Fredrik Härén's Blog, page 11

Creativity is fundamental for mental well-being. (Episode 202)

One of the people I met on my trip to Singapore this week was fellow speaker YuJin Wong. YuJin speaks on the very important topic of Mental Wellbeing and he told me that one of the pillars of his speech is to talk about the need to do something creative in your life.

​

I think that is great advice because being creative makes us happy.

​

I asked him, “So what creative thing do YOU do to stay happy?” and he told me that during covid he had taken up learning to play jazz piano by taking lessons on Zoom from a teacher in Japan (!)

​

What is your creative project that you do primarily because it makes you happier and more mentally sound?

 

[image error]

 

ps. Companies should help their people become more creative not just so that their organizations will be more innovative, but also because it will create happier and healthier employees.

 

Fredrik Haren, The Creativity Explorer

The post Creativity is fundamental for mental well-being. (Episode 202) first appeared on The Creativity Explorer.

Creativity Conviction. (Episode 125)

Interview with Patricio Melo , Executive Vice President, Media/Chief Technology Officer at Davivienda.

[image error]

Here is an interesting observation: Believe that people will change, adapt new technology and innovate and it’s a much better chance that they will. Doubt that they will, and they will not.

This lesson was given to me by Patricio Melo , Executive Vice President, Media/Chief Technology Officer at Davivienda, a Colombian bank.

It reminded me of the famous study where they told a temporary teacher that the class that she was going to teach was full of gifted students. And then they told another temporary teacher that class she was going to teach was full of underachievers. The teacher with the gifted kids did much better on the test. The only problem is that both teachers were given the same class.

If company leaders look at their clients as bad at adopting new technology, they will most likely end up being bad at adopting new technology. If you look at your customers as great at adopting new technology, there is a bigger chance that they will be.

Same is true for staff.

Or in other words: We have to be convinced about someone’s ability to be innovative for them to be able to be creative. We have to have Creativity Conviction.

At Davivienda, they have Creativity Conviction. Or in the words of Patricio, “Every person can be a source of innovation and value add – and we MUST encourage everyone to present their ideas and projects and we challenge our people. If you believe that people can innovate and they will believe that they can. In the same way we believe that digital transformation is not one very big project, but many smaller projects. We believe that real digital transformation is a lot of small initiatives that come from our employees.”

Some examples of what this Creativity Conviction has empowered: The bank started virtual meetings many years before it became “a thing” due to the pandemic. They have introduced a block-chain based financial bonds system, and their p2p-payment system went from 600,000 customers ten years ago to today’s 16 million, many of these being poor people with very little education and with access to very low-tech technology. The bank believed in these customers’ ability to become digitalised. And they did.

Patricio: “Never underestimate people’s ability to change – especially if they need to.”

Do you have Creativity Conviction in your customers and staff? If not, do you think that the fact that you don’t might affect their ability to actually innovate?

How could you increase the Creativity Conviction in your organization?

The post Creativity Conviction. (Episode 125) first appeared on The Creativity Explorer.

“SAPIs” -“Simple And Powerful Ideas.” (Episode 124)

Interview with Mette Refshauge, VP, Corporate Communication & Sustainability at A.P. Moller Maersk.

[image error]

This might sound counter-intuitive, but there are some ideas that are “too good to become true” – at least if you do not pay attention.

Let’s call those ideas “SAPI”. SAPI stands for a “Simple And Powerful Idea”, and a SAPI is an idea that is so simple and so powerful that they are met with resistance, scepticism or doubt.

Now, it could be said that all great ideas have this in common that they are simple and powerful, but a SAPI is an idea is so simple and powerful that their simplicity makes them hard to sell – they just seem too simple.

I became aware of SAPI after having a conversation with Mette Refshauge, VP, Corporate Communication & Sustainability at A.P. Moller Maersk. If you haven’t heard of Maersk you might have been spending your life on a deserted island: Maersk Line, the largest contributor to group revenue and earnings, has been the largest container shipping company globally for more than 20 years.

Mette, who handles corporate communication, told me of a great example of a SAPI. The company’s top management was looking for a simple and powerful way of communicating the Maersk’s new strategy of having a more customer centric approach. The team was reminded of how the Maersk CEO recently had been visiting the CEO of one of their clients, Puma, and how the Puma CEO had gifted the Maersk CEO with a pair of custom-made Puma shoes in the distinct blue color of Maersk.

The Maersk CEO had, half jokingly, said: “Can you mass produce these shoes?”

And that triggered the idea that Maersk should buy one pair of Maersk-blue Puma shoes for every employee (!) of Maersk to communicate the new strategy’s focus on customer centricity by having the shows symbolize the importance of – literally! – “walking in the shoes of their customers”!

Do note: Maersk has over 100,000 employees…

And yes, Maersk put in an order of 100,000+ shoes to Puma!

And on the day of the launch of the new strategy the Maersk CEO walked up on stage wearing his Maersk-blue shoes and expressing the message of how everyone in the company now should “walk in their customer’s shoes” and see things from the perspective of the customers.

[image error]

Picture from the launch with the CEO wearing the special edition Puma shoes.

Brilliant.

Simple and powerful.

Stripping down a whole corporate strategy into a pair of shoes and then giving a pair of shoes to everyone to make the strategy tangible, real and meaningful is such a strong idea.

And the campaign became a huge success with employees posting pictures both internally and externally of both receiving and wearing their shoes and employees all over the world getting a better understanding of what the strategy means to them.

But the idea was not an immediate success from the get-go. When the idea was initially introduced some people did not get it, so the team had to work on getting acceptance within the company, and they did that by not overselling the idea.

Mette: “A Simple And Powerful Idea should not be oversold. You have to almost undersell it to give people a chance to be sceptical about it first and then come to their own conclusions that the idea really is as great as it is. Great ideas do not benefit from being pushed on people.”

If you have a Simple And Powerful Idea your challenge is to get others to understand how great it is and to make them understand that by themselves. If you don’t, then the very best of ideas might die because someone thought it was just too good to be true.

The post “SAPIs” -“Simple And Powerful Ideas.” (Episode 124) first appeared on The Creativity Explorer.

Innovation as a Service. (Episode 123)

Interview with Renata Talarico Petrovic, Head of Open Innovation at Banco Bradesco.

 

[image error]

 

Bradesco is a Brazilian financial company with a different, and I have to add: fresh, approach to innovation.

 

Let’s call it Innovation as a Service.

 

What Bradesco has done is to create a hub where its corporate clients get access to the products and services of start-ups. Bradesco’s prime purpose of this hub is to foster innovation to contribute to its internal businesses and also to the businesses of its clients, helping them to move forward. Innovation as a Service, as in offering innovation to serve your clients.

The one who told me about this program was Renata Talarico Petrovic, Head of Open Innovation at Banco Bradesco.

“We build a community around innovation”, Renata said to me.

But why an innovation hub run by a bank?, I asked.

She told me Bradesco does this for many reasons: to develop a radar of innovative solutions to address its own business challenges, to increase the internal culture of innovation, but also to intensify the bank’s relationships with its corporate clients. By helping their corporate clients to innovate and exchange knowledge with other members, the bank’s bond with these clients becomes stronger.

Many banks focus on Fin-tech start-ups as a way to keep track of where the finance world is heading, but, besides that, Bradesco is also focused on helping their clients’ businesses.

So a bank helping its companies become more innovative by connecting them to start-ups. At the same time, a bank helps start-ups get easier access to big potential clients, contributing to the growth of their businesses.

It might be a health company getting help to be connected to an AI start-up to improve how they analyze X-rays or a start-up developing better journeys to convert sales in a retail company’s online store.

“The value is collaboration”, Renata continued. “Our tagline has always been ‘Collaborate to Innovate’.”

 

If you were to offer to help someone else become more creative, who would it be and how would you do it? How could you offer innovation as a service?  How could you serve by helping to innovate someone else? And what would be in it for you?

The post Innovation as a Service. (Episode 123) first appeared on The Creativity Explorer.

Idea Enjoyment. (Episode 200)

There is a special joy that comes from appreciating a good idea that you made happen. Let’s call that “Idea Enjoyment”.

​

That moment you step back from your painting and just look at it not as the painter but as the art lover.

​

That moment when you finish that task you set out to get done, but have put aside for so long and then you finally finish it.

​

When you see a crazy idea that only you believed in, get accepted.

​

The enjoyment of seeing creativity get done.

​

I am writing this to you from my island where I am sitting in my dome that I decided to build last year.

 

​[image error]

 

It’s the first time this year that I am back on the island and in the dome.

 

And I am sitting here with a big smile on my face enjoying not just the dome – but the satisfaction that comes from knowing that I had this crazy idea to build a dome on my island and that I set out to make it happen.

​

Today I am not thinking of new ideas that I will make happen.

​

I am just enjoying the fact that I made the idea of the dome happen a year ago.

​

What idea should you sit down and feel grateful for making happen in your life?

​

***

​

Today we are celebrating the 200th episode of the newsletter “The Creativity Explorer” in its current (*) form.

​

I want to take this opportunity to enjoy the moment that I decided to re-start the newsletter and the fact that I have now kept it going for 200 episodes.

​

Writing about creativity and sharing what I have learnt about the topic of creativity with you is one of the highlights of my working week.

​

It’s the very definition of being The Creativity Explorer.

​

Thank you for being part of it.

​

Fredrik Haren, The Creativity Explorer

​

(*) I actually started the first edition of The Creativity Explorer (under a different name) way back in 2000, and kept it running for years, but for some reason I stopped for a few years when I lost my database due to an IT malfunction. Then a few years back I decided to start it again. So glad I did.

​

The post Idea Enjoyment. (Episode 200) first appeared on The Creativity Explorer.

The Creatives have no clothes! (Episode 122)

Interview with John Schoolcraft, Chief Creative Officer at Oatly.

[image error]

Sometimes, we need someone to point out the obvious that everyone has missed. In the classic story of Hans Christian Andersen it is the child who screams out “The Emperor is naked!”.

 And for marketing we have John Schoolcraft, Chief Creative Officer at Oatly. 

 Oatly is a Swedish food company that produces alternatives to dairy products from oats. They generated more than $783 million in revenue in 2023 and the company has seen amazing growth the last few years. The company was considered to be one of the top 10 companies in Fast Company’s list of ‘The World’s 50 Most Innovative Companies of 2019’. And John plays an important role in this successful journey.

 

I recently met with him to hear about their unusual creative approach.

 

You see, Oatly does not use an advertising agency. They do not even have a marketing department.

 

And yet they have been nominated to – and won! – numerous advertising awards and even done an – epic – Super Bowl commercial a few years back (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r2-f-qBcQFs).

 

So how can they have such successful “marketing” without a marketing department or an agency?

 

Because they have a “creative department” instead of a “marketing department,” and the creative department looks at themselves as problem solvers, not marketers.

 

John Schoolcraft to me: “We go to other departments in the company and tell them ‘We do not want a brief; we want your problems’.”

 

The creative team gets involved early in the process and focuses on solving problems that the organization has defined. 

 

Many marketing directors and heads of ad agencies focus on the “client-agency relationship” (the tangible and intangible agreement between an organization (the client) and the company that is providing marketing, video, animation, search, advertising, or public relations services (the agency).)

 

But since Oatly does not use traditional agencies or have a traditional marketing department, they instead focus on the “Creativity-Business Relationship”.

 

John explained to me that creativity is at the very center of the whole company, and that the creative department that John is running sees as its primary role to help solve business problems with creativity.

 

That is how they, just to mention one example, came up with a soft-serve ice-cream product that is now being sold in stadiums in the US and at shops across Europe.

 

“Marketing people are a filter’, explained John to me. Take them away and let creatives work directly with the organization, and you become faster, more innovative, more customer-centered, more nimble, and braver.

John stresses that he does not run an “in-house agency”, that would just risk becoming the worst of an agency and the worst of an in-house department.

 

Instead, he told me. “Philosophically we have one foot outside. We represent the consumers. But we work extremely close with the rest of the company. We have removed every single thing that gets in the way of making great creative ideas.”

 

And it works. At a recent advertising award in Sweden Oatly was nominated for 13 (!) different awards, making Oatly the second most nominated agency- amazing, especially considering that they are not even an agency…

 

John uses the promise of creative freedom that comes with letting creatives work directly with business leaders – instead of working with business problems via a marketing department through an ad agency- to recruit some of the best creatives in the industry. And he then tells them: “There is no client. You are the client. There is no-one to go to, you have to decide if it’s great, you have to be willing to make that call…”

 

No brief. No client. No agency. Just creative business solving.

 

How refreshingly and inspiringly simple.

 

What would happen if you dismantled your marketing department, fired your agency and hired creatives who focused on solving your business problems?

The post The Creatives have no clothes! (Episode 122) first appeared on The Creativity Explorer.

Expand your personal frontier by applying the art of the possible. (Episode 121)

Interview with Larry D. James, Deputy Director and Chief Operating Officer at The Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

 

[image error]

 

Larry D. James has one of the coolest jobs on the planet. Or let me rephrase that: He has one of the coolest jobs in the solar system.

Larry is Deputy Director and Chief Operating Officer at The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) – a research and development center associated with NASA that focuses on the design, development, and operation of robotic space missions. Their innovations are out of this world.

One of their many, many amazing projects was to build the first flying vehicle on another planet. They were the ones who developed the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter.

To fly something on another planet – a planet that has an atmosphere that has 1% of the pressure of the atmosphere on Earth – is a crazy challenge but JPL pulled it off with a smile. And the helicopter flew over 70 missions (way pass the initial goal of 5).

Larry summed up what draws some of the smartest people to work at JPL when he said: “If you want an exciting career where you aorganizationn organization that takes on big challenges for the whole human race, then this is a good place to be.”

I asked Larry to share with me what we can learn about developing our own creative abilities from such an extremely innovative organisation.

At JPL there is a culture of always wanting to go further. Larry calls it “The Art of the Possible.”

They aim to tackle problems that have never been tackled before and aim to answer questions that have never been answered, by focusing on how to make them possible.

The Art of the Possible is about having a mindset of focusing on making the seemingly impossible possible.

Larry told me, with a smile: “Here we like to ask two questions when people propose an outrageous idea. First we ask: “Does physics prevent it?” Then we ask: “Is it illegal?” If the answer to both is “No” then our next response is: “Let’s figure it out!”

The Art of the Possible is such a refreshing mentality in a world where so many people focus on why things cannot be done.

When asked how to live in accordance with the Art of the Possible Larry said: “First raise the bar for the kind of questions that are being asked. Then do a check to make sure that these questions really need to be answered. (to make sure you are not going down a futile or unnecessary route) and finally ask yourself: How can I get the resources to make this happen?”

The mission of JPL is to “expand the frontier of science and to better understand our earth and the universe.” With a mission like that you can see that people get inspired to think beyond what is.

But the mindset of the Art of the Possible can be applied to anyone and anywhere, according to Larry. “To make the seemingly impossible possible, we need to expand our personal frontier. Creativity is about wanting to go further.”

“Expand your personal frontier” – what a beautiful approach to life.

Where are the borders of your own creativity, and what are you doing to expand beyond them?

These are the questions we should ask ourselves on a regular basis to make sure we are pushing our creativity to its full potential.

To paraphrase another creative space man: “To Creativity and Beyond!”

The post Expand your personal frontier by applying the art of the possible. (Episode 121) first appeared on The Creativity Explorer.

The extremes of being The Creativity Explorer. (Episode 199)

Yesterday, I stayed in a suite at the Conrad in Dubai as I was there to deliver an opening keynote speech for IT security experts from the region.

Today, I did a pro-bono speech on Zoom from my home in Sweden for a class of Afghan girls attending a secret school. (I blacked out their faces on the screenshot as they could not risk being seen attending a class.)

The two worlds could hardly be further apart.

And that is why I LOVE being The Creativity Explorer!

Sweden and Afghanistan are on totally opposite sides of the Inglehart–Welzel cultural map of the world. UAE and Afghanistan are on totally opposite sides of richest countries on earth (UAE is #7 and Sweden is #20, Afghanistan is not even on the list of the 190 richest countries.)

It’s by exploring creativity from all sides of the human spectrum that I get to build a holistic picture of human creativity.

If you are looking for a speaker on creativity who has studied the subject from all kinds of perspectives, you know who to contact.

ps. For the Afghan girls, I spoke about the need to have “imaginations” – a made up word that stands for the act of imagining what you need to do to achieve your dreams. (“Dream = I want to go to America”. An imagination: “How do I get to go to America”.)

People should not just “have dreams”, they should have “imaginations” where they are actively looking to solve the obstacles to their aspirations.

What is your “imaginations”?

[image error]

Would love to know your thoughts. Do comment on ​LinkedIn​.

The post The extremes of being The Creativity Explorer. (Episode 199) first appeared on The Creativity Explorer.

Innovation Slipping. (Episode 120)

Interview with Arturo Martinez Torres, Innovation & Technology Leader at Grupo Quimmco.

[image error]

Innovation Slipping is the insidious, slow and barely noticeable decline in innovation over time as a company gets older and more established.

When a company is founded, it’s often buzzing with innovation, but then processes are set up, procedures get cemented, and inertia sets in. Pride in past successes blocks the urge to find new ones.

 

And slowly, innovation slips.

But Innovation Slipping is reversible, if a company really focuses on getting back on the innovation track. Here are three things you can do:

1)  Change from having a financial focus to having a transformational focus.

Less about measuring what has been done and more on looking forward to what we could or should be doing.

2) Change from an “operational mindset” to an “innovation mindset”.

A well-oiled machine is great, but organizations are not machines. There needs to be a space and a place to try new things out, to experiment and to, yes, fail.

3) Change from thinking of “an innovative organization” to thinking of “an organization of innovators.”

Organizations do not invent anything. People do. Focus on how you get the most creativity out of your people and how to best support their creative potential.

It’s possible to reverse the effects of an organization suffering from innovation slipping, but to do that, you need to be aware of a crucial observation: You slip when you are not paying attention.

A person not seeing the wet spot on the floor – or the banana peel  – is the one who slips.

And an organization that will suffer from innovation slipping is an organization where the leadership is not paying attention to what’s happening to their innovation.

Innovation Focus is the antidote to Innovation Slipping.

****

This observation was inspired by a conversation with Arturo Martinez Torres, Innovation & Technology Leader at Grupo Quimmco.

The post Innovation Slipping. (Episode 120) first appeared on The Creativity Explorer.

Undeterring – The act of being undeterred. (Episode 119)

Interview with Brian J Smyth, Managing Director and Global Innovation Lead, Communications, Media and Technology at Accenture.

[image error]

 

We need a verb of the adjective undeterred. A word describing “the act of not being deterred or the process of persisting without discouragement.”

 

May I suggest the word: Undeterring.

 

It is not an established word in standard English dictionaries or usage, but it should be.

We could use it to describe a team of innovators, like this: “The team’s undeterring spirit led to a breakthrough, ultimately making the innovation a success.”

Undeterring spirits are what people who are trying to push new innovations and technologies need every day.

Why do we need the verb? Because a verb is a word that conveys an “action, an occurrence, or a state of being” and we need more people to take action to make new technologies and innovations come true. We need to encourage the act and that state of being.

A person who has an undeterring spirit is Brian J Smyth, Managing Director and Global Innovation Lead, Communications, Media and Technology at Accenture. Part of his job working in The Dock, Accenture’s global R&D hub in Dublin, Ireland is trying to get companies to understand, get interested in, try out, and adapt new technologies such as AI, VR and AR, and he constantly runs into people who are skeptical, negative, uninterested or uninformed about the potential of new tech. He, of course, also runs into loads of people who are interested, passionate and curious, but for those people you do not need the undeterring spirit

His job is to turn around the skeptics.

 

To get them to see the opportunities.

To do that you need to be undeterring.

Brian shared how, in order to get people onboard, you need to:

a) Make them see some value.

Brian: “You have to understand that people have so many current problems and tasks on their to-do-list that it’s very hard to get them to put potential new solutions on top of all those tasks. You need to show them that it’s worth it.

b) Give them the confidence to interact with the new technology

Brian: “The unknown can scare people. Have a grand vision, but when showing a new technology start with showing solutions that are close to existing products and services that people know and understand. If the leap is too big, people will fail to make that leap.”

And then realise that innovation is never a straight line. Keep pushing, keep evaluating what is working and tweak what is not. It’s hard to get others to see what you see.

Brian said that he is “attracted to the greyness that is the unknown”. He is energized by “the challenge of opening the eyes of people to the winds of opportunity.” The skepticism fuels him.

But Brian is not a rabid contrarian. He wants to help people. Or in his words: “I want to help uncover the clouds that stop people from seeing the future and their important role in shaping it.”

He has: An undeterring spirit.

Do you?

The post Undeterring – The act of being undeterred. (Episode 119) first appeared on The Creativity Explorer.