Report 103

Your newsletter on applied creativity, imagination, ideas and innovation in business.

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Wednesday 21 March 2012
Issue 205

Hello and welcome to another issue of Report 103, your twice-monthly (or thereabouts) newsletter on creativity, imagination, ideas and innovation in business.

As always, if you have news about creativity, imagination, ideas, or innovation please feel free to forward it to me for potential inclusion in Report103. Your comments and feedback are also always welcome.

Information on unsubscribing, archives, reprinting articles, etc can be found at the end of this newsletter.

Note

Most articles in this issue of Report 103 can also be found in the archives together with dozens more articles, papers and thoughts.

In this issue of Report 103

1. Threatstorming
2. DIY Parents and Creative Children
3. What's Your Value Proposition?
4. Design and Achieve Your Goals with Creative Thinking
5. Call for Papers for the 2012 South Africa Innovation Summit
6. On the Web

 

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Threatstorming

Creativity & Risks

What could destroy your business this week? A disruptive, game-changing innovation on the part of a competitor? New legislation that affects your market? Thirty customers dying as the result of using your product? Some threats are predictable. For the most part, predictable threats cause problems but will not destroy your business, largely because you can make contingency plans around these threat. It is the threats that you do not anticipate that can do the most damage. Fortunately, there is a method you can use so that you can better identify and prepare for threats: threatstorming. As an added benefit, threatstorming can even identify opportunities that make your business a threat to the competition!

“Threatstorming” uses creative thinking principals in order to identify risks and threats to your business. It is conceptually similar to brainstorming (hence the name), in that the aim is to generate creative ideas. But, whereas in brainstorming you are typically looking for opportunities (new products, new services, operational efficiencies) that you can implement, in threatstorming, you are looking for threats that your competitors, your government, your customers or your environment might impose upon you.

However, threatstorming is not so simple as asking “What could destroy our business this week?” and generating a lot of ideas. Such a broad question would generate the obvious risks you are already familiar with. Instead, you need to use creativity in order to identify the potential sources of threats and then ask more focused questions such as these.

  1. What new technology could render our product obsolete?
  2. What government legislation could seriously affect our business?
  3. In what ways could our customers misuse our products and potentially harm themselves or others?

Threatstorming Questions

The threatstorming questions you ask in your company need to reflect your business model and activities. The potential threats facing a massive pharmaceutical company are different to those facing a small management consultancy.

It is also important to put a diverse team of people in charge of generating ideas. This group should go beyond top management and include people on the shop floor, people interacting with customers, people in communications; in short a cross-section of your company. People interacting with customers, for instance, are likely to be aware of typical customer complaints or issues that are not known to top management. People in research and development will have a clearer idea of new technologies that might disrupt your business.

In addition to identifying threats, threatstorming can identify opportunities. For instance, a great question to ask is: “What new product, could our main competitor introduce tomorrow, that would put us out of business by the end of the year?” Clearly, if your people identify a realistic threat, the best thing you can do is to develop and bring to market the threatening product yourself – and threaten the longevity of your main competitors’ businesses!

Likewise, identifying potential legislation that could affect your market, might give your team ideas about product or service improvements that will put you ahead of the competition even if the new legislation is never enacted.

Identifying Threats

An important aspect of threatstorming is how you evaluate ideas in order to identify realistic threats. Typically, you need to evaluate against criteria that enables you to judge the likelihood and consequences of each threat.

Once this is done, you can use creative thinking methodology in order to identify solutions to potential threats. For this, I recommend my anticonventional thinking method.

If you would like to talk about using threatstorming in your organisation, let me know. I’d be delighted to help! (http://www.creativejeffrey.com/contact/index.php?subject=Threatstorming query&topic=creative)

 

DIY Parents and Creative Children

Clayton Christensen is most famous for his book, The Innovator’s Dilemma. But I believe one of his most fascinating insights is not in the book. It is about how some children grow up to become more creative than others. He claims (See Youtube video at http://www.creativejeffrey.com/creative/diy_parents.php?subject_code=1) that most children are born with very similar brains. However some grow up to become creative geniuses and others grow up to be of average creativity.

Interestingly, he reports, kids who grow up to be exceptionally creative seem to have one experience in common: their parents were do-it-yourself (DIY) people. When something broke down, at least one of their parents didn’t immediately call a repairman or woman. Rather they tried to fix it themselves first.

Clayton’s (I hope he doesn’t mind if I assume a first name basis with him here) explanation for this correlation between a DIY and a creative mind is twofold. Firstly, parents teach their children that they can solve problems themselves. Creativity is, after all, using new ideas to solve problems. So this is an important message to transfer to children, assuming you want them to learn to think creatively. Secondly, as any DIY parent knows, your first attempt to fix something often fails. So, you need to test your repair. If it does not work, determine why not and try a new approach.

Fixing It Yourself and Innovation

Clayton compares this to innovation. He says, rightly, that many innovative new ideas fail in their initial implementation. The responsible innovators must then review what went wrong and try a new approach. Thus, he claims, DIY parents teach their children creative perseverance, which is important for creativity.

This all makes a lot of sense. Unfortunately, although the video in which Clayton makes these claims is readily available on Youtube (and on this page), the write-up of his research is not available. Which is a pity, because his statements leave some wide open questions.

Firstly, I would be curious to know more about the statement that children are born with very similar brains. Does he mean that the brains are physically similar? To what level of detail? Considering that certain kinds of mental illness runs in families, it would seem that there is a genetic element to the kind of brain children are born with. And this is more relevant than it may at first seem.

The Brain and Creativity

Society has long associated creativity with madness. Now science is confirming that belief. Psychiatric studies indicate that there are three characteristics common to high creative production and madness: “These are disturbance of mood, certain types of thinking processes, and tolerance for irrationality.”

If mental illness is associated with creativity, and madness is similar in many respects to creativity, it is certainly plausible that creativity is more genetic than Clayton realises. And without the background to his research, we have no way of knowing whether or not this possibility has been considered and examined.

Likewise, a correlation between DIY parents and creative children does not, sadly, indicate cause. And Clayton’s language in the video is very much about correlation rather than cause and effect. An alternative explanation could be that a creative parent is more likely both to try and fix things herself and pass her creative genes on to her children.

Interestingly, when I described Clayton’s findings to a friend who grew up in what was then communist East Germany, she told me that “if that’s true, then every East German is highly creative.” She explained that simple services that we were accustomed to in Western Europe (as well as America, Japan, Australia, etc) were not readily available in communist Germany. And even when such services were available, they were largely unaffordable. So, when the toaster broke, parents really had no choice but to take it apart and try to fix it.

Whether or not it is correct to assume that being a DIY parent results in highly creative children, it is clear that it cannot hinder the raising of highly creative children and very likely helps. Therefore, if you have children and you want them to grow up to be highly creative, there is a lesson to be learned here. When a clock stops working, don’t throw it away and buy a new one. Rather try to fix it. And get your children to help!

References:

  1. Clayton Christensen’s Youtube video (above)
  2. “Creativity, the Arts, and Madness” (date unknown), http://talentdevelop.com/articles/CTAAM.html

 

Hire Me!

I do not only write a highly regarded newsletter on creativity and innovation, I also do keynote talks, Presentations and workshops on a wide variety of topics related to creativity and innovation. Learn more – and see some samples of me in action – at http://www.creativejeffrey.com/services/

 

What’s Your Value Proposition?

What is your value proposition? Quickly! Not your company’s. Yours! How do you create value for the people who give you money, whether they be your customers, your employers or your victims. Why should they give you money? What value do you generate for them?

The term “value proposition” is one more commonly associated with business. It refers to the value that a business delivers to its customers and, more importantly, the feeling in the customer’s mind that she has received some form of value in exchange for her money.

But in today’s hyper-networked, excessively businesslike world where most of us are defined by our jobs, except for those who do not have but desperately want jobs, a personal value proposition is essential as well.

Continued at http://www.creativejeffrey.com/creative/value_proposition.php?subject_code=1

 

Design & Achieve Your Goals with Creative Thinking

Step 1: The Introduction

Do you ever find yourself vaguely dissatisfied with the way your life is going? Do you feel that you have not got clear goals for the future or, if you have, that you are not achieving them? Do you find that self-help books and blogs provide step-by-step instructions that solve someone else's problems rather than your own? Do you feel that your needs are unique and different to other people's?

If so, you are correct! You are an incredible and unique person with special skills, knowledge and experience. Unfortunately, many books and blogs about achieving goals focus on a generic step-by-step process that is fine for generic people, but not someone incredible like you!

That's why I've put together a Designer Goals method you can use to define your goals, develop realistic plans for making them happen and then make them happen!

What makes this approach different to other approaches is that it uses proven creative thinking techniques to help you define your unique designer goals, rather than generic goals.

The Designer Goals method comprises 12 steps:

  1. Introduction (This page!)
  2. Acknowledge personal responsibility.
  3. Define your goal or ambition.
  4. Question your goal.
  5. Reframe your goal.
  6. Imagine achieving your goal.
  7. Identify subgoals you need to take to live that dream.
  8. Build ideas for achieving subgoals.
  9. Putting it all together
  10. Build to-do and don’t-do lists
  11. Using your imagination
  12. Get started!

Be aware, achieving your designer goals is not easy. It requires determination and effort on your part. But, my method will turn the challenging problem of achieving your designer goal into a series of very manageable steps -- also designed by you!

Continue to read here: http://www.creativejeffrey.com/creative/designer_goals_2.php

 

Call for Papers for the 2012 South Africa Innovation Summit

This year’s South Africa Innovation Summit will focus on innovation coming out of Africa, which should be fascinating. The call for papers for the summit has just been published. You can read it here on LinkedIn.

 

On the Web

A Flash of Green Enhances Creativity

Looking for creative inspiration? Apparently a bit of green helps. Learn more here. Perhaps this is why I am so often inspired by walks around my home in Erps-Kwerps, a Belgian village surrounded by fields and woods.

5 New Rules For A Winning Brand Launch

Kraft recently launched their first successful new brand in 15 years. Learn more about the innovation behind this step here.

Happy thinking!

Jeffrey Baumgartner

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Report 103 is edited by Jeffrey Baumgartner and is published on a monthly basis.

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Jeffrey Baumgartner
Bwiti bvba

Erps-Kwerps (near Leuven & Brussels) Belgium

 

 


 

My other web projects

My other web projects

CreativeJeffrey.com: 100s of articles, videos and cartoons on creativity   Jeffosophy.com - possibly useful things I have learned over the years.   Kwerps.com: reflections on international living and travel.   Ungodly.com - paintings, drawings, photographs and cartoons by Jeffrey