Idea Improv

Idea Improvs

No matter where you go, or who introduces you to the ideas of improv one of the first “rules” you will be given is the concept of “Yes and …” For a story to be built through the technique of improv, players approach the situation being presented with agreement.  When presented with an idea the technique is to say, “Yes and …”

 

This leads to the second rule:  Offer a build – the player says “yes and …” then expands the idea to expand and move the story.

 

What you do not want to occur is the third rule: No blocking. The opposite of saying “yes” is blocking or denial.  This shuts the story progression down with a screeching halt.

 

I hope you can begin to see how this relates to idea generation; when in a group brainstorming – take a “yes and …” approach to keep the ideas flowing.  Remember that the brainstorming phase is a “No Judgment” zone.  Quite frequently it is easier to reserve judgment of others’ ideas, but be careful that you are not doing a ton of self-judging and censoring of your own ideas during this phase.  We can be our harshest critics and think things about our own ideas, even subconsciously, that others would never dare to say to us in a meeting.  Make sure you taking a “Yes and …” approach with all ideas, even your own.

Dollywood - Innovation for a Community

Some of my recent travels have taken me to eastern Tennessee

where I have witnessed a remarkable example of innovative branding and marketing.  Dolly Parton (think of her what you may) has taken SevierCountyand Pigeon Forge, Tennesseein particular and has made them her own.  How did she do this?  She made this transformation of the struggling mountain community through the creation of Dollywood, of course.

 

Dolly Parton at Dollywood

Dollywood is a theme park branded on Dolly Parton’s life and career.  It has your usual rides and concessions that you would expect at any theme park across America, but she has transformed what was a struggling franchise park called Silver Dollar City from roller coasters and Hillbilly shows to a Smokey Mountain Lifestyle experience.  Having been raised in the area, this is Dolly Parton’s homage to what she loves about mountain living and the music of the area.

Instead of the usual burgers and pizza that one expects to find at amusement parks, Dollywood boasts of real home southern cooking.  Instead of cheap souvenirs made in foreign sweat shops, Dollywood hosts master artisans practicing traditional arts and crafts of the area.  And instead of simply taking land to build rides upon, Dollywood features a bald eagle and birds of prey rehabilitation facility that has release approximately 100 bald eagles back into the Smokey Mountains.

So what does this bring to the community of Pigeon Forge?  Talking to locals it is quite clear Dollywood enhances the economy in three ways:  it brings pride to the local economy; it brings jobs to the local economy; and it preserves the heritage of the local economy.  People seemed happy that Dolly Parton brought her branding to the park; it seems to be a win-win endeavor for Dolly and for the local economy.

Getting Back on the Creative Train of Thought

            During the past couple of months structure has seemed to go out the window for me.  I have split my time between working crazy hours and traveling like a fiend.  I just haven’t set aside any time to write or to have a time to be creative for the sake of just being creative.

 

This brings up two thoughts for me. 

 

            One of the biggest blocks people cite to being creative is time.  I haven’t been very good at this lately.  Setting aside time to be creative not only stretches your innovation muscles, it also helps to make certain you are feeding your soul and providing a little balance in your life.

 

            Structure helps foster creativity.  To some this may sound a little counter-intuitive. Aren’t creative people the “think out of the box” types, no-holds barred, don’t want any rules to constrain their thinking people?  Well, yes and no.  Structure helps set up the system in which to do all that new and wow thinking.  Criteria lead you on the correct path, for example, to create that breakthrough thinking for the spectacular event you are planning

 

Take for example, writing poetry.  Contemporary poetry appears as though the poet simply wrote down a stream of conscious thought and called it art.  There seems to be no rhyme or reason to what is written.  But upon detailed study, all sorts of convention and techniques are being used by the poet to create a carefully structured written work.

 

Structure in the form of time and place set aside for creative endeavors help ensure a prosperous thought generation session.  Ideas just don’t happen – you must think of them.  Even if they seem to appear out of the blue, it is usually after a time of incubation and rest that breakthrough ideas come to the conscious mind.

 

Structure also appears in the form of techniques and tools used to help prompt good to great to breakthrough ideas.  Even something as simple as the questions, “what?” or “why?” are really techniques to help prompt creative thinking.  

 

So here’s to time and structure and getting back to the creative track

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?