1.5 - Unlocking our creativity Flashcards
Creating good ideas, as opposed to obvious, boring, meaningless, or impractical ideas requires three important elements:
three important elements:
Influence
persistence
courage
Influence
Creativity benefits from diverse influences beyond advertising and marketing.
“Outspiration” is a term coined by Faris Yakob to describe the process of gathering varied influences.
Exploring connections between unrelated fields can reveal patterns that inspire innovative perspectives.
This approach fosters fresh and original solutions to creative challenges.
Persistence
Persistence
Good ideas need persistence in pushing past the easy, obvious ideas and holding out for non-obvious combinations to emerge.
Courage
There is one defining element that accompanies nearly all new ideas: courage.
Doing something new takes courage.
Courage to take a risk and be prepared to fail, no matter how much research and insight you gather to support your idea. There will always be an element of risk in creating something completely new and innovative, but having creative courage within your team is one sure way to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the most innovative brands and agencies in the modern advertising world.
T shaped person
“T-shaped persons” is a workplace metaphor used to describe individuals’ abilities.
Tim Brown, CEO of IDEO, popularized this concept for creative organizations.
The concept’s earliest reference can be found in Johnston’s 1978 article, “Scientists Become Managers - The ‘T’-Shaped Man.”
T-shaped people possess deep skills in their specialist discipline (the vertical line of the T) and the ability to collaborate across different disciplines (the horizontal line of the T).
Collaboration between specialists and different disciplines fosters creativity and “outspiration” in the creative process.
Who championed the concept of “T-shaped persons” for creative organizations?
Tim Brown
What does the vertical line of the “T” represent in the metaphor of “T-shaped persons”?
) Deep skills in a specialist disciplin
According to the text, what does the horizontal line in the “T-shaped” metaphor signify?
It represents the ability to collaborate with individuals from different disciplines.
What is the purpose of “T-shaped persons” in the creative process?
They bring out “outspiration” by combining deep skills with collaboration from different disciplines.
what does research suggest about the brain’s decision-making abilities?
The brain makes better decisions on complex problems in its unconscious state.
In an edition of New Scientist Magazine a few years back, there was an article titled “The Other You: six things your brain can do when your back is turned”. What were two key themes from this?
- author Caroline Williams discusses research that suggests your brain makes better decisions on complex problems in its unconscious state.
it seems that we are better creatives in System 1 thinking
In the New Scientist article, Don’t think: How your brain works things out all by itself (2016), Caroline Williams discusses research that found what?
Caroline Williams discusses research that found decision-making based on a series of very complex factors is more effective if made when the subject is distracted from the problem before being asked to answer.
This is because unconscious thought can process more information at once than working/conscious thought.
John Kounios, Professor of Psychology at Drexel University in Philadelphia, studied the neuroscience behind epiphanies in creative problem-solving to understand if we can learn to enhance this thinking.
Wha twere his findings?
His study identified that those asked to solve problems analytically did so logically with high activity in the brain’s visual cortex, suggesting analytical information is decoded less like insight and more like an “outsight”.
Studies of those solving problems based on sudden insight, or “Ah ha” moments, showed they had much less activity in the frontal lobes/visual cortex and instead used the temporal lobes.
Kounios & Beem (2011) states it’s like the brain turning in on itself and looking inside for the answer.
How can we harness these epiphanies in a fast-paced industry that doesn’t always allow people to think about a problem for a while?
Research suggests we must stop briefing projects on the morning they are due to be worked on. This allows for a moment of calm/distraction in which these “Ah ha” moments can appear.
Book briefings at the back end of the day so that the creative team have an evening “off work” to take in the information and decode it unconsciously.
Don’t stop with the creative team. All challenges in the advertising industry can be solved with creative solutions.
When planning a strategic workshop, don’t feel pressured to hold back the content until the day of the session. Giving your audience something to think about for homework might spark more “Eureka” solutions than a full day of breakout sessions.
when, after concentrating intensely on a problem for several hours, the solution emerges when the mind is allowed to disengage. Walking away from the problem, or approaching it again from a counterintuitive angle, is often the key to gaining a breakthrough. However, we sometimes don’t have the time or ability to walk away from an immediate problem, so what do we do?
In 1975, Peter Schmidt and Brian Eno created a deck of cards called Oblique Strategies to help train the mind to make creative missteps.
What are the things
Remove ambiguities and revert to specifics
Turn it into a cliché
Try faking it
Try repeating it
Go to an extreme, then move back to a more comfortable place
Make an exhaustive list of everything you might do and do the last thing on the list
