Category: creativity

Why Failure Should be Inevitable but not Destruction

“Success is most often achieved by those who don’t know that failure is inevitable” is a famous quote by Coco Chanel, recently mentioned by Richard Branson as one of his favorite quotes on failure.

coco chanel on failureClearly Coco Chanel was an entrepreneur as well so she must have know what it means to take into look at failure in the eyes, and feel the sting of it.

It is tough to accept that failure will be inevitable, yet it is the only way to advance.

At the same time, successful entrepreneurs know that leaps of faith must be carefully planned and tested so as not to make the rest of their creation stumble – just as share brokers know that failure (gaining money) is inevitable on part of their portfolio but have a portfolio management process that mitigates these risks.

Failure is inevitable, and it should reflect risk taking and creativity. Destruction is not, it is a matter of careful planning and risk management.

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Why There is a Limit in How Much We Can Be in Flow

Flow, as defined by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, involves Optimal Experience, when “a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile“. And, according to him, this experience is extremely pleasurable, the basis for happiness –  “Enjoyment appears at the boundary between boredom and anxiety, when the challenges are just balanced with the person’s capacity to act”

flowWe should thus normally seek to be more often in that state. Most people are never or rarely in Flow, so their problem is to be in that state more often.

On the other hand, for those that have found a way to be in Flow often, could we eventually manage to be in that state all the time?

To be in Flow we need to be able to focus our attention on a task that requires a large amount of our internal resources.

In my experience, and also in the experience of other people (for example those involved in creative activities), this state is very pleasurable and also very exhausting, because of the resources it requires. While we should seek to be in Flow often, we can’t sustain it for the entire day. We also need to rest doing more menial tasks, or even lay our mind to rest through meditation or contemplation. Indeed, most writers and creative people are in flow for only a limited number of hours per day, and spend the rest of the time doing daily tasks that do not require much effort.

Nevertheless, the sense of achievement from the moments we have spent in Flow is generally sufficient to make our day.

By all means, seek to be in Flow often, but don’t beat yourself if you can’t sustain that state for more than a limited number of hours per day!

All quotes from Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s book ‘Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience’.

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What the Single Most Important Difference Between Small and Large Companies is

“The most important difference between big and small companies is the amount of time running versus creating. A desire to do more creating is the right reason to want to join your [small] company” writes Ben Horowitz in book ‘The Hard Thing About Hard Things‘.

startup_meetOf course, creativity is essential to the success of small companies because they need to be agile and respond to the needs of the marketplace to survive. Creating something is intrinsically part of their DNA. Large companies prefer the comfort of predictability and will often discourage too highly creative endeavors even if they profess to foster innovation. This is of course an issue for creative companies that grow too fast and might become bureaucratic before they realize it. It must be a constant challenge at Facebook or Google to maintain a creative atmosphere in spite of the rapidly increasing size of the organization.

Another reason is that it is more difficult to work as a cross functional team in large organizations that in small companies, and you need to ask permission before doing anything like this. Creativity comes from mixing ideas and viewpoints, hence it is fostered naturally in small organizations where everyone works together.

Finally, creative people will then possibly find more satisfaction when working in small organizational structures. With the Fourth Revolution, small organizational structures become much more viable. Hence staying creative will remain easier in the Collaborative Age.

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Why the Chief Advantage of Language is Not Communication

“The chief advantage of language is not communication but autogeneration“, says Kevin Kelly in his book ‘What Technology Wants‘. “Language is a trick that allows the mind to question itself; a magic mirror that reveals to the mind what the mind thinks; a handle that turns a mind into a tool. With a grip on the slippery, aimless activity of self-awareness and self-reference, language can harness a mind into a fountain of new ideas.”

idea generationLanguage allows us to create new ideas. Without language our own creative capabilities are limited. Putting words on things and concepts allows us to modify our views: shifting words does shift worldviews.

In addition, Kevin Kelly in this quote misses the view that language allows to mobilize the ideas and the creativity of many people at the same time. Brainstorming techniques demonstrate clearly the power of group creativity.

Hence language (which in our framework did create the First Revolution which brought us to the hunter-gatherer state) is a key part of creativity. Without language we cannot conceptualize, we cannot generalize, we cannot categorize and we cannot shift our views.

No wonder that one of the key benefits of speaking several languages is enhanced creativity and a great flexibility when facing diverse situations!

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Why a Working Business Model is One of the Ultimate Creative Endeavors

A working, effective Business Model is probably one of the ultimate creative endeavors. It is often the result of a long-winded development effort, including many trials and errors. It reflects a relationship between a number of stakeholders with the aim of creating value to most of them. It can be shown and described like a piece of art. And it is a practical, real-life invention.

Business Model Framework
The Business Model Framework from the book Business Model Generation

The interesting observation here is that as a creative endeavor, the most successful, disrupting business models are those that go beyond the conventional, that reflect ‘out-of-the-box’ thinking. Thus those that develop those business models need to be somewhat unconventional and able to see beyond the obvious practice.

It also requires the business model generation process to be highly creative, without bounds, and highly iterative as well. Specific brainstorming situations need to be created accompanied by data retrieval or generation. It can sometimes take years to come up with a workable business model, and many trials and iterations.

And when it works, what a marvelous creation! And what really makes it an ultimate creation, for me, is how it creates value for a large number of stakeholders, not to mention that fact that it creates strong links and experiences for the same many people!

A business plan is one of the most powerful contemporary works of art.

Note – the figure is from the highly recommended book Business Model Generation – A Handbook for Visionaries, Game Changers, and Challengers.

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How to Make Commercial Departments More Creative

Following our post ‘How Commercial Is One of the Most Creative Activities‘, let us dwell a little bit into the organization of most commercial departments – and how these organizations seem to be designed to stifle creativity rather than fostering it.

Boring PresentationI am always amazed at how many commercial departments are run in a very bureaucratic manner, with a focus on compliance to procedures, requirements to report continuously and long-winded PowerPoint presentations even on the topic of marketing efforts or even on the status of negotiation with some prospects.

Of course, compliance is needed to make sure that certain limits are not exceeded; reporting and creating databases of commercial efforts is useful. But there needs to be space for creativity and I can’t find it in a number of commercial departments. Clever solutions need to be found to create the most compelling (and competitive) offer. This requires time to think and experiment; time to brainstorm and produce quality work (note – quality work is generally in the form of a text document, not of a set of slides). Where is that space for creativity?

Create a formal space for creativity in your commercial department and ensure for your organization a definite competitive advantage! And for my sake, reduce your addiction on PowerPoint slides: get to the work of creating real documents that will force you to put your ideas in order!

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How the Fourth Revolution Fosters both Smart Generalists and Super Specialists

While the Industrial Age was marked by increasing specialization, the “Return of the Generalist” in society is a common theme in many books. It has been recognized already in 2005 by Dan Pink in his book “A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future“, and I found the issue further developed in an interesting book, “The Rise of the Naked Economy: How to Benefit from the Changing Workplace” by Ryan Coonerty and Jeremy Neuner.

generalist-specialist
Generalist vs Specialized, an obsolete opposition

In this book about the future of work and of the workplace, they identified two key players in the “Naked Economy” of the future: big-picture thinkers, who they call the Smart Generalists, and the small-bore experts, the Super Specialists. The two are complementary. In our future project-based working environment, Smart Generalists will coordinate the work of Super Specialists, and both will have tremendous value.

In the book, the author mention that “My value, like all generalists’, is to know a little about a lot. That means the onus is on me to constantly reach out to new people, read books and articles, watch the trends in a wide range of arenas, and generally be passionately interested in the world. Having that broad knowledge to draw on, and to be able to use it when I need it, brings me a lot of credibility when I’m dealing with people in business, government, or academia.”

The Smart Generalist is coming back, watch for the change in the workplace!

Related Posts:

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Why Innovation is about Creating Effective Conversations

Hugh McLeod writes in a post: “If your company isn’t innovating, it’s likely because no one is facilitating the right conversations”

Innovation-ConversationFurther he writes, “In Gapingvoid’s long experience working with Fortune 500 companies, we’ve found they all have the same problem. When communication shuts down, so does innovation. And it isn’t lack of money, talent or resources. What’s missing is the interpersonal. They either don’t like each other or don’t like talking to each other or both.”

Ideas are generating by the encounter and the mix with other ideas (see for example our post ‘Idea Multiplication‘). Innovative companies must have the right conversations to foster innovation. This often needs to be facilitated – either simply through the architecture (creating places to foster encounters) or through facilitation. It takes some effort to create meaningful, powerful conversations – and they are so needed in most organizations!

Create powerful conversations, and you will create innovation. So simple!

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Why Feeling Burnt Out is Natural Part of the Creative Process

Sometimes I do feel kind of burnt out. Especially when I tried hard to push the confines of my comfort zone and it did not succeed as well as I would have expected (or dreamed). Or when I overextended myself believing I could do something but that is for the moment out-of-reach.

alone and burnt out Hugh MacLeod reminds us that “this stuff is NORMAL. No, it’s not easy, but hey, no truly interesting and meaningful life ever happened without a lot of this kind of ordeal. Trust me, we are the lucky ones. The unlucky ones are the ones who go their entire lives without ever feeling it.”

Yeah, great. So let’s admit that is the natural outcome of stretching ourselves and that we should be grateful to be sometimes in this condition. The natural reflex is to hurry back to our comfort zone and seek all sorts of risk-minimizing strategies. That’s where the danger looms because it is when we might drop the ball for good.

It is where it is so important to benefit from the support of one’s family (so as to realize we are not alone) and to have as well some areas of life where we can dwell in a comfort zone to recharge our batteries. It is important to make sure that part of our life remains in our comfort zone because stretching it and being creative is well- tiring. And you just can’t do it all the time.

Image and quote by Hugh MacLeod (Gapingvoid.com)

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How Philanthropic Patronage Returns for Art and Science

This paper in the NY Times describes how ‘Billionaires With Big Ideas Are Privatizing American Science‘. This can also be put in perspective with what happens in the field of health and development, for example with the Gates foundation, which is privately funded. Roles that had been taken by Governments during the Industrial Age seem to be now shifting to private individuals.

Orfeo_libretto_dedication
A dedication by Monteverdi to his patron – Orfeo (17th Century) (source – Wikipedia)

Patronage is actually not new. In the previous Agricultural Age, artists and creators needed the protection and funding of high-ranking individuals to develop their art and develop their initiatives – it was the widespread concept of patronage. This is why most artistic production is dedicated to the patron. It is only during the Industrial Age that this role was taken over by Government, with the creation of massive public research institutions and other direct and indirect public support mechanisms to artistic endeavors.

As we enter the Collaborative Age the trend would seem to reverse again with high wealth individuals entering again the field of art and science fostering while Governments are wrestling with huge deficits and can’t afford to continue this protection and support.

Is this trend temporary or will it be a characteristic of the Collaborative Age? I believe that with the shift in value creation and the disappearance of middle class this trend is possibly here to stay. Of course this poses all sorts of questions about possible conflicts of interests. Still patronage in the Agricultural Age supported the production of many great artwork and scientific advance, there is no reason why that could not continue.

Artists, scientists, you might want to seek funding in patronage rather than in Industrial Age governmental institutions!

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Don’t Underestimate How Easy it is to Start a Business Today

The cost and effort to start a business has dramatically floundered in the past few years with the advent of the Fourth Revolution. I believe this fact is still not fully understood by the mainstream. It could comes up to the point where even Venture Capital, which was so important to the development of new technology start-ups in the 1990’s, might not be so relevant today in the field of innovation.

start-up business plan
A typical start-up business plan framework from ‘Business Plan Generation’

Some relevant stories and posts by Vivek Wadhwa include Beat the GMAT, a 32,000$ start-up that was valued millions in a few months, or this Quartz post ‘Anyone, anywhere can now build the next WhatsApp or Oculus‘.

With the advent of cloud services, it is very cheap to have a professional level infrastructure at your disposal almost immediately and for a few thousand dollars a year, as I am also experiencing with my own ventures. It is also very cheap to develop mobile applications, websites and other web-based software based on existing free, open source basis. The importance of strong financial backing is thus delayed in the development process of new start-ups to the point where they can demonstrate revenue and whether their business model could be viable.

This of course removes lots of excuses not to start following your insights and ideas and create value to the world!

For more insight into business models I strongly recommend the Business Model Generation book, a collaborative book that created a framework that is now used throughout the start-up business community.

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How to Organize Working Space for Collaboration

Working space spatial organization is important when it comes to fostering collaboration. Many visionary entrepreneurs know this. And they came up with many different solutions.

world's largest desk
World’s Largest Single Desk

Steve Jobs at Apple is famously quoted for his bathroom concept at Pixar (one single instance so as to make sure people mix). Employees at Valve can move their desks as they want/ need to create temporary clusters around projects. Recently, a creative agency in New York came up with a design for a single desk for their employees (it is worth watching the presentation video to fully understand the design!) – (beyond the publicity, one wonders whether is will really enhance collaboration)

More commonly, start-up companies often start cramped in a single room, and collaboration is as a requirement as simple rules of community living!. In the field I am consulting in, large projects, an integrated project team interacting in a single open-space is a must.

There is no single solution, but managers still often forget how the physical space can influence productivity and creativity. Review your office lay-out and make sure that it fits what you expect to happen within your organization!

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