“We need ideas and we need them now”, everyone nods in agreement, they know it’s business time. And so the fellowship sets on its journey to this mythical Valhalla of ideas…

“Thank you all for coming, I know you’re busy with your own projects but I invited you to brainstorm with our team today. I expect creativity, and I really want you to think outside the box on this one.”

And so it begins, a journey to The Outside Of The Box: a place of infinite creativity.

Out of the box

As you might have derived from the introduction, I really, really, dislike the expression ‘outside the box’. Just a minor irritation is caused by how it’s often mistakenly referred to as ‘out of the box‘. Out of the box means, as Wikipedia cleverly informs us, ’something ready made’ or ‘off the shelf’:

Items, functionalities, or features provided out of the box are those that do not require any additional installations, plug-ins, expansion packs, or products. In addition to being used for tangible products, the phrase is often used in a less literal sense for software, which may not be distributed in an actual box but offer certain functions “out of the box,” e.g. without modification.

Just plug it in and ‘go’. It’s already been completely designed, tested and is ready to use. Needless to say that is not what people intend to say – they mean ‘creative thinking’, ‘divergent thinking’ or ideation, the process of generating many, unconventional ideas. Clearly the plug and play reference really undermines that intent.

But more significantly is my problem with how the expression undermines your brainstorm from the word go. The ‘fellowship’ as described in the introduction face a major problem for effective ideation from just those three words…

Outside ‘the box’

In order to understand the expression and the problem within, first we need to know where this mysterious box even comes from.

It is said ‘the box’ is derived from a simple puzzles that is used in training unconventional thinking. The subject is presented with a three by three grid of dots, and is asked to connect all dots with four straight lines, without the pen leaving the paper.

The puzzle is solved however, by going ‘outside the box’, moving the pen to points not part of the grid (or ‘box’) and connecting all nine dots.The box is the mental model that is formed by the grid, a container which causes the subject to make assumptions and obey the conventions of the square space.

More commonly though, ‘the box’ is simply seen as a clearly defined ’space’, a metaphor for the office or the teams ‘comfort zone’ where one has to get out of in order to generate original and relevant ideas.

Burning the box

The effect of instructing people to ‘think outside this box’ is deadly for your process of ideation. A brainstorm facilitator should stimulate divergent thinking, and ‘the boundary of the box’ is doing exactly the opposite. This abstract of a box, where ideas either go in our out (and out being good) encourages people to evaluate and judge their ideas. Worst case openly whether an idea is in or out, but also quietly, not sure if your box has the same boundaries as the other participants boxes.

Bottomline result: less ideas and the quality of ideation diminishes, and with that the true power of brainstorming: Connecting a variety of ideas – of which some could possibly come from ‘within the box’, or someones personal ‘box’ – his own comfort zone.

The ideas that come from within these ‘boxes’ are not bad or uncreative per definition, they are simply unfinished. As will any other idea generated in the process of brainstorming. They get polished and evaluated outside the brainstorm, or at least outside the process of creating the sheer volume of ideas to work with. Become a concept where other ideas could spring from, or get discarded with the original but irrelevant ‘outside the box’ ideas.

‘The box’ effectively discourages the free flow of ideas – the essential part of a brainstorm and the most determining factor of its success.

And new work at that, as I’ve switched jobs over the past two months. I’m now part of a great, creative team at Talmon B_Connected, responsible for creative concepts involving one my big passions: Storytelling.

I do apologize for the complete lack of updates over the past 2 months. It’s said that after 21 days one learns a habit, and just as easily as I’d had learned to (re)search interesting material, and more importantly for this blog – write about – it it had become undone during my vacation.

Fortunately I did not shed all good habits during this vacation and my ‘idea log‘ and email box are brimming with links, thoughts, ideas and concepts. I’m currently processing these and plan to return to our regular schedule of updates as of this moment.

I hope you had a wonderful, inspirational vacation as well and keep an eye on our feed for our upcoming updates!

It’s time like this I often remind myself of the following list. These are six simple techniques that will allow you to unleash your creative potential, and once more set inspiration free inside your mind.

A comfortable place to work

Research shows time and time again our workplace is of great influence of our creative output. An uncomfortable chair, not enough desk space, not enough (sun)light, people calling all the time, these things really disrupt our ability to think and act creatively. Consider cleaning your desk or moving someplace else (outside/kitchen) to think, or if the problem is more structural, designate a space where you can think, sit, write and read comfortably and in peace.

Visualize your goal

Sometimes it’s easy to get stuck on the problem, and it helps to just remind our self why we want this fixed. Why am I doing what I do, what is the big picture? It’s all to easy to lose motivation and therefore our ability to be creative halfway through a project, and the trick is to get through this visualizing your objective again. Think of the finished product that got you motivated at the start of the project when it was still fresh.

Collaborate with someone

Creativity thrives as a social activity. The best results are created by being part of a team where you have a chance to get instant feedback. The magic of having someone to bounce ideas off is not just that two minds work better as one. Someone less involved in the creative process as you are can more easily provide rational and objective feedback, and provide motivation by pointing out the things that he or she agrees with you.

Variety of Scenery

Sometimes I get so caught up with a creative problem it shuts down the creative process. It’s just as important to relax the mind as it is to strain the mind. Music, a game, a walk in the park or a shower often leads to sudden bursts of inspiration because the mind has a chance to relax, process information and let all the previous inspiration settle down inside your head (and pass the checkpoints in our prepared mind).

Write your thoughts down

Writing is a great exercise in analytical thinking. By writing our thoughts down we force ourself to give the idea some time and become tangible enough to create a coherent phrase out of it. Not only does this help by saving all ideas instead of discarding them instantly because we think they are just bad or ‘half’ ideas, we also have a chance to tell our self why we think it is a bad idea. This will point us in the right direction of the solution, instead of relying on the patterns in our mind (gut feeling/instinct) to make that decision for us without the opportunity to learn from it.

Night Owl or Early Bird?

No one can always be focused, always ‘on top of their game’. Some get inspired by sleep and feel a productivity boost when they just get started with work in the morning. I’m more of a night owl, I can work ‘till 4:00 AM and usually feel productivity rising after 22:00. Knowing when you are at your best might help you plan better and make optimal use of your brains biorhythm.

No matter what ‘they’ tell you, experience marketing, pull marketing and all other buzzwords that pass for new marketing’ today all started in the 15th century.

In medieval Brittan the monarchs and landlords often found themselves in a position where they needed to pass their (unpopular) new rulings along the commoners they ruled. Like announcing tax increases when they had given a grand party or fought a neighboring lord and found their treasure chest drained.

At first this was done by the military, but as the military was often recruited from the town itself, threatening the farmers often proved to be counterproductive, more than once caused uprisings. But it was around 1450 when these lords and monarch started recruiting special individuals to pass along their message for them, people that seem to have a way with words and other people – the bards.

Bards are generally thought of as merry man, traveling from town to town, telling tall tales to townsfolk. The truth is this type of bard has only come around since the 17th century. Before this the bard was simply a messenger in service of a court, who’s mission it was to praise new rulings convincingly, and pass along the messages of the powers that be to their subordinates.

The very word ‘bard’ is derived from ‘bardos‘ – which mean as much as ‘to raise your voice’ and ‘to praise’.

Given the current social situation of most of the lords subordinates at that time – poor, uneducated strong farmhands and blacksmiths – being a bard required great skill. Telling the fine folk they need to pay more or send their sons to war wasn’t always received with the happy enthusiasm you’d expect from bringing such ‘good’ news.

So in order to survive – literally – the bards found ways to embed themselves well within the community by providing entertainment in song or strong tales they’d write about their lord. Instead of demanding more taxes outright, the bard found clever stories about heroics of the lords that would make the villagers less likely to resist. Instead of fearing the messages of their lord, people would literally hoard around to listen to the tall tales (and latest rulings of their sovereign).

The evolution of bards

The bad bards made a living traveling around, spreading the word until they had made themselves too unpopular for comfort and moved on to the next town. The good bards however, got promoted to do the one thing the lords and monarchs thought was more important than keeping the peace – War.

As shown in numerous movies, in medieval warfare, morale meant life or death. When a horde of 10.000 angry men carrying swords come running at you, inspiration and a reason to not run and hide matters, and the warlords recognized this soon enough. The bards where told to inspire courage, survival and a will to fight for king & country. They often used battle songs, which carried far over the fields, or theater, enacting drama and comedy to take the soldiers mind of the battle ahead or tall tales of legendary heroes and the rewards of victory.

Eventually this evolved the bard into the artistic being – a communicator and a ‘people person’ who informed, inspired and motivated the masses through song, music and poetry – the finer arts that made life worth living. The most famous examples is of course The Bard of bards – William Shakespeare, around 150 years after the first records of bards being hired by the lords and monarchs. The role of the bard had evolved, a bard was no longer simply a messenger, but now often a thinker, posing questions and sharing world views with their audiences. Shakespeare famously posed many questions on sexuality, society, elitism and even politics. Large social issues meant to question and inspire through play and arts.

Another 150 years later the bard has reached its peak of social involvement. The famous Scottish bard Robert Burns starts to describe the foundations of liberalism and socialism in his poetry and folksongs, eventually inspiring both movements. The artistic minds are well embedded in society as thinkers, questioners and entertainers and mass-communicators.

A new monarch

But things change when we fast forward another 200 years. The profession of the bard starts to evolve again with the arrival of a new type of monarch: The industrialist. Entrepreneurs who see production is no longer an individual undertaking (a smith, a baker, a butcher etc.), but something that can be institutionalized through modern machinery. This marks the rise of the new kind of empire – the corporation.

At first the new monarch has no problems recruiting workforce or selling their products, but with the arrival of competition and broadcasting the monarch seeks to hire the help of the bard again – praising their product and telling their audiences about their business. The bards adapt to the demand for mass production and create micro and mass produced performances: The advertisements.

But the bard is facing problems – originality is rarely understood by the masses and with the increased demand for barding, the audience is flooded with ‘performances’. This means their messages have to be shorter, there’s no time or demand for depth – it’s no longer the occasional ruling of the sovereign, barding has become a full-time job. No more time for poetry or other fine arts. The bards had become marketers, and the craft of praising has been industrialized.

Like a child growing up – the art of inspiring and performing  to praise seems to have lost a lot of its necessary creativity. Inspiring had become efficiency, communicating had become publishing, and motives are not longer morale or communicating rulings. Modern bards are on a mission to create new desires for their audience and maintain the industrial complex.

The goal of these manufacture needs is to create new wants for consumers, and new consumers means expansion of the industry which means wealth for the new monarch. The easiest way to create these ‘needs’ is to simply make you dissatisfied with your current situation. In other words: companies benefit from making you feel bad and dissatisfied. “You’re getting old/fat/ugly, here is a way to fix it.” Or “What you have might have been good last year, now we have something better”.

But the manufactured needs are often not real ‘needs’. A new ‘flavor’ of water is not going to really make a positive impact on your life. Neither are 5% less fat, 10% longer taste or the addition of some fancy herb to your latest anti-wrinkle cream. These where just tricks the bards had thought themselves to make you want the product of the monarch. There was no real progress, just imaginary dissatisfaction.

Imagine the bard at the battlefield, 15.000 angry soldiers just a mile away. It was the bards responsibility to raise morale, to get everybody pumped and feel the very best they could be before striding off into battle, inspiring real need for survival. Somehow I don’t think telling them shaving with 5 blades instead of 4 will reduce skin irritation was going to cut it.

The point is – where bards used to inspire and where a positive, constructive note in society I think the multi-billion dollar industry marketing is today, is no longer positively contributing as a whole.

Do not despair, we live in hopeful times

I think the main problem is we as a society have trouble seeing the current marketing and advertising business as ‘broken’. It brings in money so it functions. But when I look back at the bards, I can’t help but think how these billions and billions of dollars of demoralizing to get us to consume, could be spend better to inspire and contribute. Opposition is still rare but these are hopeful times for bards:

• Malcolm Gladwell is my favorite storyteller of this time, using tales from far and wide to convey his sometimes visionary, sometimes observatory ideas about society.
• Seth Godin recently wrote Tribes, on leading communities through leadership and inspiration, a manifesto for the modern day bard on communicating to their audience meaningfully.
• The United States have elected a ‘Bard in Chief’ – Obama. His speeches would not have been misplaced in theaters, seeking to inspire by being a prophet of change.
• Ken Robinson recognizes the need for creativity and inspiration in modern societies, seeking to improve our educational systems to train a new generation in exploring the arts
• Kevin Roberts (Saatchi & Saatchi) makes a passionate pitch for returning to the crafts of storytelling and emotional theater in the 30 second commercial in his book Sisomo.
• Innovative ad agencies such as Crispin Porter + Bogusky find new ways to use the modern arena (the internet) to move and entertain the audience of their ‘praisings’.

But is it enough to break the dominance of mediocre, demoralizing advertisements? As long as we as a consumer society don’t feel the machine broken it’s not likely to get fixed. But as the options increase to ignore advertising, and new generations become more crafty at blocking advertising, I think – I hope – there will be a place for the bards of old again. The ones relying on their creative minds to inspire and attract. The bards that motivated and entertained through the arts, and generally contributed to a life worth living. The potential of this billion dollar communication machine is just to big to let go to waste.

His physical presentation (the old and wise man, grey haired, suit wearing business exec.) is in sharp contrast with his passionate, creative and provocative presentations and arguments. This controversy rapidly wrote the story of ‘the brand Tom Peters’ and created a loyal fan base, amongst which many other Big Thinkers in the marketing and innovation industry.

Now one of the all-time guru’s of ‘new business’ Tom Peters uses his distinctive, trademark flashing powerpoint slides and a seemingly never calming anger (passion) about the (big) mistakes and opportunities in modern business to convert multi-million dollar corporations and decisionmakers to the path of innovation, creativity and diversity.

Reason enough to take a closer look at Tom’s perspective on innovation.

Fortunately Tom Peters sees ‘hoarding’ information as one of the cardinal sins in business, and shares his experience and insights generously through his website (only building the brand even further). Out of many gems of information I distilled 10 of my favorite insights and quotes on innovation.

Innovation Tactic #1: Trying

“Darwin rules. More stuff goin’ on, more interesting-good stuff happenin’. Innovation is to a large extent a “numbers game”: He-she who tries the most stuff wins. (Astonishingly true.)”

Innovation Tactic #2: Prototyping

“Prototyping skills-attitude are more central than almost anyone can imagine. Entire organization as “playpen” with “playmates” gathering spontaneously to try stuff. Quickly. Quickly. “

Innovation Tactic #3: The stuff of legends

“Tries and screw-ups and sagas of bold champions become the “stories” that animate the organization—and induce everyone to climb aboard, play with vigor, or lose out.”

Innovation Tactic #4: Design

“Design, writ large, is increasingly the route to product or service differentiation. Many companies are now beyond lip service, but a long way from fully incorporating design and experience creation into the heart of the company culture. One effective approach is a center of excellence with the avowed goal of nothing less than becoming a “hotbed” of global excellence—for example, Samsung followed this path and is giving Sony a run for its money.”

Innovation Tactic #5: The Dreamers with Deadlines

“Warren Bennis called hot groups of innovators “dreamers with deadlines.” Innovation is not pie-in-the-sky, “let’s all have a blast, yo my man, cool, eh?” in nature. There is a compelling and disciplined “execution” thread that is central to the innovating organization. The innovating organization is focused on “new stuff,” “cool stuff”—but is pragmatic to a fault. The project “budget and milestones guru” is as honored as the true believer-dreamer-champion. “

Innovation Tactic #6: Accountability

“There is as much accountability around screwing up as there is around inventory management in a traditional outfit; that is, the innovator takes responsibility for the screw-up and for insuring rapid learning and dissemination of lessons learned and for mounting the follow-up experiment posthaste.”

Innovation Tactic #7: Lunch

“Never waste a lunch!!!! Lunch is 5 opportunities per week, 220 opportunities per year to get to know interesting outsiders, folks from other functions, customers, vendors, frontline staffers. This is remarkably important. “Lunch management,” a “lunch culture” is not an amusing aside. “

Innovation Tactic #8: Diversity

“Diversity with a lower-case “d.” Black, white, brown, purple … tall, short … North American, Asian … public school, private school, no school … etc … etc. (Etc.) Decisionmaking of every sort is far, far better with diverse views of any flavor. Period. I have come to view this is as a gamechanger—for a 6-person project team, a 20-person company, a huge enterprise. “

Innovation Tactic #9: What do you think?

““What do you think?” Innovation-an innovation culture engages one and all. (All = All.) Getting everyone to think about improvements small and large comes from, de facto, constantly asking “What do you think?”—perhaps the 4 most important words in the innovator’s vocabulary. Treating every voice as valued yields more value from every voice.“

Innovation Tactic #10: Celebrate

“Celebrate! Innovative organizations are places where people enjoy their peers’ work, good tries, good screw-ups, milestones reached, etc. Celebrating these events, large and small and very small, is a fullscale part of the “innovation culture.” “

You can find the other 111 insights on innovation in the ’ Tom Peters: Innovation Tactics 121‘.

I apologize in advance for this post reads a little bit like a ‘rant on ‘the internet’. It’s also a little more ‘tech-talk’ than usual on Crinid. Proceed with caution, you’ve been warned

The internet is a place of niches. Millions of ‘me’ niches exist on blogs, social networks. Personalized search, personalized ads, personalized content, all becoming part of our ‘digital DNA’. And it’s great, right? We get more of what we want now that our profile is slowly becoming our niche?

No more annoying spam and other advertisements, just ‘infomercials’ – advertisements I’d want to see because they are relevant to my interests. And of course, therefor is more likely to make me click/buy/tell someone else about it. It’s this ‘noble’ thought that ignited the need for our data to be collected, stored and used to build our profile, and I’m not just talking about our Facebook account.

For example, last week I spend some time listening to Jose Gonzalez on YouTube. I made a playlist and added a number of songs to my favorites. The day after I noticed nearly every ad on my screen all day was related to guitars, Spanish artists and some other stuff I could easily trace back to the smooth sounds of Mr. Gonzalez.

Of course, targeted ads for guitars are kind of lost on me at the moment, but some day it will figure it out.

Getting it right

And we know the Google’s, Microsofts and Facebooks of the future will figure it out. ‘They’ just need a little more data, and be a little more semantic (human) in order to get right. Personal profiles get stronger, and more persistent throughout the internet (my Google account gathers information from every website with Google Ads now).

On the other hand websites and applications get smarter using this information (FaceBook Connect links my profile to numerous websites simply by logging in to comment or use the service). Portals like Netvibes, iGoogle and MyAlltop lets you create pages that lists just the news you want, but how long will it take until we don’t have to tell them what we need? The web knows what we want now, what our interests are, and will feed us the information that fits our profile, our pattern, and in doing so we start to create ‘cocoons of me’.

But wait, the web was meant to connect was it not? Reach out, talk to people, share thoughts, have discussions…

The problem is the way social networks work right now. They facilitate me to find people ‘like me’. To a vast majority this is what social networking is all about. Everyone openly lists their interests, in order to find or get found by others who share these interests. Websites like LinkedIn specifically search for people like ‘me’ and recommends them as my friends. We rarely look for things that are ‘not-like-me’. The result is our networks become more and more ‘like me’.

This in turn affects the information and domains we have access to again. Even though the amount of information is growing, it becomes more necessary and more easy to filter this information.

In our effort to counter this infamous ‘information overload’ we employ ’social filters’ in mass. Facebook, Twitter, FriendFeed, Digg, del.icio.us, personal blogs and even plain old email – our new sources of information are heavily dependent on our networks. And as internet is undoubtedly the most dominant source of information in the 21st century, this will have an impact on us as ‘information processing organisms’ or ‘thinkers’.

In fact, I think this is where we might eventually be crossing the line between getting what we want, and losing what we need. Things like diversity, new domains, different interests, foreign patterns and opposed perspectives. Creativity thrives from the inspiration we get from domains that are ‘not like me’, finding things that don’t fit our patterns and expectations, people that are ‘not like me’. And the internet is getting increasingly poor at providing me with information that’s ‘not like me‘.

What are your thoughts? Will the increasing control we have over information we’re exposed to limit our ability to be creative, or will the new connectivity on the web give us access to more domains, and improve Creative Thinking?

More on that later though, I don’t want to give away too much before the presentation itself. What I can tell you the presentation (and the next blogpost) is largely inspired by my favorite quote of all time, by one of the greatest storytellers and Creative Thinkers that will ever walked the face of this earth:

“Above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don’t believe in magic will never find it.” ~ Roald Dahl

More to come soon! Why not sign up to our RSS if you haven’t done so already and get notified of our blogposts?

Pecha-Kucha (pronounced ‘peh-chak-cha’ as far as I was able to trace) is the Japanese sound of an ‘informal conversation’ or chatter, something like the English ‘chit-chat’. It was originally invented by Astrid Klein and Mark Dytham, two architects in Tokyo who opened up a performance space for young designers to meet, network and present their work.

In order to keep the presentations interesting and control the architects and designers tendency to talk endlessly about their own work, they imposed a set of rules on the presentations.

The format is easy enough. Each presentation could only have 20 slides, and you could only spend 20 seconds (exactly 20) per slide to explain the story of the picture. That’s it.

The ‘rapid-fire’ presentation style, the Pecha-Kucha, has spread virally amongst creatives and is renowned for its ability to capture an audience throughout a large number of consecutive presentations. Part of the trick is the anticipation created by the knowing the next slide is only 20 seconds away, as well as forcing the speaker to make their points quickly.

Image credits: Pecha Kucha Manila

See for yourself if you find them more easy to watch than regular presentations:

• Small Things doing Big things
• Product Innovation Presentation by Thinksketch’s
• A personal presentation by Jake Smith

For more information about Pecha-Kucha and presentation events near you visit pecha-kucha.org.

What surprised me was how seemingly innocent questions like “What is your favorite food‘ suddenly become quite complicated.

Simple question, hard to answer

First of all, there is not one ‘dish’ I’d that is my favorite all time. I know a few I like best right now, but is that really ‘favorite food’, or would that be the kind of food I’d rate the highest over a longer period of time. I quickly listed a few types of food I enjoy (sushi, spaghetti bolognese, quiche loirainne), arranged them in order of ‘favoriteness’ just between them (1. spaghetti bolognese, 2. quiche Lorraine, 3. sushi) and picked the the one at the top of my list.

However, It gets more ‘complex’ when you realize even adjectives are banned in the one word answer. I couldn’t even pick my favorite kind of spaghetti, it would just be spaghetti. I then realized how much I needed adjectives to express myself. Constantly creating minor nuances or perhaps trying to be too specific where simplicity is required.

Listing, prioritizing, picking

I had my mind set on completing the form (after I had been drawn in by the apparent simplicity of the initial question) so I did. In the end I actually enjoyed the results because it allowed me to quickly put some order to my thoughts, with no chance of being vague about my answers.

The simple, open-ended questions generate a number of answers quite quickly. But with the one word rule, you have to filter, prioritize and pick just one of them. Whether this is the actual answer is actually a lot less relevant than the process of quickly organizing your thoughts and comparing your options. Which in turn, is exactly what convergent thinking is all about (Wikipedia: convergence denotes the approach toward a definite value). This is the kind of thinking you need when creating some order in the results of a successful brainstorm (a type of divergent thinking) for instance.

To experience some quick convergent thinking, try the 5 questions below – they could help get a little more focus on your ambitions as well:

1. What are you passionate about?
2. What do you like about your current job ?
3. What do you value most in life?
4. Where do you want to be in 5 years?
5. What is the stuff dreams are made of?

(And remember, just one word per answer )

• It took the 40 years in the age of radio
• It took 15 years in the age of television
• It took 5 years in the age of Dial-up internet (Netscape)
• It took less than one year on the age of broadband (Gmail)
• It takes hours in the age of instant messaging and a networked world? (Facebook, Twitter) [My addition]

“The time it takes for an idea to circulate is approaching zero” ~Seth Godin

Ideas spread faster, easier, and become more crucial to success. Feedback is often made publicly, in comments, reviews and social recognition (joining or following someone’s blog or social networks). Scary? Opportunity? I haven’t made up my mind yet but it sure is interesting!

Image credits: Tonivc