October 29, 2014No Comments

Dishonesty: tap into your dark side to be more creative

"With great power comes great responsibility"

Voltaire or Uncle Ben (Spider-Man's uncle) - depending on your mood.

Dishonest people are very creative. Everyone can agree with that. We all know the examples: the con man coming up with lies to get money out of you, the crooked car salesman and his stories to get you to buy a lemon, fake letters from Nigeria and the sweet talk of the famed Brazilian "malandro" hiding his bad intentions.

Big examples in pop culture, like Kevin Spacey's character Keyser Söze in "The Usual Suspects" (1994) and Christian Bale's Irving in "American Hustle" (2014) drive home the same point – evil geniuses are very creative!

evil genius kevin spacey in The Usual Suspects

Kevin Spacey as an evil genius in the 1994 movie "The Usual Suspects"

But what if I flipped the order around and told you this:

Being dishonest can actually make you more creative.

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October 17, 20143 Comments

Explore the obscure birthplace of originality

originality vs obscurity

Once, when I was a young creative trying to make my way up in the ad world, a good friend of mine – also a creative – told me "the originality of your ideas depend on the obscurity of your sources". It sounded a bit douchy to me back then. It felt a bit like we should be stealing ideas left and right. As I matured as a creative, I realized more and more how much truth there was to that quote. It probably stemmed from one of Albert Einstein's most famous quotes (at least among creative circles):

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October 11, 20142 Comments

The formula for creativity involves the element of surprise

Creativity and surprise are closely related. Surprise comes from seeing something unexpected or experiencing something you've never come across before. Here's the surprise: we can say the same things about creativity – anything truly creative will surprise you.

Creativity will always have an element of surprise.

Comedians can really attest to it. I rank stand-up comedians really high on the creativity scale – they know how to take seemingly mundane situations and offer an unexpected point of view that surprises us. That's the punchline. But comedy is only one of the many facets of surprise.

The element of surprise helping comic creativity

The element of surprise helping comic creativity in a cartoon by Vic Lee

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October 2, 20142 Comments

How the new Apple headquarters will boost creativity

Apple, considered by many the most innovative company in the world, takes ideas seriously. More seriously than anyone else, probably. Apple's future headquarters is proof of that: it has been designed with creativity in mind.

applehq3

The building, described by Steve Jobs as "a shot at being the best office building in the world", has been conceived in such a way to incentivize the exchange of ideas among employees of different departments and divisions. Read more

September 26, 20145 Comments

If you forgot how to wonder, here’s how to do it

To be creative, we must marvel.

We must not allow ourselves to get used to the marvels of life, both small and great. When we wonder and marvel, we take in every aspect of the subject of our wonderment. Those things we take in, that's the very stuff ideas are made of. When we marvel we take in inspiration; we take in the puzzle pieces that will form the ideas we are still to come up with.

It's a pity that us humans can get used to just about anything. It makes life less interesting. There's a bit of Louis CK's stand-up comedy that illustrates well what I mean – it's definitely worth a couple of minutes:

 

In a brilliantly funny way he points out how we as a society just got used to amazing things. They don't even really amaze us anymore. It's part of human nature to take things for granted after we've had them for a while, but how can the things you don't notice inspire you, even if they're staring you in the face?

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September 20, 20141 Comment

Creative Technique: Chance Creativity

push for eureka
Chance can inspire great ideas. It's the proverbial "Eureka" moment. Most of the times, though, we don't have the luxury of waiting for chance to strike. The real world is full of deadlines and sometimes ideas need to come on demand. Wouldn't it be nice if we could somehow force random events to bring us ideas? I believe we can.

Chance creativity can be turned into an idea generation technique. It has worked for me many times. Here's how it works:

1. Remember the last time you've been somewhere you had never been before.

It can be anything: the last time you met someone new, or visited a new museum, or when you experienced a new part of town. You can also create a fresh new experience: go have lunch somewhere you've never been before. When we experience something new, we become more sensitive to the events around us. We can take advantage of that state and use those experiences as a starting point for creativity. Read more

September 13, 2014No Comments

Are Luck and Creativity one and the same?

In a previous article I wrote about the invention of Velcro and how the idea came to be. It touched on taking inspiration from nature's designs, but there's another side to that story I'd like to explore deeper now: the relationship between luck and creativity.

When George de Mestral – the inventor of velcro – noticed burrs stuck to his clothes, he did not dismiss the fact. Something that could be brushed aside as an insignificant event in his life ended up becoming the starting point of his legacy. Why did he not ignore the burrs, like most of us would have? Was it luck?

According to Dr. Richard Wiseman, "lucky folks – without even knowing it – think and behave in ways that create good fortune in their lives". Dr. Wiseman ran an 8-year-long experiment involving self-proclaimed lucky and unlucky people. As it turns out, only a small percentage of good or bad outcomes in our lives is a direct result of chance:

My research revealed that lucky people generate good fortune via four basic principles. They are skilled at creating and noticing chance opportunities, make lucky decisions by listening to their intuition, create self-fulfilling prophesies via positive expectations, and adopt a resilient attitude that transforms bad luck into good.

– Dr. Richard Wiseman

Dr. Richard Wiseman

A man of luck

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September 6, 2014No Comments

There’s no “i” in Creatvty

There's no "I" in creatvty

There's no reason to deny it: creation is a selfish act. We hear the stories about TV artists being a bit too touchy about criticism or the singer who throws a fit because things aren't exactly the way he wants. Anyone who's ever created something has felt at least a little bit like that. Doesn't matter if it's a company, a marketing plan or even a power-point presentation. When it's your idea, it's personal.

We know that great breakthroughs in creativity come from environments that allow creative people to exchange ideas. This is the whole basis of Steven Johnson's research – you can find out more about it in this great video or watch his TED talk. An ambient where ideas can be exchanged is a breeding ground for innovation and we definitely need to share our ideas with our peers in early stages to allow for cross-pollination and improvement. That's not the same as saying we should come up with ideas in groups. Read more

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