Creativity within reach, part #1 – Freshness

By hanne | Published: October 9, 2010

Freshness is all about how you search for stimulus and fill your mind with freshness so you can break out of conventional thinking in order to generate truly unique ideas.

Freshness is something Stimulators are naturally good at. Fresh inputs and unique perspectives are some of the things they bring to the creative table. Freshness is not something Stimulators try to do, instead it is something they are and in fact, cannot help but being.

In case you’re not a Stimulator yourself, and the success of the project you’re working on depends on generating truly radical ideas, make sure you’ve got a bunch of Stimulators who can help you.

If that’s not possible, then there are always a number of things you can do to add freshness to yourself and your stimulus cupboard. ?What If! talk about ‘river jumping’ and have created four neat little tools:

• Re-expression (finding alternative ways of describing something)
• Related worlds (looking at different areas where a similar issue has already been solved)
• Revolution (breaking assumptions and perceived rules)
• Random links (making completely random connections)

Re-expression is something Sculptors love. So if you’re a Sculptor and need to be more of a Stimulator, then this one might be for you!

Random links on the other hand, is a Spotter-friendly tool. So if you’re a Spotter and you need to generate truly fresh ideas, try this one.

Related worlds and Revolution are both tools that appeal across the board – so keep them handy in your tool box regardless of the shape of your Creative ID.

You’ll find everything you need to know about these techniques in Sticky Wisdom – How to start a creative revolution at work.

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Creativity within reach

By hanne | Published: October 8, 2010

People often ask us: “So how does the 5 Creative Creatures behaviours compare to other creative tools?”

Most frequently mentioned are Edward de Bono’s Thinking Hats, IDEO’s Ten Faces of Innovation and the ?What If! creative behaviours.

Because the Creative ID is based on your preferred creative style, by simply knowing your creative strengths, you will be better able to leverage some of the learnings shared by de Bono, IDEO and ?What If!.

As such, the five fundamental creative behaviours (Stimulator, Spotter, Sculptor, Selector and Supporter) complement – as opposed to competing with – the likes of de Bono.

To explore this in more detail, I’ve dedicated six separate posts over the coming week to illustrate how this complementarity works. Specifically, I’ll show how the Creative Creatures thinking complements the ?What If! creative behaviours (Freshness, Greenhousing, Realness, Momentum, Signalling and Courage) thereby making them more actionable – and importantly  –  within reach of not just a few ‘highly creative’ people, but of everyone.

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There’s a bit of U2 in you too…

By hanne | Published: September 17, 2010

One of the barriers holding people back from thinking of themselves as being ‘creative’, is the fact that creative people are thought to possess a streak of genius. Albert Einstein. Pablo Picasso. John Lennon. Even Bono from U2. People like are up on a pedestal. This pedestal makes creativity feel unattainable for mere mortals like us. And what’s more… these ‘creative’ people operate in the working world of us marketers, researchers, food technologists or financial accountants. They belong to a different world, so what can we possibly have in common with them?

The truth is: we can learn a LOT! Bono is a person like you and me. He just has a different job! And there are infinite things to be gleaned from fields outside of our own. Even if you are a musician and have a band, when your work is pared down to its core, it’s not that dissimilar to other types of jobs.

To benefit from the knowledge others have, raise your head above the parapet and approach the task with curiosity and total openness. When you look beyond the superficial differences, then the important similarities start to emerge all by themselves. And importantly, it is these similarities we can use to hone our own creative abilities.

We recently came across an amazing interview Elvis Costello did with Bono and The Edge. Watching it made the hairs on our neck stand up. The 45 minutes is littered with references to each of the five creative behaviours. We get to understand how Bono’s Stimulator side drives his non-music activities and how he tries to channel what he learns back into the band. We get to hear how the band embraces Spotter behaviour – they talk about being the ‘keepers of the shards’, with the shards being the great little nuggets that are not songs, but which they know there’s something in. We learn how Steve Lillywhite (U2’s long-serving producer) is the Supporter spurring them on with his enthusiasm and amazing ability to ask the right questions. The Edge talks about the Sculpting journey he, Bono and Flood went through with the song ‘Stay’ – taking it from a little nugget to an epic piece and then brought it back down to the almost acoustic rough-mix version that appears on their Zooropa album. And we even get to learn how Brian Eno made a bold Selector decision on ‘Where the streets have no name’.

So what does this all mean? Inspired by what we found, we turned the interview into the basis for an inspirational and innovative coaching session. We called it ”A little bit of U2 in you too”. This coaching session is great for individuals or teams who already know the shape of their Creative ID and who now want to sharpen certain skills. If you’re looking to become more creatively fluent or want to know how to be better at leveraging the creative composition of the team, then this session is for you. Or if you’re pondering on whether its better to be a creative specialist or a generalist, then we can give you food for though on that as well. The U2 journey is also a great example of how you can learn ‘best practice’ from everyone, yet follow no-one – it gives you actionable inspiration on how to go about reinventing what you do and how you do it… again and again.

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‘Creative’ – what does it really mean?

By hanne | Published: August 25, 2010

Why is it that ‘creative’ is such a difficult word? It covers a multitude of sins, yet often gets pigeonholed into meaning one thing. It’s ubiquitous, yet elusive. It’s a club we desire to be a member of, yet a label few people apply to themselves. Undoubtedly, being creative is important, it helps us achieve things – but if it’s hard to define what creativity is, how can you even begin to apply it?

In search for definitions, most of us turn to the dictionary. Inevitably descriptions such as: ‘Having good imagination or original ideas’ or: ‘Having the ability to create’ emerge. Or if you’re a Sculptor, you might reach for the thesaurus (Sculptors love the thesaurus. A trick they often use to help them understand exactly what a word means is to put the word in context of its synonyms and antonyms. The thesaurus is great for this!)

But in the case of the word ‘creative’, the thesaurus doesn’t really help. Synonyms cover a whole raft of words, some of which are quite different from each other. ‘Artistic’ is quite different to ‘resourceful’. And ‘original’ doesn’t mean the same as ‘productive’. Or how about ‘inspired’ and ‘ingenious’? Only innovative’ and ‘inventive’ seem to point in the same direction. Yet interestingly, all these words are synonyms for ‘creative’.

‘Creative’ is also a classification, e.g. ‘the creative industries’, or ‘the creative department’. And on top of that, ‘creative’ has become a bit of a buzzword (e.g. ‘creative cooking’) that is used to make things seem more interesting and appealing.

With all these words, definitions and applications, it’s no wonder that Creativity is a confused concept! So if the answer cannot be found in a succinct sentence or through a selection of words, what happens if you start looking at ‘creativity’ as a way of being and behaving?

That’s the question we asked ourselves when we set out to define ‘creativity’ – not through words – but instead by breaking it down into its behavioural building blocks. Through our studies of creativity in the commercial context, we discovered five fundamental behaviours: the Stimulator, the Spotter, the Sculptor, the Selector and the Supporter. Each of these five are needed along the creative journey – and combined they make up a person’s Creative ID (i.e. their preferred way of being ‘creative’).

One of the things that are so powerful about this is that when you know your Creative ID, and when you know what behaviours are needed along the creative journey, then you start to understand what creativity really is, what it means – and importantly, how it feels.

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You’ve got fire in your eyes!!

By mark | Published: August 9, 2010

It’s Sunday 23rd May. It’s 8 o’clock in the evening. That addictive programme “Britain’s Got Talent” is in full swing. A 14-year-old opera singer has just finished his awe-inspiring performance and Simon Cowell is about to deliver his verdict. Everyone waits with baited breath. But Simon doesn’t talk about the power of the boy’s voice. He doesn’t talk about his tonal range. Or his bubbly personality. Simon Cowell simply looks at the boy, hesitates and then says very deliberately: “What I really like about you… is that you’ve got fire in your eyes!” That right there, is great Spotter behaviour!

Football scouts with the ability to spot the next Lionel Messi or Wayne Rooney will often talk about potential stars having ‘time on the ball’. Sales directors looking for managers to strike big deals will be on the look out for individuals with ‘hunger and tenacity’. Anglers fishing a lake will be able find the big one by looking for the ‘right ripples’ on the water. My grandfather, an avid horse racing follower always assured me that the most famous racehorses – Njinsky, Shergar and Desert Orchid – all possessed ‘presence in the paddock’. He said this was what set them apart from the rest.

Even in the world of consumer marketing, a researcher moderating a focus group will listen to a multitude of responses from all eight participants. Over the course of an hour or two, good researchers will be able to spot the ‘springy’ word underpinning a powerful insight or the body language that highlights a potential big idea.

Fire in your eyes. Time on the ball. Hunger and tenacity. The right ripples. Presence in the paddock. Springy words and body language. Really good Spotters know that it’s those somewhat intangible slithers of evidence that make the big difference. They know to trust their instinct. Their intuition, often borne out of experience, helps them identify the gems amongst the heaps of rubbish that surround them! They might not always be able to tell you why or justify their gut feeling, but if you want to increase your chances of catching the big fish, then Spotters should come along for the trip.

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A Sculptor who’s a master Spotter and a high-octane Stimulator too

By hanne | Published: August 1, 2010

You might remember an earlier post on these pages about Scott McCloud and his amazing ‘Understanding Comic’ book. I’m totally in love with this guy and was excited to find him on TED. Click below and you’ll enter his insightful and inspiring world. As always with Scott, you get real value for money. In fact, he bombards you with at least 34 minutes worth of stimuli in his 17 minute-long TED slot. It blew my mind and I had to watch more than once to really ‘get it’.


So here’s a guy who’s clearly a Sculptor. In his opening line, he mentions that vision is the sense he appreciates the most (his father was blind). Yet I think he does a pretty good job as a verbal Sculptor too!  And my guess is, he spikes as a Stimulator and a Spotter as well. Take his four principles for example: Learn from Everyone – Follow No one – Watch for Patterns – Work like Hell!

Its mind-blowing how he dissects the language of comics while making connections between the world of comic-book writing and other fields such as science, arts, politics and even sports. During his talk, he highlights three different types of vision. And he then breaks that down even further by pinpointing four different ways in which we look at the world. He not only demonstrates how these ‘lenses’ manifest themselves in comics, he also illustrates how they’re true in other areas including psychology, music, movies and fine art. That’s mastery Spotter behaviour if there ever was such a thing! Scott, I salute you!

And if you are not left breathless at that point, then fast-forward to the point where he turns up the Stimulator volume by throwing away the rulebook of comic-book writing itself. Leveraging technology and tapping into the emerging way in which we engage visually with information, he came up with the idea of the ‘infinite canvas’. It can’t be explained. You have to watch it… Enjoy!

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Meet Susie… the corporate consultant-come-actress

By hanne | Published: July 19, 2010

I’d like you to meet Susie. Susie works part time as a consultant for a major media company. The other half of her time is spent pursuing her passion for acting. Susie attended one of our Discovery Days back in July 2009. When her Creative ID revealed a significant spike as a Supporter, she was puzzled. Surely spending so much time and energy in the theatre world – a creative hot spot – would lead to her having a higher spike as a Stimulator?

It’s not uncommon that people equate Stimulators with the archetypical creative person. After all, Stimulators always come up with lots of ideas, they love exploring and are often the first to discover new things. In contrast, Supporters are the oil that makes the wheels turn. They love collaborating and are good at facilitating the creative process. They’re also hugely empathetic – they’re good at placing themselves in the shoes of other people and at seeing differing points of view.

Interestingly, empathy and the ability to truly embrace the personae of others are exactly the types of behaviours good actors need to display. Susie and I talked about this during coffee break.  Of course it made sense…

The more we talked, the clearer it became that Susie’s Supporter side had been boosted further when she changed from being a full-time employee to take up the role as a consultant. Consultants tend to use their specialist knowledge to lead the way entering unknown territories – they are good at making others feel comfortable about the ambiguities ahead. Exactly like Supporters!

For Susie, suddenly her ‘double life’ seemed less schizophrenic – a common Supporter thread now tied together her two lives of acting and corporate consulting.

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Pictures speak louder than words

By hanne | Published: July 9, 2010

Brilliant bit of Stimulator thinking! And why not?

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PhD thesis as a 24 page comic book?

By hanne | Published: July 5, 2010

In an earlier post, I wondered if ideas could be expressed in the form of a cartoon strip. I guess I was thinking about product concepts and innovation ideas – I certainly didn’t consider the possibility of PhD dissertations. But that’s exactly what Ju Hui Judy Han did. As a brave Stimulator and accomplished Sculptor, she took her 1000 page dissertation and turned it into a 24-page comic book. She called it: “Missionary”.

The topic for her PhD study at Berkeley in California was the Evangelical Missions from South Korea. This is not a topic I know anything about, nor am I particularly interested to find out more. But the format itself transformed this potentially dry and most likely technical topic into something really engaging and very human. I also loved how the comic book media forces the writer to boil lots of data down to its absolute most salient points.

And what’s more, Judy competed the whole thing in 24 hours flat! Absolutely brilliant!

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Look for the aura or feel the tingle

By mark | Published: June 26, 2010

My father-in-law used to work for Mercantile Credit, a division of Barclays Bank that was responsible for the whole area of credit finance – hire purchase, leasing, loans and all that. Generally big ticket items involving millions of pounds.

The process of assessing and selecting companies with whom to do business was a complex and critical one. The other day I asked him which criteria he used to select companies representing good bets. I expected him to mention things like financial performance, corporate trading history, balance sheets, management experience – basically hard, rational, black and white measures that left no room for doubt.

But not so. Instead, he talked about ‘aura’. That feeling he got as soon as he walked into the reception area. He talked about the way in which bosses treated their PAs. He talked about sounds of laughter that he heard (or didn’t hear). He talked about faces of optimism or frowns of pessimism. In short, he talked about a number of extremely intangible criteria that he took into account whenever assessing the potential of a company – factors that were as important and informative as the more tangible ones mentioned earlier.

The same is true when judging the potential of customer insights in the process of idea development. Yes, marketers have to decide whether the insights are a) relevant to the target market; b) actionable by the business and c) likely to deliver competitive advantage – all ‘hard’ criteria. But as important is the ability of a strong insight to make you ‘tingle’. ‘Tingling’ can manifest itself as quicker heartbeats, ‘aha’ moments, little sniggers, raised eye brows, physical side effects proving you may have stumbled across something exciting!! The ‘tingle factor’ is hard to put your finger on, but is no less important than the ‘harder’ criteria.

Astute and successful Selectors of ideas and opportunities rely upon both tangible and intangible criteria when making their selections. Next time you make yours, look out for aura and feel that tingle!!

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