The Brainzooming Group

It’s always fun when there is a perspective from Dilbert on creativity. I’ll admit my surprise though the first time I read through the Sunday Dilbert as the boss looks for an employee who is creative.  This particular Dilbert comic seems ripe for being viewed as insensitive.

The more I thought about this Dilbert comic (and trust me this is not a perspective based on schooled psychology) though, it illustrates a point at the heart of so many messages about creativity and innovation on this blog.

This potential employee claims his particular combination of ADHD, dyslexia, bipolar disorder, and schizophrenia definitely makes him creative, with Dilbert checking the Internet to find each of them does indeed correlate highly with creativity.

Who Is Creative and Who Is Not?

When you think about it, those conditions and other genetic or developmental issues people have that are considered outside the “norm” cause them to experience, process, and respond to life in very different ways than most of society does. Those differences may be more frequently perceived as “creative” specifically because they aren’t the typical responses of most people.

We see creativity in unique, or at least unusual, responses we wouldn’t have imagined. If everyone had been able to come up with comparable responses, they’d be run of the mill and not creative.

Learning from Dilbert on Creativity

That’s why it’s vital, if you want to be more consistently creative, to mine the perspectives you have or can manufacture that place you outside the norm. These atypical perspectives can cause you to experience, process, and respond in very different ways than everyone else might, thus enhancing your creativity.

Where do those atypical views come from in your life?

They can emerge from a variety of places, including these:

• Your distinctive talents and interests
• From how people with different roles than you approach things
• By looking at things the way a kid does in a grown up world
• Through doing things the way they’re done outside your industry
• Trying to mimic more extreme creative perspectives

Go find the perspectives where you aren’t “a normal” (in the words of the Dilbert comic) and create away with your atypical self! - Mike Brown

Learn all about Mike Brown’s creative thinking and innovation presentations!

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The June 2013 issue of Psychology Today includes an article on “The Enemies of Invention.”

It is a compilation article featuring five authors’ perspectives on factors standing in the way of creativity and innovation.

The article also includes creative ideas from each author on how to get around these impediments to creativity.

Creative Ideas for Defeating “Enemies of Invention”

Here are snapshots of each of the five authors’ perspectives, along with our Brainzooming point of view on these creative ideas:

1. The Danger of Starting in the Same Old Place by Art Markum

“Don’t think differently. Think about different things.” 

The point is when we start from the same frame of reference as the creative challenge we face, we come up with run-of-the-mill ideas. Instead, we have to begin by thinking about other things from different perspectives. Brainzooming Article: What’s It Like?

2. Fear of Failure Narrows Vision by Peter Gray

We “work best when we are playing, not when we are striving for praise as a reward.” 

To be creative, don’t be so serious so much! Have some fun and play! Brainzooming Article: Kids and Creativity

3. Concentration Is Creativity’s Killer by Sian Beilock

 ”Turning your attention to something that requires just a little bit of concentration is a better way to jump-start the creative process.” 

Don’t concentrate so much on the task at hand. To instigate your creative possibilities, free up space in your mind to let your creativity work. Brainzooming Article: Finding a Huge Task to Avoid

4. The Downside of Avoiding Imitation by Christopher J. Sprigman and Kal Raustiala

“In practice, creativity is a cumulative process, one that often involves tweaking, adapting, and melding existing creations.” 

As we say so often, borrow existing ideas and twist them into new creative ideas all your own. Brainzooming Article: Lessons in Borrowing Creative Ideas

5. Battling Boredom Thwarts Serendipity by Peter Bregman

“Wasted moments are ones in which we often unconsciously connect the dots.” 

Resist the temptation to fill your head and attention with stuff that gets in the way of creativity. You’ll be much better off if you pursue empty-headed creativity! Brainzooming Article: Perhaps not surprisingly, we don’t have an article on doing nothing as a way to spur creativity. We’ll have to get on that right away!  - Mike Brown

If these creative ideas for defeating enemies of invention intrigue you, check out the links below for each of these authors’ books (affiliate links):

                                                                                  (Affiliate Links to Books)

Learn all about Mike Brown’s creative thinking and innovation presentations!

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It’s been some time since we ran a post such as this. Here are 10 intriguing articles that have been occupying tabs on my web browser for longer than I’d care to mention. Too good to lose track of; not enough time to give each one a full blog post. Even with sharing these 10 articles on creativity, I still have way too many tabs open. At least this is a start . . . enjoy the creativity from around the web!

Lovers and Haters of Creativity

The Characteristics of Creative Thinkers – Some of the most popular posts on the Brainzooming blog are about creative thinking skills and kids and creativity. Here’s another take on both topics, all rolled into one from The Seeds Network.

Creativity and IQ, Part I: What Is Divergent Thinking? How Is It Helped by Sleep, Humor and Alcohol? – Why is this article from The Creativity Post here? Did you read the title? Nuff said.

The Bias against Creativity: Why People Desire but Reject Creative Ideas – Jason Harper forwarded this link and suggested a blog post response. Usually, I’m all over Jason’s suggestions on these because he has great sensibilities. I may still respond to this one with a full blog posts, so I haven’t rejected it; it’s simply in the future blog file.

Creativity in Branding

You Can’t Force Love: Why Developing a Great Brand Eludes Process - From the Kaleidoscope blog, this is an ode to iteration when it comes to developing brand identities, positions, and messaging. Yup, brand development is definitely not a one and done strategic activity; be prepared for cycling through several times to get where you need to be with your branding.

Branding Events, A New Source Of Revenue For Social Networks – As an event guy at heart, a social network guy by client demand, a revenue loving guy by necessity, and a NASCAR guy (which is mentioned here) through career experience, this article has it all for me. If you’re interested in even one of these four topics, this article from Lighthouse Insights is worth a read.

Bringing Creativity to Strategic Insights

Inside the Secret World of the Data Crunchers Who Helped Obama Win – An overview from Time magazine on how big data shaped strategies and decisions for the Obama campaign. Only big data would tell you that George Clooney and SJP have the same impact, just on different coasts.

Best Buy Needs To Implement Something Like This To Stop People From Showrooming – Intriguing look at how the retail environment can be dramatically changed. It’s going to take some brands with some big you-know-whats to do this. We suggested a very comparable long-term strategy to a consumer product goods client last year. Their you-know-whats weren’t very big, apparently. Just sayin.

CVS and Ford: Putting Designers in Customers’ Shoes – literally- From Andrea Meyer’s website, “Working Knowledge,” this is a fantastic example of putting yourself in the situation of your customer if you really want to generate creative strategic insights.

Creativity and Storytelling

Dolan and Colbert talk about faith, humor at Fordham – This story from National Catholic Reporter is here because of how it’s reported (although I am admittedly a Cardinal Dolan fan). With traditional media limited for this event, NCR turned to social media coverage to construct its story about an evening of discussion with Stephen Colbert and Timothy Cardinal Dolan.

12 Imperative Must-Dos for the Serious Blogger– This SlideShare presentation from Jay Baer is packed with solid advice, including the recommendation for bloggers to check out inboundwriter.com. If you want to be all serious about your blogging, you should click through Jay’s presentation. - Mike Brown

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Download the free ebook, “Taking the NO Out of InNOvation” to help you generate fantastic new ideas! For an organizational creativity boost, contact The Brainzooming Group to help your team be more successful by rapidly expanding strategic options and creating innovative plans to efficiently implement. Email us at info@brainzooming.com or call us at 816-509-5320 to learn how we can deliver these innovation benefits for you.

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It is great to use new, unique, or amazingly infrequent experiences for creative inspiration. It’s loads of fun to be able to justify doing something out of the ordinary in the spirit of enhancing your creative ideas.

That is why riding roller coasters used to be at the top of my list of ways to clear my mind and trigger new creative ideas.

But guess what? I have not had an opportunity to ride roller coasters since trips to Las Vegas and Denver in 2008.

And that is the problem about building your creative inspiration around new, unique, and infrequent experiences: by definition, these experiences happen only once, at worst, or with long gaps of time in between, at best.

Who can afford to have had your last creative ideas in 2008?

Answer: Nobody.

Finding Creative Ideas from Daily Life

So beyond high intensity creative inspiration experience that come along (or we engineer), it’s vital to develop your ability to be find creative ideas from the environments, people, and things in your daily life.

That means working to discover creative inspiration each day from your:

• Kids
• Spouse
• Friends and family (both IRL and on social networks)
• Co-workers
• The content you consume regularly – books, music, television, comics, magazines, newspapers, etc.
• Your workplace
• Your home
• The drive to and from work

Cultivating a Steady Stream of Creative Ideas

When you are able to mine the creative inspiration from your daily life, you’ll have a steady stream of creative ideas. Plus, you will be even that much more ready for the creatively incredible experience that comes along every few months or years! – Mike Brown

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As usual, last Saturday’s #Ideachat on Twitter was a fantastic hour hosted by Angela Dunn, with this month’s topic on creative spaces. Angela led us through an #Ideachat discussion on how physical spaces affect our creativity.

This has been an occasional topic on the Brainzooming blog, although our focus is more frequently on what helps boost creativity in specific situations vs. what instigate creativity in certain locations.

Surroundings definitely matter to my creativity, not so much for their impact on the ability to come up with ideas as my creative disposition.

For me, great creative spaces are very open, allow creative tools to function easily (and well), and provide the opportunity to look at what I’m working on from multiple angles. Great creative spaces have a lot of square footage per person, giving the mind room to wander (and wonder).  Many business people use Starbucks and Panera as office getaways, but for me, these are spaces, but not creative ones.

It’s not because they’re noisy, because I do like noise most of the time, too.

My wife marvels at me having a TV going, maybe music, and the social networking channels open while I’m working on something else. These noise sources compensate for too infrequently having people around in person. I’m more creative when collaborating since I’m always smarter and more creative when smarter & more creative people are around. And it’s beneficial to be with someone in person because you get the full set of creative cues going back and forth when everyone is together.

Even distractions can work for me in the creative process if they’re somewhat relevant to what I’m working on at the time.

Restaurants are some of my favorite creative spaces, especially ones with white paper table cloths all ready for drawing with Sharpie markers. Although it doesn’t have the paper table cloths, Nordstrom Café is a great creative space for me; must be something about all that open space  (as shown here).

Ultimately, you can’t move a creative space around with you. That’s when creativity tools and exercises come into play. They’re portable and can help instigate creativity even when the surroundings are lacking.

Those are what my creative spaces are like. How about yours? – Mike Brown

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Which Brainzooming blog articles were most beneficial for you in 2011?

Here are the top 2011 Brainzooming articles based on two separate measure of your interest in them.  I originally selected a 2011 top 10 articles list based on Google Analytics. When perusing Post Rank, which assigns a score to articles osts based on comments and social sharing, however, it yielded a markedly different top 10.

In the spirit of being as inclusive as possible in looking at what posts were most successful in the eyes and social sharing of Brainzooming readers, here’s the Google Analytics Top 10 along with the additional posts from the Page Rank list. Overall, the combined list of the top 17 Brainzooming blog articles for 2011 leans toward creativity, innovation, and social media strategy.

Top 10 Brainzooming Articles for 2011 based on Google Analytics

1. Project Management – 15 Techniques When Time Is Running Down

Creative inspiration can come from anywhere, if you are on the lookout for it. This post was inspired by a tweeted question from Kelli Schmith (@MarketingVeep on Twitter) about project management when time is limited. Having been through LOTS of those situations, I answered her question with this blog post. It has many helpful ideas for forcing yourself to move from divergent to convergent thinking with gusto.

2. Creative Job Titles – 8 Innovative Questions to Create Them

The need to think about creative job titles for The Brainzooming Group was the original creative inspiration for this post. It seems that the questions work for other naming challenges, too. Interestingly enough, we never completed the exercise for ourselves, so we still need to get this done in 2012.

3. The Value of Brainstorming Techniques for Business Ideas

This is the first of several 2010 posts on the 2011 top 10 list. That tells me efforts to better address SEO within our content is paying off since these older posts are showing up based on continued search traffic.

4. 7 Important Creative Thinking Skills

There is a bit of a twist to the creative inspiration behind this post. While it was written from the angle of positive creative thinking skills, it actually came from a not particularly successful call with many negative creative thinking skills. Sometimes you re-cast reality with a healthy dose of wishful thinking. That is what happened here!

5. Innovation Jump Start! A 5-Step Process for Seeding an Innovation Culture

After some cajoling (okay, maybe it was begging) from me, Barb Murphy wrote her first post on the Brainzooming blog, and it was a rousing success. This innovation article was picked up by several other innovation emails and websites online, helping to grow the attention it got on Brainzooming. We definitely have got to get Barb Murphy writing more!

6. 7 Extreme Creativity Lessons from “Cake Boss”

Another perennial post, this 2010 extreme creativity article about Buddy Valastro is still perhaps the most popular Brainzooming post ever. When you consider that the 2011 follow-up post with more extreme creativity lessons from Cake Boss narrowly missed making this list, coming in at number eleven, expect more Cake Boss posts in the future!

7. 10 More Ways to Be Creative Like a Kid

The original post in this series was started while not paying attention at a class one evening. The initial list of kid-oriented creativity ideas for adults was expanded by several people on Twitter. A summer vacation-oriented edition featuring a jointly created cartoon with Stacy Harmon also did well based on Google Analytics.

8. How to Be Creative and Overcome a Creative Block – 26 Ideas

I tweet the link to this creative block vanquishing post from 2010 frequently when someone on Twitter complains of suffering from a creative block. It also was the basis for a new presentation on Breaking Creative Blocks that debuted this past April for the CreativeBloc conference. This article shows how to be creative even when you do not feel like it.

9. Personal Branding Decision – How Do You Describe Yourself?

The creative inspiration for this one was the Twitter profile of an innovation-oriented tweeter who does not follow me. I was nosing around to learn the people she does follow on Twitter, and it struck me that her old gig, which was with a well-recognized publication, still occupied a disproportionate share of her Twitter profile. We all have choices in how we describe ourselves, and the choices people decide to make fascinate me.

10. Creative Ideas – 37 Articles to Get Your Creativity Brainzooming

Some readers have told me the Brainzooming blog has become too large to easily navigate and find previous articles. That comment prompted a series of posts recapping and organizing 2010 posts in strategy, innovation, creativity, and social media. Several readers suggested these recap posts were the basis for Brainzooming books. Have to get on that for 2012!

An Additional Top 7 Brainzooming Blog Articles for 2011 based on Post Rank

7 Takeaways on Strategy, Creativity, and Innovation from 2011 TED

After live tweeting a TED event, either in-person or one on video conference, there is always so much content. This wrap-up post from the 2011 TED simulcast featured seven parting thoughts on strategy, creativity, and innovation – the central topics of the Brainzooming blog.

Is Your Social Media Intern Ready for Corporate Tweeting – 7 Questions to Find Out

This comes from getting tired of people saying, “Just let the intern handle social media.” If you are going to be effective, social media requires much more than youth. Take the assessment and see how comfortable you feel about who you have doing social media.

7 Ideas to Use Twitter to Be More Creative

At times when the people you know on Twitter are the only ones reachable for creative input, it is nice to know how to ask and incorporate them most effectively.

13 Warning Signs Your Organization Isn’t Ready for Social Media

We tend to work with organizations where social media isn’t the easy answer. That leads to plenty of challenges in creating and implementing a social media strategy to support business objectives. From our experience, here are some of the early warning signs to be looking for as you start a social media strategy effort.

10 Twitter Tips on Apps, Engagement, and Experimenting

When getting a new blog post written is a challenge, Twitter always provides potential subject matter. Thus, this post came to life. (BTW, if you’re in Kansas City and want to hear more on Twitter and getting value from it, I’ll be presenting an “Advanced Twitter” seminar on January 19 at the Enterprise Center of Johnson County. Would love to have you attend!

Who Is Creating Social Media Content in Your Organization?

I have to fess up here. It was the Saturday before July 4th, I think I was heading to an exercise class or something, and decided to throw together a hurried hand-drawn chart about who really controls social media content in an organization. So who would have guessed, but Social Media Today picked it up, it was the first weekend of Google+ and Chris Brogan shared it, and all of a sudden my hand-drawn chart gets all kinds of attention. Trust me: you never know what’s going to get attention. At least I don’t!

9 Extreme Creativity Questions from Peter’s Laws

This post comes from my personal challenge to tap into a different area of personal creativity. Throughout my career, I’ve always seemed to be the person who gets someone else’s extreme ideas creatively implemented. Now, I have to be coming up with extreme creativity. These questions are a personal tool to help do that.

Thank You for Your Votes in the Innovation Excellence Competition!

Thank you so much for reading the Brainzooming blog. You all continually surprise me on what best resonates with your interests, and that’s really fun aspect that keeps me trying new things. One thing that wasn’t a surprise is that 14 of the 17 posts here are numbered lists. Blog readers everywhere love their list posts! Watch for a recap later this week with my personal favorite Brainzooming articles from 2011.

Thank you as well for your support on the Innovation Excellence 2011 top blogger contest. I finished 6th.  Moving into the top 10 this year is really great, and it couldn’t have happened without the support of all of you who are kind enough to read the blog throughout the year. And just in case you haven’t subscribed to the blog via email or RSS, here the links to do so:

• Subscribe to daily Brainzooming emails
• Subscribe to Brainzooming RSS feed

Mike Brown

How can ultra high-speed internet speeds drive innovation? “Building the Gigabit City: Brainzooming a Google Fiber Roadmap,” a free 120-page report, shares 60 business opportunities for driving innovation and hundreds of ideas for education, healthcare, jobs, community activities, and more.  Download this exclusive Google Fiber report sponsored by Social Media Club of Kansas City and The Brainzooming Group addressing how ultra high-speed internet can spur economic development, growth, and improved lifestyles globally. 

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Sometimes guest blog posts are pretty straight forward. Other times, getting a guest blog post done means going the non-traditional route and actually being creative (what a novel concept!).

As I mentioned in Tuesday’s 10 More Ways to Be Creative Like a Kid post, I’ve been bugging Stacy Harmon (@Just_Stacy on Twitter) to write her take on kid creativity based on her 3 sons and introducing kid-like creativity ideas at her workplace.

Stacy and I decided to get together for lunch at a local pizza place which has paper on the tables for drawing while you wait (which in our case seemed like forever just to get two mini-pizzas). Given the opportunity to doodle, it seemed like the best way to create Stacy’s version of more ways to be creative like a kid was to talk about her summer, find out what the kids are up to, and cartoon it as we went!

We did just that, resulting in today’s cartoon guest blog post from @Just_Stacy (her stories, my cartoons), along with the very cool Creative Insta-Gator she drew all from letters of the alphabet. It was a great lunch, a fun post, and a whole new frontier in creative guest blogging!

So if you’ve ALWAYS wanted to do a guest post for Brainzooming, you’re located in the Kansas City area, and you’re willing to buy me a mini-pizza for lunch, let me know. I’d love to feature more ideas for ways we adults can get back in touch with the creativity of kids.  Enjoy!

To tap into your own extreme creativity, download the free ebook, “Taking the NO Out of InNOvation” to enhance your perspective! For an organizational creativity boost, contact The Brainzooming Group to help your team be more successful by rapidly expanding strategic options and creating innovative plans to efficiently implement. Email us at brainzooming@gmail.com or call us at 816-509-5320 to learn how we can deliver these benefits for you.

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