Idea Improv

Like a Kid in a Candy Store

As it is Friday, let’s pull an Idea Improv card to take us into the weekend.

Kids are great sources of inspiration for creativity; children have not yet learned to be inhibited and put all sorts of structural boundaries on their creativity. Once we go through formal education, our creativity, on average, drops by about 70%.

Another great way to leverage kid creativity is for you to relive some of your own kid passions and tap into some of those long forgotten ideas and dreams.  This weekend, I am picking up my kid dream – a camping trailer. We are going to let those passions of traveling the country, pulling a camper loose; I am going to live those adventures I dreamt of as a kid (and as an adult). Ideas for photography and articles, books and all sorts of creative endeavors are already bubbling to the surface. I’ll be like a kid in the camper, being the world traveler I always knew I would be.

Honing in on your problem, issue or goal

Working on the wrong problem, issue or goal easily leads to the wrong solution.  An easy way to determine what is the right problem, issue or goal is to list what it is versus what it is not.

Let’s use a piece of art work you are creating as an example.  What it is: It is a quilted piece, using fabric as a main design medium and found objects like buttons and beads as embellishment.  It will be fused together, using free form cut pieces.  It will be based on a picture of a beach scene taken on vacation.   What it is not:  It is not a bed quilt.  It is not traditionally pieced and sewn quilt.  It is not based on a pattern. It is not from a drawing or sketch.

The more detailed you are in the attributes of what your project is and what it is not, the clearer the picture will be for you.  Moving forward will be easier as you will have already begun to make design decisions, you have begun the shape and fashion your criteria, and you have delineated what is out of scope for your project, issue or goal.

Investigate to Find the Heart of the Matter

You may have heard a variation of the following story. 

A fellow comes upon his friend looking for something under a street lamp in a park.  He asks, “What are you looking for, and can I help?”

His friend replied that he has dropped his car key and needs to find it before he can leave.  Both search the lighted area for some time.

After what appears to be an exhaustive search of the area, the fellow finally asks, “Are you sure you dropped the key here?”

“No,” replied the friend, “I dropped it over there.” He pointed to a dark area about 50 feet away.

“Then why have we been looking over here if you knew that you dropped it over there?” asked the frustrated fellow.

“The light is better over here,” replied the friend.

Is your innovation process ever like this anecdote when identifying your primary goal, challenge, or issue?  Do you have a tendency to focus on your first inclination or what you feel would work in the situation?  Or do you conduct a needs analysis, looking at who your customers or audience are, what your criteria is, where gaps in the market or system exist, what is desired by your customers or audience?

I have worked with groups who had proceeded in their planning and innovating without having a clear picture of what their primary goal, challenge, or issue was.  One group had spent a tremendous amount of hours and resources planning an event without asking the question, “Is this the forum to get out our message to our customer base?”  By the time they had paused to ask this question, they were financially committed to their event.

I also worked with a group who had spent countless hours brainstorming and planning solutions to a client issue that had been met with resistance and frustration.  This group had worked on solutions from their expertise rather than from the client’s needs and desires.  They had failed to take into consideration their client’s point of view when designing a solution to the issue at hand.

In the next three entries, we will look at the elements of investigating the need: Identifying your primary goal, challenge, or issue; identifying your audience’s perspective and needs; and honing in on what is needed, wanted or wished for.

Clouds Don't Always Mean Showers

Today driving into work the clouds looked ominous. A storm was brewing.  I was sure it was going to hit, hit hard and hit soon. All the signs were there.  How could it miss?  But as the minutes went on I watch safely from the windows at work. No torrential rains came; no thunder and no lightning.  In fact, the dark barrel like clouds simply went away. Nothing happened.  It is now just a muggy, cloudy, summer’s day.

Has innovation ever happened, or not happened, that way for you.  All the signs are there – the pieces are in place, creativity is happening, and then nothing fruitful comes down the pipeline. Or things just don’t pan out the way you expected them to or you thought they should have. What went wrong?  Were the gods of innovation just not with you? Maybe so?  More likely you had only thought of one part of the innovation equation or left one of the crucial stages out.

I once worked with a group whose innovation process it was involved coming up with a bunch of ideas and “throwing them up against the wall to see which ones stick”. They would just try out all their ideas indiscriminately to see which ones worked and then were disappointed with their results and use of resources.  What this group didn’t understand was that innovation was a four stage process in which attention must be given equally to all four stages: Investigation, Creation, Evaluation, and Activation. The group I was working with was missing the evaluation stage of the game. By not holding up their ideas to a rigorous evaluation process, they were spending time developing ideas that really didn’t meet their criteria, and wasted valuable resources in the process.

What I’ll be doing over the couple of entries is guide you through this four stage process and offer some tips to help bring your innovation to a great return of investment along the way.

Not Your Grandmother's Quilts

A great brainstorming technique is the SCAMPER method where you substitute, combine, adapt, modify, put to other uses, eliminate and reverse and rearrange elements to create something new.  I want to share with you a website of a quilter who has adapted traditional piecing methods with a method that uses fusing (combing layers of material using a heat sensitive bond) and cutting intricate patterns in the fabric using scalpels.  Here is an detail of some of Erica Graff's work.

Erica says of herself, "The epicurean world has Asian Fusion, the textile world has me, an Asian fusing."

I thought you may enjoy seeing some of her work: http://ericagraff.com/

Gaining Perspective on Creativity

Look at the following illustration:

The table top on the right is definitely shorter and wider, right?  Wrong.  Believe it or not, the table tops are exactly the same size and shape.  (My eyes couldn’t resolve this optical illusion, so I actually printed out the illustration, cut out the table tops and had to lay one on top of the other before I believed it.)

What makes these two identical objects appear so differently?  Perspective, of course, makes them appear as though they are different sizes.  They are drawn at different angles and the perspective of the legs gives the tops the appearance of shapes they are actually not.

Looking at the same problem, issue or goal from different perspectives can allow people to see different things when looking at the exact same thing.  Working solo and in isolation gives only one perspective, and only one point of view no matter how creative, in which to approach your issue.

Working with a group can be a great boost to creativity and innovation.  Here are some ideas to help assemble productive creativity groups:

§         Make the groups diverse.  During World War II, studies found that the more diverse the group, the greater the creativity of the group.

§         Include some people with no knowledge of the field or process. This ensures that some people will have a completely fresh approach to the subject and be free of pre-conceived ideas and conventions of the field.  As Malcolm Forbes once said, “It's so much easier to suggest solutions when you don't know too much about the problem.”

§         Include experts in different fields of study and people with varied experiences. You want your team to bring different ideas to apply to your problem, issue or goal.  Bringing in different expertise allows for transfer of knowledge and best practices, analogies, process comparison and contrast, substitutions, applications from one field to another and the like.

§         Include people who will use or interact with your process, project, or event at every stage, from design to delivery to deployment.  Bringing in end users, designers, etc. will help ensure that all stages, potential issues and potential uses are considered and explored.  Designing from one perspective only give a myopic view and the risk of leaving huge gaps is great.

So gather a group together and ask for some in-put into your process.  Take a few hours for a brainstorming session and gather some ideas.  Buy a few people a cup of coffee and see what they have to say about your ideas.  Gain some perspective on your ideas and add some depth to your creativity and innovation.

New Shoes/New Ideas

Today I am wearing my new shoes. They are a little tight and a bit uncomfortable, but they are leather and in time will stretch and mold to my foot. These are tight across the top of the foot and the widest part of my foot is not where other people’s foot is widest. I probably should have worn these for just short periods of time until they could stretch a little and my foot could get use to a snugger fit. But I am impatient and I desperately needed a new pair of shoes (my old pair of shoes has already been tossed into the garbage). In time this pair will stretch and be as comfortable as my old shoes, but it will take a little while for this process to occur.

So why am I talking about shoes and how they fit in a creativity and innovation blog?  Funny you should ask.  The practice of being creative and innovative is just that – a practice. The more you do it, the more comfortable you feel doing it, the easier it becomes, and the better you get at it.

If we wait until the eleventh hour in do or die situations it will feel just like that – death. Creativity is supposed to be serious fun.  The more ideas you have the more ideas you will have. It is an act of abundance, not a situation of a fixed amount that needs to be rationed. If you make it a practice to generate ideas, number 1) you will have ideas in reserve to draw on when you need them, and number 2) it will seem as comfortable as putting on a well-worn shoe when you are in a situation where you really need to produce ideas quickly.

So take up the practice of creativity every day – create idea logs where you jot down the ideas that come to you; do practice runs of idea generation with favorite and new techniques; establish idea quotas every week and adhere to coming with those ideas. Train your brain and get it in great creative shape.  What can you do this week to stretch out your ideas?

Lion's Share

Today let’s use the analogy of a lion to do some idea generation for your project, issue or goal. An analogy is an idea generation technique where you apply the characteristics of one object to your problem to look at it in unique and fresh ways. To help us think about lions, we’ll use this picture of my dog Zebedee in his Halloween costume of a circus lion.  That should help us think creatively rather than realistically.

To work with an analogy, our first step is to list the characteristics of the object we are drawing our ideas from, the lion.

§         A lion has a mane, which is used to make the animal appear larger than it is.

§         A lion roars, which is used as communication and can be heard up to 5 miles away.

§         A lion kills his prey by strangulation, by crushing the wind pipe with its jaw.

§         A lion hunts mainly at night so that it can’t easily be detected.

§         A lion has powerful paws, and can deliver stunning blows with them.

§         A lion travel in a group called a pride.

Now take these characteristics and apply them to your project, issue, or goal. 

Is there someway to make your project seem large or grand?  Can you “roar” with your goal, or better communicate your issue?  Can you leverage your strengths to defeat your competition?  Is there a way to approach your problem that is not straightforward and obvious?  Are there issues that you need to bat around?  Is there strength in numbers that you have been missing out on?

You get the idea.  The comparison can be literal or figurative; a one for one match or merely suggested.  Work with the lion analogy some more and then come up with some of your own.  This is a great brainstorming technique to be followed by analytical evaluation and then putting your plan into action.

Food For Thought

Last night for dinner I found myself at a Japanese food mall eating shrimp rolls and barbeque sticky buns.  I started to think how creative food can be.  And I thought of what a great creativity boost it can be to go and eat outside of your normal dining experience.

There is an Ethiopian restaurant very near my home where I eat every once in a while that challenges the status quote of American society – no utensils are allowed.  You eat by tearing pieces from a spongy loaf of flat bread and scoop up the food using the piece of bread and your hands.  The eating is communal at your table.  This challenges three very strong norms of eating out for Americans: sharing meals, eating with your hands and the possibility of double dipping your food.  It is also a tradition in this culture to feed food to your loved one – we are also not used to seeing this be done in polite American society.

Another way that food can be innovative is what we do with ingredients when we need to clear them away before a certain time period or event.  Around my neighborhood, a fantastic pre-Lent treat is the Polish Paczki or Jelly Doughnuts.  This special Jelly Doughnut made only the week before Lent begins comes from the tradition of needing to get rid of all “luxurious” baking items, such as butter, sugar, cream, etc. that a penitent home was not to have during Lent.  So the households took all these delicious baking items and made decadent doughnuts and the tradition of the Paczki was born.

Practicality and safety can alter the way we make our food as in the case of the Welsh meat pie the Pasty.  A neighbor friend of ours taught my partner how to make this meal that was the favorite of Welsh lead miners for their lunch.  It’s a pie crust pocket filled with meat, potatoes and vegetables with a thick pie crust edge along one side. The one side was made with such a thick crust so that the miners could grab the pasty with their lead contaminated hand and eat the meal, and then toss the crust without ever eating what their hands had touched.  I think that is a pretty creative solution.

Getting back to the Japanese food at the mall, over dinner I asked my partner for a story about a food innovation brought about by a practical need.  She told me that the tekka roll, the seaweed wrap on sushi rolls came about because of gamblers.  In fact, the word tekka means “place of gambling”.  Similar to the way the Earl of Sandwich invented the sandwich because he wanted to eat and not stop gambling so he threw his meat between two pieces of bread, gambling houses wrapped seaweed around their sushi so gamblers could eat without getting rice on the cards or tiles.  They were afraid the gamblers were marking cards and tiles and cheating with their sticky fingers.  That’s innovation.

SuperWord to the Rescue

I have been reaching for a little inspiration to get my creative juices flowing all morning.  So I thought what better way to do this than to reach for an Idea Improv card:

The Super Word technique is an idea generation technique that is known by many names; some call it Fishing, others refer to it as an Oracle, still others know it as Author Advice.  It doesn’t matter what you call it – the technique is simple and effective. Some people use a book of fiction, others a spiritual book like the Bible, some use a book of quotations, some just use the dictionary – it really doesn’t matter.  Some people like to be inspired by song lyrics, or lines of poetry.  You could even use catch phrases from movies or television, or even from advertising campaigns.

Let the word or phrase inspire you with regard to you project, issue or goal.  Does it speak directly to the process?  Is there an analogy or metaphor you can draw?  How about a reversal that you can make?