Catalyzing Creativity

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While I am not sure I quite agree, a recent article in The Atlantic proclaims that there are two ways to save the economy: innovation and inflation. Inflation sounds like a postponement of the issue, so let’s focus on innovation. As I wrote Innovation Types a few weeks ago, I had in mind the processes that we use to go about these different types.  Before we explore how they are different, let’s look at the conditions for creativity and innovation that they share.

Conditions. Not a formula. This is about emergence. It doesn’t happen in a linear fashion. It isn’t clearly causal. It is something that we can increase the probability of rather than directly ensure. Creativity could happen without these conditions, but most of the time it happens with some of these conditions. Increase the conditions and you may increase your chances.

My insights here come from conversations with Valdis Krebs and Steve Crandall among others. Valdis approaches the subject as a social network analyst, watching for the characteristics of networks that give rise to creativity. Steve… well, Pip Coborn says of Steve that he “is one of those rare Bell Labs genuises that when I was growing up people spoke of in hushed tones.” My relationship with Steve is as an amazing friend rather than a creative collaborator/innovator/partner. And, I am aware that he has given significant attention to what gives rise to creativity and has deep experience creating very forward thinking innovations. I have heard his stories. I will share a few with you.

So when Venessa Miemis asked

I knew it was time to write about what I have learned from Steve and Valdis. There are two other groups I also learned from – conversations here and there over the last five years with many people and a deep devouring of written information. And then, my years in the creative fields of art, theater, and literature.

Let’s begin. What conditions contribute to creativity and innovation? My response to Venessa was:

And Valdis added:

In no particular order, then:

Randomness – I say randomness because things, even in hindsight, seem to look a bit random. Steve talks about developing the idea for MP3 technology by trying to figure out how mother bats can find their baby bats in a cave of thousands. Ah…they screen out sounds other than the sound of their baby. Bats? When I first heard this story, I was shaking my head, thinking who would have guessed that bats led to MP3s? The path to innovation is not a straight line or a clear flow chart. It is a jumble of odd experience that a creative brain makes note of and creates meaning from. Creative people are ones who can take the random bits and make something from some of them. Encourage randomness. Go for walks in nature and notice things. Visit an art museum or take an odd dive into history. Look elsewhere than right in front of you.

Time – Innovation doesn’t happen on pre-determined timelines. In fact, time pressure can undermine creativity. Time pressure and monetary incentives both trigger analytical thinking instead of creative flowing. Time also works in two ways for creative outputs. There is often a tremendous amount of time gathering all the information relevant to a creation. It is as if the warehouse of the unconscious mind must be filled with all the relevant parts but you have no list of relevant parts to be adding to the warehouse, so you can’t know when what you need is in stock. However, the moment where those things are in stock and meaning is made – creation happens – can feel instantaneous. Sometimes the ideas emerge fully formed and plop into the conscious mind ready for action. That can’t be scheduled.

The other crucial element to time is having long enough stretches of it. When interrupted from deep mental activity, it can take 20 minutes to return to the same headspace. For creative activity, turn off phones, put away social media, and reduce your chances of being distracted. Steve says there are institutions that actively encourage this “offline” time for deeper creative activity. Give yourself the time to explore without distraction. Go deep into the warehouses of the mind and play there.

Right mix of Sameness and Difference – Valdis drew a Gaussian curve for me and said – I think the left side of the curve is something where people are so different they can hardly communicate at all. And on the right side of the curve, people are so similar that adding another person doesn’t increase information available – the homophily doesn’t generate creativity. He said he wasn’t sure what the numbers were or what the curve was precisely, but somewhere between those two ends of the spectrum there is enough sameness to enable communication & trust and enough difference to generate something creative that the people involved couldn’t come up with on their own. Think of that warehouse metaphor above – if you have difference, then you have more inventory to be pulling from. And he had this nice phrase to go along with it: “connect on your sameness and profit from your difference.”

Play (lightness) – This might be the most important condition. A significant portion of creativity involves trying many different combinations of things together. Steve has this wonderful expression: innovation is like throwing yourself at the ground over and over again until you finally miss the ground and start flying. If you take yourself too seriously in the act of throwing yourself at the ground, you won’t take enough risks to generate something really creative. Instead you will try 100 small variations in a very methodical process. If you are afraid of hitting the ground, you won’t really throw yourself at it. Tickle the fear out of yourself and play with possibility and with your collaborators.

Steve also tells stories of Friday creative jams at Bell Labs. He and several others would gather together. One – a catalyst – would listen and encourage them, then, later in the session, sort and summarize their best ideas. I call it a jam because, like jazz, it was each person knowing how to play with others and giving forth their best pieces in a space of play. The vast majority of the ideas generated were tossed away. We should ask Steve for some of the outcomes from these jams. When he describes them, he is focused on how much fun they were and how creative they could be instead of what they led to. This is a sign of play – that the process is alive and enjoyable (even when challenging).

Aesthete (deep sensitivity) – Steve was explaining to me, after many conversations about creativity and innovation, that serendipity is not only the seemingly random connection of things in a meaningful way, it is also noticing that the connection is significant. If you create something incredibly original, but no one realizes it including you, then it is lost. What does it take to notice that a new connection is made that could be significant? A deep sensitivity. I surround myself with really brilliant and creative people. And what I notice about them is that they are “noticers” by which I mean they are giving their attention to details – the flavors used in foods, the unique sound combinations in music, the way light moves through a water glass. Whatever their passion, they devote significant time to building up that warehouse of data in their minds using a great deal of discernment in their sorting. They have a deep awareness of and sensitivity to the topography of their interest areas.

Trust/Safety – Whether this is trust and safety we perceive in ourselves or between us and our collaborators, the trust and safety acts as the ground of creativity. If we don’t have it, we can’t try things. We become afraid to fail or look silly. Our mind-time focuses on social dynamics instead of playing with ideas. If we happen to be in groups where trust is missing, the only course is to trust ourselves. But trust must be there. Question everything…but not all at once…and not without trusting yourself to figure it out. Safety is also important. Sure, I mean physical safety as possible. But I also mean things like financial safety.

Deep curiosity – I almost forget this one because I tend to have it as a pre-requisite for people I share time with. When I was in the humanities, I noticed that those most dedicated to their work shared a trait – a deep curiosity about some question or another. Curiosity is the fuel for exploration. It is what feeds us in a space of profound un-knowing – the vast realms of unmapped possibility. We ask “why?” And the asking leads deeper into the question. Steve says the best questions lead to more questions. Only the deeply curious are willing to go there. One of my favorite quotes is an anonymous one: “go out on a limb, that is where all the fruit is.”

Network poised for Serendipity – As mentioned above, serendipity plays an important role in creativity. A network poised for serendipity is more likely to generate creativity. Steve talks about how the buildings at Bell Labs were like a labyrinth. It was easy to get lost. People of different backgrounds were mixed together and chalkboards filled the halls. This encouraged random interactions between people with differences and tools for them to brainstorm together. Steve also says another creative organization he has worked with designed their building with too few bathrooms to encourage waiting in line so interactions happen with unexpected people.

Some luck – Creativity and innovation operate in that space of probability. We can’t methodically try all possibilities (this would take much too long). There has to be some sensitivity to what could work and an ability to catalyze innovation to increase that probability. Whether it is the humility of those I have spoken to who are deeply creative or truly a matter of what is required, it seems luck has a hand in innovation. (Mind you, I am a big fan of the Richard Wiseman’s research book: The Luck Factor.)

And with that, I wish you luck. Innovate!

Experience Stories

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Today I posted on twitter:

“It continues to amaze and baffle me how much the interior mind creates the experience of the exterior world. What do you do with that?”

It simply deserves more than just that, so I am expounding on it here. Play with me?

First, let me not imply that the interior world is making the exterior world in some magical way. I can’t think coffee and have coffee show up in my cup. The world of objects is a world of objects. However, those objects remain meaningless until we shape a story or stories about them. A rock is a rock until I say, this is the rock I picked up on the beach the day we played with the sand together and ate that delicious chocolate carmel tart. Now it is a rock that has a memory attached to it. It has a meaning for me. And that meaning is entirely in my own internal world. I can tell you that story, and maybe some of what is meaningful about it to me can be meaningful to you (but even if I tell the story well, it will only be a small portion of what is alive for me about it).

I am driving on 90/94 past downtown Chicago. A driver comes up fast behind me, swerves around me, and cuts me off before speeding ahead. These are the facts. And the internal experience I have could take several different paths. I could make up a story that this person is a selfish jerk, a menace to society, and probably thinks of himself as a race car driver. (And then what will I do in response to him? honk? give him the bird?) Or I could make up a story that the driver is racing to get to the hospital because they are a doctor and a patient urgently needs their skill in order to stay alive. (And then what will I do in response to him? move out of the way?).

What happens to my body and my frame of mind as a result of either of these stories? In the first, my body is most likely to tense up or get angry, frentic. In the second, my body is more likely to calm down. I have no evidence by which I can judge whether the first story or the second story is accurate. None. I could imagine the driver of that car is insane and the demons in his mind propel him to behave this way. Or any number of many other possibilities of how the facts can be interpreted. I get to choose which story I am going to tell.

I get to choose the story I want to tell about the worlds I inhabit as part of a dance between the facts that I am aware of and the interior mental models and beliefs I have. The experience I have is not some default or single choice. I get to choose. Most people do not realize this. For most of my life, I didn’t realize this.

Doing so has created profound shifts in how I interact with others, the sense of power and control I have in my life, my sense of agency, my ability to create options for action, my capacity to be compassionate, and my ability to stay “grounded” in the flux of changes around me.

Step 1: Realize that you are choosing.

Step 2: Realize that there are options. Pick the ones that are useful for having the experience you want to be having to the degree that the evidence is not being ignored.

Step 3: Recognize that while there is choice, my ability to communicate and connect with others is in some ways limited by my ability to have an overlap in the story I am telling about my experience of something. This isn’t about making random choices because the choice is there…there are choices in the creation of the story and your internal experience of it that interconnect with other humans.

Step 4: Response and actions are not foretold by the facts before you, they are foretold by the story you weave around those facts. Engage the story you are telling about your experience when you want to create options to act upon.

Make your experience of the world something you actively engage in co-creating.

 

Financial Thrivability

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I have had google alerts on “thrivability” for three years now, and I was very excited when a recent alert sent me to a press release: The Patterson Foundation Invests in Partner’s Thrivability. When the Patterson Foundation uses the term thrivability, they mean financial thrivability. Our collaborator Kevin Clark has also been working with nonprofits on thrivability plans (rather than business plans because nonprofits are not businesses nor should they pretend to be). He has a template for those plans, if you are interested. I wondered if the Patterson Foundation thought of financial thrivability in the same ways as Kevin Clark.

I was so excited by what I read on the press release that I contacted the foundation to open a dialogue. I have been working as a writer and editor in philanthropy since 2003, and I co-founded Inspired Legacies, a donor education organization catalyzing millions of dollars in philanthropy. And I have been, in that space, particularly interested in innovative forms of philanthropy, so for me, this was doubly exciting. I spoke with their interim COO, Michael Corley.

So often in the philanthropic world, grantees receive gifts on an annual basis or on a short term cycle (such as three years). Executive Directors in small organizations and Development staff in larger ones can devour large amounts of time and energy in a revolving cycle of chasing the next round of funding. I have personally watched an ED devote 50% of their energy to this funds-chasing cycle {note that this is also true in startups seeking funding} This significantly detracts from the organization’s ability to act on the mission they have. Patterson Foundation wants to change that dynamic with their grantees. Debra Jacobs, their president and CEO, explains this perspective on the Patterson Foundation blog in an article entitled: Investing in endowed philanthropy to thrive for impact.

Think of it like incubation. The Patterson Foundation perceives the potential in an organization or collaboration for them to achieve financial thrivability. Over the course of two or three years, the Patterson Foundation works beside the grantee much like an incubator – making connections, providing appropriate consultants, building necessary software and skills as well as financial support, so that the end of the grant period the organization is launched and standing on its own financial viability/thrivability.

What does financial thrivability look like? I am not completely sure yet. We are making this up as we go along. There are likely many ways that can be achieved. In the case of the press release from the Patterson Foundation, this is about creating an endowment that enables the organization to exist into perpetuity. I imagine it can also be the case if we view the philanthropy as seed capital for a social enterprise that is then enabled to grow itself. In the Patterson Foundation blog post it is clear they are also looking for more methods for supporting financial thrivability. Perhaps you have some ideas or suggestions that you can share with us? I have spoken with several donors who believe similar to the Patterson Foundation that the circling back year after year for more funding of programs isn’t as potent in the transformation of our world and organizations as the nudge that philanthropy can give to enable an organization to move toward more self-perpetuating financial methods.

I am eager to see more organizations working in parallel with the Patterson Foundation to incubate socially transformative organizations – both by assisting with financial thrivability and by acting as partners to help organizations learn, evolve, share and take effective action. There is significant waste in the philanthropic process. And I excited to see lead organizations leap in to address those inefficiencies.

Positively Insane

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Today Gregory (On the Spiral) tweets:

Which links to a Scientific American article, The Pitfalls of Positive Thinking. And I think this is a great excuse to debunk the sense that because I am positive focused and nurturing, that I live in some lala land of illusion where everything is soft and beautiful and unicorns run wild and perfectly groomed and everything is sprinkled with fairy dust.

Unicorn (Design by Román Díaz)

Unicorn (Design by Román Díaz)

Positive thinking doesn’t have to be about daydreaming some future in which you are the bestest, most beautiful, and amazing person ever and then assuming that will somehow magically make it happen. Positive thinking is about wondering about possibility. Is it possible that I could get that? If I could, how would that happen? What would I need to do to get closer to it? Are there other ways I could go about it? When I encounter hurdles, I am not going to tell myself some self-hating story about how I suck. Instead, I am going to tell myself that I am trying, I can keep trying, or I can use feedback to decide how realistic my goals are…and adjust.
Creative Commons License photo credit: Origamiancy

Positive thinking can be knowing that while I feel crushed right now, I have been crushed before, and I survived that and grew from it. I am resilient. So instead of using self-talk that denigrates my efforts by focusing on what went wrong (and how that is my fault), I am going to focus on getting to that place where I am not crushed because I know I can do it (and learn from where I can do better next time).

I have worked with coaching clients who want to set big hairy audacious goals for themselves. And that is fantastic. I applaud that. AND… let’s celebrate each step toward that instead of waiting to see if we shoot past that goal. Let’s work on enjoying the process instead of the outcome. Because even when we achieve the big hairy audacious goals, as we sometimes do, we are often then beset by post-goal hitting blues! If you emotionally hype yourself up too much for a bold goal, you collapse at the finish line. Which is fine, if you can accept and enjoy that process. But for you high-performing addicts, the dip after the high seems to be a negative space most people weren’t expecting and have a tricky time navigating (aren’t they supposed to be happy when they succeed?).

Positive thinking is about having an intentional conversation with yourself about the experience you want to be having. What experience do you want to be having, what experience are you having, what is the gap, what do you want to adjust about that? And it turns out, reframing your perspective is the quickest way to level out emotional spikes (of both highs and lows). I know, because I have had to become masterful at thinking my way out of emotional highs and lows. I am a pretty excitable and emotional person. And I don’t like getting hijacked by my emotions. So I learned how to have a conversation with my emotions and give them different perspectives to look through. Sometimes I have to sit with myself in conversation before I can find a perspective that soothes my emotions… but I am looking, and I feel empowered by the process instead of feeling hijacked. No one gave me a users manual for my brain and heart. I had to create it myself. And so do you. We can learn together.

In sum, positive thinking is not about airy fairy day dreaming wish making. If you do it that way, you will be disappointed. Wishful thinking is like Wiley E Coyote stepping off a cliff assuming there is ground there. There isn’t. There is a real world out there with a fair bit of complexity to it, and if you want to make it yours, you better put in persistent and determined effort and manage your expectations. Be mindful of your surroundings.

Oh, that is the one other guide to positive thinking. Manage your expectations. I have a saying I usually only use in private with clients: Expectations are a bitch. Hope for something. Dream of something. Imagine wild possibilities. Drive toward something. All of those can go well. But once you start to expect them, you put your emotions at risk of being disappointed. Find the balance that works for you between what you want to expect for and of yourself and what dreams you want to seek out and make real for yourself.

Innovation Types

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There is a lot of energy around innovation as we struggle between old economic structures and systems and new ones. Are we really talking about the same kinds of innovation or not? In working with a coaching client who catalyzes innovation, I developed the following chart and typing (borrowing from a dozen models I found in various domains and with the help of several practicing innovators including my collaborator Herman Wagter).

Let’s explore, across these types, where innovators focus their attention, what is required, the timelines usually involved in implementation and adoption, and some examples within business model, marketing, product/service, and process.

Disruptive Innovation

Here, we are looking at game-changing innovation. These innovations offer an unexpected new value proposition. This type of innovations requires: deep creativity, long term market building, and has trouble creating market (because people don’t even know they want it yet).

To be disruptive is deep creativity – coming up with something that no one else is doing or knows they need. They aren’t inward facing: “how do we do what we do better?” They aren’t outward facing: “how do we do something better than what others do?” They involve lots of random play in a nonlinear process. Attention focuses on where there is complacency or “accepted wisdom” that no one else is questioning in the market. Highly emergent, networking is everything. To be disruptive, you must see a striking new perspective on a existing problem. To win the market by being disruptive you need to execute on a bold plan. To be successful, you have to invite people to make a trade off in what they think is valuable. You create a different value proposition where that market validates the trade off as an improvement.

Combinatory Innovation

Welcome the the world of mashup innovation. These innovations take something that is working in some other domain and transport it into a new domain or they take existing offers and bundle them in better ways. This type of innovation requires: broad awareness outside market zone and short-term market building.

To be combinatory, innovators look outside their domain of known expertise for ideas that work. Partly emergent, you have to be able to see what is not there yet. This is a world of allegory. Find systems like your system and use what works there. Alternately, take several things that work and combine them in new and more effective ways. The value proposition is enhanced: more, wider attributes.

Efficiency Innovation

These innovations focus on refinement. They offer iterative improvement on existing technologies by reducing waste. These types of innovation require: engineering creativity and competitive market building.

To be efficiency innovators, look for ways to refine what is. This is about control and limitation. What about what is there now is not critical? What about what exists really matters and what can be left behind? Remove what is not highest value adding. What would a simpler way to do it be? The value proposition stays the same, it is offered with better speed/cost/options.

What form of innovation are you doing? What type do you want to be doing? How are you going about achieving that?

What examples would you add?

Ruined: The Crush of Enlightenment

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The more I learn about systems, the more I feel I am ruined now. Like any good enlightenment, once it happens, you can’t ever quite go back to thinking the way you did before. I can’t go back to thinking the world has single/independent problems or single solutions. I can’t believe in single causes. And when I look for what led to events that are transpiring, I can’t blame a single source. Instead, I am always looking for the complex interweaving of causality. David Harvey’s fantastic “Crisis of Capitalism” shows the causes of economic collapse from 6 different explanatory perspectives:

  • Human Frailty
  • Institutional Failures
  • Obsessed with a False Theory
  • Cultural Origins
  • Failure of Policy
  • Systemic Risk

And, I look at this list Harvey has, and I realize, yep, I have, at one time or another, played a sort of blame game with each of them. However, now that I think in multiple perspectives about interlocking complex adaptive systems that operate beyond simple linear singular causality…I am no longer able to come up with simple easy answers like: Vote! March! Go around! or Change policy! I guess I do still have a fondness for “Avoid toxic ossified institutions” and “Beware of Systemic Risk.”

The trouble with ideas that enlighten us is that we can’t go back. We might want to. It might be an easier life back there. The answers appeared more obvious (because the perspective dictated them).

I once had a contract cancel – basically, simplistically – they said something to the effect of: you are a breakthrough person and we already decided on breaking down right now, so we brought in someone who does that. And you see this all the time – we look for what we already think the answer is and we seek reinforcement of our belief. And usually we don’t have to go far to get it (that old lure of homophily) I call this mirror-thinking. We go looking in mirrors to see our existing beliefs are true, and sure enough they give us our beliefs right back to us.

The more you think in multiple perspectives, the harder this sort of mirror-thinking becomes. I return regularly to Donella Meadows’ work on Intervening in a System. It stands as a reminder not to get trapped in solving system issues from a single perspective.

However, I warn you. Should you pursue the path of seeing through multiple perspectives a world of interlocked complex adaptive systems… you can’t go back. You can never go back to that serenity of simplicity in problems/solutions/interventions or views.

As you begin to step into the various positions and stories people occupy, you may fill with compassion, seeing each operate under their beliefs with positive intentions. There is something incredibly uplifting recognizing that all people operate from a love for someone or of something. It is love behind everything, even war and violence. And there is something incredibly depressing recognizing that this is what we get as a result despite all that love. Try not to get lost. I have gotten lost in compassion or in understanding one element in the overall system.

Because to really perceive what is happening requires a deep both and. Both the details and the context. These details and those details. This context and the context of that context. Don’t get dizzy. It is easy to get dizzy zooming from perspective to context to culture to cultural context and then back into another perspective. Take something for the SEE sickness. Ginger is good.

Brain science is revealing that Westerners are very focal-point centered. We Westerners want an object in the middle of our pictures. People from other cultures value context. Think, for example, of the elaborate etiquette systems of China, India, and Japan, where behaviors are dictated by context and even the slightest contextual clues provide information for effectively navigating culture. Students from countries like China will focus their eyes on the context even more than the object in the center of a picture. Learn to do both. Flip back and forth in rapid succession from one to other until you can hold both at the same time. Learn to soften the edges of your eyes and see from your periphery. (I learned how to do this over the summer while I was in Australia – mind-blowing!)

Once you learn to see from all these perspectives, you can never fully occupy any of the places as if you were unaware there were others. You are stuck always transcending any given place/space. And while experiencing the rush of the enlightenment to perceive – deeply perceive – what is happening and why and where to make a leveraged action for yourself or those you love – you are also crushed out of who you thought you were and into someone else altogether. Your very being begins to exist in all these perspectives more and more of the time. Your very being becomes distributed experiencing the world from different perspectives nearly simultaneously. This can be disturbing, and no, you probably don’t need to see a doctor. You are already ruined now. 🙂

Don’t lose yourself to existential bedazzlement. Stay on, stay steady. Grow your multiple perspective skills. Grow your ability to hold both the particulars from different perspectives as well as their context simultaneously. Because, while you can never go back, it is also the most amazing awe-inspiring view I have ever imagined. Crushing or not, like all tremendous experiences they hold the space where anxiety meets wonder in an exquisite dance of perception.

**warning: using multiple perspectives may harm or damage feelings of self-righteousness. Side effect can be greater levels of creativity and innovation.