Real creativity that is – creativity that is exposed to the looks, reactions and feedbacks of others. Being creative in one’s realm without sharing does not create anything for the world.
Are you really courageous? Ready to confront criticism and people making fun of you because you show them something which is outside the normal?
There’s just one way to know it. Create something and show it, publish it to the world. There you’ll know whether you can face your fears. You’ll know whether you’re courageous.
Be courageous. The world, your community, your family needs you to be.
Quirky is a successful startup that thrives on social invention. Inventions are sorted out by the crowd, and if selected, inventors get royalties… and not just inventors: those that were influential in the later development of the idea, the name, the tagline or the color too!!
The development of this startup is astounding. Launched in 2009 it now launches 2 new products per week.. and they have paid millions to inventors and contributors. More information on this post by Mitch Joel.
Think about it: a startup which is collecting ideas from anybody, put them to proof and vote, builds them, compensates all the crowd that was influential in producing the product… and unleashes the inventiveness of the world.
The Fourth Revolution has not finished to astonish us!
“Others inspire us, information feeds us, practice improves our performance, but we need quiet time to figure things out, to emerge with new discoveries, to unearth original answers” – Dr Ester Buchholz (from Garr Reynolds’s ‘Presentation Zen‘ (a great recommended book to improve presentation skills!))
As modern life pushes us around, tries to keep us busy constantly, do we still have enough time to stop receiving all this information and figure things out?
In fact it is all about balance: we do need the contact with the others to receive other view points, open our minds, discover the world, know how other people have failed, sound solutions, what they have learned. And we also need to have some time to be with ourselves, let our creative mind reveal itself and create.
What should the ideal balance be like? Probably lots of interaction with the world and just making sure we keep enough time to be alone with ourselves.
Do preserve this precious time alone with yourselves. be it meditating, walking, looking through the window of the train… It’s worth it. It’s needed. For you. For your contribution to the world. Do it. Now.
“Creators train themselves to transform uncertainty, fear, and doubt into fuel for creation”
This is a quote from ‘Uncertainty‘, a book by Jonathan Fields, which resonates deeply with me.
Are you ready to step into uncertainty?
I hate to face uncertainty. I’d like my life to be organized and predictable for the next few months, years.
I hate having a predictable life. Much too boring. So challenging!
I am stressed and fearful sometimes. Quite often actually since I started my own company. Some days it gets the better of me and I avoid the issue. Some days it pushes me forward into action.
So what? I progressively learn to accept uncertainty and fear and how it opens opportunities. I still have a long way to go to welcome, to grab these feelings and use them as a source of energy. Still I am on my way, and there are times where I experience uncertainty or fear as a real fuel for creativity.
See, avoiding uncertainty and fear was the mindset of the Industrial Age. Welcoming uncertainty and fear as a transformational force will be the mindset of the Collaborative Age. We need to learn that because it will be what makes us successful.
And you? I’d like to hear about your experience in the comments!
And Hugh McLeod (subscribe for free to receive a daily Gapingvoid cartoon and thought) captures it fantastically as usual in this cartoon.
Yep, to be creative you need to be some kind of a lone wolf. And choose not to be sheep. Are you really ready for it? The point of Hugh McLeod is very well made – you need to choose one or the other.
At any time, in any society, only a few people are ready for being lone wolves. They will be lonely, sometimes hungry, but they will change the world.
Will you be the sheep of the wolf? Time to choose!
Creativity has become a key concern. As measured by some standards our creativity seems to declibe. Yet globally creation has never been so buoyant. How can that be?
Following our blog post “the World Wants to Keep us Stupid“, a comment linked to this 2010 Newsweek paper “The Creativity Crisis”. Studies describe in this paper have measured that while IQ tends to increase from generation to generation, creativity tends to diminish since 1990 in the US – and in particular in younger children. When this paper came out it led to a number of reactions. The new Collaborative Age is the age of creativity! Is America losing the game? Are Western countries losing the game? Is the world losing the game?
Creativity in the corporation. A model that will disappear?
There is one big logic failure here however: creativity can be learnt and taught. It can be developed quickly through the proper exercise. It can be also unlearnt in our society like shown in this fantastic example quoted from the Creativity at Work Blog:
In 1968, George Land distributed among 1,600 5-year-olds a creativity test used by NASA to select innovative engineers and scientists. He re-tested the same children at 10 years of age, and again at 15 years of age.
Test results amongst 5 year olds: 98% Test results amongst 10 year olds: 30% Test results amongst 15 year olds: 12% Same test given to 280,000 adults: 2%
If you don’t understand why that happens in a conventional Industrial Age world, look at the cartoon!
So the result of tests on young children anyway does not predict their creativity as adults. It might be true that the modern kid might be enticed to do activities like video games and watching TV that do not develop as much creativity as figuring out how to play games with almost nothing – and I make sure my kids have moments where they need to be creative.
Yet the most important is also to make sure we train our creativity muscles during our entire life. And even atrophied creativity muscles can be trained back to be fit!
The Fourth Revolution shows us everyday how our collective creativity is increasing every day, both through the mating of ideas from the web, and the increasing emphasis on creativity as a key success factor. We can learn creativity. We need to practice creativity.
There is no creativity crisis. The only crisis is that the world might not be ready to welcome the wave of creativity that will change our societies beyond recognition.
Thanks to Julie Pigdon for the comment and reference that led to this post.
One of the key concepts explained in the book caught my eye and ignited my attention. The concept is simply Vuja Dé. The reverse of “Déja Vu” obviously, French for “seen already”. This concept implies the possibility to look at the same old things and redefine how we use them.
Or, like Proust, a famous French author of the beginning of the XXth century says in the quote, seeing the same thing with new eyes.
How can we redefine what seems to be an established practice, business, industry through the use of Vuja Dé? Not just improve, but redefine?
This is a word that has the power to change the world, because it names a concept which is truly useful in these times of change. A concept of rupture, of reinvention.
Ready to Vuja Dé your job? Your business? Your industry? Tell me how this word changes your mindset in the comments!
In the Industrial Age, the world wanted to make us stupid. It wanted to make us be a cog in the well oiled machine of society.
For the first time since centuries the Fourth Revolution gives us the possibility to be clever and free again. But – will be seize this chance?
Industrial Age classical image: watching what others have decided for us
There is quite some comfort to passively be told what to do. To avoid taking decisions as they are taken by others. To watch TV all day long, watching what others have decided would be good for us. Relying on ‘specialists’ to decide what we read, eat.
The difficulty of accessing information has vanished. Today at the touch of our fingers we have humankind’s information available.
Will we use it? Will we make the effort to seek information, to find what we need, to decide by ourselves what we want to do, watch, read?
Some individuals have chosen that path. Most have not. It is scary, it requires decision-making, it involves risk and – gosh – failure.
Will we see the majority of people chose the harder way of freedom and choice? It seems like the young generation is much more unconventional than the previous generations. Still the majority will start working in corporations where fitting with the system is a survival skill.
Maybe the ongoing economical crisis that forces more people than ever to be creative in their response to finding ways to live will be considered as a key moment in the emancipation of humankind.
Following our blog post on Lean and accelerating our learning in the Collaborative Age, a particular issue came up. As part of the lean methodology, we propose to go out in the world as early as possible with a ‘Minimum Viable Product’. That is to say, an unfinished product with some basic functionality and lots of bugs. This product could be a book, a painting, a recording, a set of photos, a blog, a website… anything that you are creating with your heart.
Getting out into the light is the hardest
That’s generally at this point of time that Resistance attacks. What? Coming out to the world with an imperfect product? What about my ego, my reputation? Won’t I look ridiculous?
And there we often freak out. Delay. Find all sorts of excuses not to go out with this imperfect product and work to improve it. Worst even, not to anything on the product and just shelve it waiting to be secure enough to show it to the world.
Resistance was already trying to avoid us working on the product or the creation; it is the ultimate battle before it gets to the world; and Resistance does fight it with the back to the brick wall.
Just consider this: you might be somewhat ridiculous this time with this imperfect product; but you will be much more later if you spend much more time trying to make it ‘perfect’ in your eyes and if it remains dull in the eyes of the world. And you won’t be able to forgive yourself if you never bring it out to the world.
Do you want to live in regrets all your life? Just come out with it. And rock on!
And no- you won’t be ridiculous this time anyway. Your tribe will take interest in your new creation and guide you toward making it really fascinating and useful.
Have you anything almost finished on the shelf you never managed to get out to the world? Get it out and start learning! Beat the Resistance!
Don’t wait until your product is perfect to push the button or you’ll never progress by getting the right feedback. Yet how finished, polished, perfect should be your product before you shoot it to the world? What is actually a ‘minimum viable product’ to follow the words of the Lean Startup Movement?
Are you ready to push the button even if not "perfect"?
There is a little bit of debate on this issue. Is it just a functional product even if it does not look nice? Well, if it’s not attractive and nobody tries it, you’d better add some good presentation.
Is it a product for CEOs? Make sure it looks professional enough.
Is it a nice-looking product that does only part of the work? Here again it depends who you send it to, and what they would expect.
‘Done is better than perfect’ is written on the Facebook walls. It is the motto of the hackers. It’s true. But your product should have at least some of the functionality and look as your prospective clients will expect. Don’t wait forever for the perfect, but make sure what is done works for what you expect it to do. Maybe you should start by analyzing what are the minimum functionality you are aiming for your audience and stick to that as a priority.
In summary, don’t seek to be perfect. Just do the right thing – and just the right thing. And shoot to the world.
I love this image. And I wonder where I am right now. How much am I stretching myself outside my comfort zone? Is it enough to get to “where the magic happens”? Am I leaning in the right direction?
Gosh! Do I really need to go beyond my comfort zone?
Tough questions, precisely because I am out of my comfort zone, not quite at ease. I literally dream sometimes to get back in the comfort zone (having a simple, cosy job as an employee in a large corporation, no more worries about marketing and end-of-the-month cash?).
In that general context of uneasiness how can I know whether I am moving in the right direction to encounter magic? How will I recognize magic? That’s a tough question!
Actually, magic is easy to recognize: it is when what you do resonates with people, when you get conversations started because people are interested, when people ask to meet you to discuss what you are doing.
Once you meet the magic, the energy you get from these encounters and these conversations makes you lean even more outside your comfort zone, and necessarily in the right direction.
So, do people resonate with what you do? If not, continue to seek by experimenting. If yes, then lean further in that direction.
She’ll do her compelling project, probably much more and most certainly we’ll hear about her in the future with some new, amazing, awesome projects.
No label, no publisher (which she dumped two years ago). Just the power of the crowd. People voted with their wallets.
Let’s look at the stats: 24,883 backers contributed an average of 48$ each. Out of them 11,100 contributed less than 5$. 20,500 contributed less than 25$. Ouch! Isn’t that democracy? Don’t you have 5$ to spend to support an artist you love??
I’m sure you want to change the world too. When will you leverage the power of the crowd for your project, and stop waiting for somebody else to decide whether what you are doing is right?
