

There is a great deal of method to the madness in the world of creativity. Oh, it will never be entirely exact. I mean, we are talking about the human imagination here, right? But there are some parts of the creative process that are actually very exact - quantifiable even.

One of those things is the law of large numbers, or simply put; more is more.

“You mean if I come up with more ideas I’ll have more ideas?”

Exactly.

“Will they all be great ideas?”

Let’s keep talking. (more…)

I now understand the reason for Rudy Giuliani’s snazzy hair style. You can’t have vision with hair in your eyes.

I’ve often equated vision with imagination. So, I guess we now know the secret to extraordinary creativeness.

The former New York City Mayor was stumping in my city over the weekend. The gist of his remarks, if I trust my local newspaper, was vision.

According to the Providence Journal, “Leadership, (says) Giuliani, who wrote a book by that title, has two ingredients: a vision, and the ability to execute that vision.

If you’re all vision and no execution, you’re a philosopher, (Giuliani continued,…) Are you all execution and no vision? Then, he suggested, you should work for somebody with vision.” (He wasn’t recruiting campaign drones, was he?)

I don’t care about your political leanings, only the first two paragraphs into this article and there’s a lot of wisdom for those of us always trying to hone our creative edge.

(more…)

One of the best gifts I got this Christmas is Twyla Tharp’s “The Creative Habit.”

Like most good self-development books, the premise is very simple and speaks to a universal truth: you want to create more, create more often. Like, everyday.

Of course, most of us know this. But do we practice it? I mean do we really practice it?

For Twyla Tharp the daily canvas is her “white room,” as she calls the dance studio where she starts every creative project; alone, only accompanied by the potential of a great dance. What’s your canvas? Are you working at it daily to stay sharp? (more…)

There’s a segment in Andy Dick’s Bush speechwriter parody right after he pinpoints topics (by throwing darts at stickies with words on them - war, taxes, muffin, etc.) “…then I sleep on them….” he says.

And at that he has the stickies scattered across his bed, then jumps on them in his Uncle Sam boxers, “…and I see what sticks…” only to awake in the morning with Post-its stuck all over his body. Bingo. A speech.

It’s a pretty funny segment in an uproariously funny video. The only part that’s not so funny is that most people aren’t this smart when they approach idea generation or problem solving.

The most prolific idea person in America totally believed in “sleeping on it.” And it led to thousands and thousands of ideas, 1042 of them patent-worthy. (more…)

I love hearing about the thinking behind creative endeavors. I get a real charge out of watching the “making of “ bonus scenes on movie DVDs, sometimes more than the film itself. I eat up the stories behind breakthrough moments in the development of new products or entire technologies. I totally dig the “Behind the Music” shows on VH1. These glimpses into the creative process can be so revealing.”

Do you have any favorite magical creative moments? I’d love to hear them. Here are a few of mine. (more…)

You don’t always have to create. Sometimes you can just recognize the potential for a great idea in something that already exists.

I believe you can divide the creative process into two fundamental methods, if you will; active and passive creativity. Active: consciously looking for new ideas. And, passive: simply being open to new ideas.

When you look at creativity with this in mind you might see a surprisingly large portion of fresh ideas emerge in this latter, more receptive manner. And one of my favorite categories of creative exploration that demonstrates this quite frequently is song writing. (more…)