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January 25, 2006
Live From Davos: What's the Key to Creativity?
The World Economic Forum at Davos has a theme every year, and the theme of the 2006 meeting is ''The Creative Imperative,'' the idea being that business leaders and society as a whole need to come up with new and creative approaches to change. And so on this first day at Davos, I attended a session called ''Innovation and Design Strategy,'' a topic that is of course close to our hearts at Fast Company. It was, in a lot of ways, a very un-Davos-like session--more a reality show than a typical gabfest.
The eight panel members were each asked to describe what they think is the key to creativity. The audience then voted them off the island, one by one. Quick to go, for example, were panelists who pitched religious institutions and government as important engines of innovation. In the end, we were left with two finalists who are well-known to Fast Company readers, Ideo's Tim Brown and Google's Marissa Mayer.
Their respective arguments: Brown stumped for the beginner's mindset, and for the virtues of rapid prototyping. Being or thinking like a beginner lets you approach problems in new ways, lets you make connections that haven't been made before. And rapid prototyping lets you test those insights quickly and at limited expense.
Mayer argued for a ''healthy disrespect for the impossible,'' combined with the virtues of constraints. A healthy disrespect for the impossible means you can take risks, while constraints--a price point you have to meet with a new product, a specific design problem you have to solve-- mean your risk-taking will follow productive avenues.
In a later posting, I'll tell you who won. In the meantime, what do you think? Which of these views represents the ''magic fairy dust'' of creativity, as it was described today at Davos?
Posted by Mark Vamos at January 25, 2006 10:28 AM | Category: davos 2006 |
6 Comments
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What an invaluable exercise!
Creativity, and creative expression through the development of valuable products and services is the core of worthwhile business. As creativity software pioneers, we know too well what are some of the major creative stumbling blocks, and what truly fosters innovation.
In our experience, Brown leads in understanding the essentials of taking off the blinders by playing the role of an innocent, within the context of quickly seeing some sort of results: good or bad. Innocent inquiry into "how things work" combined with experimentation is the core of
the creative process.
Mayer also removes the blinders in her "healthy disrespect" comment... and her pushing toward a price point as the constraining element is key: we can all develop with unobtanium... but then you can only sell to the Sultan of Brunai and Bill Gates. Real innovations that effect us all need price points that reflect reality.
I'm feeling it for Brown on this one. And from the buzz on the street, Mayer has this year to prove that Google doesn't just acquire great innovations, but can actually bring them forth from thin air. (Note: I'm confident she's got what it takes to make that happen... Google is by no means an accident, and she's been a significant part of their current lineup of winning products).
What would happen if these two folks walked across the campus and shared a lunch or two? Just a thought.
One additional comment: If you want to see rapid product development based on real market needs and wants in action, I encourage you to visit PRWeb.com and poke around the site, paying close attention to the two links above the day's press releases.
David McInnis, the founder and CEO has developed back-end tools to help he and his crew watch trends in visitor behavior from the point of view of "what are they doing, and how can we help them do it better, faster, cheaper".
So a simple thing like "press release writers need shorter, more memorable web links in their releases" becomes 301URL.com. Not only do users get shorter URL's with keywords, but the user also receives "link credit" from the link (meaning the search engines give real value to where the link points, rather than to 301URL.com. An important attribute when it comes to the dance search engines do).
Another is PRWebPhotowire.com, an image bank to present PR-centric images at high resolution, with links from their respective press releases, all keyword searchable. This came as a result of clients needing Print-Ready image content available NOW, rather than having to set up a Press Room on their respective sites (PRWeb has a large constituency in the SMB marketplace).
What's cool here is that they put these innovations together quickly, test frequently, fix quickly (when bugs are seen) and price competetively (currently both of the new services mentioned are free, which is a very good price, and in concert with PRWeb's well established free PR service).
Real-time innovation is a hallmark of this firm, and is an organic extensions of the PRWeb mantra McInnis is constantly bantering about: "PRWeb is THE Online Visibility Company".
You don't have to be a Google or IDEO to lead the innovation front. Even a small, fast-growth firm like PRWeb can make a global difference (just ask the over 100,000 journalists and media outlets worldwide who subscribe to their services).
I’m a writer and I have long applied (since 1975) Edward De Bono’s concept of lateral thinking as the creative technique. In lateral thinking, you don’t think of winning first, so rather than guess who won, I’d like to tell you who I think should have: Marissa Mayer. Her ‘healthy disrespect for the impossible’ (you don’t have to be crazy but it works!) is the proper first attitude in a creative session – a beginner’s mindset means you are assuming you know a few things when you shouldn’t assume anything at all. On one hand, a beginner can’t be that creative – it takes someone with experience to be truly creative in that field if he can master the process of creativity. On the other hand, it takes a non-beginner to know what are the constraints – after that creative flash.
This is a very interesting exercise, but I truly think that there is no single "magic fairy dust", as you have put it, to a creative process. Crativity is, in fact, a process, which inherently contains several steps.
Edward De Bono's thinking caps are probably one of the best examples of a structured creative process. One must act as a beginner in one part of the process, and as an expert in the next part. Being able to think out of the box, and "disrespect the impossible" are both invaluable assets to a creative person, but they are not worth much without the ability to think also "within the box", and place restraints on oneself in a second moment.
In synthesis, what I am trying to say is that the secret to creativity, a creative person or a creative team is flexibility - an ability to put one's mindset from one extreme to another, coming up with crazy ideas in one moment, then taking such ideas and snipping them up until they can fit within the limits one has identified.
Coming back to the vote, I'd draw a truce between the two finalists, because both have expressed important aspects of creativity. If I were forced to choose, I'd probably vote for Brown, however I do beleive that his approach on its own could be highly unproductive without an intermediate stage which concretises the 'beginners' attitude with expert knowledge.
Interesting activity! I wonder how the vote distributions leveled off after cutting through the first wave. I would expect to see that votes drew closer together rather rapidly once certain obvious options were eliminated.
Personally, I think that while this exercise provides a great insight into the panel, it's not very conducive to drawing a map to creative success. Why? Because creativity can't be a predetermined formula. You can spark it, you can facilitate it, but you can't write a manual for it. The beauty of creativity comes from it's ability to flow in a -unique- fashion from individuals or groups of individuals. It's the spontaneity that makes it so wonderful and insightful.
Both panelists raise great points. The keys to creativity presented from both have to do with breaking convention and reducing restrictions. So, from where I'm sitting, it amounts to the same thing. It seems they both take different approaches to utilize the same key. A very useful tidbit.
Boyd's Snowmobile.