Ideas on Demand: A crash course on creativity. Bust creativity blocks, 10x your ideas, and become an idea machine. (10x Impact)

by Miliind Harrdas

References https://news.stanford.edu/2005/06/14/jobs-061505/ https://www.brainpickings.org/2011/08/01/networked-knowledge-combinatorial-creativity/ https://www.amazon.com/How-Think-Like-Leonardo-Vinci-ebook/dp/B000SEFNF0/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr= https://www.amazon.com/Creative-Genius-Innovation-Business-Crossers-ebook/dp/B0051H66W8 https://www.wsj.com/articles/BL-SEB-67363 https://archive.fortune.com/galleries/2008/fortune/0803/gallery.jobsqna.fortune/index.html https://www.dezeen.com/2015/03/14/nike-just-do-it-slogan-last-words-murderer-gary-gilmore-dan-wieden-kennedy/

In learning creativity, the frame is the most important concept you need to understand and master to create countless dots (ideas).

Once you know the relationship between dots and frames, it won’t be difficult for you to understand the secret that gives creative and innovative people the ability to generate infinite ideas. The world’s most creative and innovative minds know that every new frame they identify will open a treasure trove of dots for them. Hence, they have built an ability to perform “multi-frame” thinking.

Just now you learned the most powerful secret of creative thinking called “frames.” If you want to discover new sets of dots (things or ideas), you need to discover new frames first. This is the secret all the creative minds of the world use to produce tons of ideas and effortlessly make connections between the completely diverse ones. With frames, now you have the power to multiply your ideas exponentially.

Creative ideas and innovation just can’t come into existence as long as assumptions exist.

Assumptions come in a disguise of facts and blind us to the obvious

A large majority of things that we consider as facts are just assumptions. They blind our vision, making it impossible for us to see the obvious. Take the case of Swiss watchmakers. Once, they ruled the global watchmaking industry. At some point, they made around 65% of all the watches in the world. This success created enormous wealth for the Swiss watchmakers. It also created a set of ‘facts’ based on which the entire Swiss watch industry operated successfully for a long period. Now, what were those facts? Fact # 1: A watch has to be mechanical. Fact # 2: It needs to have wheels, levers, gears, and mainsprings. Fact # 3: It needs to tick. Interestingly, Max Hetzel, who was a scientist working for a Swiss watchmaking company, challenged all these assumptions and invented a quartz watch that was even more accurate than the mechanical ones. Overnight, all the ‘facts’ mentioned above became just a bunch of assumptions. The story didn’t end here. He took his invention to many Swiss watchmaking companies, who outright rejected it. For them, the points stated above were still facts. And a watch that didn’t comply with the facts couldn’t be a real one. Hetzel then showcased his invention at the World Watch Congress. The Americans and the Japanese just took one look at it, and the rest is history. Assumptions blinded the Swiss watchmakers from seeing an obvious opportunity and resulted in their downfall. The American and Japanese watchmakers didn’t have the baggage of assumptions...

You are driving down the road in your car on a wild, stormy night. You pass by a bus stop and see three people waiting for the bus: 1. An old lady who looks as if she is about to die. 2. An old friend who once saved your life. 3. The perfect partner you have been dreaming about. Knowing that there can only be one passenger in your car, whom would you choose?

here is the answer: The old lady, of course! After helping the old lady into the car, you can give your keys to your friend and wait with your perfect partner for the bus.

Mind you, no one deliberately forms the assumptions. They get formed below the level of consciousness. We can call them “unconscious assumptions”, but for the concerned person, those are the “realities.”

The only way one can separate assumptions from reality is by challenging them. But we believe our assumptions to be the reality. Hence, to challenge them, you must question all the things that are believed to be real. When you look at history, you will realize that almost all the innovations and inventions happened only when someone successfully challenged and proved that certain things that were believed as realities were just assumptions. In your journey towards mastering creativity, challenging such deeply ingrained realities is one of the toughest yet most important milestones that you must cross.

In the year 1923, when Alfred Sloan took over as the CEO of General Motors (GM), the market was dominated by Ford Motor. Ford’s famous Model T was ruling the roost. That was the era when Henry Ford had famously quoted, “You can have any color you want, as long as it is black.”

It’s another fascinating story. I strongly recommend you read this interesting piece written in LinkedIn1—What Organizations Can Learn from Alfred Sloan, Not Henry Ford, by Rachna Choudhry.

State your assumptions. (Since initially you would see all your assumptions as facts, list down all the facts pertaining to your situation.)

Replace a few words in the statement with a new set of words that turn the meaning of the sentence into an opposite one. The reversed idea will be opposite to what you, as well as everyone, had been believing all these years. It may sound completely outrageous to you. Your first impulse may be to drop it altogether. But don’t do it. Follow the next step.

Start searching for reasons that will support the reversed statement. Do it for every reversed idea. Don’t think of the feasibility of any of the reversed ideas at this stage. We are going to address that bit in the next step. As you keep trying harder, answers will start appearing. Each answer will offer you a new frame, and every frame will be loaded with the dots of exciting possibilities. This is the stage when Aha! moments happen. Earlier, you had one reality that was confining you. Now you have many new realities that might actually liberate you. If you could apply this technique successfully, you have an innovative solution in hand.

List down every possible way you could think of to execute all the ideas. Remember, in the beginning, you can never find an end-to-end and one hundred percent doable solution. In fact, some of the solutions may appear either half-baked or too far-fetched. But don’t discard any of it. More dots will get connected later. For the time being, keep creating more dots. Do it individually. Do it along with your core group. It might take you a few days or even weeks to complete this exercise.

written by Porus Munshi, Making Breakthrough Innovation Happen. As the book’s title suggests, it is packed with 11 such fascinating stories, and each of them is about breakthrough innovation. It’s a must-read book for anyone interested in the subject of innovation.

Below is a list of a few of the assumptions that stop people from asking questions (Mind you, these are just a few. The actual list might go up to hundreds): I know this subject like the back of my hand. There is nothing more that I need to learn. I know where he/she is heading to, we have tried it before, and it won’t work. Asking questions speaks of a lack of knowledge. It’s the same old story. I have heard it several times before. Asking too many questions will make me appear confused. I am well aware of such situations. I already know the answer. As a leader, my job is to offer answers, not questions. My boss expects me to come up with answers, not questions. I want to be perceived as an expert. Asking basic questions will make me seem like a novice.

What do you need to challenge assumptions? Questions. What is stopping you from asking questions? Assumptions.

References https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/what-organizations-can-learn-from-alfred-sloan-henry-ford-choudhry/ https://www.amazon.com/Making-Breakthrough-Innovation-Happen-TheImpossible/dp/817223774X/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=Making+Breakthrough+Innovation+Happen&qid=1622798904&s=books&sr=1-1

Ideas get stuck at two places: 1. Inside the invisible walls of assumptions 2. Inside a single frame.

When you change your questions, you break the invisible wall of assumptions and find a new set of frames. And you are unstuck. Questions are the key to liberating your creativity.

In his famous book, Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey shares an example of a person climbing efficiently on a ladder, only to discover that the ladder has been leaning against the wrong wall. This holds good even with the problem that we are trying to tackle. Changing our questions will help us discover the right wall, meaning the right way of defining our challenge. This process is known as reframing.

When you look at the same situation from a higher level, it gives you a different perspective. This also applies to the challenge that you are attempting to crack. The process of reframing involves asking a series of searching questions to probe your intent or objective deeply. This will help you to see our problem from a new or higher perspective. Then, based on this new perspective, you reframe your challenge.

Those who ask different questions to challenge the assumptions and dare to take bold action always enjoy a competitive advantage over the rest.

The process of reframing involves having a second look at your challenges by taking a step backward and asking a different set of questions.

References https://www.amazon.in/Habits-Highly-Effective-People-Powerful-ebook/dp/B08KH29CJC/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1624693103&sr=1-1-spons

Your questions determine the frame into which the answer falls. If you are unable to get new ideas and feel stuck, it means you are stuck in the single or limited frames. As long as you keep asking the same set of questions, the answers will take you to the same frame(s). The key is changing your questions. When you change your questions, the new set of answers will take you to a different set of frames.

Michael Michalko, in his book1 Cracking Creativity—The Secrets of Creative Genius, shares an anecdote from Toyota. The company was grappling with the problem of improving workers’ productivity. Initially, the management asked employees for ideas on how they could become more productive. This question was confined to a frame, namely efficiency, which appeared to be serving management’s interest. The employees were not interested. The management received very few responses. Then management decided to shift the focus to the employees’ needs and asked a different question — How can you make your job easier? This question opened up many possibilities (frames). As the results show, the management was flooded with more suggestions than they could handle.

Inventors and scientists have an insatiable curiosity to know more about things. Their curious minds are not content by asking the same set of questions that everyone asks. Their curiosity drives them to ask different types of questions. When others see things and accept them as usual, day-to-day happening, scientists find them intriguing. When a fruit falls from a tree, there is nothing unusual about it. But when an apple fell on Newton’s head, it triggered a series of questions that resulted in the discovery of the law of gravity.

He once said, “If I had an hour to solve a problem and my life depended on the solution, I would spend the first fifty-five minutes determining the proper question to ask, for once I know the proper question, I could solve the problem in less than five minutes.”

Edward Jenner asked a completely different question. He wondered why milkmaids were not getting infected with smallpox. This question changed the frame and connected the dot called smallpox with a new one — cowpox. The focus shifted to a cowpox-causing virus that belongs to the same family as smallpox but as a much milder form. This new connection resulted in the invention of a vaccine for smallpox.

References https://www.amazon.com/Cracking-Creativity-Secrets-Creative-Genius/dp/1580083110/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=cracking+creativity&qid=1622895982&s=books&sr=1-1

Hieron, the king of Syracuse, suspected that the new gold crown was not pure gold as claimed by the goldsmith. Archimedes was tasked to figure out the exact truth. Archimedes knew the density of gold. So, theoretically, Archimedes knew that if he could calculate the volume of the crown, then the density of the crown could be calculated and compared with the density of the gold. If two densities were different, then it would be proven that the crown was adulterated. However, given the irregular shape of the crown, Archimedes could not think of any way to measure its volume without damaging the crown. Archimedes thought long and hard but could not find a method for proving that the crown was not solid gold. He was stuck. He decided to take a break and go out for a bath. As he stepped into the bathtub, the water level rose, and it spilled out of the tub. He realized that the water displaced by his body was equal to the weight of his body. He instantly knew that he had found the solution to the problem. He jumped out of the tub. Forgetting that he was without his clothes, he went out running naked on the street shouting “Eureka!” (Meaning “I have found it.”)

two eminent psychologists, John Kounios from Drexel University and Mark Beeman from Northwestern University, joined hands. They carried out their experiments using EEG – Electroencephalography and fMRI – Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging. (To know all the fascinating details about this experiment and for some deep insights, you can read the book1—book1—The Eureka Factor: Creative Insights and The Brain by John Kounios and Mark Beeman..) In the experiment, participants were asked to solve different types of puzzles. Participants were asked to press a button as soon as they thought of a solution to record the exact time when the answer was found. Investigators then correlated the time with the observations on fMRI and EEG machine to understand whether the answer had come to them suddenly, like a flash of insight, or if they used a systematic trial-and-error approach. The fMRI showed a corresponding increase in blood flow in the part of the brain's right temporal lobe involved in making connections between distantly related ideas. This activity was not present when the word problems were solved analytically. Simply speaking, the thought process that leads to aha moments or insights involves different parts of the brain compared to the solutions arrived at through analytical thinking.

There is something even more interesting. As observed in the EEG machine, there was a burst of EEG gamma waves in the right hemisphere at the ‘aha moment’. This is not surprising considering that gamma waves are associated with heightened alertness. What surprised them was that the EEG recorded a bust of alpha wave activity about a second before that.

For long, alpha brain waves had been associated with creative thinking. Alpha brain waves appear to be key to bring creative ideas from the depth of the subconscious mind to the surface of the conscious mind.

The wandering mind makes novel connections

According to a study published here, the wandering mind makes more creative connections between completely different sets of dots. These dots are already present in our minds but present in different frames.3 A wandering mind is not an empty mind

According to cognitive neuroscientist Kalina Christoff at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, “mind wandering is a much more active state than we ever imagined, much more ac...

She has co-authored a book – The Oxford Handbook of Spontaneous Thought: Mind-Wandering, Creativity, and Dreaming4. I also recommend you look at this article written by Robert Lee Hotz ...

References https://www.amazon.com/Eureka-Factor-Creative-Insights-Brain-ebook/dp/B00RKX0SAC/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr= https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0010945215001033?via%3Dihub https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0956797612446024 https://www.amazon.com/Oxford-Handbook-Spontaneous-Thought-Mind-Wandering-ebook-dp-B07CZM7GZJ/dp/B07CZM7GZJ/ref=mt_other?_encoding=UTF8&me=&qid= https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB124535297048828601

“The notes I handle no better than many pianists. But the pauses between the notes ah, that is where the art resides.” - Artur Schnabel

Intense focus and let go

For your benefit, let me list down all the things you will consciously do during the stage of intense focus. Identifying and challenging assumptions. Asking different sets of questions to reframe the challenge. Searching for different frames. Adding more dots in each of the frames.

I want you to try so hard to make your creative muscle sweat!

one of the important phases in the idea generation process: incubation. The incubation phase is where you hand over your creative challenge to your subconscious mind.

“Make the subconscious mind your powerful ally”.

August Kekulé had been struggling to figure out how the atoms in benzene are arranged. While thinking about the problem, he dozed off to sleep. In his dream, he saw atoms dancing. Gradually the atoms arranged themselves in a long row and started moving about like a snake. As he watched the snake dance, it turned around a bit its own tail. When Kekulé woke up, he immediately realized the meaning of his dream. Benzene molecules are made up of rings of carbon atoms. There are many such stories wherein inventors, in their dream state, were presented with the most critical missing link of the puzzle that they were struggling to solve. This eventually led to many path-breaking inventions.