Conversations about creativity, destroy to build

Says Toni Segarra, one of the most recognized advertising creatives in the world "creativity is not copying". You may think it's an incomplete or too simple definition., but for me it represents well the methodology of creativity. Maybe, positions to add, I would say that the creativity is creating value without copying.  

I have once again had my imaginary robot Gabriela Fitzgerald to discuss creativity. A while ago we talked about Empathy.

If you're short on time, I'll sum it up for you in a minute.

creativity? We are creative by nature

Says David Kelley, one of the founders of Ideo: "Stop dividing the world between creative and non-creative people. We are creative by nature".

Kelley counts in this TED talk highly recommended the story of a scientist who created one of the best magnetic resonance machines. But the 80% of children needed to be sedated to enter, until he built a machine designed for children, full of pirate drawings. Only one 10% needed to seded, which increased daily testing, the possibilities of cure and the profitability of the hospital.

Sometimes it is enough to observe and investigate (Empathy) to stimulate a solution to a problem, and we don't necessarily need to be creative professionals.

I don't know what Gabriela will think of this...

–Gabriela Fitzgerald: I can say that in my case I am analytical by nature, and that's what you've created me for.. With the data, I can come up with analyses that maybe can stimulate your creativity, but not mine.

-Guillem: I get it, you can conclude that we have a 50% of chances of catching Covid in a nightclub, but do not recommend that everyone wear a mask and get an antigen test before entering.

–Gabriela: That's it, the recommendation, the idea to prevent, you must provide it yourself. 

Creativity often arises from failure

The psychologist Adam Grant, he tells us in his TED talk that great creative minds are also the ones who fail the most, because they are the ones who try the most.

It takes a lot of bad ideas to get a single good idea.

I remember one of the books edited by the chef Ferran Adria from El Bulli "The family meal". There they explained the number of failed attempts before they hit the imagined dish. Things like leaving a piece of meat cooking at low temperature for two days and eventually throwing it away. Creativity comes from trying again and again.

–Gabriela: this idea of going through failure is not in my plans. If a robot like me fails, I doubt humans will give us a second chance. Imagine a robot vacuum cleaner that, accidentally, kills a domestic pet.

-Guillem: in that you are right. We don't create robots to make them wrong, make a mistake, for now, it's a human quality.

Regaining ignorance

Toni Segarra himself claims to recover ignorance so as not to limit creativity. In its TALK TEDx Eixample explains that you don't need a lot of information to create, but to understand how a brand is perceived by the consumer, just that.

As a publicist I can attest that too much information creates mediocrity, since it places an excessive set of objectives that, by joining them, they generate a complex message of little persuasion.

–Gabriela: That is not at all logical. The more information, better decisions we can make.

-Guillem: I know, but this is not about making decisions, it's about generating ideas, and sometimes a blank mind, an hour of silence or soft background music can be more inspiring than a document of 100 Pages.

Destroy to build, a good principle of creativity

As children we are imaginative, Curious, our creativity seems to have no boundaries… until the social system itself puts them on us. This idea was brilliantly vindicated by the recently deceased Sir Ken Robinson at his TED 2006 Do schools kill creativity?. 

Adults need to destroy the four great blockages that prevent our mind from showing its creative potential.: 

• stress
• insecurity
• Self-demand
• weariness

-Gabriela: what has been destroyed can be built, but not always. A human life, For example. And about the four blockades, I cannot understand them.

-Guillem: Of course, death is irreversible, of a human life or of anyone else in the animal and plant kingdom, but we can rebuild an arm, a liver, a leg... And here robotics can play a key role.

We evolve by doing, not thinking, and we do it as a team

The writer said, painter and art critic John Berger: 

I believe we evolve through practice, doing things, not thinking about them. And I also think you have to do things with others., not alone. It is from joint action that the energy to move forward comes from.

John Berger

It's hard to disagree. In my case, as well as consultant, I am a trainer, and what I learn in my consultancies and trainings is not taught in any business school.

-Gabriela: we finally agree. Thinking is not functional, run yes it is. That of doing it as a team, should I understand it as a sum of diverse intelligences?

-Guillem: More or less, humans appreciate having different points of view to better understand a Context. 

Walk to create

There are many theories that relate walking to creative stimulation. Marily Oppezzo, human behavior scientist, conducted an experiment and found that people on a treadmill had better ideas than sitting ones.. So in the face of a blockage, go for a walk.

I also liked the advice of Robert Poynton which I heard on Joan Clotet's Digital Humanism podcast titled "The power of pause". There is a claim to the need to stop to continue. Highly recommended and very applicable to creativity.

-Gabriela: here I can not be of help. I have no legs, and I also don't understand that having them and using them can change the way I process data.

-Guillem: Well, question of stimuli. Imagine that instead of 50W it gives you 300W.

I hope you have been given these concepts about creativity, next week I hope, with Gabriela to deal with the imagination, lucky to travel for free.

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