According to brothers Tom and David Kelley, founders of the iconic design firm IDEO, everybody is creative no matter what their background or career path.

“…early failures, defeats and setbacks can lead otherwise creative people to shut down their own best ideas.”

If you accept their reasoning and your team isn’t as creative as you would like the fault most likely lies with you.

The “early” in the above quote can refer to early in life, but also early in tenure.

How often have you hired someone with a track record of creativity only to find them carefully coloring within the lines?

That’s usually the result of having creative ideas rejected, arbitrarily shot down or, worse, ridiculed—not once, but over and over.

Even when those negative responses are from a team member, it’s still your responsibility, since the culture that makes acts like that acceptable is either sourced from or condoned by you.

Flickr image credit: liz west

An article a few days ago made me a happy camper for three very different reasons. Here they are in the order of their importance to me.

Reason 1: It provided a scientifically acceptable reason for having a messy desk and gave me permission to quit trying to clean it up. This was especially nice, since ‘clear desk’ is a constant item on my to-do list.

Reason 2: The clinically tested reason for having a perennially messy desk is creativity. How cool is that?

Reason 3: I beat the pattern because I have creativity, yet I eat healthy and go to the gym daily (not on weekends).

Essentially, the study showed that “Those in messy spaces generated ideas that were significantly more creative, according to two independent judges,… people that are organized and predictable, typically eat better and live longer than people who are disorderly. They also tend to have immaculate offices.

Last year I found that I possessed three of the five parts of Innovator DNA, based on a Harvard definition, but, after a lifetime of trying, am totally incapable of the final two.

Dr. Kathleen D. Vohs, a behavioral scientist at the University of Minnesota and the leader of the study, seems to think that the only way a messy desk person could develop healthy habits is to clean up their desk.

“My advice would be, if you need to think outside the box” for a future project, says, then let the clutter rise and unfetter your imagination. But if your primary goal is to eat well or to go to the gym, pick up around your office first. By doing this, the naturally messy can acquire some of the discipline of the conscientious.

I’m willing to bet that Dr. Vohs is a clean desk person or she would understand that it’s not that simple.

But, as a messy desk person, I will tell you that you can build a healthy eating-gym attending persona without ever cleaning up your desk.

One caveat, in part of the study people were given a choice between chocolate and a healthy snack (carrot sticks?). The messy desk crowd took the chocolate, which meant a messy desk equals unhealthy choices.

However, based on a lifetime of experience with neat desk friends, all with lots of self-discipline, I think it just means they didn’t like chocolate.

Flickr image credit: Jeffrey Beall

Common wisdom says that the larger a company the harder it is to get management to listen, especially when it goes against fundamental corporate practice.

Franchises are even worse and the longer they’ve been around the less they are likely to listen to a franchisee, let alone a new one.

But when they do the result can go way beyond the most optimistic prediction.

The frozen-yogurt giant credits the 32-year-old’s success with pushing them to embrace the self-serve model – a move that has reinvigorated the company and led to exponential growth.

TCBY had been around 30 successful years when Samuel Batt was approved for a new franchise in 2010.

He grew up eating TCBY, but wanted to incorporate self-service—enabling customers to choose flavors, toppings and quantity of each—in his new franchise.

Sounds old hat today, but DIY was just gaining traction in new venues back then.

Long story short; the powers-that-be said yes, as long as he kept the branding.

And within three weeks, his location was one of the top-five most profitable franchises in the country. (…) About half of TCBY’s nearly 500 franchises across the country have embraced the new model to great success, each doing from 25 percent to 200 percent better in sales than with the traditional model, Brian Mooney, director of operations for the Eastern U.S., said.

Management could have just as easily said no.

Compare TCBY’s attitude to Steve Ballmer’s at Microsoft; they are close to the same age—TCBY is just six years younger than Microsoft.

In 2007 Ballmer said, “There’s no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share.”

He didn’t listen to either his own people or the industry when they said that mobile and the cloud were the future—or maybe he was in denial.

But as I recall, Bill Gates didn’t listen when staff tried to tell him that the Internet was going to be really, really BIG.

Bosses at every level, not just CEOs, have a choice.

They can choose to listen and be flexible—or not.

Flickr image credit: jessica mullen

What do you think?

Do you think?

Or perhaps the question is ‘how do you think’ around the clutter and the noise.

“Nobody can think anymore because they’re constantly interrupted,” said Leslie Perlow, a Harvard Business School professor and author of “Sleeping With Your Smartphone.” “Technology has enabled this expectation that we always be on.” Workers fear the repercussions that could result if they are unavailable, she said.

Of course, there is the alternative of ‘why bother thinking’ when one can just ask and receive crowdsourced thoughts on any subject imaginable; from where/what to eat to raising your kids to how/when to die.

But what happens to the crowd when everybody stops bothering to think?

At that point the old saying, everyone has a right to be stupid, but some just abuse the privilege, kicks in with a vengeance.

Rather than joining the crowd, take time to think; you may be one of the few left who do.

Flickr image credit: Alyssa L. Miller

Warning: today’s post probably won’t help you manage your group, work better or improve culture, but it is so darn cool I had to share.

It’s also a glimpse of the future.

It’s real innovation—the kind that actually has the potential to change the world—unlike the inane kind, such as Google Glass.

IBM research just released an adorable stop-motion movie, “A Boy And His Atom,” by moving individual atoms around and imaging them. (…)This breakthrough “has the potential to make our computers and devices smaller and more powerful, but also holds enormous implications for the way entire industries operate,”

Plus, you can see how the movie was made.

Kind of blows your mind, doesn’t it?

YouTube credit: IBM

Over the years some people take my expanding box idea and try and tell me that the boxes are actually replaced, not expanded as I described yesterday.

I (respectfully) tell them they are wrong.

It isn’t about replacement or creating boxes within boxes, it’s about expansion.

Everything that existed in the old box continues to exist, but new dimensions are added, because the box is larger.

And it especially isn’t about ‘using up’ what’s in your box before you can expand it; it’s about choosing to explore beyond what’s known and/or comfortable—or not.

We all push our boundaries organically as we age; it happens through experience and just plain living—and we’re not even conscious of doing it.

Some folks enjoy consciously pushing back boundaries in evolutionary ways, exploring new areas a bit at a time.

Others take a revolutionary approach and willingly leap into the unknown, not knowing where they will land or if they’ll survive. Very scary—but the unknown has always been scary.

Most of us combine all three types, organic, evolutionary and revolutionary, with ascendancy changing depending on what’s happening in our world—as well as the larger world.

What needs to be understood is that the person who leaps into the unknown is not intrinsically more valuable than the person whose box enlarges organically through their own life experiences or the ones whose boxes increase incrementally through conscious, measured efforts.

All three types, along with their varied, changing combinations, are necessary for life and for Life to continue on our planet.

Look at any list of great innovators from the past and then think of all the people who enhanced/changed/added to the original ideas; then add on all the lives involved, one way or another, with these ideas.

All the contributions have value within their own world—what is different is the size of each innovator’s world and since society tends to equate size to value—the bigger the greater the worth.

Not all of us want to/can change the world, but each of us can take care of/improve our little bit of it.

As for me, I’d hate to live in a world where all the little bits were a mess because everybody was out changing the whole.

Flickr image credit: Leonora Enking

We’re fast coming up on a new year.

New ways of thinking can open up new opportunities.

So try this new way of thinking, rather than a bunch of New Year’s resolutions that may not last out the month.

Everybody has a box.

That’s right and no matter how hard you try you’ll never really think outside it.

Heresy? No.

The idea that boxes are bad is a function of how you interpret them.

It’s not the box that matters, but its size and how you address that.

Steve Jobs’ and Steven Spielberg’s boxes are immense, far larger than most, yet they both continue to enlarge them.

And therein lays one of the secrets of creativity, whether in an individual or organization.

It’s not about “thinking outside the box,” it’s about understanding your box and how to enlarge it.

Because that’s how it works.

As soon as you get outside your own box, a new one forms.

Once you totally use up its content and find its sides you go outside that box; a new one forms and the process begins again.

If you work at it, this process continues throughout your life—although some never start and some get comfortable in a certain box and retain it.

But the most wonderful thing about boxes is that it’s always your choice—within your control to make it happen.

There will always be a box, but with effort you can enlarge it enough to encompass galaxies—and even entire universes.

It’s all yours for the choosing.

Have you hugged (and enlarged) your box lately?

Flickr image credit: NASA

Last Saturday I provided links to innovation based on thinking different; there’s more of that this week, with some very inventive solutions to common problems.

The cost of setting up shop for a budding designer is beyond prohibitive, especially if they want to be close to their prime clients in urban areas like Manhattan. But just as an interest in food and fashion often go together so the food truck solution adopted by new chefs is being snapped up by young designers.

Styleliner is among a handful of mobile retail stores in New York, Boston, Los Angeles, Portland, Ore., and across the U.S that are hawking vintage accessories, sexy shoes and denim to die for in their haute wheels.

An old industrial building in Brooklyn is signaling what could be a small renaissance for local manufacturing. It’s an approach that could be applied in many urban areas by developers with a more creative and longer-term vision than loft condos.

A surge of young entrepreneurs eager to produce $7 chocolate bars made from hand-roasted and hand-ground cocoa, or build theater and movie sets or fashion high-end furniture for a connoisseur’s market find the smaller spaces carved out of these old factories precisely what they have been looking for.

And now the story of Tito Beveridge, whose career proves that rarely does one get from point a to point b via a straight line. It does prove that constant personal exploration is needed to get from, say, premed to computers to geology/oil to your true passion—even if it takes a couple of decades—which sure kicks a large hole in today’s instant gratification mindset.

I saw a motivational speaker on TV who suggested that people at a crossroads consider what they enjoy doing and what they’re good at doing — and to find a job where the two intersect. I had been making infused vodka to give to friends at Christmas, and I really enjoyed that. I thought that was my answer.

Even people who like babies get tired of the endless stream of pictures posted on various social media, but that is especially true for those folks who, by age or by choice don’t have any. Twenty-somethings fit that demographic and a group of them have provided a solution.

Launched last Wednesday, Unbaby.me will scan a users Facebook newsfeed for certain words and phrases that indicate that a picture of a baby will be looking back at them. (…)The service describes itself as, “A Chrome extension that deletes babies from your newsfeed permanently – by replacing them with awesome stuff.”

I love the English because they embrace the unusual, quixotic, eccentric and downright odd. Being pragmatic, they allow gambling (knowing people will do it whether of not it is legal). You can bet on anything if you find the right bookie—there is even a term for it—novelty betting.

The history of novelty betting in Britain can be traced back nearly a half century, Adams said, to a man named David Threfall, who in 1964 requested — and received — odds of 1,000 to 1 on a man walking on the moon by Jan. 1, 1970. Threfall, obviously, turned his £10 ticket into £10,000, giving rise to an ever-growing legion of bettors who are interested in betting on the obscure, unlikely and (sometimes) unimaginable.

We’ll end today on what I hope will be a thought-provoking note. How many friends do you have? Not Facebook friends, but real ones; the kind you would tell you need serious help and would be there for you. Take a look at why the further out of college the more difficult it is to form real connections. If this shoe fits then you may want to commit some time to finding at least one new pair.

As external conditions change, it becomes tougher to meet the three conditions that sociologists since the 1950s have considered crucial to making close friends: proximity; repeated, unplanned interactions; and a setting that encourages people to let their guard down and confide in each other, said Rebecca G. Adams, a professor of sociology and gerontology at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.

Enjoy!

Flickr image credit: pedroelcarvalho

For years I’ve wondered why the target of advertisers and companies was 18-35 year old males; a target that, based on my experience and observations, was incredibly fickle and rarely had the money to spend that other demographic groups had.

But what did I know?

Apparently more than I thought.

If you are a startup, especially a tech startup, you need to do two things.

First take a hard look at stats that could make or break your success.

It turns out women are our new lead adopters. When you look at internet usage, it turns out women in Western countries use the internet 17 percent more every month than their male counterparts. Women are more likely to be using the mobile phones they own, they spend more time talking on them, they spend more time using location-based services. But they also spend more time sending text messages. Women are the fastest growing and largest users on Skype, and that’s mostly younger women. Women are the fastest category and biggest users on every social networking site with the exception of LinkedIn. Women are the vast majority owners of all internet enabled devices–readers, healthcare devices, GPS–that whole bundle of technology is mostly owned by women. –Genevieve Bell, Intel researcher

Along with the stats, you would do well to keep in mind that women are social creatures who love to share—especially tips and opinions.

Then take a hard look at your staff.

How many women have been hired? In what roles? How many are in a position to provide input to your products or services? How often is that input applied, i.e., how much weight does “her” opinion actually carry?

Does it matter? Are her ideas really so different?

It definitely does matter if you plan to sell to her.

And the one thing you should have learned in the course of your life, whether you are 20 or 60, is that boys and girls are different.

They do not

• think alike or even about the same things in the same way;
• use language the same way (“men negotiate status; women talk for connectivity” –Deborah Tannen)
• run on the same time table;
• consider the same things important or
• prioritize similarly.

The list goes on and on.

Given that, how do you propose to develop products and services they will pay for if your whole team thinks like a guy because they are guys?

““““““““““““““““““““““

Sunday was Father’s Day and I shared Martin Sheen’s thoughts on fatherhood, but the thoughts from some of Silicon Valley’s “hottest dads” are definitely worth the read.

I WANT  YOUR STORY
Be the Thursday feature – Entrepreneurs: [your company name]
Share the story of your startup today.
Send it along with your contact information and I’ll be in touch.
Questions? Email or call me at 360.335.8054 Pacific time.

Flickr image credit: moodboardphotography

Let’s start with a short personal quiz.

A. Do you consider yourself creative?
B. Do you

• love your iPad;
• wouldn’t be caught dead without your smartphone;
• can’t conceive of spending time without a music source;
• still follow TV shows, whether on TV or online;
• all of the above, often simultaneously?

What if B interferes or even cancels A?

What if the springboard for creativity and creative problem solving is boredom; a mind free of distractions that can wander untethered?

…a phenomenon that’s been identified by Edward de Bono, the legendary creative thinker. He calls it the “creative pause.” (…)The creative pause allows the space for your mind to drift, to imagine and to shift, opening it up to new ways of seeing.

From HBS’ Jim Heskett’s research question on deep thinking to my own comments on the value of silence, the need for undistracted time and the resulting creativity is well documented.

To be or not to be distracted is an individual free choice and can’t be dictated by others, but it is always wise to look at the consequences of one’s chosen actions.

Distracted driving kills people.

Distracted thinking kills creativity and innovation.

Flickr image credit: MacintoshDo