Creativity Seminar

Diverse Experience, Broad Understanding

2011-08-25T12:12:00.000-07:00

"When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn't really do it -- they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That's because they were able to connect experiences they've had and synthesize new things. And the reason they were able to do that was that they've had more experiences or they have thought more about their experiences than other people.

Unfortunately, that's too rare a commodity. A lot of people in our industry haven't had very diverse experience. So they don't have enough dots to connect, and they end up with very linear solutions without a broad perspective on the problem.

The broader one's understanding of the human experience, the better design we will have."

— Steve Jobs, Wired, February 1996

Innovation is a Personal Skill

2011-06-06T08:18:00.000-07:00

Mainstream thinking about innovation has focused on process and policy. A new book addresses a critical element largely overlooked — the essential role of the personal skills of the innovator.

In The Innovator's Way, authors Peter J. Denning and Robert P. Dunham define innovation as the art of getting people to adopt change. Innovation, they write, is not simply an invention, a policy, or a process to be managed. Innovation is a personal skill that can be learned, developed through practice, and extended into organizations.

Denning is a pioneer in operating systems who has taught at Princeton and worked for NASA, and Dunham is a former VP at Motorola who founded The Institute for Generative Leadership.

The authors draw a distinction between invention and innovation: many inventions never become innovations, and many innovations do not involve an invention. They identify and describe eight personal practices that all successful innovators perform. Weakness in any of these practices, they show, blocks innovation.

Denning and Duham provide a detailed account of the eight practices, grouped into three segments, and how to accomplish them; and they chart the path to innovation mastery, from individual practices to teams and social networks:

THE MAIN WORK OF INVENTION

SENSING
Articulating a new possibility that would bring value to the community by addressing an issue or seizing an opportunity.

ENVISIONING
Building a compelling, engaging story of how the world would be better if the possibility were made real. more…

THE MAIN WORK OF ADOPTION

OFFERING
Presenting a proposed practice and its benefits to a community and its leaders so that they commit to consider it.

ADOPTING
Getting community members to commit to adopt the practice for the first time, reserving the option of dropping it if not satisfied after a trial period.

SUSTAINING
Getting community members to commit to the practice for an extended period, integrating it into their other practices, standards, incentives, and processes, and making it productive for its useful life.

THE ENVIRONMENT FOR THESE OTHER PRACTICES

EXECUTING
Coordinating actions, planning and carrying out all individual and team commitments needed to support adoption and deliver its value.

LEADING
Working proactively to produce the essential outcomes of the other practices, overcoming obstacles, building and maintaining trust, and sustaining the leader’s own commitment.

EMBODYING
Practicing the other practices until you can perform them automatically without conscious thought, and helping the community members embody the practice they are adopting. 

The authors elaborate:

"In reality, these practices are not sequential at all. The innovator moves constantly among them, refining the results of earlier ones after seeing their consequences later. It is better to think of them as being done in parallel rather than in numerical order.

The overall effectiveness of these practices depends on the innovator integrating them into a single, coherent style. The practices affirmatively suggest that Is innovation a learnable practice."

A summary of a sample chapter focuses on dilemmas common to any industry and summed up with a word that all of us can identify with: messes.

ON MESSES, COLLABORATION AND INNOVATION

"Messes are intransigent social situations that people want to exit but feel stuck in. While some messes may be irresolvable, we can often find ways out of messes through seven basic strategies augmenting the eight practices: declare, learn, question the paradigm, blend, develop a “we”, lead collaboration, and develop shared promises. Collaboration is at their core.

Collaboration is a practice of creating new observers and new possible actions together, in a mood of commitment to take care of the concerns of all parties as best possible. Through collaboration, a community creates a solution to a messy problem that takes care of all their concerns at the same time. Collaboration does not mean that community members give up or comprise their dearest concerns. It means they design a solution that recognizes their concerns. The process often leads to a reconfiguration of everyone’s concerns. The hallmark of successful collaboration is the experience of solidarity and new energy: a “we”.

History tells us that resolutions of messes are likely to be disruptive innovations. The reason is that the paradigm (belief system) hosting the mess does not allow the new thinking needed to resolve the mess. Only a belief-changing innovation driven by an entrepreneurial mindset will succeed. This is why many in the mess feel threatened about the prospect of a solution. The solution may challenge everything connected with the mess, including social power structures and deep beliefs."

From The Innovator's Way: Essential Practices for Successful Innovation
by Peter J. Denning and Robert P. Dunham (The MIT Press)

Aristotle's Categories

2011-06-01T19:09:00.000-07:00

In creative problem-solving, checklists can provide an essential resource for examining the multiple aspects and qualities of a challenge, and for analyzing the elements that become the building blocks of a solution.

Arisotle's ten Categories list all the possible kinds of thing which can be, what he termed, the subject or the predicate of a proposition.

1. Substance or essence
What is it and what makes it unique or individual?
2. Quantity or magnitude
How many, how much, what degree?
3. Relation
Rank, comparison, derivation.
4. Quality
Value, attributes, shape, habits.
5. Action
What is it doing or does it do?
6. Affection
Reputation, attitudes toward.
7. Place
Where is it?
8. Time
When? (now? historical? future?)
9. Position
Sitting, standing, displayed, hidden
10. State
Planned, broken, untried, changing.

Robert Harris explains how checklists can aid problem-solvers and decision makers in his book Creative Problem Solving.

MIT's 150th Birthday: The Network Effect

2011-04-08T08:55:00.000-07:00

The students, alumni, and professors at Massachusetts Institute of Technology are a brainy — and busy — bunch. To mark the university's 150th year, Fast Company magazine charted a handful of smart and productive minds with ties to the school. The categories include Entrepreneurs, Inventors, Government Leaders, Astronauts, Athletes, Artists, 76 Nobel Prize Winners, and 2 Radio Host Siblings (Tom and Ray Magliozzi: "Click and Clack" on NPR's Car Talk, Classes of '59 and '72). Among the impressive statistics: MIT grads have founded more than 25,800 companies, and have been issued 166 patents in 2010 alone. Other more notorious achievements include the annual "hacking" by MIT students, like this 25-foot-long fire truck (above right) placed on the Great Dome at the school in 2006. Historical videos and a timeline are featured in MIT's special 150th anniversary website.

Chart below by Fast Company Design, article by Rachel Arndt

in the April 2011 issue of Fast Company.

(Click to enlarge)

A complete list of articles about MIT published in Fast Company.

UPDATE: Read an entertaining and well-researched list of "150 Ways That MIT Made a Difference" in The Boston Globe.

Quote of the Day

2011-04-01T11:24:00.000-07:00

"Where all think alike,

no one thinks very much."

— Walter Lippmann

Creativity Profiles: Incubate, Imagine, Improve, Invest

2011-03-31T12:33:00.000-07:00

Jeffrey DeGraff and Katherine A. Lawrence think of creativity as a core competency for corporations, and they describe the notion of Creativity Profiles in their 2002 book from the University of Michigan School of Business Management, Creativity at Work: Developing the Right Practices to Make Innovation Happen.

By profiles, they mean a description of the biases, tendencies and preferred creative activities of particular individuals, groups, and organizations, together with the desired creative outcomes of their activities. For each of the Creativity Profiles, an example of its implemenation and a representative organization are provided. DeGraff and Lawrence feel that each endeavor must be tackled differently, choosing a creative approach that suitably matches each challenge. The four I's of the profiles are: Incubate, Imagine, Improve and Invest.

INCUBATE

"Long-term Development"

Example: Bill Wilson, Alcoholics Anonymous

Growing a community through shared values and learning

IMAGINE

"Breakthrough Ideas"

Example: Walt Disney, The Walt Disney Company

Inventing radical products, services and markets

IMPROVE

"Incremental Adjustments"

Example: Ray Kroc, McDonalds

Implementing systems, structures and standards

INVEST

"Short-Term Goals"

Example: Thomas Watson, Jr., IBM

Competing through focused initiatives, hard work and partnerships

DeGraff and Lawrence, from the introduction to Creativity At Work:

"The study of creativity in business is somewhat unique in that its singular purpose is to produce superior performance for customers and investors. We wrote this book for managers who want to develop their people and practices to be more creative at work. What we have seen again and again are businesses desperately trying to make their products, services, and processes more valuable by making them better or new. Although leaders acknowledge and invest in creativity, we seldom see creativity hold a credible place in the business development process.
We suggest that this is primarily because creativity often fails to create value. Today's leaders demand that their employees produce value, and we believe that creativity can be a path to this end."

See more of Jeffrey DeGraff and Katherine A. Lawrence's work.

The Neuroscience of What Jokes Are Funny

2011-03-30T15:30:00.000-07:00

From London's New Scientist magazine:

The Neuroscience Of What Jokes Are Funny
by Daniel Elkan

"Despite the importance of humour to human psychology, it is only the advances in brain imaging during the past decade that have enabled neuroscientists to pin down how the brain reacts when a joke tickles us. Armed with this knowledge, they are now solving the puzzle of why some jokes are funny to some people but leave others cold.

...Yet humour is a far more complex process than primeval pleasures like sex or food. In addition to the two core processes of getting the joke and feeling good about it, jokes also activate regions of the frontal and cingulate cortex, which are linked with association formation, learning and decision-making

...Perhaps unsurprisingly, personality also appears to play a key role in humour. Mobbs has shown that people who are classed as extrovert and emotionally stable have increased activity in reward areas of the brain during exposure to funny stimuli. Neurotic people, in contrast, have less of a reward response compared with the average person "This suggests that personality style may be important in how we process humour," Mobbs says.
.
...More than anything, the recent research confirms the fact that humour, an oft-neglected trait when considering our cognitive skills, requires a tremendous amount of brain power. "Getting a joke would seem - on the surface - to be a very trivial, intuitive process. But brain imaging is showing us that there is more going on than we might think," says Samson."

Full article here.

Ideators and Alligators

2011-03-29T05:43:00.000-07:00

This week, The Creativity Seminar will be presented in Miami where Sean Kelly will be a guest speaker at a workshop on journalism, design, technology and creativity. It's likely that in South Florida in late summer, any brainstorms will develop into full-fledged hurricanes.

Multiply

2011-03-16T18:43:00.000-07:00

“Ideas are like rabbits.
You get a couple and learn how
to handle them, and pretty soon
you have a dozen.”

— John Steinbeck

Why Business Leaders Should Act More like Artists

2011-03-12T18:28:00.000-08:00

John Maeda, President of Rhode Island School of Design knows all too well the many stereotypes about artists. But when he had a conversation with two RISD textile entrepreneurs in Chicago, Robert Segal and Alicia Rosauer, he realized that leaders in the business world could benefit by adopting some of the less well-known traits of successful artists.

From Harvard Business Review:

"The three "aha's" I received from my conversation with partners Segal and Rosauer were:

1. Artists constantly collaborate. The example given was the common occurrence of an exhibition with multiple artists showing together, or the so-called "group show." Even in the context of a solo show, the artist works with the gallery owner, the curator, the framers, the installers, the lighting person, the publicist to bring their vision to life. Every exhibition is a collaboration to the nth degree.

2. Artists are talented communicators. The whole point of a work of art is to communicate something — a thought, an idea, a feeling, a vision. More explicitly, the artist frequently gives a talk to explain the thought process behind the artwork. Engaging the audience in a meaningful, expansive dialogue is often critical to the exhibition's success.

3. Artists learn how to learn together. Perhaps the reason why artists collaborate and socialize so well is that they learn in the studio model — ten or more students in the same room for hours on end. Bonded together in a personal space of intimate self-expression, they come into their own through the familial ties of the studio setting.

We've all seen the business world increasingly crave an approach that balances values with profits. One natural way to do this is to adopt an artist's point of view; the honesty and integrity that artists naturally bring to their work will be increasingly relevant."

More from John Maeda here.

Think Different

2011-03-05T05:43:00.000-08:00

"I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas.

I'm frightened of the old ones."

— John Cage

Visual Thinking for Writers

2011-03-04T07:08:00.000-08:00

Visual thinking involves using images as tools to allow the creative and emotional part of the brain to process information in an intuitive manner.

Suzanne Choo, of Teachers College at Columbia University, in an article published by The National Council of Teachers of English, advances the question: What if visual thinking were given special emphasis in the English classroom? She proposes

"...a curriculum grounded on three principles: (1) sense and perception as starting points; (2) meta-conceptual links between visual and verbal texts; and (3) the art of visualization in the writing process.

The emphasis on sensory experience, perceptual thinking, and visualization is a deliberate attempt to challenge reason, critical thinking, and linearity of thought that have come to dominate the teaching of writing in contemporary English classrooms.

Typically in such classrooms, critical-thinking skills in various forms are emphasized, such as the ability to write a persuasive argument using logical reasoning or the ability to write an informed response by analyzing and evaluating a given text."

But, in traditional teaching, critical thinking dominates visual thinking. So, Choo recommends that both skills be given a more equal balance through a multimodal approach of teaching. Two benefits are gained from this method:

"First, visual texts provide an easier access to printed texts, particularly for English Language Learners, via the facilitation of meta-conceptual links. Secondly, for native speakers of English, the inclusion of strategies that promote visual thinking along with critical thinking is especially relevant given the image-saturated, mass-mediated societies that they are likely to be immersed in."

Numerous scholarly works have identified that although most school systems support a language-centered curriuclum based on linearity of thought, more recent generations of students have been raised with greater exposure to visual stimuli, through television, computers and mobile devices. It's understood that instructors must broaden their focus "from grammar and genre to meta-concepts related to aesthetic composition in visual and printed texts."

An opportunity, Choo suggest, would be created to allow students to use visual design techniques to construct and organize their written work.

"The primary goal of such an approach is to provide creative spaces in the writing classroom that would empower students to become not just writers but also composers of texts."

By turning abstract ideas into visible concrete ones, visual learning techniques help students to understand and interpret information. These techniques can provide structure for writing and reporting -- through tools such as storyboarding -- as well as analyzing and discussion, and can help students to focus their thoughts and ideas.

Research by child development theorist Linda Kreger Silverman suggests that less than 30% of the population strongly uses visual/spatial thinking, another 45% uses both visual/spatial thinking and verbal thinking, and 25% thinks exclusively in words.

Harvard University art professor Rudolph Arnheim coined the phrase "visual thinking" in his 1969 book of the same name, explaining how the development of imagery can allow students to make connections and apply the pictures in our mind's eye to the world around us, helping them communicate more effectively. He wrote, "The clarification of visual forms and their organization in integrated patterns as well as the attribution of such forms to suitable objects is one of the most effective training grounds of the young mind."

In 1981 Roger Sperry won a Nobel Prize for his split brain research.The right hemisphere -- the non-verbal hemisphere -- he concluded, is indeed a conscious system in its own right, perceiving, thinking, remembering, reasoning, willing, and emoting, all at a characteristically human level, and that both the left and the right hemisphere may be conscious simultaneously in different, even in mutually conflicting, mental experiences that run along in parallel.

More recently Stephen Pinker wrote in The Language Instinct that because we are not born with language, we therefore cannot be engineered to think in words alone.

Writing is linear; our brains are not. Our writing processes can be improved if they better reflect the way we think. Many writers have found that visual thinking offers a powerful creative tool for translating our non-linear thoughts into clear writing.

That "Eureka" Moment

2011-03-03T06:35:00.000-08:00

"I get my best ideas in the bath tub."

— Archimedes

Recognized as the greatest mathematician of antiquity, Archimedes is perhaps best remembered today for the anecdote about his discovery of how to measure the volume of an irregularly shaped object. Challenged with determining whether a crown was made of solid gold or contained some silver, he knew he could not melt down the headpiece to measure its density, for that would destroy it.

Taking a break from this work challenge, it was when Archimedes was lowering himself into his bathtub that he observed that the water level rose -- and that this principle could provide a way to measure volume. As the crown was submerged, an amount of water equal to the volume of the object was displaced. Dividing the weight of the crown by the weight of the water displaced, Archimedes arrived at the density of the crown; a lower density would mean other materials had been added to the gold.

Thrilled by his discovery, the scientist cried "Eureka" (I have found it!), leapt from his bath and, excited to immediately share the news, apparently ran through the streets naked. (It's unlikely, however, that people hearing Archimede's one-word exclamation thought he had just invented the first vacuum cleaner...)

Often the stimulating power of a bath or shower can allow us to make our own discoveries on topics other than the water itself.

The fact that many people discover great ideas while in the shower is partly biological: warm water on the scalp and through the pores increases blood flow, which gets the brain churning. The mere sound of the water, producing a constant repetitive white noise (or wet noise) has a hypnotic and relaxing effect, too.

Merely stepping away from a work environment to the privacy of a shower stall or tub can release anxieties and clear one's mind.

Perhaps most significantly, a morning shower is the culmination of a period when the brain has switched to subconcious activity during sleep. It's at night that our minds have a chance to mull over the challenges of the previous day. Turning off the conscious brain, freer thinking rises to the surface, and fully escapes during a reinvigorating shower.

To capture the "Eureka" moment, some thinkers, attuned to the moments when their best ideas come to them, might even have a wax pencil ready to immediately write down their brainstorms right there on the tiles of the shower wall.

Quantity Leads to Quality (But Let's Qualify That)

2011-03-02T12:43:00.000-08:00

In Sloan Mangagement Review, Josh Hyatt explores how brainstorming teams are often unable to identify which of the concepts they've developed is best. So engrossed in the ideation, they lose perspective on the second, perhaps most critical, part of the creative process: selectivity.

A recent university study explored what differentiates brainstorming sessions that produce a single "A+" idea from those that produce multiple "B" ideas. The coauthors of the paper are Karan Girotra, a professor at INSEAD, and Christian Terwiesh and Karl T. Ulrich, both professors at the University of Pennsylvania.

"Existing research [on brainstorming] often focuses on how many ideas groups come up with, as opposed to evaluating the merit of those ideas. It turns out that brainstorming groups "are very bad at evaluating ideas," according to Terwiesch. "Certain members will get hung up on certain ideas, and often there is a strong personality whose opinion will dominate."

To combat this dynamic, the authors, in their research, split people into two groups: those generating ideas and those assessing them. After a group came up with new product ideas, researchers asked as many as 20 outside experts to subjectively assess the concepts.

Two types of groups generated ideas. One followed a traditional model, assembling a group - in this case, students studying product design - and having them come up with appropriate product ideas for dorm rooms. They worked solely in a group. The other group took a hybrid approach: Those students worked on ideas by themselves before coming together to share their thinking.

Which technique yielded the best ideas? Strictly speaking, the traditional brainstorming groups came up with the very best ideas. They also came up with the very worst ones. In other words, their results' quality varied much more than did the hybrid group's results. The hybrid group produced more ideas that were, on average, of higher quality. But, as Girotra notes, "when it comes to innovation, the extremes are what matter - not the norm and not the average." So, if both groups work for the same amount of time, the traditional brainstorming team "significantly outperforms" the hybrid group when it comes to producing the best ideas, according to the authors.

This finding contradicts most existing literature on the subject, which tends to conclude that while working in teams is more satisfying, working alone generates the most effective ideas."

The complete article is available at here. (Image source: InnovationTools)

Standing on the Shoulders

2011-03-02T09:35:00.000-08:00

"I invented nothing new. I simply assembled the discoveries of other men behind whom were centuries of work. Had I worked fifty or ten or even five years before, I would have failed.

So it is with every new thing. Progress happens when all the factors that make for it are ready and then it is inevitable.

To teach that a comparatively few men are responsible for the greatest forward steps of mankind is the worst sort of nonsense."

— Henry Ford

Pyramid Dream

2011-03-01T13:36:00.000-08:00

The brilliant John Maeda, President of Rhode Island School of Design and former associate director of research at the MIT Media Lab, works to integrate technology, education and the arts into a 21st-century synthesis of creativity and innovation.

In his extraordinary blog he describes a conversation he had with Dr. Patricia Brennan, of University of Wisconsin-Madison, about the nature of creativity and imagination:

"[This chart was] inspired by Maslow's famous Hierarchy of Needs. I was impressed how Patti had a clear mental model of why "teaching creativity doesn't work but expanding their imaginations might work better" in the context of some of her work in patient healthcare. Her basic thought was that in order to get patients to take control of their health, they need to imagine what it looks like to be more healthy.

At the base of the pyramid is human reflex -- i.e. response to a stimuli. One level above it is problem solving which in her mind doesn't require creativity and just a set of processes that can be activated. Above that is creativity -- an elevated form of problem solving that involves invention and improvisation. And at the very top is imagination, which Patti insisted is "boundless creativity." You can mix the different levels at the interfaces and see a different kind of creativity/action happening. I sincerely enjoyed how this model felt in my mind."

More inspiration from John Maeda.

(Image credit: "Brennan's Hierachy Chart," from TEDMED 2010
at the RWJF Pioneer Portfolio Meeting, by John Maeda)

Innovation Nation

2011-02-07T19:17:00.001-08:00

"Create as if the fate of the nation depends on you. It does."

— Barack Obama, February 2011

The Meaning of My Meandering Mind

2011-02-02T08:47:00.000-08:00

As John Tierney's article in The New York Times's Science Times section emphasizes, daydreaming is great, but please remember your itinerary — and keep an eye on your luggage — for you'll discover uncharted territories if you really pay attention.

In the past, daydreaming was often considered a failure of mental discipline, or worse. Freud labeled it infantile and neurotic. Psychology textbooks warned it could lead to psychosis. Neuroscientists complained that the rogue bursts of activity on brain scans kept interfering with their studies of more important mental functions.

But now that researchers have been analyzing those stray thoughts, they’ve found daydreaming to be remarkably common — and often quite useful. A wandering mind can protect you from immediate perils and keep you on course toward long-term goals.

Sometimes daydreaming is counterproductive, but sometimes it fosters creativity and helps you solve problems.

And those are just the lapses they themselves notice, thanks to their wandering brains being in a state of “meta-awareness,” as it’s called by Dr. Jonathan Schooler of the University of California, Santa Barbara.

To encourage this creative process, Dr. Schooler says, it may help if you go jogging, take a walk, do some knitting or just sit around doodling, because relatively undemanding tasks seem to free your mind to wander productively. But you also want to be able to catch yourself at the Eureka moment.

“For creativity you need your mind to wander,” Dr. Schooler says, “but you also need to be able to notice that you’re mind wandering and catch the idea when you have it."

Full New York Times article with links to psychological studies is here.

Nature, Nurture, Not Sure

2011-02-01T13:14:00.000-08:00

Discipline, not giftedness, is what's vital to greatness.

So says David Shenk in his new book, The Genius in All of Us.

And, he admits, his sub-title, Why Everything You’ve Been Told About Genetics, Talent, and IQ is Wrong, makes a strong claim:

"It is a bold statement, and it reflects how poorly the public has been served when it comes to understanding the relationship between biology and ability. The clichés we’ve been taught about genetic blueprints, IQ, and "giftedness" all come out of crude, early-20th century guesswork. The reality is so much more interesting and complex. Genes do have a powerful influence on everything we do, but they respond to their environments in all sorts of interesting ways. We’ve now learned a lot more about the developmental mechanisms that enable people to get really good at stuff. Intelligence and talent turn out to be about process, not about whether you were born with certain "gifts.""

When asked how do we go about finding the genius in all of us? What steps we can take to unlock latent talent?, Shenk replies with wonderfully positive spirit:

"Find the thing you love to do, and work and work and work at it. Don't be discouraged by failure; realize that high achievers thrive on failure as a motivating mechanism and as instruction guide on how to get better."

From Annie Murphy Paul's book review titled "How to Be Brilliant," in The New York Times:

Whatever you wish to do well, Shenk writes, you must do over and over again, in a manner involving, as Ericsson put it, “repeated attempts to reach beyond one’s current level,” which results in “frequent failures.” This is known as “deliberate practice,” and over time it can actually produce changes in the brain, making new heights of achievement possible. Behold our long rumored potential, unleashed at last! Shenk is vague about how, exactly, this happens, but to his credit he doesn’t make it sound easy. “You have to want it, want it so bad you will never give up, so bad that you are ready to sacrifice time, money, sleep, friendships, even your reputation,” he writes. “You will have to adopt a particular lifestyle of ambition, not just for a few weeks or months but for years and years and years. You have to want it so bad that you are not only ready to fail, but you actually want to experience failure: revel in it, learn from it.”

David Shenk, the author of five previous books including The Forgetting , Data Smog and The Immortal Game, is a correspondent for TheAtlantic.com, and has contributed to National Geographic, Slate, The New York Times, Gourmet, Harper's, Spy, The New Yorker, NPR and PBS. Shenk is a 1988 graduate of Brown University.

Strokes of Genius

2011-01-31T16:36:00.000-08:00

"Great things are done not by impulse,

but by a series of small things brought together."

Vincent Van Gogh

Brainstorming: Accentuate the Positive

2011-01-30T14:35:00.000-08:00

A re-posting of an article, from The Creative Leadership Forum, by Paul Sloane, author of The Leader's Guide to Lateral Thinking Skills.

By identifying the negative, Sloane accentuates the positive:

SIX WAYS TO RUIN A BRAINSTORMING SESSION

"They say brainstorms are old-fashioned and no longer effective. But the real reason for the frustrations is that the brainstorms are not facilitated properly. A well-run brainstorm is fun and energetic. It will generate plenty of good ideas. But a poor brainstorm can be frustrating and demotivational. Let's look at some simple ways to ruin your next brainstorm meeting.

1. Having no clear objectives
A brainstorm with a vague or unclear purpose will wander and lose its way. So set a clear objective. The purpose of the brainstorm is to generate many creative ideas to answer a specific goal. It is best to express the goal as a question. A wooly objective is not helpful. 'How can we do better?' is not as good as 'How can we double sales in the next 12 months?' Once the question has been agreed it is written up clearly for all to see. It is worth setting objectives for the number of ideas to be generated and the time to be spent. 'We are looking to generate 60 ideas in the next 20 minutes. Then we will whittle them down to 4 or 5 really good ones.'

2. Too homogenous a group
If everyone is from the same department then creativity can be inhibited and you may get 'group think'. Choose the group carefully. The best size is somewhere between six and twelve. Too few people and there are not enough diverse inputs. Too many people and it is hard to control and retain everyone's commitment. Sprinkle the group with a few outsiders from other areas or even from outside the business - people who can bring some different perspectives and wacky ideas. A good mix of people works best - varied ages, men and women, experienced and fresh in, etc.

3. Letting the boss act as facilitator
Beware of having an autocratic boss with his or her team. They can inhibit or shape the discussion. If the boss is present then it is better to have a good independent facilitator - someone who can encourage input from everyone and stop one person from dominating. The worst formula for a brainstorm is generally the department manager leading the meeting and acting as scribe and censor at the same time.

4. Allowing early criticism
The most important rule of brainstorming is - suspend judgment. In order to encourage a wealth of wacky ideas it is essential that no one is critical, negative or judgmental about an idea. Any idea that is uttered - no matter how stupid - must be written down. The rule about suspending judgement during the idea generation phase is so important that it is worth enforcing rigorously. A good technique is to issue water pistols; anyone who is critical gets squirted.

5. Settling for a few ideas.
Don't get a handful of ideas and then start analyzing. Quantity is great. The more ideas the better. Quantity improves quality. Think of it as a Darwinian process. The more separate ideas that are generated the greater the chance that some will be fit enough to survive. You need stacks of energy and buzz driving lots of wacky ideas. Crazy thoughts that are completely unworkable are often the springboards for other ideas that can be adapted into great new solutions. So keep the crazy ideas coming - you have to kiss a lot of frogs to find one prince!

6. No closure or follow through.
Don't stop the meeting after generating lots of ideas with a vague promise to follow up. If people see no real outcomes they will become frustrated with the process and lose faith. You should quickly analyze the ideas at the meeting. One of the best ways is to divide the proposals into three categories - promising, interesting or reject. If any of the promising ideas are real no-brainers - so good that they should be implemented straight away then give them to someone as an action item immediately.

You should evaluate the ideas using clear criteria - e.g. we want ideas that are practical, creative and appealing. Once you have reduced the long list to a short list you can let people vote. Give everyone three points. They can allocate points to their favorite ideas in any way that they want. Then you total the points and select the best for further action.

Close the meeting by thanking everyone for their input. Mention again one of two of the best, most inventive or funniest ideas. Then see which ideas you can implement - even if they are small things. People enjoy short, high-energy brainstorms that lead to actions. These meetings can motivate people, improve efficiency and drive innovation."

More about Paul Sloane here.

Chief of Confusion

2011-01-29T07:13:00.000-08:00

A visiting scholar at the University of Southern California, John Seely Brown calls himself the Chief of Confusion, in that he helps people ask the right questions.

Prior to his current position, he was another kind of Chief, the Chief Scientist of Xerox Corporation, and the director of its Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). While head of PARC, Brown expanded the role of corporate research to include such topics as organizational learning, knowledge management, and complex adaptive systems. He was a cofounder of the Institute for Research on Learning (IRL). In a world of these acronyms, he's known as JSB.

With Paul Duguid he co-authored the acclaimed book The Social Life of Information and with John Hagel he co-authored the book The Only Sustainable Edge which is about new forms of collaborative innovation.

Brown (a Brown graduate) describes himself as "part scientist, part artist and part strategist."

His new book, written with Hagel and and Lang Davison, is The Power of Pull: How Small Moves, Smartly Made, Can Set Big Things in Motion. It helps us to understand that pull is far more than search or accessing media on demand. Pull can be more systematically used to shape serendipity. The authors provide a guide to connecting with personal passion and finally turning stress into success.

JSB and Hagel are co-founders of Deloitte's Center for the Edge and recently were interviewed for Nokia's IdeasProject about their notion of "creation spaces," which they describe as:

online and in-person experiences designed to draw out what Hagel refers to as tacit knowledge — "Valuable knowledge that we have a really hard time expressing to each other." This process allows people to bring out the knowledge by coming together over extended periods of time to jointly problem solve and learn from each other in the process.

From the video transcript:

How do you get people to come together over extended periods of time, working together, contributing different perspectives, different experiences and skill sets, to jointly problem solve over an extended period, and learn from each other in the process and scaffold towards new sets of knowledge that just are not available today?

For more, see JSB, Hagel and Davison's manifesto,The Power of Passionate Creative -- an inspiring call to action.

(On a related topic, see The Lemelson Center for Invention and Innovation's excellent Places of Invention.)

Seeing is Believing

2011-01-28T07:03:00.000-08:00

“I prefer drawing to talking.

Drawing is faster,

and leaves less room for lies.”

— Le Corbusier

The Magical and The Mathematical

2011-01-27T10:45:00.000-08:00

A spreadsheet plot written out by J.K. Rowling. Her approach to spreadsheet plotting is to divide the columns by chapter number, story timeline, chapter title, main plots and subplots.

More on the spreadsheets here.

The Benefits of Structure and Constraints

2011-01-26T13:12:00.000-08:00

"You can't improvise on nothing, man.

You got to improvise on something."

— Charles Mingus

Design: Improving Through Improv

2011-01-25T16:17:00.000-08:00

Sean Kelly's Creativity Seminar pays homage to the imaginative work of improvisational theater groups like Second City and Upright Citizens Brigade, and demonstrates how their inventive techniques can be applied to problem solving in any field. In particular, he describes how the improv game of "Yes, And" allows performers -- and team members in work projects -- to build upon each other's ideas, provide positive reinforcement and expand a conversation in unexpectedly creative ways.

Now, Kelly receives a reply of "Yes, And" from Dartmouth College Professor Peter Robbie who ponders whether improv comedians might even make great design thinkers.

From an article in the Winter 2010 issue of Dartmouth Engineer by Elizabeth Kelsey:

"At Thayer School’s MacLean Engineering Sciences Center, Professor Robbie’s Design Thinking course is “...a class on improv as a tool for brainstorming,” he explains. “I’ve always thought that the quickest and smartest folks at the brainstorming phase of design have been those who do standup and improv.

They never say no. They never miss a beat. Improv requires players to accept what they are given, build on the ideas of others, and encourage wild ideas.”

"Using improv to get students comfortable with brainstorming is a case in point. “Everyone thinks that they know how to brainstorm, but in fact, brainstorming is usually plagued by problems like self-censoring, competitiveness, and ridicule,” says Robbie. “Improv is a great way for students to learn to defer judgment.”

Full article here.

Dartmouth Professor Peter Robbie (Photograph by John Sherman)

Dig Deeper

2011-01-15T07:44:00.000-08:00

Dig deeper for more ideas and better ideas.

And dig deeper into this blog for information on Sean Kelly's Creativity Seminar -- and a wide range of discussions about:

Quantity and Quality... Improv and Brainstorming... How to be Brilliant...
The @ Sign... Creative Blocks...

That Eureka Moment... Aristotle's Categories... Imagination and

Happiness... The Neuroscience of

Jokes...Business Innovation...

Flexible Thinking... The Art of

Collaboration... Making Mistakes...

Avoiding Writing... The Mystery

of the World... and Tina Fey!

(SCROLL DOWN AND CLICK ON "OLDER POSTS" AT BOTTOM RIGHT FOR MORE...)

The Defeat of Habit

2011-01-14T07:19:00.000-08:00

“Creativity can solve almost any problem.
The creative act, the defeat of habit by originality, overcomes everything.”

— George Lois

Storm in the Brain

2010-10-09T11:53:00.000-07:00

Dr. Rex Jung, an assistant research professor in the department of neurosurgery at the University of New Mexico, is leading a team in the first systematic research on the neurology of the creative process, including its relationship to personality and intelligence. The findings of the Mind Research Network as reported by Patricia Cohen in The New York Times:

They hope to figure out precisely which biochemicals, electrical impulses and regions were used when, say, Picasso painted “Guernica,” or Louise Nevelson assembled her wooden sculptures. Using M.R.I. technology, researchers are monitoring what goes on inside a person’s brain while he or she engages in a creative task.

Yet the images of signals flashing across frontal lobes have pushed scientists to re-examine the very way creativity is measured in a laboratory.

Responses by participants to a series of tests are used to generate what Dr. Jung calls a “Composite Creativity Index,” and his research has produced some surprising results. One study of 65 subjects suggests that creativity prefers to take a slower, more meandering path than intelligence.

“The brain appears to be an efficient superhighway that gets you from Point A to Point B” when it comes to intelligence, Dr. Jung explained. “But in the regions of the brain related to creativity, there appears to be lots of little side roads with interesting detours, and meandering little byways.”

Although intelligence and skill are generally associated with the fast and efficient firing of neurons, subjects who tested high in creativity had thinner white matter and connecting axons that have the effect of slowing nerve traffic in the brain. This slowdown in the left frontal cortex, a region where emotional and cognitive abilities are integrated, Dr. Jung suggested, “might allow for the linkage of more disparate ideas, more novelty and more creativity.”

Read the full article from The New York Times.

Images from brain research conducted by the Mind Research Network. Subjects who tested high in creativity had thinner white matter and connecting axons that slow nerve traffic in the brain. In these images, the green tracks show the white matter being analyzed. The yellow and red spots show where creativity corresponds with slower nerve traffic. The blue areas show where “openness to experience,” associated with creativity, corresponds with slower nerve traffic.

The Verbal and The Visual

2010-09-30T19:48:00.000-07:00

In advance of the eagerly-anticipated release of Steven Johnson's new book, Where Good Ideas Come From, the very brilliant, best-selling author has presented a pair of videos highlighting the crux of his thesis: Evidently, good ideas come from both his own spoken words, at a fascinating TED lecture recently; and from the nimble-fingered illustrations of Cognitive Media.

An extremely original thinker, tireless researcher and artful writer with a dry sense of humor, Steven Johnson was a semiotics major at Brown University.

His conversation with Wired magazine's co-founder Kevin Kelly at The New York Public Library is now available on video. And Johnson also presented an excellent overview of Where Good Ideas Come From here. (Both videos courtesy of ForaTV.)

Magazines and iPads: The Creative Process in Process

2010-08-20T08:13:00.000-07:00

On March 7, 2011 the Donald J. Reynolds Journalism Institute hosted a day-long seminar titled iPads: The Creative Process in Process.

iPads and the clones that are hitting the market are a game changer for magazines - and the entire publishing industry. In the midst of this digital upheaval, iPads: The Creative Process In Process brought together editors, designers, tech and visual thinkers for a day-long conference that explores how to adapt and generate original content for this ground-breaking device.

Speakers included: National Geographic executive editor/e-publishing, David Griffin; panelists Gary Hoenig, ESPNPublishing general manager/editorial director, ESPN.com editor in chief, Rob King, and ESPN senior writer Wright Thompson; design director Wyatt Mitchell of Wired magazine, Mike Haney, deputy director, research & development, who oversees iPad for Popular Science and other Bonnier titles; Better Homes & Gardens executive editor Kitty Morgan, creative director Michael Belknap and Joe McCambley founding partner of Wonderfactory, Meredith's consulting firm for Better Homes; Matt Bean, associate vice president of mobile, social, and emerging media for Rodale's Men's Health and Women's Health magazines; plus Regina McCombs, online and multimedia expert, the Poynter Institute and Roger Fidler, digital publishing expert at the Reynolds Journalism Institute

SESSION TOPICS:

• The National Geo Empire Goes Digital 

• ESPN: Touch Changes Everything 

• Wired: Full Speed Ahead 

• In the Trenches with Popular Science
and Mag+

• Better Homes & Gardens: Testing
the iPad Waters

A full listing of the events, bios of the speakers, an archive of on-site blogging that day, and video of each session are available at the Reynolds Journalism Institute website.

AN UPDATE: Since the planning of this seminar, Speaker David Griffin has been named Visuals Editor of The Washington Post.

On Selectivity

2010-08-19T08:24:00.000-07:00

"Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes.

Art is knowing which ones to keep."

Scott Adams

Think Inc.

2010-08-19T06:04:00.000-07:00

The current issue of Inc. Magazine offers what they dub their "highly practical, eminently doable, totally reasonable plan to create a million new jobs." Inside the magazine are articles such as "Entrepreneurship Education for All," "How Incubators Speed the Start-up Process," and "How Business-Plan Competitions Reward Innovation."

Like Businessweek's expanded coverage on, and special attention to, Innovation (especially by the Design Thinking columnist Bruce Nussbaum), Inc. Magazine has begun to put more focus on innovation and creativity inthe corporate world.

A useful resource is the updated section of Inc.'s website which

provides a full archive of all their articles on inventive thinking

in the workplace.

Past Innovation topics are grouped into categories:

MANAGING FOR CREATIVITY

• Hiring For Creativity

• Encouraging Process Innovation

• Marketing New Ideas

RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT

• Brainstorming

• Interdisciplinary Research

BRINGING INNOVATION TO MARKET

• Expoiting Idea Marketplaces

The full index is here.

(Click images to enlarge.)

Overnight Incubation

2010-08-17T09:01:00.000-07:00

Sean Kelly's Creativity Seminar explores the miraculous percolation that can occur in the mind at night, before the coffee starts its own percolation. When we turn off our conscious mind, the subconscious goes to work on our creative project, while we're thinking about other things -- and especially when we're asleep. But, only if we've done the research and the preparation, and explored the possibilities the night before.

The brilliant performer and writer John Cleese discovered something additionally remarkable about how a good night's sleep can relieve a dilemma for us:

"If I was trying to write a sketch at night, and I got stuck or couldn't think of an ending or I couldn't see how to continue the sketch, I would go to bed.

And when I woke up in the morning, I made myself a cup of coffee and went to my desk and looked at the problem.

Not only was the solution to the problem immediately apparent to me, but I couldn't even remember what the problem had been the previous night. I couldn't understand why I couldn't see what the solution was."

Cleese also reveals another profound discovery about the creative, and uncreative, mind.

"To know how good you are at something requires the same skills as it does to be good at that thing.

Most people who have absolutely no idea what they're doing have absolutely no idea that they have no idea what they're doing. It explains a great deal of life.

It explains, particularly, Hollywood."

Thinking Broadly

2010-08-15T09:14:00.000-07:00

In a recent Wall Street Journal article, Dr. Rosabeth Moss Kanter, professor of business administration at Harvard Business School, discusses how businesses can benefit from thinking broadly about society.

Describing her latest book, "Supercorp: How Vanguard Companies Create Innovation, Profits, Growth, and Social Good," she encourages companies to find new opportunities by creating a new perspective on every aspect of operations and using that to drive the business strategy.

Organizations, she suggests, can think broadly and -- by breaking familiar patterns -- think differently:

"One of the essential tasks of leaders is to inspire people—but it isn't just to inspire people individually, it's also to create a framework in which people can communicate and collaborate. Having a strong corporate culture is one of the best ways to do that.

That's one cluster of lessons. A second cluster of lessons is: Do more in the outside world. Think more broadly. Ask everyone to be scouts for new ideas. Hold meetings in unusual places, where you make contact with customers that you don't yet have—who are not yet in your market but could be."

Full Q & A here.

Stress —> Success

2010-08-08T07:07:00.000-07:00

"No pressure. No diamonds."

– Mary Case

(Back to) the Future of News

2010-06-22T08:26:00.000-07:00

It was a pleasure chatting with Garry Trudeau once again at this year's National Cartoonists Society convention and awards ceremony in Jersey City, NJ.

Previously, and more seriously, on the topic, the Doonesbury creator said:

"I don't believe there's anything I can do personally to prepare for a post-newspaper future, other than hope that the large media companies will come to their senses and form a gated Web collective along the lines of cable TV. They need to form a news utility, financed by subscription or micropayments because going it alone has been disastrous for all of them."

Read the rare interview with Trudeau here.

Party of One

2010-06-20T09:45:00.000-07:00

"Be alone, that is the secret of invention; Be alone, that is when ideas are born."

Nikola Tesla, 1934

Places of Invention

2010-05-15T15:10:00.000-07:00

The 12x18-foot garage in Palo Alto, CA from which, in 1939, Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard launched their business.

The Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation at the National Museum of American History is planning a new exhibition called Places of Invention. The exhibition will explore several questions about creative communities, including:

• What social, psychological, and spatial elements spark creativity?
• How do these elements give rise to places where invention thrives?
• How does collaboration affect innovation?

Through a series of design challenges hosted by The Tech Virtual, the Lemelson Center invites the public to develop and prototype design concepts for the Center’s next exhibition about modern and historic “hot spots” of invention and innovation.

The public can contribute ideas in one or all of these categories: design an interactive exhibit space that allows museum visitors to model their own place of invention; design an activity that encourages museum visitors to practice collaboration, a key feature of many innovative communities; or use a virtual environment or other design tools to model the contributor’s own place of invention.

More at Inventors Digest.

Quote of the Day

2010-05-14T05:52:00.000-07:00

"The soul can not think
without a picture."

Aristotle

Not Just for Artists Any More

2010-05-11T14:18:00.000-07:00

Harvard lecturer and researcher Dr. Shelley Carson, who focuses on the interface between creativity and psychopathology, understands that our changing world makes the further development of our creative abilities more crucial now than ever — particularly for those in the business world. She expands upon this idea in her fascinating new book,“Your Creative Brain: Seven Steps to Maximize Imagination, Productivity, and Innovation in Your Life.’’

As Dr. Carson explained to Elizabeth Cooney of The Boston Globe:

"The roadmap for how to do things has disappeared. In the business world, creativity is now the number-one quality that head hunters are looking for in top-level chief executives. Most of the elite business schools in the country now have courses on creativity, and many Fortune 500 companies have hired creativity consultants. Creativity isn’t just for starving artists and musicians any more."

And Dr. Carson knows that creativity can, and must, be taught.

"What we have found in recent years in the neuroscience of creativity is that highly creative people tend to activate certain neural patterns in their brain when they are solving a creative problem or doing creative work. We have also found through biofeedback programs and other types of cognitive behavioral research that it is possible to change your brain activation patterns. Therefore we can mimic the brain activation of highly creative people."

Read more of the Globe interview.

In Your Creative Mind, Dr. Carson identifies how developing our creative potential can lead to greater success and fulfullment :

"The trick is in understanding networks that connect our brain’s “hot spots” for creative thought, and then developing the ability to “turn on” these networks. Each of us is stronger in some areas than others – some are great at brainstorming but weak in follow-through. Others experience creative block because they’re too critical or inhibited. And some people squelch their imaginations when they’re feeling low, rather than recognize that there is creative potential in a negative mood."

Based on the latest findings in neuroscience using brain imaging and neuropsychological testing, combined with interviews with hundreds of creative achievers, Dr. Carson has created a model of seven brain states, through the acronym CREATES: Connect, Reason, Envision, Absorb, Transform, Evaluate, and Stream – and she describes how these "brainsets" relate to creativity, productivity, and innovation.

Explore more of Dr. Shelley Carson's brilliant and original research, and learn more about her new book, at her inspiring website.

What Encourages Employees To Be Creative?

2010-05-10T12:30:00.000-07:00

According to a Wall Street Journal article by JC Spender and Bruce Strong, the best source of productive ideas at any corporation is the employees themselves, through what the authors term Innovation Communities. These forums that share concepts across functions and ranks are defined by seven key characteristics:

• Create the space to innovate

• Get a broad variety of viewpoints
• Create a conversation between management and staff

• Participants should be pulled to join, not pushed

• Tapping unused talent keeps development costs low
• Collateral benefits are as important as the innovations
• Demonstrable value is key

To make the case for the need for Innovation Communities, the authors present a sidebar article that explains why tapping into employees' imaginations through traditional routines rarely produces results.

Three factors are blamed:

(a) Senior management doesn't see the potential. They look to outside managers for new ideas.
(b) Managers suppress employee imagination. Problems and possible solutions aren't shared up and down the chain of command. Each end doesn't feel comfortable talking to the other.
(c) Managers don't know how to use employee imagination. Suggestion boxes generally fail. Research shows that creativity is generally not stimulated (and may in fact be harmed) by financial incentives.

This third explanation brings to mind a remarkable study that explored the related topic and delved deeply into the question: If you were paid more money would you produce more creative work? Teresa Amabile, who has investigated the intersection of business and creativity as a professor at the Harvard Business School, found that the answer is a surprising "no."

"Since coming to HBS in 1995 from the psychology department at Brandeis University, she's engaged in a longitudinal study to "track creativity in the wild," she says. Poring over 12,000 electronic diaries submitted by workers in seven companies, she's encountered some myth-busting answers to what makes creativity tick in the work environment - and what grinds it to a halt.

Money, it turns out, does not foster creativity; Amabile found that people doing creative, innovative work do not focus daily on salary or a potential bonus. Ditto for severe deadlines, which despite common perceptions generally stifle creativity. Competition and fear of retribution also hinder employees from doing their most creative work, she found.

While these findings might chafe against popular management wisdom, they support Amabile's core hypothesis, formulated in social-psychological laboratory experiments, that creativity is a product of intrinsic motivation. "That's being motivated to do the work because it's interesting, it's positively challenging, it's captivating," she says. On the flip side, extrinsic motivators - expected evaluation, competition, anticipated reward - tend to decrease creativity.

From Beth Potier's article in Harvard Science magazine.

Read more about Teresa Amabile's excellent study here.

Teresa Amabile (Photo: Kris Snibbe/Harvard News Office)

Trans (across) Discipline (study)

2010-05-10T09:09:00.000-07:00

Parsons The New School for Design launched a new Masters program this spring:

FROM THEIR WEBSITE:
"Emphasizing collaborative design-led research, the MFA Transdisciplinary Design in the School of Design Strategies at Parsons will serve as an academic laboratory in New York City for graduate students seeking to define the next phase of design practice globally.

The complex problems that confront a networked 24/7 global culture call for broad design approaches. Parsons created the MFA in Transdisciplinary Design (TransDesign) for a new generation of designers who want to address pressing social issues using new ideas, tools, and methods. Students work in cross-disciplinary teams, consider issues from multiple perspectives, gain insight from industry leaders, and emerge with a portfolio of projects showcasing design as a process for transforming the way we live in the 21st century.

A NEW KIND OF DESIGN THINKING
Graduates of the MFA TransDesign program will possess a unique set of skills and capacities that will distinguish them professionally. Students learn to practice:

• Reflective collaboration – working flexibly in multidisciplinary teams to solve highly complex problems

• Complexity modeling – visually modeling complex systems and social structures to yield new insights

• Critical reframing – examining problems and turning them into design opportunities

• Design-led research – articulating a research problem and exploring it through a design process

• Fitness prototyping – discovering an appropriate resolution of a problem that belongs to no single design field.

Read an interview with Jamer Hunt, chair of Urban and Transdisciplinary Design at Parsons.

What does "Transdisciplinary" mean? Just ask the man or woman on the street...

Musical Chairs

2010-05-07T06:13:00.000-07:00

Need New Ideas? Trade Places.

"When two successful CEOs switched places for a day, the result was new ideas and a fresh perspective. Don't limit your imagination to what you already know. If you need to innovate, don't look to what others in your industry are doing, or to your past successes.

Seek out a new experience, put yourself in a new context, and find ideas already proven in one field that might be applicable to yours. If you can, find someone who has a similar job in a different industry and trade experiences; what might be routine and ordinary for him may be revolutionary for you."

Adapted from "Trading Places: A Smart Way to Change Your Mind" by Bill Taylor.

Business Innovation Conference at Yale

2010-04-16T14:39:00.000-07:00

Yale School of Management

in association with AIGA

July 25-30, 2010

at Yale University, New Haven, CT

BUSINESS PERSPECTIVES FOR CREATIVE LEADERS

"...is designed exclusively for design executives who work with designers or clients to develop strategic responses to client challenges—in the form of a comprehensive communication or positioning strategy, or the design of a range of products or services. This select group of senior-level creative leaders will come together to discuss, network, debate and grow with each other."

Explore timely topics to understand significant transformations and technological advances in the business world, apply financial tools and strategic analysis, and capitalize on new client opportunities. Case studies, lectures, guest speakers and study groups will give attendees a more complete understanding of business and design through the eyes of business executives. Learn more about the curriculum and faculty.

-- From the American Institute of Graphic Artists

More info here.

Panaramio

Corporate Creativity and Comedy

2010-04-14T04:30:00.000-07:00

Sean Kelly's Creativity Seminar uses examples from his 25 years of producing humorous illustrations and from great comedic minds such as Moliere, Oscar Wilde, Dorothy Parker, The Second City's guru Del Close and writers for The Simpsons. During difficult economic times, humor can provide comfort -- and lead to great solutions.

Dr. Rosabeth Moss Kanter, author of Supercorp, explores the power of a sense of humor as a tool for corporate innovation.

"Creative leaders unlock ingenuity and build support for change by lightening up. They are willing to consider new possibilities that seem absurd, even ludicrous, at first...This is exactly what humor is all about: playing with ideas, challenging assumptions, and poking fun at tradition.

In the classic tradition, tragedy is apocalyptic; whatever one tries, the outcome cannot be altered. Comedy, in contrast, is hopeful. It involves ludicrous juxtapositions with never-ending possibilities for improvement. Humor helps us understand that things aren't always as they appear, they can shift shape or form, there are opportunities for change, and we're not trapped by past decisions."

Dr. Kanter's brilliant commentary is a serious analysis -- with lots of very funny examples.

Read "Laughing Your Way To The Bank."

Science and Creativity

2010-04-07T06:18:00.000-07:00

Science journalist Marcia Bartusiak and Harvard physicist Lisa Randall explore the creativity involved in scientific research and writing about science at Cambridge Forum. The free program, titled Criticizing Creativity, takes place at The First Parish (Unitarian Universalist) 3 Church Street, Cambridge, MA (Harvard Square) at 6:30 p.m., Wednesday, April 7, 2010.

From the press release:

"Creativity is a trait commonly associated with artists --writers, painters, or composers. But other professions require creativity as well; think of the doctor coming up with a diagnosis, the teacher creating a new lesson plan, or the scientist confronted with aberrations in data. How is the creative spark that informs a scientific investigation the same as the inspiration that generates a work of art or literature? How is it different? What can we learn about the nature of creativity when we examine the ways in which it is used outside of the arts?

MIT’s Marcia Bartusiask and Harvard’s Lisa Randall each have experience in scientific research and in the arts. They bring this dual perspective to the discussion led by Dr. Sasha Helper."

Vibrated

2010-03-31T06:56:00.000-07:00

"There are no days in life
so memorable as those
which vibrated to some
stroke of the imagination."

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

Scott and Zelda, Westport, CT, 1921

Transforming Journalism

2010-03-29T12:33:00.000-07:00

George Washington University's School of Media and Public Affairs, in association with the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism and The Newseum, hosted "Transforming Journalism: The State of the News Media 2010" on March 29, 2010.

The event featured panelists Tom Rosenstiel (Director, PEJ), Jim Brady (President, Digital Strategies, Allbritton Communications), Tina Brown (Founder and Editor-in-Chief, The Daily Beast), Susan Page (Washington Bureau Chief, USA Today), Charles Sennott (Exec. Editor, GlobalPost) and Mark Whitaker, (SVP and Washington Bureau Chief, NBC News). The panel was moderated by SMPA Director Frank Sesno.

The keynote speaker was Vivian Schiller (President & CEO, NPR).

Live Twitter reports featured quotes, such as:

Susan Page: "It's still 'legacy media" that is driving conversation in the country and traffic on the web." (80% of links on blogs come from traditional journalism sources such as The New York Times.)

Vivian Schiller, to students: "Don't let family, neighbors tell you to not go into journalism because there are no jobs. Students in this room will re-invent biz, make models and make $"

More info on the panel at GWU's SMPA is here.

The new Pew annual report on the health and status of American journalism (March 15, 2010) is here.

The Innovator's DNA

2010-03-26T09:29:00.000-07:00

From The Harvard Business Review, an article by Innosight founder Clayton Christensen, BYU Professor Jeffrey Dyer, and INSEAD Professor Hal Gregersen describes the critical characteristics of successful innovators, and presents practical tips for business leaders looking to strengthen their innovation muscles.

"Our research led us to identify five “discovery skills” that distinguish the most creative executives: associating, questioning, observing, experimenting, and networking. We found that innovative entrepreneurs (who are also CEOs) spend 50% more time on these discovery activities than do CEOs with no track record for innovation. Together, these skills make up what we call the innovator’s DNA. And the good news is, if you’re not born with it, you can cultivate it."

What makes innovators different?

"Innovative entrepreneurs have something called creative intelligence, which enables discovery yet differs from other types of intelligence (as suggested by Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences). It is more than the cognitive skill of being right-brained. Innovators engage both sides of the brain as they leverage the five discovery skills to create new ideas."

Full article here.

Train of Thought

2010-03-23T06:32:00.000-07:00

Quantity of ideas leads to quality of solutions.

Swiss-born photographer and graphic designer Herbert Matter (1907-1984) certainly understood this, for he left
a remarkable imprint on
20th-century visual communication.

Attending the École des Beaux-Arts in Geneva and the Académie Moderne in Paris, Matter studied with Léger and worked with Cassandre and Le Corbusier. Gaining international fame with his travel posters for their pioneering combination of photomontage and type, he was hired by legendary art director Alexey Brodovich, working for Harper’s Bazaar and Vogue, among other publications. Later he was a design consultant at Knoll Associates, collaborator with Charles and Ray Eames and professor of photography at Yale University. Among his close friends were Jackson Pollack, Alexander Calder, Alberto Giacommeti and Willem de Kooning.

Assigned in 1954 to bring new life to an already well-known logo for the New Haven Railroad, Matter launched into a passionate exploration of all the graphic possibilities. In a relentless search for just the right solution, he produced over 100 concepts (compiled in the video below).

The journey was certainly worth it: the final design he chose, employing a bold red, black and white logo, still endures -- outliving the train line itself by over 40 years.

This tour-de-force comes from Stanford University's collection of Herbert Matter's papers.

NHRR logo development from Herbert Matter on Vimeo.

What's The Big Idea?

2010-03-21T09:36:00.000-07:00

HOW TO DEVELOP CREATIVE SOLUTIONS
THROUGH VISUAL THINKING

A Seminar for Executives, Journalists and Educators

The best way to come up with a good idea is to come up with lots of ideas. But what if the bolt of inspiration never strikes? What if the brainstorm is merely a cloudy drizzle?

Often the most elegant solution to a problem is already right in front of you. Obvious ideas are not brilliant, but brilliant ideas are obvious.

Finding that gem of a concept requires first knowing what you're really looking for, and then developing inventive ways of looking.

In a seminar designed to stimulate creativity, Sean Kelly explores how using analysis, free association, selectivity and visual thinking can allow individuals, teams and organizations to produce great ideas and solve problems.

Kelly uses examples from his 20 years of creative work to demonstrate his conceptual and playful process: how he approaches assignments, generates multiple concepts and arrives at solutions.

Visual thinking can lead to a big idea -- and lots of big ideas.

-------

Recently presented for the Columbia Scholastic Press Association at the Columbia School of Journalism

For information on how to host this seminar at your business or school:
CLICK HERE FOR EMAIL

(Go to "Contact" section)

CONTINUE THROUGH THIS BLOG BY CLICKING "OLDER POST" AT BOTTOM RIGHT.

Is it @rt?

2010-03-19T11:46:00.000-07:00

AT @ THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY: Arroba sign, used at the "taula de Ariza" registry from 1448, to denote a wheat shipment from Castile to the Kingdom of Aragon.

As symbols, icons and graphical abbreviations evolve into ever more dominant tools of communication in the digital age, it becomes helpful to understand the history of such visual devices.

Perhaps the most iconic icon of the internet age is the "@."

Thousands of years before the invention of email, the symbol had a variety of other functions in linguistic and commercial society.

The @ symbol, which is believed to date back to the sixth century, is commonly defined as: "A cursive variation of ᾱ or ᾱᾱ, the abbreviation of Greek ανα (ana) used in recipes and prescriptions with the meaning "of each", and later extended to accounting. Other explanations have that it is ā, an abbreviation of Latin ad (“to”), or French à (“to”).

At it's most basic, it's a handwriting device, a ligature designed to fuse a preposition in a single distinctive pen stoke.

The symbol persisted in sixteenth-century Venetian trade, where it was used to mean amphora, a standard-size terracotta vessel employed by merchants, which had become a unit of measure.

The @ symbol was known as the ‘”commercial ‘a’” when it appeared on the keyboard of the American Underwood, the first typewriter, in 1885.

From this stage forward, the symbol was standardized stylistically and functionally, and it appeared in the original 1963 ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) list of computer codes.

In 1967, American electrical engineer Ray Tomlinson created the world’s first email system and in 1971 selected the @ for its unique locative sense.

Cultures around the world have anthropomorphized @ with charming names: Germans, Poles, and South Africans call it “monkey’s tail” in each different language. In Italian, the symbol is referred to as the “snail,” (chiocciola), in French as "arrobase" in Norwegian as “pig’s tail,” and in Chinese as “little mouse.” For the Russians @ symbolizes a dog, while the Finnish know @ as the miukumanauku, meaning the “sign of the meow,” and believe that the symbol is inspired by a curled-up sleeping cat.

@ at MoMA:
Now, the symbol has been recognized on a new level of cultural significance.

New York's Museum of Modern Art's Department of Architecture and Design has "acquired" the @ symbol into its collection.

From Paola Antonelli, Senior Curator:

"[Ray] Tomlinson performed a powerful act of design that not only forever changed the @ sign’s significance and function, but which also has become an important part of our identity in relationship and communication with others. His (unintended) role as a designer must be acknowledged and celebrated by the one collection—MoMA’s—that has always celebrated elegance, economy, intellectual transparency, and a sense of the possible future directions that are embedded in the arts of our time, the essence of modern.

The appropriation and reuse of a pre-existing, even ancient symbol—a symbol already available on the keyboard yet vastly underutilized, a ligature meant to resolve a functional issue (excessively long and convoluted programming language) brought on by a revolutionary technological innovation (the Internet)—is by all means an act of design of extraordinary elegance and economy."

UPDATE:
The London Independent responds to MoMA's acquistion and quotes Steve Kennedy, adjunct professor of typography at The New School, who expressed puzzlement: "What will it lead to? Maybe we will wake up tomorrow and discover that the Guggenheim has acquired the ampersand..."

Creativity Seminar at NYC Marriott Marquis

2010-03-17T17:58:00.000-07:00

Sean Kelly's Creativity Seminar was one of the featured presentations at the 2010 College Media Advisers Spring Convention, March 14-16 at the Marriott Marquis in New York City.

1,600 college print, broadcast and online journalists took part in educational workshops and heard lectures by professional journalists from international newspapers, magazines, television networks and online blogs.

At the annual convention, the largest assembly of student journalists in the world gathered for three days to attend over 200 educational sessions, heard inspirational keynote addresses from media movers and shakers, participated in a trade show, learned from onsite critiques and competition, and much more, including preconvention Media Pro Workshops.

Preceding Sean Kelly's presentation were the conference's three keynote speakers: Mark Halperin, author of "Game Change;" Terry Moran, of ABC News; and Brian Stelter, of The New York Times.

Spring Nieman Reports: Visual Journalism

2010-03-16T19:44:00.000-07:00

From Harvard University's Nieman Foundation: Fresh Approaches and New Business Strategies for the Multimedia Age

"In this issue," writes editor Melissa Ludtke, "photojournalists write about pushing through the digital disruption to find inventive uses of digital media - ways they hope will pay."

Highlights of this special Spring 2010 Issue of Online Exclusives on Visual Journalism include:

The Danger of Failing to Harness
the Web's Visual Promise
By Fred Ritchin

Recognizing the Special Value of
Still Photos in a Video World
By Nuri Vallbona

What Crisis?
‘It’s not about finding new ways to do old things,
but time to radically rethink our business models by redefining our products, our partners, and our clients.’
By Stephen Mayes

Full Reports here.

Why Humans Create

2010-03-15T09:33:00.000-07:00

Saul Bass is the legendary designer who created famous corporate logos and identity campaigns for AT&T, United, Continental and Frontier Airlines, Hunt Wesson, Quaker, Alcoa, The United Way, and many more. He is perhaps best known for his design of animated title sequences for top motion pictures including Psycho, North by Northwest, Anatomy of a Murder, West Side Story and The Man With the Golden Arm.  Saul Bass was the recipient of th AIGA Lifetime Achievement Award in 1981, and he won an Oscar for Why Man Creates, in 1968.

Why Man Creates (in two parts, below) is sub-titled, "A series of explorations , episodes and comments on creativity," and is structured in segments titled:

1. The Edifice 2. Fooling Around 3. The Process 4. The Judgment 5. A Parable
6. A Digression 7. The Search: Work in progress on new ideas.

It begins with an animated history of western culture: art, philosophy, politics and invention.

Among the film's musings:

"Where do ideas come from?
From looking at one thing and seeing another.
From fooling around, and playing with possibilities.
From speculating. And changing.
Pushing, pulling.
Transforming.
And if you're lucky, you come up with something worth
saving, using, and building on.
That's where the game stops, and the work begins."

Although told in the whimsical and surreal style popular in the short films and advertisements of the late Sixties, the film carries a timeless, universal message on the core principles of imaginative thinking. It's a charming tale told with some pathos. In retrospect, all of the societal and scientific problems from that period remain today, but all the creative techniques for solving them still remain viable. It's a hopeful celebration of the power of curiosity, self-expression and the human need to connect with the outer world in a meaningful way.

Why Man Creates also quotes Albert Einstein:

"As one grows older, one sees the impossibility of imposing your will on the chaos with brute force. But, if you're patient, there may come the moment when, while you are eating an apple, the solution presents itself and says, 'Here I am.' "

The movie won the Academy Award for Documentary Short Subject. An abbreviated version of it ran on the first-ever broadcast of CBS' 60 Minutes, on September 24, 1968. In 2002, it was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry and was recognized by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."

Why Man Creates was directed by Saul Bass and Elaine Bass, and was written by Saul Bass and Mayo Simon.

Neigh Sayer

2010-03-05T13:31:00.000-08:00

"The horse is here to stay, but the automobile is only a novelty, a fad."

- Advice from a president of the Michigan Savings Bank to Henry Ford's lawyer Horace Rackham. Rackham ignored the advice and invested $5000 in Ford stock, selling it later for $12.5 million.

Block That Creative Block

2010-02-28T17:52:00.000-08:00

"Working with Inhibitions to Creativity"
at School of Visual Arts, NYC
Friday, March 5, 6:30 - 8pm

Marilyn LaMonica, MPS, NCPsych, will discuss how psychoanalytic theory provides a unique explanation of impediments to creative work. Clinical cases of a filmmaker, a painter and a writer will be used to demonstrate how explorations of fantasized object relations lead to freer access to creative potential.

Presented by the Masters of Professional Studies Art Therapy Department, School of Visual Arts

133/141 West 21 Street, Room 101C, New York, NY
Free and open to the public.

Where Do Ideas Come From, Part I

2010-02-27T12:56:00.000-08:00

Rod Serling, the American screenwriter and television producer best known for his Twilight Zone scripts with O. Henry- and Pirandello-like twists, fielded questions from students at Ithaca University in 1972 about the art of writing for television.

In the clip above, he gives a rather florid response to the question, “Where do ideas come from?” (The author he references at the end is Ernest Hemingway.)

The conversation with Serling continues here.

See

2010-02-26T06:15:00.000-08:00

“Thinking is more interesting than knowing, but less interesting than looking.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Seminar Returning to Columbia University

2010-02-10T09:11:00.000-08:00

(Photo: switchstyle)

More information about the upcoming Spring presentation of Sean Kelly's Creativity Seminar to the Columbia Scholastic Press Association at the Columbia School of Journalism will be posted here soon.

The Most Terrifying Sight

2010-02-07T15:57:00.000-08:00

A blank page can cause panic in some people.

But it's the place where most work projects begin. In fact, it's where Sean Kelly's Creativity Seminar begins.

And, as this entertaining presentation demonstrates, it's also where the fun part of the creative process begins.

Or, perhaps, where it ends.

2010 Press Release

2010-01-21T09:29:00.000-08:00

How To Be Creative? Avoid Being Uncreative.

2010-01-19T10:41:00.000-08:00

As journalist Charlie Brooker illustrates in this very witty parody created for the BBC, the worst way to tell a news story is through all the obvious gimmicks.

"The Only Real Thing In The World Is Imagination"

2010-01-18T19:50:00.000-08:00

R.F. Outcault (1863-1928) is considered the father of the comic strip, having created the full-color series called "The Yellow Kid" (giving rise to the phrase "yellow journalism") which was published in Joseph Pulitzer's New York World.

Exactly 90 years ago today, a strip by Outcault revealed his more philosophical side through his thoughts on imagination, saying "without [it] nobody can be real happy," and recognizing how inherently imaginative children are.

Before becoming a comic strip artist, Outcault worked for another expert in the creative process, Thomas Edison.

(DETAIL ABOVE: "Buster Brown" strip, January 18, 1920.)

A tip of the hat to Larry Harnisch, editor of the wonderful "Daily Mirror" blog at
The Los Angeles Times.

On The Other Hand

2010-01-17T14:09:00.000-08:00

“Analyzing humor is like dissecting a frog.

Few people are interested and the frog dies of it.”

E.B. White

Times of London: "Most Ideas Rubbish"

2010-01-13T09:18:00.000-08:00

In a recent discussion on group brainstorming in The Times of London, Andy Green, director of the Flexible Thinking Forum, emphasized the importance of creating a non-critical atmosphere in brainstorming sessions:

“Accept that most of your ideas will be rubbish, but at the outset you have no idea what are the good and what the not-so-good ideas,” Mr Green said. “Premature evaluation is a major killer of potential brilliance.” Mr Miller agreed. “There are plenty of bad ideas, but in a brainstorming session we want people to ... leave judgment until the end.”

Full article here.

Bad Times Demand Great Ideas

2009-12-01T14:35:00.000-08:00

SEAN KELLY, QUOTED IN BUSINESSWEEK:

"During uncertain economic periods, new ways of
thinking are more crucial than ever for businesses.
Really innovative ideas are what's needed to produce sucessful strategies. Visual thinking can allow you to see differently -- to open your eyes and see the problem from a new perspective, and to see even more solutions than before."

Declaration of Principles

2009-11-29T17:36:00.000-08:00

Charles Foster Kane famously drew up a declaration of principles in Orson Welles's epic film.

Here are some not about newspapers, but about design in general.

From Tim Brown, of IDEO at Designthinking:

I had the great pleasure of spending a few days last week with some eminent designers and design thinkers as part of a World Economic Forum event in Dubai. We were participating as one of over 70 WEF Global Agenda Councils consisting of experts from around the world studying how to improve global institutions. As the Global Agenda Council on Design we felt that one of our greatest contributions might be to help other councils embed design thinking in their deliberations. We created a set of design principles that we felt might be a useful guide and I am listing them here:

Design is an agent of change that enables us to understand complex changes and problems, and to turn them into something useful. Tackling today’s global challenges will require radical thinking, creative solutions and collaborative action. Here is a set of principles identified by the Global Agenda Council on Design that could help your Council to develop ideas and strategies to address the complex problems facing us all.

Transparent:
Complex problems require simple, clear and honest solutions.

Inspiring:
Successful solutions will move people by satisfying their needs, giving meaning to their lives, and raising their hopes and expectations.

Transformational:
Exceptional problems demand exceptional solutions that may be radical and even disruptive.

Participatory:
Effective solutions will be collaborative, inclusive and developed with the people who will use them.

Contextual:
No solution should be developed or delivered in isolation but should instead recognize the social, physical and information systems it is part of.

Sustainable:
Every solution needs to be robust, responsible and designed with regard to its long-term impact on the environment and society.

What is missing? What would you change?

We are interested in distributing these principles further if there is interest.

The members of the council on design who contributed to the principles are:

Paola Antonelli, Carl Bass, Craig Branigan, Tim Brown, Brian Collins, Hilary Cottam, Kigge Mai Hivid, Larry Keeley, Chris Luebkeman, John Maeda, Mokena Makeka, Toshiko Mori, Kohei Nishiyama, Bruce Nussbaum, Alice Rawsthorn, Sudhir Sharma, Jens Martin Skibstead, Milton Tan, Arnold Wasserman.

The Sound of One Hand Sketching

2009-11-19T20:23:00.000-08:00

Above, the drawing credited as being the first visualization of the phonograph. After making this sketch, Thomas Alva Edison handed it to his head engineer, John Kreusi, and reportedly said, "Make this."

An excellent book by William S. Pretzer, "Working At Inventing," illustrates this evolution from concept to creation in a chapter titled "Drawing As A Means of Inventing."

The extraordinary Edison National Historic Site -- in West Orange, NJ -- which includes the famous laboratory, library and revolving movie studio (The Black Maria), has recently reopened after years of renovation. A design and science lover's Disneyland.

"Innovation" is The New Black

2008-12-06T12:20:00.000-08:00

Drawing circles and arrows with markers on a white board, and projecting PowerPoint slides can be done by any idiot.

But inventing great ideas and developing real solutions can be done
only by a creative idiot!

The Man Who Coined The Phrase

2008-12-01T09:40:00.000-08:00

Alex F. Osborn, who first codified the brainstorming process in the 1930’s, was a journalist before going into advertising. Osborn was the "O" in BBD&O, where he developed a technique for getting a group of people to use their combined powers to generate multiple potential solutions to problems.

Sean Kelly's Creativity Seminar outlines Osborn's original research, finds new ways to utilize his process by combining it with other techniques, and applies them to creative challenges in a variety of fields and industries.

Osborn's first book, "Your Creative Power"(1938), was enticingly subtitled, "How to use your imagination to brighten life, to get ahead," and was followed nine years later by "Applied Imagination." This title is apt and a logical progression, for today the distinction is made that "creativity" is the ideas, and "innovation" is the application of the ideas.

Corporate Creativity

2008-11-29T14:40:00.000-08:00

Sean Kelly's corporate clients include:

Viacom
American Express
IBM
Razorfish
Smithsonian Institution
Aetna
Vera Wang
NBC Universal
Jujamcyn Broadway Theaters
Nielsen Media Research
Scholastic, Inc.
Georgia-Pacific
Time-Warner

Quote of the Day

2008-11-12T09:27:00.000-08:00

"People will be much more willing to accept your idea

if you tell them Albert Einstein said it first."

(I said that.)

The Seminar at Columbia

2008-11-03T14:44:00.000-08:00

On Monday, November 3, 2008, Sean Kelly presented, for a second time, his seminar on visual thinking to students at the Columbia Scholastic Press Association at Columbia University's School of Journalism. Highlights of the presentation will be available here soon.

How To Avoid Writing

2008-10-09T11:16:00.000-07:00

From Writers on Writing:

"A master procrastinator, Robert Benchley is remembered for his work at The New Yorker magazine in the 1930s -- and even more for his deadline-defying high jinks at the Algonquin Round Table."

-- Richard Nordquist

Famous for his essay "How to Avoid Writing," Benchley used a later short piece, "How I Create," to further elucidate his technique while still managing to not get much done:

Very often I must wait weeks and weeks for what you call "inspiration." In the meantime I must sit with my quill pen poised in the air over a sheet of foolscap, in case the divine spark should come like a lightning bolt and knock me off my chair on to my head. (This has happened more than once.) . . .

Sometimes, while in the throes of creative work, I get out of bed in the morning, look at my writing desk piled high with old bills, old gloves, and empty ginger-ale bottles, and go right back to bed again. The next thing I know it is night once more, and time for the Sand Man to come around. (We have a Sand Man who comes twice a day, which makes it very convenient. We give him five dollars at Christmas.)

Even if I do get up and put on part of my clothes--I do all my work in a Hawaiian straw skirt and bow tie of some neutral shade--I can often think of nothing to do but pile the books which are on one end of my desk very neatly on the other end and then kick them one by one off to the floor with my free foot.

I find that, while working, a pipe is a great source of inspiration. A pipe can be placed diagonally across the keys of a typewriter so that they will not function, or it can be made to give out such a cloud of smoke that I cannot see the paper. Then, there is the process of lighting it. I can making a pipe a ritual which has not been equaled for elaborateness since the five-day festival to the God of the Harvest.

From "No Poems: Or Around the World Backwards and Sideways"
(1932) by Robert Benchley, Illustrated by Gluyas Williams.

Eventually, of course--after sharpening pencils, making out schedules, composing a few letters, changing typewriter ribbons, relighting his pipe, building a book shelf, and clipping pictures of tropical fish out of magazines--Benchley did get down to work.

-- Richard Nordquist, Writers On Writing.

What's The Big Idea?

2008-09-16T14:38:00.000-07:00

HOW TO DEVELOP CREATIVE SOLUTIONS
THROUGH VISUAL THINKING

A Seminar for Executives, Journalists and Educators

The best way to come up with a good idea is to come up with lots of ideas. But what if the bolt of inspiration never strikes? What if the brainstorm is merely a cloudy drizzle?

Often the most elegant solution to a problem is already right in front of you. Obvious ideas are not brilliant, but brilliant ideas are obvious.

Finding that gem of a concept requires first knowing what you're really looking for, and then developing inventive ways of looking.

In a seminar designed to stimulate creativity, Sean Kelly explores how using analysis, free association, selectivity and visual thinking can allow individuals, teams and organizations to produce great ideas and solve problems.

Kelly uses examples from his 20 years of creative work to demonstrate his conceptual and playful process: how he approaches assignments, generates multiple concepts and arrives at solutions.

Visual thinking can lead to a big idea -- and lots of big ideas.

-------

Recently presented for the Columbia Scholastic Press Association at the Columbia School of Journalism

FOR INFORMATION ON HOW TO HOST THIS SEMINAR
AT YOUR BUSINESS OR SCHOOL:
CLICK HERE FOR EMAIL

(Go to "Contact" section)

Word Cloud Becomes Brain Storm

2008-08-01T07:04:00.000-07:00

See For Yourself

2008-07-16T14:47:00.000-07:00

"The true mystery of the world is the visible,

not the invisible."

Oscar Wilde

A Day At The Races

2008-07-15T14:48:00.000-07:00

"Who are you going to believe?

Me, or your own eyes?"

Chico Marx

Newspaper Profile

2008-07-08T14:49:00.000-07:00

BY PHYLLIS BOROS
July 6, 2008

EXCERPT:

"In the trade, Sean Kelly has become known for his clever solutions, fresh thinking and an uncanny ability to distill and convey complicated concepts in a single solution."

"Also keeping Kelly busy are his seminars on creative thinking, which are designed for business executives as well students of all kinds...For him, the seminars are a natural outgrowth of spending a career devising simple and elegant ways to visualize complicated subject matter."

"Kelly adds that clients come to him for his conceptual ability, as much as his artistic talents. 'Coming up with the ideas behind each drawing is always a great exercise,' he says."

"'I thought it would be helpful to share the way I do this with others. We're talking about tapping into creativity through brainstorming — and those are universal skills that can be applied to so many business projects and fields.'"

FOR INFORMATION ON HOW TO HOST THIS SEMINAR AT YOUR BUSINESS OR SCHOOL:
CLICK HERE FOR EMAIL (Go to "Contact" section)

Television News Feature

2008-06-23T14:50:00.000-07:00

On Monday June 23, 2008, News 12 Connecticut devoted a segment to Sean Kelly, showing him at work in his studio, discussing his current and past projects and interviewing him about his creativity workshop.

Reporter Heather Kovar described both his illustration and his brainstorming techniques: "How one local illustrator deals with the issues of the day makes us laugh. His creative strategies could help you develop ideas and solve problems in your own line of work."

Kovar highlighted Kelly's "seminars on how people can also use visual thinking to motivate clients and co-workers."

Pop Quiz

2008-04-22T14:51:00.000-07:00

QUESTION:
What do Aristotle, Linus Pauling, Tina Fey and a yellow Lab have in common?

ANSWER:
They all appear in The Creativity Seminar.

And, they all generously waived their customary union-required day-rate fee.

Except Aristotle.

The Creativity Seminar

2008-01-07T14:52:00.000-08:00

SEAN KELLY's creative work has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Rolling Stone, The Atlantic Monthly, Forbes, Fortune and Businessweek, among other publications.

He is a frequent contributor to The New York Times where his visual commentaries are seen on the Op-Ed page.

Having developed a trademark style of strong ideas and original thinking, Kelly has garnered corporate clients including American Express, Viacom, IBM and The Smithsonian Institution.

His work has been exhibited by The Society of Illustrators and Parsons School of Design, and has been featured on the CBS News program Face The Nation.

This year The National Cartoonists Society named him Best Newspaper Illustrator 2007.

Sean Kelly is a graduate of Brown University and he studied at Rhode Island School of Design.

Portfolio at: Sean Kelly Studio
Recent awards: Best Newspaper Illustrator 2007
Special Series: Metropolitan Diary
Illustration Site: The I-Spot

FOR INFORMATION ON HOW TO HOST THIS SEMINAR
AT YOUR BUSINESS OR SCHOOL:
CLICK HERE FOR EMAIL

(Go to "Contact" section)

2007 Press Release

2007-12-21T14:53:00.000-08:00