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 First published in Great Britain and the United States in 2018 by Nicholas
Brealey Publishing
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An Hachette UK Company

© Dave Birss 2018

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Dedicated to everyone who’s ever felt like an outsider
Contents

Title Page
Copyright
Dedication

Author’s note

Part 1: Reimagining Creativity

Clarifying creativity: Trying not to use the “c” word
The evolution of creative thought: The journey from beast to Bach
Inside the mind: Understanding your ideas machine
Divergence: Don’t be normal, be valuable
Drive: Lighting a fire in your soul

Part 2: Creative Structure

The RIGHT process: Mapping the route to a great idea
Developing the skills: Creativity isn’t just one thing

Part 3: Individual Creativity

Get to know yourself: Let’s find your creative mojo
Shaping your mind: Fill your brain with good stuff

Part 4: Corporate Creativity

Idea killers: Can companies really be creative?
Managing for ideas: Leading minds to where the best ideas are
Into the Unknown: Time to switch off the corporate SatNav

Introduction
Endnotes
 AUTHOR’S NOTE

Have you ever suffered from creative block? Or wished you could come up with
better ideas? Do you feel frustrated with the lack of effective innovation in your
business, or wondered why your staff come up with the same predictable ideas
again and again? Have you ever breathed air, seen daylight, or eaten a sandwich?

If your answer to any of these questions is “Yes,” you’re the very person I had in
mind when I wrote this book.

What you’re holding in your hands is a practical guide on how people and
organizations can have better ideas. It draws on scientific study, academic
theory, and decades of personal experience. And much of it runs counter to most
people’s understanding of creativity.

It’s divided into four easy-to-digest parts:

Section 1 gives you a better understanding of creativity

Section 2 gives you a handy framework to solve any problem
Section 3 shows you how to have better ideas yourself
Section 4 shows you how to get better ideas out of an organization

The book is written for anyone at any level, in any role, in any industry, in any
organization, as well as for individuals who are bravely plowing their own
creative furrow. I’ve included a practical exercise at the end of every chapter.
And you won’t find any mention of finding your muse or unlocking your inner
Einstein. I promise.

Take a deep breath.

Let’s dive right in.

 Chapter 1

CLARIFYING CREATIVITY

or

Trying not to use the “c” word

I’d like to start with a confession: I’m embarrassed about the subject matter of
this book. The main word that will be used to identify the topic that it covers is
“creativity,” and—as you’ll see—I think the word causes more problems than it
solves. For twenty years of my life I had the word “creative” in my job title, and
now it causes my cheeks to flush and elicits an embarrassed cough. I’m
mortified when I get introduced as “the creative guy.” I’m no more creative than
anyone else. It’s just that, perhaps, I feel more comfortable expressing my ideas.
At one point I considered writing this book with the word censored
throughout. That’s how much I dislike it. Instead of focusing on creativity, I
prefer to focus on ideas. They are the end result, after all. Creativity is the path
to get to them. This book aims to clarify how to get to that end result more
effectively.
But I guess I’m stuck with the “c” word. So instead of attempting to discard it,
I’ll do my best to clarify it.

CREATIVITY IS A PROBLEM

Let me explain myself here. I don’t hate the creative act—quite the opposite. But
I do feel uncomfortable with the word. It carries unhelpful baggage and leads to
a myriad of misunderstandings.
Over the last few years, I’ve worked a lot with businesses to help them
produce more effective ideas, and I’ve found that the word “creativity” is
polarizing. Some people find it exciting; others will shake their heads and say:
“Not me! I’m not creative!” When these naysayers opt out of any activity that’s
labeled as “creative,” they are denying us access to their uniquely valuable ideas,
perspectives, and skills.
So why is the word “creativity” nectar to some and poison to others?

SOME SIMPLE MISUNDERSTANDINGS

I came to the conclusion that most people don’t know what creativity actually
means. My career has included time working in the advertising, broadcast,
publishing, and music industries, and I came to suspect that my former
colleagues misunderstood it as badly as anyone else, so I ran an online study to
find out. I set up a simple webpage with the headline: “What is creativity?”, and
below it a box inviting people to tell me their own personal definition without
consulting a dictionary. I got 473 responses. The only consistent factor was the
inconsistency of the answers.

The webpage I created to find out what people think “creativity” means

The responses split into a number of categories:

UNIMAGINATIVE CLICHÉS
Sadly, the most common answer was “Thinking outside the box.” The concept
behind this reply isn’t wrong (I’ll actually be showing you that it’s thinking
outside of a circle), but the act of using a cliché betrays both a lack of thinking
and—worse—a lack of understanding. My heart sank every time I saw this stock
response.

FLUFFY NONSENSE
Some of the most eye-rolling responses were “The soul manifesting itself into
the world” and “Saying whatever one’s heart feels like it needs to say.” This
kind of pseudo-spiritual approach adds mystique and fogginess where I believe
we need clarity.

BRUTAL HONESTY
I laughed out loud when I received an entry that read “Creativity is the word
artists use to justify their existence in a capitalist society.” But it highlights an
issue that needs to be dealt with. Many people confuse art and creativity. Any
belief that art is pretentious or highfalutin colors the holder’s opinion of any
other form of creativity.

SPECIAL ABILITIES
Equally harmful is the belief that creativity is the exclusive domain of specially
gifted people. Responses included “Creativity is a human character trait,” “A
natural ability to conceive of and execute an original and inspiring idea,” and
“It’s the ability to make shit up and come up with surprising solutions.” Some
people may have a more natural aptitude than others to express ideas, but to limit
creativity to certain blessed individuals devalues the thinking of others who
don’t fit into a “creative” mold.

POETRY
Some responses were wonderfully imaginative. These included suggestions like
“The unfettered freedom to explore idea space,” “The jump from the obvious to
the wondrous,” and my personal favorite: “It’s unicorns farting out rainbows.”
They’re lovely, witty, poetic, but not particularly useful.
My little study yielded more unhelpful answers than helpful ones. It
confirmed my suspicion that the word creativity was broken, and it led me on a
journey that resulted in the book you now hold in your hands.

Most people don’t know what creativity actually means

This book aims to offer a clearer understanding of creativity. It explains how

ideas made us the species we are, why some people are better at coming up with
ideas than others, and shows you a system that helps anyone have better ideas.
 But before we set to work on these new thoughts, we need to get rid of some
old ones.

LINGERING MISUNDERSTANDINGS

I don’t blame anyone for their misunderstandings about creativity. Many of these
mistaken beliefs are historic hangovers dating back hundreds or even thousands
of years. It seems that we’ve never had a good understanding of this topic. Here
are my top ten offenders.

MYTH #1: IT’S A SPIRITUAL THING

The ancient Greeks and Romans believed the inspiration for creative acts could
be attributed to one of nine goddesses.1 These mythical figures each had a
separate specialism; at the time, this included poetry, history, music, song,
dance, comedy, and astronomy (yes, that’s right, astronomy). The goddesses
would whisper their genius into the lucky ears of humans because the dumb
beasts were not capable of coming up with anything of value themselves.
It’s totally understandable how this kind of thinking came around. Ideas will
sometimes strike us unexpectedly when we’re not actively focused on the task.
And these ideas will often seem pretty well thought through. In a world
dominated by benevolent and terrible gods, this concept of inspiration makes
perfect sense. So the phenomenon was explained using the understandings of the
age.
We’ve got fMRI scanners now. And the general consensus is that these
goddesses don’t exist.

MYTH #2: YOU NEED TO BE A GENIUS

Many of the most famous creative minds through the ages are seen as being
outstandingly intelligent. People like Albert Einstein, Archimedes, Isaac
Newton, Da Vinci, and even Steve Jobs are seen as possessing unusually high
intelligence. These individuals may all have had higher than average IQs but—
without any disrespect to them—I don’t think that’s what led to their amazing
ideas.
Intelligence only helps your creative thinking up to a point.2 And that point is
just above the ability not to poke yourself in the eye with a fork when you’re
eating. However, we can all develop traits that are far more powerful than a
black belt in cleverness.


We can all develop traits that are far more powerful than a
black belt in cleverness

MYTH #3: CREATIVITY EQUALS ART

People often confuse creativity and art. They think because they feel alienated
by most of the work in an art gallery and have never had the desire to learn the
saxophone or slap some paint on a canvas, that they can’t be creative. But art is
only one subset of the far larger world of creativity.
It may be helpful to think of art as the non-practical side of creativity. That’s
not intended to devalue it. Art plays an important role in society. It just doesn’t
need to fix a problem.
Becoming a great artist often involves spending an obsessive amount of time
developing a skill. You don’t need to be an artist to come up with valuable ideas.
Creativity is open to everyone.

MYTH #4: EXPERTS COME UP WITH BETTER IDEAS

Education conditions us to believe we need to have all the knowledge before we
can do something with it. But that’s just not the case. You do need a certain
amount of knowledge to be able to come up with useful ideas, but too much
knowledge can work against you.
The longer you are part of an organization, an industry or a group of people,
the more of this assumed knowledge you adopt. These are the very things that
limit your thinking over time. There tends to be a sweet spot where you have
enough knowledge to understand the problems but haven’t adopted too many of
the limiting assumptions.
I think the ability to have valuable ideas works a bit like this:
 Knowledge is useful up to a point and then it starts to hold you back

At the start of the journey, your energy goes into learning. Later on, it needs to
go into unlearning. Expertise and experience are wonderful attributes to possess,
but inexpertise can be just as valuable.

MYTH #5: YOU’RE AIMING FOR ORIGINALITY

I used to think that real creativity was all about coming up with an idea that no
one else had ever come up with in the history of the planet Earth. But aiming for
true originality is setting yourself an unattainable goal. If you actually do
manage to achieve it, no one will have any reference for how to judge it. You’ll
be misunderstood and your idea will be rejected.
Most ideas are fresh combinations of existing ideas. Combine a mobile phone
with a computer and you get a smartphone. Combine a vacuum cleaner with the
airflow system of a paint booth and you get a Dyson. Combine the film Jaws
with Star Wars and you get the Alien franchise (it was allegedly sold into the
studio using the simple description “Jaws in space”).3 You would still describe
all of these things as creative or innovative but—as you can see—none of them
can be described as truly original. And I’ve not yet come across an idea that
legitimately can be.

MYTH #6: YOU NEED TO REMOVE ALL CONSTRAINTS

The general belief is that you need to remove any limitations and just let your
thinking go wild. That sounds nice, but it doesn’t help people to come up with
great ideas.
Great ideas very often come from dealing with restrictions. Constraints give
you direction and focus. Some of the work I’m proudest of has come from
overcoming unreasonable budgets, impossible timings, or other initially
frustrating limitations. And I’m not alone in this.
When Gene Roddenberry was creating Star Trek in the 1960s, he faced a
serious dilemma: it just wasn’t practically possible for the Starship Enterprise to
land on a new planet every week.4 The scale of the spaceship would make it
hugely difficult to film, and in any case the budget would never stretch to that
kind of set build. Working within a very tight production budget, they had to
find a practical way to land the crew anywhere on the planet. The solution he
came up with was just to “beam them down.” The field of teleportation is now
being researched at universities all over the world. In 2017, Chinese researchers
succeeded in teleporting a photon 300 miles up to a satellite using quantum
entanglement.5 What started as an imaginative science fiction solution is quickly
becoming science fact.

MYTH #7: GREAT IDEAS SELL THEMSELVES

Howard H. Aiken, one of IBM’s most pioneering engineers, once stated that you
shouldn’t worry about anyone stealing your ideas, because if it’s original you’ll
have to ram it down their throats. There’s a lot of truth in that. Good ideas are
transformative, and people don’t really want to be transformed. That takes effort.
It makes them feel uncomfortable. The better the idea, the harder it is to sell.
Nikola Tesla battled to get the world to adopt his system of alternating
current. It was clearly far better than the direct current system that Edison was
championing. Tesla had to endure a torrent of ridicule, dirty tricks, and insults
before it was eventually accepted as the better and safer option.6 His idea didn’t
sell itself. In fact, it caused him many years of pain. It was his tenacity that got
his technology adopted.

MYTH #8: YOU’RE EITHER CREATIVE OR YOU’RE NOT

The general belief is that some people are born creative and others aren’t. If you
don’t conform to your own idea of what a creative person is, you haven’t got it
in you—so why bother trying?
But creativity isn’t a binary state. There’s no such thing as a person who’s
creative and a person who isn’t. It’s a sliding scale that’s measured in
obviousness. The ideas we refer to as creative are the ones that are less obvious
than others.
 Creativity isn’t binary. It’s a sliding scale from obvious to unusual

Obvious ideas don’t require much cognitive energy. Unusual ideas—

especially valuable ones—tend to take time and effort to get to.

MYTH #9: YOU CAN’T DEVELOP CREATIVITY

Carrying on from this binary misunderstanding, many people believe that
creativity is innate and can’t be learned. But it most definitely can. The more you
work on coming up with ideas, the better you get at it. Your brain develops like a
muscle. You get used to making unusual connections, you develop an instinct for
what works, and you improve just as you would learning any other skill.

MYTH #10: IT’S JUST BRAINSTORMING

Brainstorms are a real problem. If you’re skimming this book looking for
brainstorming techniques, you’ll be disappointed. You will, however, find
practical exercises that really will make a difference. These are focused on
fundamental changes that will help you or your organization generate better
ideas.
Seeking out techniques and “brain hacks” that give you shortcuts to amazing
ideas is not the way to come up with amazing ideas. Habits, attitudes, and hard
work will take you further than any brainstorm technique ever can.

Even the smartest people can fall for these myths. People at the very top of
organizations assume that many of these myths are true and manage their
companies based on false beliefs. This happens in the creative industries too, and
it cramps the ability of an organization to adapt to changes and solve problems
effectively.
Academics aren’t immune from these myths either. I spend a lot of time
reading studies and academic papers, and many of them start with false
assumptions. Fortunately, these are in the minority, but they often make more
noise because they offer journalists the sensationalist mind candy that attracts
clicks, comments, and shares.
Now we’ve dealt with what creativity isn’t, let’s clear up what it is.

Habits, attitudes, and hard work will take you further than any
brainstorm technique ever can

LET’S SPLIT CREATIVITY INTO TWO

The word creativity is used to describe a couple of quite different things. It can
equally be used to describe the graceful movements of a ballet dancer as it can a
bunch of accountants sticking yellow Post-it notes to a boardroom wall. These
two activities have very little overlap, so I find it’s helpful to separate them.
I like to split creativity into thinking and doing.
Creative doing involves months or years of focused practice to become
proficient at something. Dancing, painting, playing an instrument, sculpting,
writing, and other artistic pursuits require developing a skill until it becomes
innate. And maybe finding your own voice while you do it. Often the people we
hear about in these fields are the best of the best. Which makes this side of
creativity feel pretty exclusive.
Creative thinking, on the other hand, is the side of creativity that everyone can
do. It’s what this book focuses on. If you have the mental ability to understand
this sentence, you are equipped to come up with ideas. Companies are
increasingly seeking ideas from their staff, and they’re asking them to do it with
very little—or no—training in an environment that’s designed to make the
process harder than it needs to be.
The world is hungry for more ideas—preferably good ones.

THERE IS SUCH A THING AS A BAD IDEA

It’s not hard to come up with ideas but—let’s be honest here—most ideas aren’t
any good.
Academics use two criteria to judge the creativity of an idea: they expect it to
be new and valuable.7 If you’re to use that as a way of judging ideas, then this
matrix can help you decide what to do with any ideas you generate:

A simple way to decide what to do with an idea

But it’s worth us digging further into what we mean by new and valuable,
because there are different levels of new. An idea can be new to you, new to
your peer group, new to an industry, or new to the world. Obviously, these are
massively different and can have a wildly different impact.
For example, when I was fourteen I wrote a lovely piece on the piano. I was
really chuffed with it. I refined it and practiced it until it was sounding beautiful.
I then played it to one of my friends, who burst out laughing. “So you wrote that,
did you?,” he said. “That’s the end bit of ‘Layla’ by Eric Clapton.” I had no idea.
It felt new to me but it wasn’t new to anyone else. On the other hand, when Eric
Clapton wrote a pretty much identical piece of music, it was new to the world.
On the other hand, an idea can be really powerful when it’s only new to an
industry. Richard and Maurice McDonald revolutionized the food industry by
creating a Henry Ford-style production line for their burger restaurant.8 It greatly
increased the speed and the consistency of their food. The idea of a production
line wasn’t new to the world, it was just new to burger kitchens.
Now let’s talk about value. People and organizations value ideas in different
ways. For some businesses, it’s about the idea’s potential to generate income.
For some, it’s about standing out from the competition. For others, it’s about
making people feel something.
When you’re working with ideas, it’s good to define the value you’re aiming
for up front. If you’re clear about this, you have a far better chance of achieving
it. And it makes it easier to judge your ideas at the end.

Now we’ve got the biggest misunderstandings out of the way, we’ll look at why
creativity matters for humanity and what science is currently teaching us about
it.

PRACTICAL EXERCISE

WHAT KIND OF NEWNESS AND VALUE?

Before you start coming up with ideas, it’s good to understand what you
mean by “new” and “valuable.” It will differ according to the problem
you’re working on, so let’s pick two very different problems and define the
criteria for each one.
Pick a personal issue you’d like some new ideas for. You might want to
eat more healthily, spend more time with your family, or be more
successful at dating. This is all about improving your own life. Choose
something that would make a real difference to you.
Now pick an industry issue. It may be relevant to your own job or it
could relate to an industry you have nothing to do with. You may want to
change a company’s perception, help them reduce waste, or attract new
customers. You’ll be working at a whole different scale from your first
problem.
For each of these, work out what level of newness you’re after. Is it
something totally new to the world or simply something that’s new to you?
And what kind of value do you want it to create? How will you know
you’ve achieved it? There may be a few things you want to tick off here.
Write them all down and pick the three or four most important ones to
concentrate on.
This is a good exercise to do at the outset of any creative project. If you
actually want to address these problems, put them aside until we reach
chapter 6.
 Chapter 2

THE EVOLUTION OF CREATIVE THOUGHT

or

The journey from beast to Bach

Let’s imagine we found a magic portal that connected your home to the beautiful
and fertile Sahara region of 50,000 years ago. Let’s now step through that portal
and find a human from this Upper Paleolithic period. They’d look a lot like you.
They’d walk in pretty much the same way as you. Given a good bath and a trip
to the hair salon, they’d probably scrub up pretty well, too. But your lives would
be entirely different.
Their day-to-day existence would involve hunting, gathering, and running
from wild beasts. Their shelters, if they had any, would likely be caves or basic
wooden structures. Their main priority would simply be survival. So you may
struggle to find much common ground for conversation.
As the product of a modern, civilized society, you’re obviously superior to
them. After all, you have culture, tailored clothing, and a smartphone. You’ve
got a day job and a handful of nice references on LinkedIn. That must make you
more capable and intellectually developed, right?
Let’s imagine, in this fantasy we’re sharing, that you trade places with this
primitive human. You’re now the one living on the prairie and they’re the one
trying to survive in a modern city. Who will last longer?
I’m afraid my money’s not on you. Sorry about that. There are a couple of
reasons for this.
The first is that humans have successfully made life safer and easier over the
years. As long as the ancient human doesn’t immediately walk out in front of a
bus, they will easily find everything they need for survival. Although I imagine
they’d be picked up by the authorities pretty quickly for transgressing some
modern social norm, like shoplifting or urinating in public.
 The second reason is that you’ve lost all the skills that would help you survive
in the wild. Even if you’ve watched every single Bear Grylls episode, you’d
probably struggle to light a fire and build a safe shelter. And I wouldn’t have
much confidence in your ability to spot the leopard sneaking through the long
grass towards you.

TRAVELING AWAY FROM THE PAST

Thousands of years of creative thinking have progressively separated us from

our ancient ancestors. Each idea we embrace as a society separates us from our
past and nudges us into the future. These developments tend to make things
easier for us (with the notable exception of Microsoft Word).
The creative breakthroughs started by increasing our physical capabilities.
They let us perform tasks with less effort and augmented our abilities so that we
could achieve things not previously possible. Technological developments then
did the same for our mental capabilities. The invention of maps meant we didn’t
need to hold routes and environments in our heads. Then the invention of
TomTom meant we didn’t even need to know how to read a map. Each time we
embraced something new, we let go of something old.
We’ve shaped the world around us to make things as painless as possible. And
the world we’ve created has, in turn, shaped us.
As we’ve increasingly outsourced effort and thinking to technology, we’ve
shaped our brains and bodies. In the last seventy-five years, humans have grown
1.5 percent taller and about 15 percent heavier.1 These are dramatic changes, and
experts are getting worried. However, I’m more concerned about the effect
technology is having on the human brain, as we increasingly outsource our
memories, mental processing, and decision-making to our devices.
The human brain has shrunk over the last 10,000 years or so.2 One theory to
explain this is that all sorts of skills have become unnecessary, and as we’ve
outsourced much of our cognitive load our brains have pruned the parts they
don’t need.
This makes sense when you look at studies of animals. It’s well documented
that domestic beasts have smaller brains than their wild counterparts,3 and it
comes as no surprise that the areas which have reduced the most are the ones
that relate to survival instinct—in particular, the parts of the brain that are
responsible for fight-or-flight instinct and aggressive behavior. Domestic
animals tend to have had this trait bred out of them as humans selected animals
with gentler characteristics.
As people started to gather in larger communities, the more desirable
characteristics changed. Aggression, physical stamina, and hunting prowess
made way for social skills. As the idea of the most desirable mate shifted, so too
did the direction of human evolution.
Humanity’s ultimate creation is itself. And it will continue to be so, for good
or bad.

HUMANITY’S CONCEPTUAL EXPLORERS

Creative thinkers are the individuals who drive the human race into the future.
They go out ahead of society to discover new ideas and new possibilities. They
report back their discoveries through art, invention, story, and discourse. Society
decides whether or not to embrace their ideas and our species moves forward
accordingly.
Without creative thought, humanity would just be another beast on the African
savannah, if we were lucky enough not to have suffered the same fate as every
other hominid, that is.

Creative thinkers go out ahead of the rest of humanity to discover new ideas and opportunities

Creative thinking is the main thing that separates us from the rest of the
animal kingdom. We saw sparks of it nearly three and a half million years ago
when our ancient ancestors began turning stones into tools.4 These tool-making
skills developed slowly, resulting in stone knives, hammers, axes, and spear tips.
Then something seemed to happen around 40,000 years ago. Homo sapiens
appeared to go through a cognitive spurt. Their creations went from being purely
practical inventions that helped humans survive and thrive to non-practical
developments like art, jewelry, and music.

Creative thinkers are the individuals who drive the human race
into the future

Within a few millennia, we developed agriculture, domesticated animals,

gathered in cities, and created culture. We developed abstract concepts like
religion, government, and money. These led to written language, the printing
press, and the internet. For the last few decades, historians and archaeologists
have been scratching their heads about what led to this explosion in human
development.
The answer may be simpler than you’d expect.

THE BEAUTY OF MESSING AROUND

As a teenager, I used to spend my holidays working on a farm. The Easter school

holiday coincided with lambing season, so I’d spend a week or two each year
surrounded by heavily pregnant ewes and their frolicking offspring.
The most amazing thing about newborn lambs is how quickly they get up on
their feet. They’ll usually be tottering around on their wobbly legs and rooting
around for milk within an hour. The situation’s similar with most animals born
in the wild. Humans, it seems, give birth to the least capable babies in the animal
kingdom.
Even when you compare human offspring with those of other primates, we
enter the world shockingly underdeveloped. If humans were born as physically
mature as an infant gorilla, pregnancy would last an intolerable 20 months.5 And
the baby’s head would be far too large to fit through the birth canal. An early
birth is the evolutionary compromise that allows us to have such large brains.
This has knock-on effects for our mental development.
Rather than being born with the brain wiring and muscle mass to immediately
start functioning in the world, we’re born physically helpless. Lying in our
parents’ arms, our brains are stimulated at a far earlier stage of development,
shaping our minds and building social connections. This immediately gives us a
head-start on the other beasts.
 Our next evolutionary advantage is a long childhood. In the last 1.5 million
years, humans evolved an extra six years between infancy and puberty.6 This
gave us more time to develop without the responsibilities of adulthood. Most
important, it gave us time to play.
And it’s play that led to the inventive human.

CURIOSITY BEGETS CREATIVITY

If you’ve ever met a four-year-old, you’ll be familiar with the word “why.” They
love to repeat it ad nauseam, with each successive answer simply leading to
another “why.” It drives parents up the wall. But it’s actually a wonderful thing.
This is the outward sign of a child’s curiosity. And the extended human
childhood allowed curiosity to flourish.
As soon as they are born, children begin running experiments to help them
understand the world around them. Dropping a spoon on the floor is an
experiment in gravity. Touching the thing they were told not to touch is an
experiment in control. Repeatedly kicking the back of the driving seat after
you’ve told them to stop is a social experiment to discover the limits of their
parents’ patience. Children are constantly on the lookout for learnings.
Adults, on the other hand, tend to stop asking “Why?” They stop dropping
spoons on the floor. And they stop conducting social experiments. Which is a
real shame. Curiosity is the foundation of creative thought. It’s what fills the
mind with the raw pieces of knowledge that we can shape into something new.
It’s a trait the great creative thinkers hold on to throughout their lives.

Curiosity is the foundation of creative thought

THE EVOLUTION OF CREATIVE THINKING

There are different levels of creative thinking. Each successive step involves
more cognitive sophistication.
The levels of creative thinking are as follows:

DISCOVER
It starts out basic. You notice an effect and you connect it with a use. For
example, an ancient human may have noticed that a log rolled along when they
stood on it. This discovery made them realize that the rolling action might be
helpful when they’re trying to move something heavy.

PRODUCE
The next step is being able to reproduce the effect when you need it. In our
example, the group of ancient humans want to move a large flat boulder. It’s too
heavy for them all to carry, so one of them remembers the idea of the rolling log.
They search for logs, snap off any protruding branches and slide them under
their rock. They maneuver their prize home on their new-found rollers. This is a
breakthrough.

REFINE
Once the idea has been successful enough to gain traction, it’s time to start
improving it. Our ancient humans may have realized that protruding branches
can be a problem and that the effect works best when the logs all have the same
diameter. From experience, they know it can be hard to find similar-sized logs
without too many branches when they need them, so they develop a set of rolling
logs to take with them when they need to move anything large. They’ve created
a product.

REPURPOSE
This is about taking the idea and finding another use for it. The users of our
hypothetical rolling logs noticed that they left a trail of flattened grass behind
them when they were moving their large objects. The village will be safer if it
isn’t surrounded by long grass that wild beasts can hide in, so they use the logs
to flatten the grass around their settlement. They’ve now discovered another
purpose.

COMBINE
The top creative level is combining two different ideas to create something new.
Our ancient ancestors may have noticed that when you roll the stalk of an acorn
between your fingers, the nut spins around. The protruding stalk demonstrates
the principle of the axle. Combining this new idea with the rolling concept of the
logs could have been the very thing that led to the wheel. And—hey presto!—
transportation is invented.
 The hierarchy of creative thinking

The ingredients that spark these approaches are curiosity and play. It must
have been pretty exciting times when humans first developed the cognitive
capacity to come up with ideas. The whole world was theirs to discover.

THE WORLD USED TO BE SIMPLER

I’ve always been fascinated by Leonardo Da Vinci. He seemed to have a
curiosity that spread in a multitude of directions. As well as being an exquisite
and inventive painter, he was also a sculptor, inventor, architect, scientist,
musician, mathematician, engineer, writer, anatomist, geologist, botanist,
astronomer, historian and cartographer. His LinkedIn profile would have been a
mess. He made breakthroughs in lots of fields and came up with ideas—like the
parachute and the helicopter—that couldn’t be applied for centuries.
These days we don’t have polymaths as extraordinary as Da Vinci. And there
may be a good reason for that: the tree of knowledge has grown far more
complex in the intervening years.
During the first cognitive explosion around 40,000 years ago everything was
ripe for discovery. Humans were working out how to use ashes and pigment to
make marks on cave walls. They were working out that some bones whistled
when you blew through them. Pretty soon all the obvious stuff was taken.
It then took more effort to find the stuff that people didn’t understand.
Leonardo looked inside the bodies of dead people to find things that hadn’t been
discovered before. He experimented with substances in an attempt to invent new
paints, with varying degrees of success. He identified areas of ignorance to
explore. And he turned much of this new knowledge into fresh ideas and
practical applications.
All of the areas that Leonardo explored have now become specialisms. Many
smart people dedicated their lives and energy to furthering a single field. As
more knowledge was collected, the fields split into their own specialisms in turn.

The tree of knowledge grew more and more complex with each successive discovery and idea

Let’s return to the present day. There are fewer new things to discover. It’s no
longer possible to have a massive impact across a number of fields. The world
has become so complex and interconnected that you need a significant level of
knowledge before you can even start tinkering. Often the simplest of objects
requires a complex combination of specialisms to be brought into existence.
Leonard Read’s book I, Pencil was released in the 1950s and went on to have
an influence on economists all over the world. It was written from the point of
view of the humble lead pencil as a celebration of how complex the economic
and manufacturing system of the time had become. The pencil states at once that
“not a single person on the face of this earth knows how to make me” before
going on to prove the point. The book lists many of the people and skills
involved in the process, from the lighthouse keeper guiding a cargo ship to port
all the way up to God himself for creating the tree. If this incredible complexity
was true of so basic a product sixty years ago, imagine how true it is now of the
smartphones and microwaves and satellites we rely on every day.
Making a dent in our increasingly complex and interconnected world requires
a different kind of thinking. Maybe ground-breaking ideas require more than one
brain now.

LET’S PUT OUR HEADS TOGETHER

In 2007, three academics—Stefan Wuchty, Benjamin F. Jones, and Brian Uzzi—
contributed equally to a paper that appropriately looked at the increasing role of
teamwork in the publishing of new ideas.7 They examined nearly 20 million
academic papers and just over 2 million patents across five decades, paying
particular attention to the size of the teams of authors. Traditionally, both
academic papers and patent applications had been seen as the domain of
individual geniuses, but the data showed that the tide was turning.
Examining scientific papers over a 45-year period showed a dramatic trend
towards large teams. In this time the average number of authors per paper had
nearly doubled from 1.9 to 3.5. In the same period, the number of papers that
were written by teams rose from 17.5 percent to 51 percent. These collaborations
also seemed to result in more successful work: when the researchers examined
their data, they discovered that papers authored by teams were more than twice
as likely to be cited as those produced by individuals. The move towards
collaborative thinking appears to be leading to better-quality output.
And that collaboration may even be moving beyond humans.

BACH TO THE FUTURE

In 1982, the American Record Guide boldly stated that: “David Cope is
unquestionably one of this generation’s most ambitious, prolific and multifarious
composers.”8 But unlike most composers and classical musicians, he was
anything but a traditionalist. His interest in computers took him in a direction
that upset many in the establishment. In the 1970s he started to spend more time
in front of a computer keyboard, learning programming languages and studying
the nascent field of artificial intelligence. He naturally combined this with his
love for music and started to experiment with computer-generated compositions.
This led to him developing a ground-breaking project called Experiments in
Musical Intelligence, otherwise known as EMI.
The program he created could be fed musical compositions and it would
output an original piece in the same style, without copying any of the material it
was given. He used the program to create pieces influenced by Brahms, Chopin,
Gershwin, Joplin, Mozart, and most notably, Bach. He released these in the
album Bach by Design, which polarized the music community.9
One of the most vocal critics of these AI compositions was Professor Steve
Larson from the University of Oregon. He went as far as to challenge Cope’s
EMI program to a showdown. They would get a real live pianist to play three
pieces: a true Bach composition, one created by EMI, and the third composed by
Larson himself. An audience would then try to identify the composer of each
piece. Larson was pretty sure that an audience would be able to tell the
difference. Instead he got egg on his face when the audience took the Bach piece
for Larson’s, EMI’s piece for Bach’s, and—ultimate insult—Larson’s piece for a
computer’s.10
So, if computers are capable of producing works of art, can we call them
creative?

THE EVOLVING CONCEPT OF CREATIVITY

Before we can work out whether computers can be creative, we need to agree on
how we define creativity. The present consensus seems to maintain that
creativity requires conscious intent. Computers don’t currently have that. As far
as we understand it, they are simply running through calculations that result in
something they feel no pride for. Therefore, it can’t be art.
Computers aren’t built like us, so in their current state they can’t ever have
consciousness like us. But they will more than likely be able to mimic it very
well. If we coded a highly flawed and temperamental program, we might just be
able to get a result that approximated human consciousness. But why would we
do that? Computers are tools that we rely on for accuracy, not volatility. I don’t
think any of us would be happy if our laptops refused to open our emails because
they don’t feel like it today. Or our smartphones unlocked for a stranger because
they seemed like a nice guy.
The creativity that results in computer-generated music and art is more likely
to be attributed to the humans who did the coding than to the code that produces
the output. Our understanding of creativity as a human process prevents it from
being applied to non-human creations.
But maybe that definition can change.
Over 2,000 years ago, Plato had a few things to say about art. His view of
painting was particularly belittling. He saw it as merely a second-rate imitation
of nature, and nature itself as a second-rate imitation of the ideal of perfection.
These days, being a painter is regarded as a pinnacle of creativity. The tables
have turned quite dramatically.
If we apply our academic definition of a creative idea being both new and
valuable, computers can currently achieve that. Algorithmic design can create
structures that are as beautiful as they are practical. And could never be created
by a human mind.
Maybe one day the concept of creativity will evolve to embrace non-human
creations. Maybe in the future our art galleries and music charts will be
dominated by algorithmically generated creations. Maybe these AIs will even
start writing books like this.
Maybe I need to find a new career.

PRACTICAL EXERCISE

EVOLVE YOUR THINKING

Take yourself on a thinking journey, following the steps in the hierarchy of

creative thinking.

DISCOVER
Start by spotting something you’ve not previously noticed. It’s unlikely to
be something that’s new to the world, but it would be good if it’s something
that’s new to you. You’re then going to imagine a use for this observation.
As an example, I’m going to choose something I spotted recently—the
hum that the wheels of my pull-along suitcase make when it travels over a
bumpy strip on the floor. I noticed that it plays a musical note that changes
in pitch according to how fast the wheels are traveling or the distance
between each bump. I connected the observation to a use by imagining that
I could space the bumps on the floor so that wheeled suitcases would play a
melody when they travel over the surface.
PRODUCE
The next step is working out how you might actually make your idea
happen. This is about finding a real practical use for your idea. Come up
with a few ideas and pick the best.
In my case, I came up with the ideas of:

using it to give a nee-naw-nee-naw warning signal for partially

sighted people approaching stairs;
using it to play a marketing jingle as people pass over the top;
using it to play a descending tone to let people know they’re
approaching the end of a walkway.

I selected the marketing option because it felt like the most realistic one.
I applied a bit more thought and realized it might be of interest to British
Airways if it could play a little snippet of their theme music (called “The
Flower Duet” in case you’re interested). I imagined it being used in
Heathrow Terminal 5 to give a nice little brand experience on the way to
your flight.

REFINE
This is about making the end result better. Obviously, we’re not seeing it in
practice, so we aren’t going to have real learnings to work with. Instead,
imagine any problems that might arise and come up with ideas to solve
them.
I imagined two problems to address:

People complain because they think it’s damaging the wheels of their
suitcase. My solution is to make the bumps smaller so they feel less
vibration and drag.
Some people are tripping over the strips in the floor. I address this by
making the strips a nice bright color to draw people’s attention.
Maybe even using brand colors.

REPURPOSE
You now want to take the principle of your idea—or a side effect of the
idea—and find another use for it.
I realized that the musical strips reminded me of rumble strips at the side
of a motorway—the bumps that are designed to alert drivers to the fact
they’re drifting towards a crash barrier. I wonder if an ascending or
descending tone would encourage people to slow down on dangerous
stretches of road. I think it’s probably worth testing to see if it changes
behavior and saves lives.

COMBINE
The last step is combining your concept with another concept to create a
fresh combination.
While thinking about the marketing opportunities of playing a sequence
of notes, I wondered if it’s possible to play a little jingle by opening a door.
So I combined the idea of a hinge with the musical strip. I pictured a curved
piece of ridged plastic built into the doorframe and a scraper attached to the
door. As the door is opened, the scraper rubs along the tuned ridges and
plays a melody. Another new product is born.
Going through this process has taken me just over half an hour of writing
and thinking. And I think it’s resulted in some pretty good ideas. This is
worth doing whenever you spot something interesting that you haven’t
noticed before. It may even give you an idea for a brand new product or
business.
 Chapter 3

INSIDE THE MIND

or

Understanding your ideas machine

I’m often asked how I make people more creative. And my answer tends to be:
“I don’t. I make people less uncreative.” That probably sounds pretty ridiculous
to you. And maybe a tad pretentious. But it’s actually based on a scientific truth.

BRAIN SCIENCE AND ALL THAT JAZZ

In recent years Charles Limb, a professor at Johns Hopkins University, has been
studying the brains of jazz musicians.1 He brings them into his lab and places
them inside an fMRI scanner to do the strangest performance of their lives.
Lying on their backs, the musicians have a small plastic keyboard placed on their
legs that they play while their brain activity is recorded.
It starts with learned material. The musicians play a jazz composition that was
sent to them in advance. This allows the researchers to record what happens in
the brain when you’re playing from memory. The musicians are then asked to
improvise on the tune, playing a sequence of notes they’ve never played before.
This is what jazz musicians live for, and you don’t need to be a spot-the-
difference expert to see the contrast between the two brain scans.
As Professor Limb points out: “One area turns on, and a big area shuts off, so
that you’re not inhibited, you’re willing to make mistakes, so that you’re not
constantly shutting down all of these new generative impulses.”2
The area that shuts off is in the prefrontal cortex. This is the region of the
brain that’s linked to conscious monitoring and self-censorship. Deactivating this
area silences the little voice that says: “You can’t do that!” And the musician is
given the freedom to explore new territories and make mistakes.
 The prefrontal cortex is responsible for helping us steer our way through
social norms and moral values. It develops over time as we learn how to fit into
different social groups. It’s the part that censors any actions or words that might
rock the boat. It’s the damp towel that douses the creative spark. If we don’t
make a conscious effort, this part of our brain will prevent us from coming up
with new and interesting ideas.

THE NEUROSCIENCE RENAISSANCE

Charles Limb’s work is just one of the many breakthroughs in our understanding
of how the brain comes up with ideas, but we are only at the start of this journey.
As he said in his 2010 TEDx talk: “Truly, we know very little about how we are
able to be creative. I think that we’re going to see, over the next ten, twenty,
thirty years, a real science of creativity that’s burgeoning and is going to
flourish.”3
I have my fingers crossed for that (which makes it hard to type).
In recent years we have been seeing more and more experiments conducted in
fMRI machines. These massive—and massively expensive—contraptions still
give us only a pretty rough approximation of what’s happening below the skull.
They measure the movement of oxygen around the brain through blood vessels.
The brain tends to direct blood to where the activity is happening, so this gives
us an indication of which brain regions are being activated. They currently have
a resolution of a few millimeters, so we’re nowhere near to measuring things at
the level of a firing synapse.
The other way we measure brain activity is with EEG—the friendly acronym
for electroencephalography. This generally involves subjects wearing a distinctly
unglamorous skullcap with electrodes that measure the brain’s electrical activity.
That’s because the brain operates using both chemicals and electricity. It was a
hybrid machine long before the Prius was even considered, and it has helped us
discover that our brain uses different frequencies of electricity to unlock mental
abilities.
Until people are happy to have measurement devices placed on the inside of
their skulls, science will have to content itself with these imperfect technologies.

NEITHER THE LEFT NOR THE RIGHT

Both fMRI and EEG have debunked one of the most unhelpful myths about the
creative mind: that people are either left- or right-brained. It’s clear from any
brain scan that both sides of the brain are used to generate ideas.
The left brain/right brain myth was based on the theory that the left and right
hemispheres process input in different ways, with the left side focused on the
details of objects whereas the right side looks at the overall shape. According to
this account, the language cortex on the left side is great at grammar and literal
meaning, whereas the right side helps us understand metaphors and implied
meaning.4 But when it comes to creative thinking, the processing happens in
both hemispheres.

It’s clear from any brain scan that both sides of the brain are
used to generate ideas

It’s more about networks. The brain switches on a pathway that connects
functional areas according to current needs. In the jazz experiment,
improvisation activated a network that switched on certain parts of the brain and
switched off others. A few of these networks have been associated with
attention, but the main network associated with creative thinking is a lot more
relaxed than the others.

HARNESSING THE DAYDREAM

It’s natural to think that brains are at their most active when they’re
concentrating on a task. Surely that’s when they really light up and start burning
through the calories. Yet when Hans Berger, the inventor of the EEG, started
doing his first studies in the late 1920s he discovered that the electrical
oscillations he was detecting didn’t stop when the test subject was resting.5 He
pointed out this strange observation in a series of papers which, disappointingly,
the scientific community chose to ignore.
A few decades later, in the 1950s, Louis Sokoloff and his colleagues noticed
that the metabolism of the brain didn’t change when a person switched between
a resting state and solving difficult math problems. But the psychological
community carried on regardless with their belief that the brain is only active
when it’s performing a focused activity.
 Then in the 1970s the Swedish brain physiologist David Ingvar observed that
blood flow in the front area of the brain increased when someone is resting. This
eventually led to the theory of the Default Mode Network: the state the brain
goes into when it’s not focused on a task. It’s the state that activates when we’re
building mental simulations based on past experiences, imagining the future or
envisioning different perspectives and scenarios. A popular term for this kind of
thinking is daydreaming.
These drifty, random thoughts are where creative thinking tends to happen.
It’s the state where our brains can play with “What if?” scenarios and come up
with fresh ideas. When we focus too sharply on a task, we lose access to this
valuable unfocused thinking.
This is the reason why designers, writers, and advertising creatives spend a
significant portion of their time with their feet on the desk staring blankly out of
the window. They’re not doing nothing. They’re not slacking off. They’re
activating their Default Mode Network to give them access to wider associations
and new possibilities.

Drifty, random thoughts are where creative thinking tends to

happen

DON’T LOSE YOUR BRAINPOWER

When I was five years old my mother made me learn our home phone number,
because in those days the telephone was the primary way of contacting someone.
She made me repeat it again and again until I would automatically say “nine-
four-two-four-three-O-two” when prompted to do so. It’s still burned into my
memory even although the number has been disconnected for over 20 years.
Last month I got around to memorizing my wife’s mobile phone number after
eight years of simply prodding her name on a glass screen. And that was only
because my faulty iPhone has a habit of shutting down when I need it most. And
sometimes when I need my wife most.
It’s the first phone number I’ve memorized in years.
Yesterday I was faced with a pretty simple piece of arithmetic. I simply had to
add 20 percent VAT onto an invoice. I automatically opened up the calculator on
my computer and tapped in the figures. It was entirely unnecessary—I’m pretty
good at math. But, like most people, I turned to a device to do the mental
donkeywork on my behalf.
As wonderful as technology is, it also has a serious downside for our brains: it
is causing us to use them less. For the last few years, we have been outsourcing
our memories and our mental processes to technology. And we’re about to
outsource more and more of our decision-making power as well. The field of AI
is giving computers the power to analyze our past behavior, create an algorithm
based on our actions, and then use that to make decisions on our behalf.
The brain is a bit like a muscle, in the sense that it grows and shrinks
according to how we use it. The less we use it, the less information we store in it,
and the less we make decisions, the weaker it becomes.
We need to make a conscious effort to keep exercising and growing our
brains. Because if there’s one thing that’s more terrifying than computers
becoming smarter than us, it’s that we become dumber than them.

PRACTICAL EXERCISE

REMEMBER MORE INFORMATION

Let’s make sure the valuable information stays in your head so you can use
it when you need it.
Studies show that we are less likely to remember information if we know
it’s stored on a computer.6 Because, after all, why would you need to go to
the effort of remembering something if you can simply search for it? So
whenever you see something online that seems interesting or valuable,
don’t just bookmark it or clip it to a digital notebook, rewrite it by hand in
your own words. This forces you to understand the idea. And it activates
more of your brain. Studies have shown that students who take notes on a
laptop remember less information than those who take notes by hand.7 The
act of understanding and summarizing appears to store a concept more
permanently in the brain.
You may also want to draw pictures or use spider diagrams to represent
the concept. This activates the visual parts of your brain that can make it
easier to recall the information later. Because, if you don’t remember the
information when you need it, it’s like never having seen it at all.
 Chapter 4

DIVERGENCE

or

Don’t be normal, be valuable

If you were a secondary school teacher in the 1980s, there was a great alternative
to actual teaching. You simply wheeled a television and video recorder into the
classroom, inserted an educational cassette, and hit Play. That could buy you 30
minutes of nap-time behind your desk.
I remember one of these educational videos very clearly. It was all about peer
pressure and how you should say no to cigarettes, drink, sex, and anything else
that looked like fun. It was the spirit of every nagging mother distilled onto
magnetic tape and fired into the faces of 30 disengaged adolescents. It was a
futile attempt to counter the natural behavior of teenagers with bad acting and
even worse video effects.
Of course, it didn’t work. Like all teenagers, we were busy forming social
bonds and taking risks. We were defining ourselves as being different from our
parents and more like our peers. That’s why many teenagers in my day
expressed themselves by being metal-heads or new romantics or goths. It wasn’t
so much about being unique. It was about finding an identity.
Even anarchists have a strong social identity and a long list of unwritten rules.
Taking on the look, knowledge, attitudes, and beliefs of a group gives people a
sense of belonging. It’s one of the things that made humans successful.

THE SOCIABLE SHALL INHERIT THE EARTH

Up until about 30,000 years ago, Homo sapiens coexisted with Neanderthals in
Europe. Our human cousins had much the same-sized brain as our ancestors,
dealt with the same predators, ate the same food, and roamed the same
landscape. But they were bigger and stronger than us. Surely that was an
advantage. Yet we survived and they did not.
For years, this has puzzled scientists. What was it that gave Homo sapiens the
edge over Homo neanderthalensis? Surely brains of the same size would have
similar cognitive abilities?
In 2013, a paper was published by the Royal Society that looked at the
development of different areas of the brain in Neanderthals.1 By adjusting for
their larger visual and motor areas, the researchers found there was significantly
less capacity left over for higher-order thinking and social interactions. This led
to Neanderthals living in smaller, isolated groups, which led to less genetic
variation, less inter-group trade, and limited adaptability as Europe entered an
ice age.
Our ancestors, on the other hand, lived in large groups with impressive trading
networks that spanned thousands of miles. They developed strong social
identities that helped them create a complex network of interpersonal bonds with
other members of the group. And which, in turn, caused them to be suspicious of
outsiders. These bonds allowed individuals to specialize in tasks and create a
society that could do more things better.
Being attached to a group was a matter of survival. If you found yourself
ostracized, there was more chance of you passing on your protein to wild
animals than passing on your DNA to the next generation. Conforming to the
social identities of a tribe became a selected trait.

BEING SUITABLE FOR AN OFFICE

When TV shows want to portray the typical business commuter, they often rely
on the same imagery. In the UK, it’s a long-lens shot of besuited business people
marching across London Bridge. In America, it’s a similar shot somewhere in
New York’s financial district. Every country has its own version of the same
thing. All the men are wearing suits and ties. All the women are wearing a smart
blouse and jacket. It’s the uniform of the modern workplace.
Just imagine what would happen if someone started turning up at an
investment company wearing an Iron Maiden T-shirt and ripped jeans. How
would the rest of the office react? Would the offender be sent home to change
into something more appropriate? If they kept on sporting this kind of wardrobe,
would it affect their prospects within the company? Of course it would.
Corporate attire is as important to many workplaces as health and safety
compliance.
People in the creative industries think themselves lucky not to have such a
buttoned-up dress code. They fail to realize that they actually do.
When I got my first job in advertising, I knew nothing about the industry so,
under my parents’ terrible guidance, I arrived for my first day at work wearing a
grey suit and carrying a briefcase. I was shown to my desk in the creative
department by a sniggering receptionist and sat there smartly until the rest of the
department trickled in late and draped their denim jackets on the back of their
chairs. Each of them burst out laughing when they saw me. I loosened my tie
and attempted to fit in. The next day I turned up wearing a far more acceptable
uniform for the job, but it took far longer for me to live down my initial sartorial
faux pas.
The conformity of our workplaces goes far deeper than the pinstripe fabric. It
extends to every aspect of our behavior—to our collective understandings, our
ambitions, and how we interact with each other. It leads people to say things
like: “That’s not the way we do things around here,” “That’s against company
policy,” and “I don’t think that fits with our best-practice guidelines.”

The conformity of our workplaces goes far deeper than the

pinstripe fabric

Systems are put in place to prevent individuality from interfering with work.
And just as with bands of ancient humans huddled together on the savannah,
when business is under threat the urge to conform only gets stronger. A group’s
focus tends to be on sustaining the familiar and making it work, regardless of its
dwindling relevance. The organizational antibodies get to work on eliminating
the unfamiliar. Powerful ideas are sacrificed on the altar of humdrum.
 Group thinking naturally drives people towards the familiar and obvious and rejects anything
unfamiliar

THE VALUE OF NONCONFORMISTS

There’s a minority of people who don’t comfortably fit into any norm. They’re
not like everyone else in their group and often don’t want to be. Just as in the
days of our early ancestors, they tend not to be embraced by their group, and
often they’re ostracized and excluded from opportunities. But thanks to modern
society, it’s no longer as fatal a condition as it used to be.
These outsiders are the very people who can add the most value to the group
because of their very difference. The people we describe as “creative” tend to be
part of this minority of challenging thinkers. The fact that they diverge from the
norm is exactly what makes their minds valuable. Being different is what helps
them come up with ideas that just aren’t accessible by those who live within the
norm.

Valuable thinkers diverge from the norm to access thoughts that lie outside it

EINSTEIN WAS A PAIN IN THE NECK

I’m sure your parents told you that if you try hard at school, you’ll succeed. It
was probably part of the same conversation where they told you to listen to your
teachers and stay out of trouble. But that wasn’t what Einstein did. He wasn’t
exactly the model pupil.
His rebellion against authoritarian educators started at the tender age of five,
when he hurled a chair at a tutor he didn’t like.2 As a child, his language skills
were slow to develop.3 Many of his teachers believed he had learning difficulties
because he couldn’t speak fluently until he was nine.
In secondary school, Einstein got decent grades in many of his classes but he
failed to impress all of his teachers. In 1895, one of his teachers declared in his
report card: “he will never amount to anything.” His behavior was such a
problem that he was expelled at 16 because his bad attitude was having a
negative impact on his classmates. So he tried to get into the Federal Institute of
Technology in Zurich, but he failed the entrance exam. He had to go to college
to raise his grades before he was eventually admitted.
At the end of his university course, he wanted to become an educator himself.
He spent two frustrating years trying to find a teaching post before eventually
giving up and taking a job as an assistant examiner at the patent office.
Not exactly the conventional route to a Nobel Prize, is it?
Unconventionality was very much part of Einstein’s personality. Even his
theories came about in unusual ways. He would conduct what he called
“Gedankenexperiments,” which literally translates as “thought experiments.”4
One of his early exercises was to imagine himself somehow catching up to a
wave of light. If he was to do that it would appear to be frozen, which of course
it couldn’t be. So it must mean that time itself would be affected if you traveled
close to the speed of light. This went on to become a central principle in his
special theory of relativity.
Much of his thinking was so advanced that it took 100 years to prove he was
correct. In 2016, the Advanced Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave
Observatory (LIGO for short) detected the first gravitational wave from the
collision of two black holes.5 Since then, we’ve discovered that these events are
far more common than we imagined.
If Einstein had been a conformer, the world might have gained an adequate
patent clerk but lost one of its greatest visionaries.

WE DON’T FIT INTO EVERY GROUP

In the same way as you might feel uncomfortable with the idea of spending eight
hours a day hanging out with chess enthusiasts or Elvis impersonators or
sadomasochists, many people feel they don’t fit in with office work. The idea of
dressing in business attire, leaving the house at the same time and venturing on
an identical commute every day fills them with horror. Like it or not, they are
forced to find another way.
This was the situation with Ben Wheatley. “I came out of school like a kind of
wild creature with no skills and no understanding of what the world of work
was,” he confessed to me. “My career has reflected that. I’m not fit for offices or
for teams. It’s not through any rejection of the system or the hardcore elite, it’s
just through necessity that I’ve ended up working the way that I work.”6
Not fitting in led to Ben becoming a multi-award-winning film director.
Conformity can seriously limit people’s potential.

SHUTTING YOURSELF OFF FROM EVERYTHING

If you were a treasure hunter looking for buried bounty on a desert island, you
probably wouldn’t have much chance of increasing your bank balance if you
threw a hula hoop on the sand and made a decision not to look outside it. Unless
it’s a very small island and a really big hula hoop, there’s going to be more
chance of unearthing the hoard by digging outside the circle than inside.
Yet, that’s exactly what most groups do. They confine their thinking and their
opportunities to the narrow definition of their norm. Their collective
understandings create a restrictive boundary that hems in everyone’s thinking.
The very behavior that gives them a collective identity also turns out to be the
behavior that limits them.

WHERE THE VALUABLE THINKING LIES

A strong social identity leads to people behaving in the same way, following the
same written and unwritten rules, having the same assumptions, and working
with the same knowledge. With the same input and processes, it’s no surprise
they tend to create the same output.
In company brainstorms, people come up with similar kinds of ideas. And the
way the ideas are then selected cuts down further on variety, so that the most
comfortable rather than the most effective ideas are the ones that make the cut.
Thinking that comes from inside the norm is obvious. Anyone in the group could
come up with it. This kind of thinking is of very little—if any—value to an
organization.
The valuable thought space lies outside the norm. That’s where the new
thinking is. That’s where you’ll find the ideas with the power to transform an
organization.
But not all that wide-open space is useful. The conceptual gold lies in a fertile
area with the right balance of novelty and familiarity.

Thinking that comes from inside the norm is obvious

THE RIGHT AMOUNT OF DIVERGENCE

In the film Garden State, Natalie Portman’s character explains what she does
when she feels unoriginal.7 She goes on to writhe on the spot, squealing: “Blah,
blah, blah, BLAH, blah-la!” She describes her actions to her friend, played by
Zach Braff, saying that in order to keep feeling unique, she occasionally has to
do something that no one has ever done before. And no one had ever squealed
and writhed like that in that exact spot ever before. It was a unique moment in
human history.
Of course, if we accept the definition of creativity as producing something
that’s both new and valuable, this kind of activity only ticks one of these boxes.
So there is a point where originality becomes useless to us. It becomes the
equivalent of wriggling and making noises for the sake of it. It doesn’t have
strong enough connections to common experiences or knowledge to be relatable
or useful. It’s more likely to alienate people than to give them any value.
The right amount of personal divergence is a balance. It lies in the area where
someone can still function within the group but doesn’t think or operate like the
typical member of the group. Individuals that diverge too much don’t add value
to the group. There’s just not enough overlap between the needs of the group and
their own knowledge, abilities, and attitudes. They tend not to last long. Either
the group chooses to remove them or they decide to leave of their own accord.
We’re looking for people in the Goldilocks zone, whose mind is neither
predictably conformist nor wildly divergent. It’s just right. It’s wise to do
whatever you can to hold on to these people and find a way of harnessing their
thinking. These naturally divergent people are really valuable and important, but
it’s possible for everyone to be usefully divergent—even those who feel a strong
pull to conformity. We’ll look at how to do that in a few pages.

The Goldilocks zone of divergence is where individuals still add value to the group but probably come
across as outsiders

DIVERGENCE ISN’T JUST ABOUT WHO YOU ARE

There are two elements at play when it comes to divergence; there’s the
individual and there’s the group they’re in. People can fit neatly into the norm of
one group but diverge wildly in another. So our divergence changes according to
context. It’s simply about people having different perspectives, knowledge,
habits, understandings, and ways of doing things from the rest of their group.
Some people have no control over what makes them divergent, while others do.
Both are valuable.
Let’s look at the different kinds of divergence, and how some attributes that
have been traditionally seen as drawbacks should in fact be seen as superpowers.

INVOLUNTARY DIVERGENCE
Some people, through no choice of their own, are different from those that
surround them. They may be a different sex, different color, have a different
background or have a brain that operates in a different way. Much of the time,
these differences are seen as problems. Which causes individuals to feel bad and
causes organizations to miss out on opportunities. But these are the very things
that make us who we are. They make us more valuable because they make us
different.
There are four forms of involuntary divergence.

Diversity This is the way we’re born. It’s the attributes that are written
into our DNA—like our sex, ethnicity, and level of physical ability—as
 well as the neurodiverse ways our brains are wired that lead to dyslexia,
autism, ADHD, and other conditions.
Background These are the circumstances that shape us. This is the
“nurture” to diversity’s “nature.” It includes the culture we are raised in,
our upbringing, our education, and our level of poverty and privilege.
Trauma These are the events that change us and force us to redefine who
we are and how we behave. These pivotal points in our lives include
accident and injury, abuse, bereavement, and anything else that has a
profound emotional or physical impact on our lives.
Illness These are the conditions that affect us. They involve ailments that
impact the body or mind either temporarily or over time. The biggest of
these to consider is mental illness, which is on the rise in many areas of
the world.

The four kinds of involuntary divergence

You probably feel pretty touchy about these topics. I’ve just dragged you into
a political-correctness minefield, after all. But it’s the political-correctness
brigade who have made this such a difficult subject to deal with. Rather than
pasting over these differences and trying to make everyone the same, I think we
should celebrate the differences, and the wonderful potential they offer if we let
them.
Please don’t misunderstand me here. I’m not denying that these differences
can make life harder for individuals. I’m pointing out that only focusing on the
negatives is what makes these topics especially dark and awkward. There are
positives too. It may take time and effort to find them, but the perspectives,
knowledge, skills, coping mechanisms, and attitudes that divergence gives rise to
in people can be valuable for generating ideas.

DIVERSITY IS ONLY THE FIRST STEP

Most companies have now made a commitment to address their diversity issues.
Typically they are aiming to get more women in leadership and launching
initiatives to develop a better balance of employees across race, sexual
orientation, religion, age, gender, and disability. That’s wonderful. If your
organization hasn’t already put plans like this in place, they’re late to the party.
But diversity is only the first half of the solution.
The focus of diversity is getting a broader spectrum of people into the
workplace, yet if you’re just going to turn these wonderfully different
individuals into more identical-thinking work units, you’ve destroyed the value
of their difference. Not many companies have even started thinking about that.
A diverse workforce may be the most powerful way of accessing more diverse
thinking in an organization. But only if you let it.

Diversity is only the first half of the solution

It’s easier to manage a department if you treat everyone identically—as if

each individual has the same skills, the same potential, and the same approach as
everyone else. Anything that lies outside of the norm is discarded. But what
you’re actually discarding is opportunities.

Embracing the difference of your employees greatly increases your opportunities

An employee’s real value lies in their difference. Their knowledge, skills,

perspective, and everything else that makes them unique is what you should be
looking to harness. Which requires a different management style. It involves
trying to get the best out of people rather than trying to make them like everyone
else. It means measuring them by the work they do rather than how they do it.
That might take a little bit more work, but it will lead to better thinking and new
ideas.
Direct Line’s Mark Evans has been shaping his department around the unique
attributes of each employee, and he’s been specifically focusing on
neurodiversity. He believes it can be a huge benefit to business.
“Obviously, diversity of thinking is likely to lead to greater innovation,” Mark
said, clearly channeling my own thinking. “We have this thing called Ideas Lab
where anybody can contribute an idea and it gets listened to and gets processed
by the right people. That’s a symbol of the fact that we appreciate the concept
that diverse thinking will lead to breakthrough solutions.”8
As part of his interest in diverse thinking, Mark has been supporting
neurodiversity within his department, and even shaping his recruitment process
to make it more suitable for neurodiverse individuals. Having a mind that works
differently is seen as a plus point rather than an uncomfortable liability.
Even in his lofty role as marketing director, Mark probably wouldn’t be able
to do what he’s doing without the backing of other people at the top of the
company. Fortunately, he has full support from the leadership team. “I think it’s
just embedded in our cultural DNA. Our Human Resources Director and CEO,
internally and externally, are very loud advocates. So I think it’s just a bit more
genuine.”
I sincerely hope that Mark’s trailblazing methods become the norm in the
business world very soon.

VOLUNTARY DIVERGENCE
If you’re not fortunate enough to have a natural difference, you can still develop
some valuable divergency. These are things that are entirely within your control.
You can switch them on and off at will, and dial them up and down. You can
just use the ones you feel comfortable with and ignore the others. They are
powerful ways of escaping from the norm of any group.
There are four main ways you can do that:

Contrarianism This is about not taking things at face value and looking
 at alternatives. It involves questioning, evaluating, and offering better
ways of doing things. Some people naturally seem to be a bit more
contrary than others, but it’s something anyone can develop. Just make
sure you don’t stop at criticism but carry on to constructive suggestions.
Dreaminess This is about using your imagination to help you explore
opportunities and possibilities. It involves kicking back and letting the
Default Mode Network take over. This will help you imagine
consequences, see things from other people’s perspective, and come up
with new solutions.
Altered states These can temporarily change the way your mind
operates. A different state can remove mental obstacles and take your
brain to new places. It’s not just about drink and drugs—there’s also
meditation, exercise, and even electronic devices that can change the way
your brain functions.
Play This is a useful approach where one or more people can temporarily
remove themselves from the assumptions and limitations of the collective
norm. Contrary to most people’s understanding, it’s not the opposite of
work. You can use it to gather information, explore different perspectives,
generate ideas, improve thinking, judge options, and a multitude of other
things.

The four kinds of voluntary divergence

These are useful ways of breaking out of the norm of a group. But you need to
use them constructively. Otherwise, you’ll end up becoming someone that no
one wants to work with.
 In the next chapter, we’ll take a look at something else you need to develop if
you really want to be great at generating ideas.

PRACTICAL EXERCISE

TRY BEING A CONTRARIAN

Choose something you do on a habitual basis. It could be something work-

related or something personal.

Divide it into its constituent steps.

For example, if you were to think about how you do your grocery
shopping, you might break it into: plan your meals and ingredients for
the next week, list the ingredients, go through the cupboards and cross
out the items you’ve already got, take your list to the grocery store,
wander the aisles picking up what you need, pay for it at the checkout,
take it home, put each item away in the right place.

Pick the parts that irritate you most.

For this example, we’ll choose going to the grocery store and picking
up the items.

Define the purpose of the steps you want to replace and list the input
and output for each one.

In this case, the steps I don’t like are all about getting the grocery
items that I’m missing.
The input is a list of required items.
And the output is the actual items.

Use this information as a brief to come up with alternatives.

This gives us options like:

– Get someone else to do the shopping for you
– Create a robot to go to the shop and get the groceries
 – Move closer to the grocery store so it’s not such a schlep
– Turn the trip into a game to make it more enjoyable
– Make it part of a keep-fit regime so you get more benefits from it
– Make friends with the cashiers so that you can look forward to
friendly conversations at the end of the process

Judge your ideas to see which ones offer the most benefits.

In this case, the one that offers the most actual benefit is making my
grocery-store trips part of a keep-fit regime. But that loses out to the
simplicity and ease of getting someone else to do the shopping for me.
A great way of doing this already exists. So I decide to start doing my
shopping online. If nothing exists to solve your problem, this is your
opportunity to create it yourself.

Get into the habit of applying this approach to lots of diferent things.
Especially if they annoy you or you find them inefficient. If you’re always
looking for ways to make things better for yourself, you’ll discover ways of
making things better for everyone.
 Chapter 5

DRIVE

or

Lighting a fire in your soul

Diverging from the norm is like having half a superpower. Without the other half
of your ability, you’re merely different. Strange. Maybe even a weirdo.
The other thing you need is the motivation to use your difference positively.
We’re going to call that your drive.

NURTURE, IF YOU DON’T HAVE THE NATURE

Some people seem to have more motivation and energy than others. When
people hear what they’re up to, they often ask: “How did you find the time to do
that?” They seem to achieve so much more than anyone else, even although
they’ve got the same number of hours in a day. These people don’t have any
more intelligence, knowledge, or skills than other people. Not at the start,
anyway. They just have more drive. They’re self-motivated to get on with
things.
The easy way out is to say that some people are built that way and others
aren’t. That’s just shorthand for saying: “I’m lazy and can’t be bothered
changing.” It may be that some people are wired to have more energy and drive
than others, but there are more important factors that give us the driving force to
do things. And many of them are completely under our control.

FIND YOUR PASSION

If you don’t enjoy something, it’s always going to feel like a slog. I personally
hate doing expenses and bookkeeping. Accountancy is like a Dementor to me; it
sucks every scrap of joy out of my day. The darkness closes in and I find myself
with barely enough energy to lift the box of receipts I need to sort through. Of
course, that means I put it off until it becomes an unavoidable, gargantuan,
torture, which simply cements my dread of the job even further.
It’s the same with any creative pursuit. You need to find what floats your boat
and use that to develop your creative muscle. You may have a fascination with
film-making, which gives you the drive to learn more about it and give it a try
yourself. That’s great. But maybe your passion lies outside the creative field.
It could be that spelunking is your thing (it does exist—look it up if you’ve
never heard of it!). You could use your unusual and dangerous hobby as a
catalyst for expanding your knowledge and skills. It would be a great way to
learn long-exposure photography. Or cartography. Or blogging.
When you find your passion, use it to fuel your drive to produce. Because if
you don’t enjoy doing something, you’ll never want to keep doing it.

Find what floats your boat and use that to develop your creative
muscle

ACHIEVE LITTLE THINGS

If you’ve never directed film before, it may be a bit ambitious to start off with a
six-part TV series. (Trust me. I did it and it took over my life!)1 It would be a
much better idea to start with a 30-second piece of film. Then move up to a two-
minute film. And keep working your way up until you’re ready for the big stuff.
You’ll learn every step of the way. And you’ll be learning by doing, which I
find to be the best way. More important, you’ll be regularly achieving things that
will boost your motivation to continue. Go too long without a sense of
achievement, and your energy is apt to fizzle out before you complete anything.

KEEP GOOD COMPANY

There is an often repeated phrase that’s been attributed to a number of
motivational speakers and writers: “You are the average of the five people you
spend the most time with.” This is often interpreted in an extreme way,
recommending that you ditch people who are bringing you down and start
befriending ambitious and successful entrepreneurs. Please don’t do that! I think
it’s really unwise and is likely to end in disappointment. But there is a nugget of
wisdom lying somewhere behind this quote.
 The very process of social influence that causes you to conform with a
group’s norm causes you to be more like those you spend time with. The best
way to do that is to find ways to spend more time with people you admire. You
could do that by going to meetup groups, joining professional bodies, going to
events, and finding online communities. Just by doing this, you’ll find out what
they’re talking about, what excites them, what their aspirations are, and lots of
other useful stuff.
For example, if you want to learn more about graphic design, you’ll find 1,564
LinkedIn groups dedicated to the subject. You’ll quickly be able to work out
which ones have the right people and the right conversations for you. A quick
search for the keyword “design” on meetup.com generated an endless list of
groups gathering within 10 miles of London (it took me several minutes of
scrolling to get to the bottom). You can dig deeper to find your niche and
regularly spend time with the people who will feed your enthusiasm.
These people will usually be happy to share their wisdom and experiences.
Many of these groups will give you advice and encouragement when you get
stuck. They may even open up opportunities for you if you want to do more with
your passion. That’s all vital if you want to keep going and keep improving.

JUST DO IT

It’s really easy to find an excuse not to do something. It takes no effort to

convince yourself that you’ve got a solid reason to hold off. But these reasons
are usually pretty misguided. The most common one is because you feel you’ve
got a knowledge gap. You just need to know a little bit more before you kick off.
This is based on a fundamental misunderstanding.

LEARNING AND DOING SHOULDN’T BE SEPARATED

The traditional view of education is that you need to learn all the information
before you become a practitioner. That’s the system our universities and colleges
follow. Whether you’re training to be a lawyer, accountant, doctor or architect,
you spend years sitting in a lecture theatre taking notes and passing
memorization tests (because that’s all most exams are) before you’re ready to
put it into practice. But that approach simply isn’t suitable for a world that’s
constantly changing, where new technology becomes defunct faster than ever,
and new approaches render slow-moving companies irrelevant.
The better approach for learning is to think of the way you’d pick up a
musical instrument. Spending three years learning theory before you get your
hands on a violin is unlikely to turn you into a concert-level performer. Instead,
you start small, screeching your way through scales and nursery rhymes. Then
you move on to simple compositions that you practice again and again, building
up muscle memory and refining your technique. These pieces get steadily more
difficult until you can read music fluently and use your instrument as naturally
as your own voice. Each time you learn a piece, you get a feeling of
achievement. And that achievement gives you the motivation to keep going.
It’s the same with anything creative. Many artists say they have no choice but
to create. It’s what makes them feel happy and fulfilled. And there’s a reason for
that.

Achievement gives you the motivation to keep going

THE CREATIVE PERPETUAL MOTION MACHINE

You’ve probably noticed the rise in popularity of adult coloring books in the last
couple of years. It initially seemed like a peculiar fad to me, until my wife
invested in some felt-tip pens and started working her way through some classy
designs. She then downloaded some coloring apps to her phone so she could do
it on the go. And now I understand the allure.
These books make the benefits of creativity accessible to everyone. They have
a low entry point, so you don’t need to have a high level of skill to start. They
give you the satisfaction of improving your skills the more you do it. Each time
you complete a page you get a little buzz from achieving something. And you’re
in full control of where you start, what colors you use, how fast you complete it
and whether you use pen or pencil. It’s a perfect demonstration of what happens
when you start doing any creative pursuit.
It takes effort at first to get started, but when you complete something it gives
you an emotional reward that keeps you motivated to carry on. It’s a self-
perpetuating cycle of putting in the effort to create something, leading to the
satisfaction that gives you the motivation to keep putting in the effort.
Once you’ve started, it’s much easier to continue.

The effort of creating something gives you satisfaction. The satisfaction gives you the motivation to
create more.

PRACTICAL EXERCISE

START PURSUING A PASSION

When you have something that intrigues you, it’s sometimes hard to know
where to start. And the mass of unknowns we’re faced with seems like an
impenetrable barrier keeping us out. Let’s deal with that right now and set
you on an exciting path.
First, start with something that interests you. It could be watercolor
painting or juggling or rocket science or shoe design. It’s going to be
something that raises questions like: “I wonder how they do that?” or:
“How do people get into that?” These questions are the sign that you have a
knowledge gap that’s just waiting to be filled with information. Your
interest in the area will cause you to soak up details like a sponge.
To start you on your path, we’ll use a classic learning model of knowing,
doing, and being.

KNOWING
You’re going to start by filling some of your knowledge gaps. This will
give you a foundation to work with. This stage will likely just create lots
more questions and make it clear how little you know. Don’t be intimidated
by the scale of your ignorance. Everyone starts out with no knowledge and
learns as they go.
I recommend that you start searching straight away for terms like
“juggling for beginners,” “how to become a shoe designer” or whatever is
relevant to your area of interest. Start taking notes about the parts that
interest you. Watch interviews with people who are already successful in
your chosen area. Read online reviews and critiques to see how people
judge what is good. If you understand the criteria that separate the good
from the great, you’ll have a better understanding of what knowledge is
important and what isn’t.

DOING
Get your hands dirty as quickly as possible. This is how you get into the
creation/motivation cycle that will keep you going.
Start by looking at YouTube videos that give you tutorials for beginners.
This will get you started for a minimum outlay. As you get going, you may
want to do some more specialist online courses on SkillShare or Udemy.
The good ones will probably cost you a bit of money, but by this stage
you’ll have enough enthusiasm and momentum to be happy to pay to
improve. Keep going and keep doing. You’ll soon be ready for the next
stage.

BEING
You want to start rubbing shoulders with people who share your interest
and people who do it successfully. Any group of passionate people tend to
cluster around their area of interest. Search for online communities where
they’re discussing that interest. Get involved and start asking questions.
You’ll find that people are happy to share their wisdom and experience.
If you live near a city, you may find that some of these passionate people
actually like to hang out in person. Look at sites like meetup.com to see if
there are any groups who gather in your area. Go along and chat. The one
thing that passionate people love is other people’s passion for their area of
interest.
The best way to get started is simply to start. Just like eating a pizza, the
best way to acquire the knowledge you need is in bite-sized pieces. Focus
on the journey rather than trying to arrive at the destination. That’s where
the enjoyment lies. And if you don’t enjoy it, you won’t do it.
 Chapter 6

THE RIGHT PROCESS

or

Mapping the route to a great idea

The classic image of an artist’s studio is a chaotic space with half-finished

canvases stacked against the wall, crazy pots of brushes, and paint splatters
everywhere. It doesn’t look organized. Or particularly hygienic.
The classic image of a writer is of someone sitting in front of a keyboard with
a glass of whisky, waiting for inspiration.
And the classic image of a songwriter is someone hunched over a guitar with a
cigarette hanging from the corner of their mouth.
Does any of that make you think of process? Probably not.
Yet process there is. Any journey from nothing to something involves some
pretty definite steps.
Some people don’t realize they’re following a process. Others make an effort
not to question what they do in case it will ruin the magic. Still others want to
keep the mystique about what they do in an effort to make themselves appear
more interesting and glamorous.
Maybe it’s the computer programmer in me that likes to pull things apart to
see how they work. I don’t like the mystery-box approach. I personally think it’s
easier to perform a task—and improve at it—if you understand how it works.

BREAKING OPEN THE BLACK BOX

Getting to an idea is a process. There are steps that get you from A to B. You
need to take these steps in order, and how well you perform each one of them
affects the possible results you get at the end.
 If you understand these steps, you can improve on your own output by
developing the areas that are weakest. And you can get more out of group
creativity if you understand how to effectively plan and manage the process.
I use a simple acronym for the steps that take you from wanting an effective
idea to having that idea.

There’s nothing particularly revolutionary about this. It follows a basic input–

process–output flow, starting with understanding the problem and ending with
potential solutions. But it’s surprising how rarely this kind of process is actually
followed when people or businesses are looking for ideas. Most often someone
says: “Hey, we’ll hold a brainstorm.” And then they get nothing of very much
value from it. That’s because they’re missing out most of the process.
It’s natural to want to jump straight into the middle of the process and start
coming up with ideas. That’s the exciting bit, after all. That’s what we think of
as the “creative” part. But doing that is unlikely to give you the best ideas.
We’ll look at how to manage this process in an organization later in the book.
But for now, let’s go through the steps one by one.

RESEARCH
As soon as I left university, I started a job as a recording engineer in a rather
lovely studio in a tiny Scottish village. We’d get all sorts of bookings, from
signed artists to heavy metal cover bands on the pub circuit. One of the things
the less professional musicians would often say was: “We’ll fix that in the mix.”
You very quickly learned that this wasn’t a real option.
These were the old days when music was analogue. We were recording onto
tape and you couldn’t just nudge a single snare-drum beat the way you can now.
It taught me an important lesson: The only way to get quality output is to start
with quality input. The process can only do so much.
You need to have a good understanding of the problem if you want to solve it
effectively. That involves digging deep to find the stuff that probably hasn’t
been noticed before. If you skimp on your research, every other step in the
process suffers.

The only way to get quality output is to start with quality input

BREAK IT APART

At this point, you should be breaking the problem down into its component
parts. What are the steps? What’s the input? What’s the output? What resources
does it currently take? As you do this, you’ll begin to get a better understanding
of the problem. It may be that you’ll solve it just by picking it apart like this.
You should do your best to understand each of the component parts. If there’s
something you’re unclear on, read up on it. You need to know which parts can
be changed and which ones can’t. And you won’t understand that if you have
gaps in your knowledge.

SPOT THE HUMANS

Identify everyone who is involved. Who are the audience or customers? Who is
involved in the process? Who sets limitations on what can and can’t be done?
Who influences people’s expectations? Who’ll make the decision on whether or
not to implement your ideas? List everyone you can think of.
Now identify the ones who are fundamental to the problem you’re trying to
solve. What are their motivations? What would make things better for them? If
they’re the source of the problem, why is that? Look at the problem from
everyone else’s perspective. What would make a good solution for them?
It’s obviously best if you do this by spending time with the most important
individuals and getting to know them. Maybe simply observing how they go
about things will give you the nugget of information that’s your key to a better
solution.

ASK LOTS OF QUESTIONS

In the 1950s, Taiichi Ohno pioneered the Toyota Production System.1 His
thinking helped the company become more efficient, more profitable, and more
adaptable than ever before. His approach was so effective it was adopted by US
manufacturing companies, who called it Lean Manufacturing.
Ohno used to say that “the root cause of any problem is the key to a lasting
solution.” And one of his ways to get to the root cause was to repeatedly ask the
same question any annoying four-year-old asks: “Why?”
He believed that asking why five times would get you to the source of a
problem. His own example of how it worked was with a hypothetical situation
where a welding robot had stopped unexpectedly. His questions went like this:

1. “Why did the robot stop?” – The circuit overloaded, which blew a
fuse.
2. “Why did the circuit overload?” – The bearings locked up because
there wasn’t enough lubrication on the bearings.
3. “Why wasn’t there enough lubrication on the bearings?” – The
robot’s oil pump was delivering too little oil.
4. “Why was the pump delivering too little oil?” – The pump’s intake is
clogged up with metal shavings.
5. “Why is the intake clogged up with metal shavings?” – Because
there’s no filter on the pump.

It’s simple. And highly effective. I find it often reveals that the problem is not
what you first thought it was.

INSIGHT
The word “insight” is nearly as problematic as the word “creative.” It’s badly
understood, but few people are willing to stick their hand in the air and ask for a
clear explanation.
I’ve been doing that exact thing for the last few years. I’ve been asking
strategists, planners, and business consultants what they mean by insight. The
responses have ranged from blank stares to stumbling explanations. They
contained more “er”s and “um”s than the average conversation, and I found no
consistent understanding, even within a single industry.
 When it comes to RIGHT Thinking, an insight is a piece of information that
can inspire an idea. But that can be a hard thing to define.

THE INSIGHT MATRIX

If you want to know what makes a piece of information inspiring, think about
the kind of thing you might tell people over a couple of pints on a Friday night.
You’re not going to tell them something obvious or something boring. That
would reflect badly on you. It’s the same situation with insights. You should
only be sharing information that’s interesting and unique.
To make it even clearer, you can check any thinking nuggets against the
Insight Matrix:

If you want to know if your information is any good, use the Insight Matrix

Let’s break down these quadrants:

OBVIOUS AND INTERESTING

This is where everyone else is playing. And probably have been for some time.
The chance of you finding something new from the information that everyone
else has is pretty slim. This stuff gets less interesting the older it becomes.
Eventually, it will drop into the bottom left quadrant.

OBVIOUS AND DULL

This is the knowledge that’s taken as read. It’s really not worth bringing up. The
only valuable thing you can do with the assumptions in this quadrant is turn
them on their head and subvert them.

UNIQUE BUT DULL

If you’ve found something unique, it will tend to be pretty interesting. However,
if you manage to unearth something you’ve never seen before but is still pretty
dull, dig a little bit deeper. There may be something interesting about it. Or it
may lead you to another more inspiring tidbit.

INTERESTING AND UNIQUE

You’ve hit the jackpot! This is the good stuff. It lies outside the norm and it’s
fizzing with possibilities. This is the kind of information that’s most likely to
inspire effective ideas.

THE WHY BEHIND THE WHAT

Over the course of my advertising career, I saw hundreds of briefs across pretty
much every industry sector. These briefs are usually prepared by a planner or
strategist whose job it is to define the problem, unearth some insights and give
the creative department everything they need to inspire brilliant ideas.
But more often than not, they didn’t give an insight, they gave an observation.
For example, you could get a statement saying that 17.4 percent more twenty-
somethings wore odd socks on a Friday than on any other weekday. That may be
interesting (and totally fabricated) but it’s just an observation. It becomes more
useful when you understand that Thursday is the new drinking night, which
makes Friday the new hangover morning. And when you’re feeling rough,
you’re more likely to grab whatever socks are available.
An interesting observation can be helpful by itself. It can inspire ideas, which
is exactly what it’s supposed to do. But the more valuable thing is to find the
interesting reason behind the interesting observation; the “why” behind the
“what.” That can set you on the path to tackling something closer to the root of
the issue.
In 1950s America, General Mills launched a line of Betty Crocker cake mixes
that tapped into the growing market of convenience foods.2 Products like
powdered coffee, instant potato, frozen dinners, and dried milk were rising in
popularity, so they developed the easiest cake mix you can imagine. All you had
to do was empty their powder into a dish, add water, give it a mix, and pop it in
the oven. It was the very definition of convenience. Surely it would be a hit.
Yet it remained firmly on the supermarket shelves. People just weren’t buying
it. That was the observation. Most companies might try to hit this problem head-
on with an advertising campaign, some coupons or a PR push, but General Mills
decided to dig deeper. To help them find the reason why their product was being
rejected, they hired a team of psychologists. What they discovered was pretty
surprising: the product made things too easy. And that made the housewives of
the day feel guilty. The cake still tasted great, but it made them feel like they
were somehow cheating their family.
This interesting reason behind their observation inspired General Mills to
make a simple adjustment that changed everything: they made it less convenient.
They reformulated the mix so that it now required the addition of a real egg.
That was all that was required.
The observation was that the product wasn’t selling. The insight was that it
made housewives feel guilty.

Find the interesting reason behind the interesting observation

This approach doesn’t just have to involve humans. It applies equally to

systems, processes, engineering, and other rational pursuits too. On January 28,
1986, the NASA Space Shuttle Challenger exploded 73 seconds into its flight,
killing all seven crew members. It was a global tragedy and the footage of the
explosion was played again and again on TV screens worldwide. It had a big
impact on an aspiring young astronaut like me.
NASA needed to get to the bottom of this disaster and devise an effective
solution. They created the Rogers Commission, recruiting the renowned scientist
Richard Feynman to help them investigate.3 They observed from the footage of
the explosion that an O-ring seal in one of the solid rocket boosters had failed. It
would be easy to stop there and blame a faulty batch. But that would not have
solved the problem. Feynman kept digging and found that the rubber O-rings
wouldn’t expand fully below 0°C; the exact temperature at the launchpad on that
day. This insight led to a redesign of the solid rocket boosters.
If you want to have the best chance of solving the problem, go beyond the
observation until you find the reason.
MO’ DATA, MO’ PROBLEMS

It may be that you’ve collected or identified data during the research stage and
you feel it has a role in the thinking. That’s great. You’re probably right. But you
need to do some work on it first.
Over the last few years, organizations have been obsessing over data. They
want to collect as much of it as they can, which means that the world’s data is
doubling every two years or so.4 But data is useless on its own. To make it
valuable, you have to apply intelligence. This was understood even in the earliest
days of computing, when the DIKW Pyramid was developed. It goes like this:

Aim for the top of the DIKW Pyramid

DATA
Here’s where it starts. This is simply a collection of ones and zeros. It’s pretty
useless unless you do something with it.

INFORMATION
Once we apply intelligence to the data, we get meaning from it. We can describe
what is happening and what it represents.

KNOWLEDGE
When we apply further intelligence to this information in the form of context,
past experience, values, and other factors, we get knowledge. This gives us a
more usable understanding.

WISDOM
This is the holy grail of data. It’s been described as the “know-why.” It’s the
understanding that can lead to insightful ideas and better decisions.
Now you’ve got all this information, you probably want to bring it all together
into a nice, simple, single-minded brief. That’s what’s going to help keep you on
track and, hopefully, inspire some jaw-dropping ideas.

GENERATE
This is where your divergence and drive really come into play. Together they
will help you explore the idea space that lies outside the norm. Your divergence
will take you into new and valuable thinking territories and your drive will give
you the energy to keep searching.
There’s no shortage of creative techniques—for individuals or groups—that
will help you come up with ideas you wouldn’t normally have. I’ve personally
collected dozens of them. But they won’t do you a whole lot of good if you skip
directly to this step without doing your research and finding an insight. You may
generate lots of ideas, but they’re unlikely to be as valuable as they could be.
So, even although you probably find this the most exciting stage, you need to
stop yourself from jumping directly to it.

ESCAPING THE NORM

As I’ve already made clear, you need to break out of the standard normative
thinking of your group if you want to get valuable ideas. And if you can break
out of your own personal norms and mental ruts, then all the better. This stage is
about journeying into unfamiliar thought territories.
In his book Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman postulates that the
vast majority of our thinking is intuitive and unconscious. We tend to go down
tried and tested mental paths because they are easy and familiar and the neural
connections are stronger. But just sitting at your desk and trying to force yourself
to think unfamiliar thoughts probably won’t get you very far. That’s why I tend
to use techniques and tools to force my thinking in new directions. These
exercises cause you to come up with new ideas by:

Changing what’s in your brain

Changing the way your brain operates
Changing your assumptions
Changing the rules
 Changing your environment

Natural divergence can give you an advantage at this stage, but even with this
advantage, you want to keep yourself fresh and break out of your own habitual
ways of doing things.
Even the best jazz musicians will end up playing the same old stuff if they
don’t keep challenging themselves. Keeping your approach fresh makes sure
your thinking doesn’t go stale.

CHOOSING TO DIVERGE
The best creative workshops are a form of play; giving people new rules to
follow, new ways of interacting with each other, different roles to fulfill, and
defining an agreed end goal. Done properly, this approach is powerful because it
breaks people out of their daily work routine and creates a temporary new state
for them to operate within.
Most important, a good play state will eliminate the things that tend to kill
ideas along the way. Like early judgment, restrictive processes, internal politics,
and fear of senior managers. They create an environment where everyone can
contribute, whatever their level.
We’ll take a look at how to manage group thinking effectively later in the
book.

PICKING OUT THE GOLD

This step isn’t just about generating lots of ideas; it’s about ending up with the
best ones. And that takes judgment.
Judgment is usually seen as being the process that kills terrible ideas, but
because it’s usually done badly, it often kills great ones too. It’s more powerful
if you turn it on its head and use it to spot opportunities rather than problems. In
that way, ideas with potential can survive long enough to be improved. Because,
at this stage, ideas are unlikely to be fully thought through and ready to go.
Getting good at judging takes experience. The more you do it, the more you
know what to look out for.
If you do this stage well, you’ll have a handful of ideas with lots of potential.
Now it’s time to unlock that potential and turn the ideas into something brilliant.


Getting good at judging takes experience—the more you do it,

the more you know what to look out for

HONE
Idea-generation sessions are all about thinking broadly. They’re focused on
generating a good number of ideas that are diverse and interesting. These ideas
will naturally be early thoughts. In many cases, they’re no more than indicative
markers signaling that “there could be something in this.” There’s a good chance
they won’t tick off every requirement. You may not even know if the ideas are
physically possible. That’s all fine.
This step is about moving from breadth of thinking to depth of thinking.
We’re going to take the best ideas and make them as good as they can
possibly be. This is where we take the raw ideas and turn them into something
special.

HOLD ON TO THE MAGIC

One of the first things you should do with each of your chosen ideas is remind
yourself what’s so good about them. Ideas are a lot like jokes. You can only
experience a joke for the first time once. The more you hear it after that, the less
funny it becomes. Similarly, the more you work on an idea, the less brilliant it
seems. You can end up losing track of what made it special in the first place and
end up with something unremarkable and compromised.
In a few sentences, define what makes the idea so good. Keep it simple.
Describe the idea, state what makes it special, and list the elements that are
important to hold on to. If we were to do this for the original Dyson vacuum it
would be something like this:

This is a vacuum cleaner that uses cyclone technology instead of a bag.

What makes it special is it doesn’t lose suction and force you to buy
new bags to keep it functioning.
 The important elements are its constant power, its beautiful design,
the visibility of the dirt that’s been collected, and ease of use.

Hold on to this. Keep referring back to it, especially if you start to lose faith.
Don’t drift from this unless you have very good reason to do so.

CAN IT SOLVE THE PROBLEM BETTER?

Now that you know what made the idea so good in the first place, you want to
see if you can make it better.
Return to your original aims. Does the idea do everything you were hoping it
would? If not, is there any way you can adapt it to make it fit the brief better? If
you’ve specified aims at the beginning of the process, this is the time to pull
them out and go through them.
Now have a look at the idea and see if there are any drawbacks to it. Is there
anything that people in your audience will object to, or that decision-makers in
your organization will object to? Try to minimize or eliminate the problems.
Just make sure that none of your alterations damage the very thing that
originally made the idea so good. For example, if you really like a marketing
idea because it would help you stand out from your competitors, don’t try to add
anything that makes you more like them. That would just be weakening the idea.
Concentrate on strengthening the strengths and weakening the weaknesses.

FIRST, SIMPLIFY

In my early days as a musician, I started playing guitar for a wonderful singer–

songwriter who was signed up to the record label I worked for. His band had
been the training ground for some of the biggest musicians to have come out of
Glasgow in the 1980s. It was like being on a rock and roll apprenticeship.
In one of our earliest rehearsals, he presented us with a new song and I started
to play along on my guitar. I was trying to impress him. But I ended up doing the
opposite. At the end of the song, he diplomatically told me that I’d played some
brilliant stuff. He would just prefer if I didn’t play quite as much of it. Because
you never want to leave the audience begging for less. To drive his message
home, he told me to pick any two notes and to use them however I liked
throughout the song. It was strangely liberating.
 Simplicity is powerful. The first thing you should do with any idea is simplify
it to its most important elements. Prune it back to its barest functional essence.
You want to have something you can describe in a sentence, draw on a napkin,
or explain in a lift journey.
Steve Jobs once said that “Innovation is saying no to 1,000 things.”5
Sometimes these are things that excite us, but if they aren’t vital to the idea, they
need to go.
Be brutal. If it’s essential, keep it. If it’s not, don’t.
Put your pruned elements to one side. You may be able to use them later. My
editor quoted these last sentences back to me when it came time to reduce the
word count on this very book. And she was right.

BREAK IT INTO LITTLE PIECES

This is all about turning a top-level idea into an idea you can actually implement.
It’s about moving from the what to the how.
If it’s a process, break it into steps. If it’s something physical, break it into its
constituent parts. If it’s something else, just break it apart in whatever way you
can.
It’s a good idea to divide it into big chunks first. And then carve up those big
chunks into smaller chunks.
For example, if you were looking at the customer journey in an online shop,
you might start with big chunks like:

Create account
Choose products
Checkout

You would then take each of these steps and break it down into smaller
elements. The checkout step might include steps like:

Display contents of shopping basket

Ask customer to select payment method
Ask customer to enter delivery address details
Take payment
Confirm purchase

As you can see, these steps can be further broken down into more steps.
 Each time you break the idea into pieces, ask if there’s a better way of doing
that step. And if the step is even necessary. Some of the most interesting results
can come from removing an element you thought was essential.
It’s a good idea to get a few people to do this independently, especially if you
can get people with different backgrounds and expertise. Their divergent
approach may cause them to break things down into very different steps. These
perspectives could open up new opportunities you hadn’t even considered.

BUFF, BUFF, BUFF

If there’s anything I’ve learned from 30 years working in all kinds of media
channels, it’s that completing something usually takes a lot more work than you
were expecting. I’ve frequently been found at my desk in the early hours of the
morning putting the finishing touches on things before launch. Because I don’t
believe that good enough is good enough.
As an artist, good enough probably won’t get you noticed.
As a business, good enough reflects on your organization and how much
respect you have for your audience.
You may need to be honest here and admit that you don’t personally have the
skills to execute things at the level you’re aiming for. If that’s the case, bring in
people who can. Pull favors if you have to. You’ve come this far and you’ve got
a great idea. It would be a shame if you turned it into something second-rate.

TEST

No matter how well you think through an idea, it never quite seems to work the
way you expected. As Woody Allen said, “If you want to make God laugh, tell
him about your plans.” I know that’s true from experience.
I’m lucky enough to speak fluent HTML, so whenever I get an idea for a
website, I just build it. It costs me nothing except my time. And each time I do it
I learn something new.
Whenever I get a site working, I ask my wife to use it and watch what she
does. No matter how much I plan for eventualities, she never seems to use the
site the way I expect. Even although my inner voice is exasperatedly muttering:
“What on earth are you doing?” I bite my tongue and watch what she does. I’ll
ask her why she’s done what she’s done, so as to understand her motivations,
and then return to my coding to adjust the site accordingly.
My wife is my one-person test lab. She’s a vital part of the process for me.
Even although my natural instinct is to tell her how she should be using my
latest digital creation, that wouldn’t be helpful. I can’t be at the side of everyone
who stumbles upon one of my sites on Google. My wife helps make the idea
stronger so that more people can get more out of it.
If you don’t test an idea before you release it into the world (or your
organization), it’s unlikely to be as good as it should be.

A POWERFUL SALES TOOL

Most of the time people simply turn their idea into a PowerPoint slide show and
present it to their boss. It then gets holes picked in it, the enthusiasm for the idea
wanes, and it never sees the light of day. For a number of reasons, the act of
prototyping and testing dramatically increases the chance of an idea working out.

THE DATA TO PROVE YOUR POINT

Good ideas tend to encounter resistance. People say “No” not because an idea is
wrong but because there’s not sufficient information to say “Yes.” Conducting a
test is the ideal way of plugging that information gap.

SPEAK THE LANGUAGE OF BUSINESS

Decision-makers like rational reasons. One of the most common questions I’ve
heard over many years of presenting ideas to clients is: “Can you show me
where this has worked before?” Obviously, when it comes to truly new ideas,
that’s a ridiculous thing to say. Successful test results give decision-makers
something more concrete to deal with.

SOMETHING TO HOLD ON TO
A prototype means you don’t have to rely on people’s imagination. Which is
great because some people don’t seem to like activating their imagination. They
think it’s unbusinesslike. Others have very good imaginations which can cause
another problem: you don’t have full control over what’s happening in their
heads. When we give people something to hold—whether that’s a physical
product, a mockup of a digital product or a printout of a system chart—it
eliminates the need to imagine something. I’ve personally found that mocking up
digital experiences and letting clients click and prod at them is far more
successful than just showing them a static printout.

IT SHOWS BELIEF
People buy into a team as well as a product. The big Silicon Valley investors
understand that. When you’ve gone as far as to build and test a prototype, it
shows that your heart is in it. It shows that you’ve got the passion and the energy
to make things happen. It makes you stand out from all the other people with
their monotonous PowerPoint decks.

When you’ve gone as far as to build and test a prototype, it

shows that your heart is in it

MUCH OF THE HARD WORK HAS ALREADY BEEN DONE

One of the biggest turn-offs for decision-makers is the idea of all the extra work,
meetings, and frustrations that a new project brings. If it’s not absolutely
necessary, there’s very little incentive to get behind it. When you’re standing in
front of them with a tested prototype, they realize that a lot of that painful
journey has already been done. They don’t need to worry about it. If they’re
impressed with what’s in their hands—and the evidence that it’s worth pursuing
—there’s a good chance their boss will be too.

THERE’S LESS MEDDLING

When you’ve taken an idea through to some level of execution, people are
unlikely to do too much unpicking of the work you’ve put in. So by prototyping
your idea, you get it further through the process before suffering the effects of
other people’s input. That gives you a better chance of having a solid and
focused foundation to build on when you’re given the green light.

HOW BIG SHOULD YOU GO?

Before you start with your prototyping and testing, work out exactly what you
need from this stage. It may be that you just need to sense-check the idea to see
that it works and is feasible. Or it could be that you want to continue improving
it using real-world feedback. Or perhaps you need some concrete figures to
convince decision-makers and win support.
Make sure you’re clear on the purpose before you start. It would be a shame to
go through the process and not end up with what you need at the end. It may
seem obvious, but it’s amazing how often people launch into the what of a
project without first nailing the why.
It may be that all you need is to create a paper prototype to make sure you’ve
got the logic and decision tree sorted out. Or it could be that you need to get a
3D model created to test the ergonomics. Or maybe you need to try out a new
process on a small number of your customers.
If you’re using the test phase to help sell your idea into decision-makers, it’s a
good idea to identify the information that will be most persuasive and design
your test around that.
The more effort you put into planning your prototyping and testing, the more
helpful it’s likely to be at the end.

CUTTING-EDGE WOODEN TECHNOLOGY

I’m what’s known as an “early adopter.” That means I tend to buy technology
while it’s still glitchy and annoying because I love the vision of what the product
is trying to do. Which has resulted in a box of disappointing gadgets that didn’t
quite live up to the dream.
The Palm Pilot was one of the rare exceptions that quickly found a place in
my life. I loved it. It was the fantastic result of a failed experiment called the
GriDPad,6 which was a handwriting-recognition tablet that came out in the late
1980s, a few years before Apple released their short-lived Newton device. These
products were the true predecessors of our current smartphones and tablets,
allowing people to sync data with their desktop computer so they could be
productive on the go. But the devices weren’t quite as portable as people would
have liked, and they never really took off.
Learning from his mistakes, Jeff Hawkins founded Palm Computing to carry
on his dream of portable productivity devices. This time he started with size—
the one element that led to the demise of the GRiDPad. He reckoned the ideal
size for a device would be something that could fit in a shirt pocket. So he went
out to his garage and cut a wooden block to size. This piece of wood became his
trusty companion for the next few months.
 Jeff would carry this lump of wood in his pocket, taking it out in meetings and
business situations to simulate checking his diary, taking notes or writing emails.
He ignored the strange looks he got because inside his head he was planning and
refining the product. He started printing out potential interface designs and
sticking them to the front of his trusty wooden prototype. He’d tap and scratch
on this imaginary screen, using a piece of chopstick as a stylus.
He carried on like this for weeks, acting as a one-man guinea pig with an
imaginary gadget. In this time he got to understand the moments you would use
the device, how to get an interface to work on a small screen, and what data
would need to be shared between your device and your main computer. Only
after this was sorted did he start thinking about the technology side.
Without this useless wooden prototype and a fantastic imagination, the hyper-
functional slice of glass you currently prod your finger at might have been a few
years behind where it is now.

PRACTICAL EXERCISE

DEVELOPING INSIGHT

You’ll have a better chance of generating great ideas if you get good at
finding great insights. Let’s practice finding the why behind the what.
First, gather some interesting observations. These could be about human
behavior, processes, design, or anything else. For example, you may notice
that people tend to pull ridiculous faces when they’re doing a selfie or that
wind tends to whip up litter into a mini-tornado at the corners of buildings.
Now start asking “Why” to discover the reason behind the observation.
You may need to take the Toyota approach and ask why a few times to get
to a useful answer. And you may need to do a bit of reading on psychology,
physics, or some other area of expertise to get the right answers. Finally,
come up with an idea that makes use of your insight. It could be a new
product, it could be an improvement to a system or something else.
The better you get at finding the reasons behind the observations, the
better you’ll be at unearthing useful insights.
 Chapter 7

DEVELOPING THE SKILLS

or

Creativity isn’t just one thing

There’s a guy you’ve probably encountered who apparently thought of things

years before anyone else did. He uses the phrase “I thought of that years ago” a
lot. He’ll claim to have thought up half the apps on your phone. He’ll have come
up with the concept of contactless payment long before any of the banks did.
Maybe he even envisioned the miniature plastic table that prevents the lid of
your pizza box sagging onto your pepperoni topping.
I think there’s a good chance that this guy is telling the truth. Most of the time
the companies who are first to market with a new product weren’t the first ones
to think of it. I’m not saying they stole the idea. I’m saying that lots of people
tend to have similar ideas around the same time simply because they are facing
the same facts and questions.
The guy in the pub probably has lots of ideas all the time. He just has no idea
how to take them further. Or maybe he’s too lazy to put in the groundwork, or
too scared to do something he might fail at.
Having an idea and making it happen calls for a number of skills. You need to
develop them all—or work with people who plug the gaps—if you want to go all
the way to implementation.
What might surprise you is that the ability to come up with ideas is right at the
bottom of the pile.
 The Creative Skill Pyramid – The rarer a skill, the more valuable it is

Each layer you rise in the pyramid requires a rarer and more valuable skill.
The more of these you develop, the more valuable you become. If you don’t
have them all, there’s very little chance of an idea seeing the light of day.

Having an idea and making it happen calls for a number of

skills

IMAGINATION

Before we get started, let’s give your mind a little exercise.

Picture a bright blue poodle on a skateboard.

Think of a name for a cross between a camel and a kangaroo.
Come up with a really stupid way to crack an egg.

How did you get on? If you came up with an answer for any of these, you’ve
got imagination. That’s great! You’ve made it onto the first level of our Creative
Skill Pyramid.
But don’t feel special just yet. The fact is that just about everyone makes it
onto this level, because humans are wired to come up with ideas. The guy in the
pub who thought of everything first exists at this level but probably hasn’t
moved beyond it.
Imagination is what we use to come up with things that don’t exist yet. You
can use it to produce pretty obvious stuff or you can use it to imagine incredible,
never-before-seen wonder stuff. You can use it as the vehicle to explore the land
beyond your norm. Whatever you do, just use it. The more you do, the better you
get at it.
JUDGMENT

If getting ideas is not uncommon, far rarer are the people who can recognize the
good ones. A trawl of the patent archives proves this. You’ll find jaw-dropping
ideas like an “apparatus for facilitating the birth of a child by centrifugal force,”1
an “electrified tablecloth” for repelling insects (and possibly stopping insolent
children from putting their elbows on the table), and the “Beerbrella” for
keeping your chilled brew out of direct sunlight. Clearly, not every idea is a
great idea.
But it’s possible to develop judgment. First, let’s look at developing your
judgment of something specific. If you were to hand me an old trombone, I’d
have no idea if it was any good. But I know I could learn. After asking some
experts, I’d be in a better place to judge. After I’d examined a hundred different
trombones, I’d be in a better place yet.
Judgment is the product of knowledge and experience, and you will develop it
faster by doing your research, speaking to specialists, and exposing yourself to
as much as possible. But there comes a time when we have to judge things that
fall outside our area of expertise. At this point, it’s good to understand how our
entire bodies are involved with judgment.
Over the years, I’ve seen countless great ideas die from bad judgment. The
decision-makers will often say things like ‘I’m just not feeling it’ or ‘that makes
me feel uncomfortable’ or ‘I don’t know what the right idea is but I’ll know it
when I see it’.
These individuals think they’re doing the right thing, but they’ve
misunderstood the situation. They assume that ideas come about in an
environment where emotion reigns supreme, so they should only judge ideas
using their emotions too. I think that’s misguided.
The concept of the “gut reaction” comes from the fact that we very often feel
a response to situations in our belly or chest. External stimuli can have a
physiological effect, making us “feel a bit funny.”
We’ve long known of the connection between the digestive tract and the
mind. Our digestive system is home to our enteric nervous system, which
contains about 100 million neurons—that’s more than a hamster has in its entire
body.2 So it’s no surprise that it’s also referred to as the second brain. But what
might be surprising is that 90 percent of the connections between the gut and the
brain flow in only one direction—and that’s upwards.3 The gut clearly has a
bigger effect on our thinking than our thinking has on the gut.
 When we’re highly stressed, we go into the state that’s known as “fight or
flight.” Our adrenal medulla floods our systems with epinephrine and
norepinephrine.4 Our digestive tracts grind to a halt, our bladders relax, our heart
rate increases, blood vessels open up, and we can go pale or flush as blood is
redirected around our system. We all know what that feels like.
It used to be assumed that the emotions we felt created these physiological
reactions, but a current theory is that we experience the physiological state first
and then we scan our environments for cues before we interpret it as emotions.5
If we want to judge well, we can’t just obey these physiological responses. We
can’t just reject things because they make us feel uncomfortable. Very often our
gut will react because the idea is ticking the right boxes. If we’re looking for
something that’s new and challenges the status quo, the chances are it will make
us feel uncomfortable. It will set our guts in action for the right reason. We need
to interpret this response.
You do that by checking your reaction with your rational, conscious brain. If
you know what the criteria are for a successful idea, you can measure it against
that. If you don’t, you can say “I don’t know just now” and then go away and
work out the criteria before you respond.
Judgment takes experience and wisdom. Just going on gut reaction is like
letting a timid hamster make your decisions for you. Sadly, that’s how most
organizations seem to operate.

ADAPTABILITY

The journey from identified problem to implemented solution is rarely direct or

simple. If you’re doing something that’s never been done before—or at least that
you’ve never done before—there will be lots of lessons to learn along the way.
You’ll encounter hurdles, unexpected developments, and resistance. It’s not
possible to undertake this journey without picking up new information that could
impact the end result. It’s a good idea to learn from it.
Anyone who’s started up a business will understand the need to pivot. I know
this from experience. I left the advertising industry in 2010 to start a training
company. I’d set up a learning program at my last agency, seen the immediate
impact it had on the quality of work, and decided that I’d offer it to the rest of
the industry. Before I handed in my resignation, I floated the idea around and
had lots of interest from agencies. It seemed like a great idea. As soon as I was
out in the market, however, the great recession hit the world of advertising and
training budgets were frozen. The agencies that were interested in hiring my
services went silent and I found myself without any income. I had no choice but
to change direction.
I turned to the world of education and was very soon running courses in
universities around the world. I taught media in Chile, digital creativity in
Singapore, 360° film-making in New York. This led to me doing more public
speaking. Which led to me hosting events. Which led to me writing, directing,
and presenting a six-part television series. Which has led to me being paid to
speak. Which has led to me having more time to develop and test my
approaches. Which has led to this book.
My life is a constant succession of pivots. I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Because, if you do it right, it improves the end result.

The right kind of changes will make your idea better and open up opportunities

THE RIGHT KIND OF PIVOT

This isn’t about constantly altering your idea every time a new piece of
information or criticism comes your way. In his brilliant book Hey Whipple,
Squeeze This, Luke Sullivan uses the phrase “pecked to death by ducks” to
describe the cumulative effect of lots of minor changes. A peck from one duck
won’t do you much damage, but lots of pecks will kill you. So it is with
feedback on ideas.
If your idea is any good you won’t have any shortage of people wanting to
change it. People will tell you what they think because they want to sound wise,
they want to tell people they were instrumental to the idea’s success, they’re
worried about the knock-on implications or—occasionally—because they
genuinely want to make the idea better. Not all feedback is valuable and some of
it can be downright damaging.

If your idea is any good you won’t have any shortage of people
wanting to change it

You need to know how to stay on track and know when to pivot. Here are
some pointers:

Hold on to the magic First of all, you need to define what it is that
makes the idea so good. This will probably be a short paragraph or a
handful of bullet points. If you’re not clear what the magic is, there’s a
good chance you’ll lose or damage it as you travel through the process.
Collect the information When you come across new learnings or
feedback, hold on to it. Don’t make a quick rash decision. Put all the
information in one place so you don’t lose it.
Interpret the information Don’t just take everything on face value.
Very often people offer a specific change rather than an observation
because they think it makes them sound smarter. This can lead you down
the wrong path if you don’t question it. For example, someone might tell
you that a button in an app should be bigger. What they’re telling you is
that it wasn’t clear enough what they needed to do in order to take action.
That could be because the layout is too confusing, or the words on the
button not clear enough, or that the screen size of their device results in a
sub-optimal design. You need to apply some intelligence to find the reason
behind an observation or piece of feedback.
Decide what action to take Now take your list of potential amends
and compare each item with your definition of what makes the idea
magical. If taking action helps you make the idea stronger, execute it
better, simplify it, or generally improve it, then go for it. Otherwise, reject
it. Or reinterpret it. Never do anything just because someone told you to.
Your job is to end up with the best results, not to massage someone’s
fragile ego. This may require some diplomacy, but the alternative path
results in a less effective idea, a painful journey through the process, and
little satisfaction at the end.
 Never stop defending the idea. It’s easier to damage it than it is to improve it.
Only make a change if you’re making it better. And if you do, adjust your vision
accordingly to embrace the new magic you’ve just added.

COMMUNICATION

Everyone is in sales, whether they like it or not. Even the best ideas need to be
sold to people. Maybe even more so than average, unadventurous ideas.
You’ll doubtless have heard people harping on about having a good elevator
pitch. This is simply their way of saying you need to understand how to tell
people about your idea. I experienced this a few weeks ago in relation to this
very book. While chatting with Soon Yu, my friend and co-author of Iconic
Advantage, he asked me how I was describing this book to people. What was I
saying that quickly put across what it was all about?
I wasn’t prepared to answer his question. I bumbled. After our call, I set off at
once to write a one-sentence description. I came up with “a practical guide on
how people and organizations can have better ideas.” There are lots of other
things I wanted to add, but short and simple comes first. People don’t need all
the information. They just need to know what applies to them. And they’ve got
lots of other things happening in their life, so you need to keep it short.
Here are some communication tips from a couple of decades working in the
advertising industry.

KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE

This is the most obvious thing, but it’s often the most neglected. Most
presentations, talks, and sales meetings are focused on someone communicating
information they have. The presenter would offer exactly the same information
to anyone, regardless of who they are. Too many presenters imagine that because
the product doesn’t change, their message doesn’t need to change either.
But the product does change, depending on who you’re speaking to. A bottle
of whisky means different things to a 16-year-old boy, a connoisseur, a
teetotaler, and a recovering alcoholic. A Range Rover means different things to a
farmer, an investment banker, and an environmental activist.
If you understand your audience, you understand their needs, desires,
motivations, and turn-offs. And that becomes the lens you apply to your idea
when you talk about it.
BENEFITS BEAT FEATURES
When you’ve put lots of energy and effort into developing an idea, you know the
reasons for each feature you’ve added. You know how smart the decisions were
that led to their inclusion. And because that interests you, you probably want to
tell people about them. But that is a mistake. If you focus on the features of a
product, you’re saying that the product is more important to you than the
audience you’re talking to.
This is where you use your understanding of the person you’re speaking to.
Instead of telling them all about the great stuff in your product, you need to tell
them about all the great benefits it will offer them. Those benefits will vary with
each audience. Users will want to know how it makes their life easier. Decision-
makers may want to know how it will make them look good (though they may
not admit it’s a priority). Investors just want to know how much return they can
get and how quickly they’ll get it.
People’s favorite subject is themselves. So make them central to your story by
tailoring your message to their needs.

HAVE A FLOW
When you’re excited about something, the words can just flow off your tongue.
But that can be a nightmare to listen to. People don’t know quite what to latch on
to, and it can end up bamboozling them. You need some sort of sequence to
follow.
The three-act structure is a classic storytelling technique that you can lift from
the worlds of theater and film. Act One sets the scene and introduces the
characters. Act Two builds tension on the way to the confrontation. Act Three
resolves the story. Copywriters generally use a similar flow that goes “We
understand you,” “Here’s a problem you’ll identify with,” and “Here’s the
solution.” In this case, the solution is the product.
If you use this kind of flow, you’re more likely to get people on side and help
them understand what’s so great about your idea.

AIM TO CHANGE YOUR LISTENER

Don’t forget that the role of any communication is to shift the listener from one
state to another. The starting state may be that they are frustrated with
competitors overtaking them in the marketplace; the end state may be that they
see your idea as a way of remedying that.
 The job of any communication is to get them from state A to state B as
quickly and effectively as possible. A fifty-slide PowerPoint deck probably isn’t
the best way to do that. It’s certainly not a way to get their attention and stand
out. If you aim to change people rather than just give them information, your
approach to communication will be entirely different.

TELL PEOPLE WHAT TO DO

Don’t be embarrassed to ask for the sale. If someone is being good enough to
listen to you, you need to tell them what you want them to do with that
information. It could be “I’m looking for £6.3 million for a 20 percent stake,” “I
want your public support to assemble a team to develop it” or “I want your
honest feedback to help me make it better.” If people don’t know what to do,
they’ll probably do nothing. And that’s a waste of everyone’s time.

PERSUASION

If you want to get people to work with you and put their energy into making
your idea a reality, you need to give them a reason to do so. Your
communication skills go some way towards helping you get these people on
board, but your actions are just as important.

Share something of value This isn’t necessarily monetary value

(although it can be). It’s often more powerful if you tap into other human
motivations. People may be motivated by recognition, reaping some of the
credit, the chance to learn something new, the opportunity to look smart,
the possibility of glamour, or a financial share in any success. If you find
the thing that really motivates them—and can actually deliver on it—
they’ll put a lot more energy into the project.
Give them autonomy If instead of telling people what to do, you allow
them to do things their own way, you’ll get a lot more out of them. A
feeling of control and a chance to prove yourself are amazing motivators.
This will keep people engaged, flexible, and focused on success.
Share a vision People will get behind an activity that offers a higher
purpose. If your vision is about making life better for customers, making
people think about an important issue, or anything else that makes their
world a little bit better, people will get behind you. And they’ll stay
aligned with your goal throughout the journey.
 Be good to work with If you’re a tyrant, you’ll lose people. If you
enjoy the power of telling people what to do, your project will suffer.
Creative projects need a softer touch. Things will get stressful and you’ll
feel lost sometimes. You’ll need the team to support you at times, and if
you’re a nightmare to work with, they just won’t do that.

Persuasion skills are still important if you’re doing the whole process by
yourself. If you’re an artist or a musician or a comedian, you still need to
convince people to give you your big break. You need to convince people to
venture away from their comfy settees to experience your work. And you
probably want them to see some value in what you’re doing.
That requires persuasion. Without the ability to get other people on board,
even the best idea will never succeed.

TENACITY

Rarest of all is the ability to see projects through to completion. Few ideas make
it past the flip chart, layout pad, or Post-it note. Most ideas that make it beyond
that wither at the first sign of resistance. The rare few that get initial support are
often bruised, maimed, or even butchered before they make it to the finish line.
It requires tenacity to make it past the naysayers, the crippling review meetings,
and the unexpected obstacles that litter the path. Tenacity is the one attribute that
differentiates the successful creator from the bedroom dabbler.

Rarest of all is the ability to see projects through to completion

Tenacity can often come across as over-confident pig-headedness, but to those

on the creation side of the fence, it’s about putting the idea first rather than
themselves. Ideas lack the capacity to defend themselves, and their enemies are
many. It’s about having confidence in the idea and doing everything you can to
protect it. That makes the quest noble rather than arrogant.
Tenacity may be better developed in some people, but it’s a skill that can be
developed. And it’s possibly the most valuable skill you can have if you want to
share your ideas with the world.
BECOME A COMPLETER
I’ve always been great at starting projects, but for a long time I was really
terrible at finishing them. I suffered from Shiny New Object Syndrome. That’s
where you abandon old projects to start new ones because the inception of an
idea is so much more exciting than its implementation. I got a global patent for a
tent peg I invented, but I never saw it through to a finished product. I wrote and
recorded demos for dozens of songs, but I never created an album. I came up
with business ideas, designed the logos, wrote the marketing materials, and
never launched them.
About fifteen years ago I realized I couldn’t go on this way. I had to start
completing.
I started small. I set myself little projects I could complete in a night. Then I
moved on to things that might take a weekend. Then ideas that could be
achieved in a week. And eventually, I moved up to projects that would last
several weeks.
This practice is important for two reasons. The first is that it gets you used to
fighting small battles and facing manageable hurdles. The more you do it, the
more resilience and stamina you develop. As you start to deal with bigger
challenges, you find out they often break down into smaller, more manageable
problems. You discover that all the information you need is available to you
online. And that people with more experience are usually happy to give you
advice and assistance. You go from being an excitable sprinter who is easily
exhausted to a long-distance runner who understands that barriers are there to be
pushed through.
The second reason is that you feel the joy of finishing. This is an addictive
high. Once you’ve experienced the satisfaction of getting to the end of a project,
you’ll want to do it again. And again. The rewarding feeling you get at the end
makes all the hard work worth it. In fact, the more work you’ve put in, the
bigger the high. This drives you through the difficult parts of the project. It gives
you more chance to reach the finish in good shape.

START SIDE PROJECTS

It may be that your job doesn’t give you many opportunities to have ideas and
make them happen. Don’t let that stop you. This is why lots of people start side
projects.
Technology lets you do just about anything these days. It gives you access to
tutorials on everything from Malaysian cooking to body modification. And free
software opens up a world of incredible opportunities. Twenty-five years ago I
worked in a recording studio that had a mixing desk twice as wide as my settee
and racks of effects that blinked like a computer in a 1970s sci-fi film. The
amount of specialist technology required kept recording in the hands of the
professionals. It’s all changed now. These days I have far more flexibility in
Garageband than I ever had back then. It’s now about ability rather than
equipment.
There’s no better way to pick up skills than by practicing them. And the best
way you can do that is by starting your own projects.

GET THINGS OUT FASTER

The longer it takes you to do something, the more obstacles you’ll encounter. If
you don’t want to deal with as many obstacles, shorten the time you take to
finish it. This doesn’t mean cutting corners and releasing something that’s
substandard. It’s about aiming for a minimum viable product—a simpler
functional version that you can develop further if you want to. That’s why the
RIGHT Thinking approach is focused on getting you to a prototype rather than
just a PowerPoint show.
When you make it real, it’s easier for everyone to understand. You can maybe
get results from it that will help you generate support. And it gives you the
completer’s buzz that will drive you through the next development of the idea.
Tenacity is a rare and valuable superpower. Develop it and the world is yours.

PRACTICAL EXERCISE

IDENTIFY YOUR CREATIVE SKILLSET

Take another look at the Creative Skill Pyramid at the start of the chapter
and work out which skills you’ve got and which ones you need to develop.
Start at the bottom, because you’ve got imagination already. But, of course,
there is lots you can do to improve it. Like feeding your mind with more
interesting stuff.
Now work your way up, being honest about how good your skills are at
each level.
Decide which skills you need to work on the most and make a plan for
how you’re going to do that. Some skills, like communication and
persuasion, can be improved by taking some online courses, reading books,
or person-to-person training. But other skills, like judgment and
adaptability, will require more regular, applied effort.
Pin your plan to the wall, add important dates to your diary, create a to-
do list. The faster you build these skills, the sooner you’ll see success.
 Chapter 8

GET TO KNOW YOURSELF

or

Let’s find your creative mojo

As we’ve already shown, it is creative thinking that makes us human. It’s what
led us off the prairies and into cities. It’s what has given us all the technology
and innovations that we would struggle to survive without. It took us to the
moon, generated millions of songs in every language, created Hollywood,
produced the laptop I’m tapping away on, and at some point it may just wipe us
out of existence.
The more creative thinking we collectively do as a species, the faster we
develop, and the sooner we get to hover cars, immortality, and interstellar travel.
It’s what gives us dreams and what makes our dreams become reality.
Our thinking didn’t just create all the amazing things around us, it created
mankind. This would be a terribly dreary existence without it.
This section is focused on giving you everything you need to know to become
an ideas machine. We’re not going to be talking about discovering your muse or
channeling your inner Picasso. And we’re not going to be telling you how to be
the loudest voice in a brainstorm. Instead, we’re going to look at the attitude,
habits, and mental skills that will help you become a more effective creative
thinker.
There are no shortcuts here. There are no hacks to help you “look” more
creative. This is about the stuff that will actually lead to better creative ideas.
Let’s go!

DEVELOPING YOUR DIVERGENCY

You can’t be an explorer by staying part of the pack. You need to leave the
comfortable security of the group behind and venture into new territories. You
need to experience things the masses don’t, question things the masses do, and
share ideas that may change the direction people are heading in.
You do that by developing your divergency.
Everything that makes your mind different makes your thinking valuable.
Many of these differences are traditionally seen as negatives, but they don’t have
to be. Divergence is a superpower. And it’s one we can all develop.

Everything that makes your mind different makes your thinking

valuable

FIND YOUR CREATIVE MOJO

We don’t all operate in the same way. Just because some people find scrawling
in a Moleskine with a fountain pen while listening to Mumford and Sons in an
organic coffee shop works for them, it doesn’t mean it will work for you.
I continue to explore different environments and ways of working. Right now,
I’m tapping away in the cafe at my local gym. I’ve just finished a pilates class
which has given me a much-needed mental break. And I’ll shortly be taking my
notebook to the jacuzzi so that I can remove myself from technology and scrawl
my thoughts in pencil. As you can see, it gives me different working modes for
different tasks. It may sound ridiculous—and your boss is unlikely to approve of
such behavior—but it works for me.
I recommend you spend a bit of time finding out what works best for you. Just
ask yourself a few questions.

WHEN?
Are you a morning person or a night person? Or just a daytime person? If you
have a strong preference for a particular time, use it. My careers in the creative
industries proved to me that ideas don’t restrict themselves to office hours. More
often than not the best thoughts come to you during evenings and weekends.
That’s part of the job. No one asks for more money for these extra hours,
because their motivation is to work on brilliant ideas. If your motivation is the
same, you may need to look beyond the 9 to 5.
WHERE?
I personally don’t work well in offices. I am regularly offered free desk space in
businesses but I never take it because I know it doesn’t work for me. If you find
it hard to think at your desk or any other part of the office, try to escape and find
places that do it for you.
I look for places that have the right balance of uninterrupted isolation and
low-level distractions. Airplanes are pretty much my ideal office. I pop my
earbuds in and get my laptop out. If I need a distraction, I look across the aisle
and see a six-year-old picking their nose. Or look out the window and let my
mind drift along with the clouds far below me.
Find the places that work for you. Try libraries, museums, park benches, pubs,
coffee shops, jacuzzis, and even the comfort of your own bed. If one of these
places helps you think more effectively, use it.

WHAT?
It’s hard to work on stuff that doesn’t motivate you. So what is it that drives
you? Maybe you’d like to change the world for the better. Or maybe you’re after
recognition and credit. Or maybe you want to do something that will improve
your chances of promotion.
Once you’ve found your motivators, find your demotivators. I’ve personally
refused to work on projects that I had a moral objection to. It’s not just about
trying to keep my soul clean (too late for that, I’m afraid), it’s also because I
know I would struggle to do the job justice when my heart’s not in it. If you
know what drives you and what drains you, you’ll have more chance of picking
projects that excite you.

HOW?
Do you know how you work best? It’s probably not by being thrust immediately
into a brainstorm with no prior knowledge of the problem. Some people work
better by themselves, some in pairs or small teams.
And what about deadlines? Do you like to have the luxury of time or do you
prefer a bit of pressure? People work in different ways depending on whether
they are introverted or extroverted, experienced or novice, methodical or
disorganized. If you don’t understand what works for you, you’ll have no choice
but to work in the way that others dictate for you.

WHO?
When it comes to creativity, there are two types of people: those who make the
idea smaller and those who make it bigger. You want to work with the latter.
You’ll find that some people inspire you and the ideas flow. That’s because they
welcome your thinking and happily share their own. These people are sadly
pretty rare. It’s more common for people to criticize ideas or simply shut them
down. These people usually think they’re adding value by preventing wasted
thought, but they actually stop the creative flow and prevent potentially
transformative ideas from ever being uttered. Do everything you can to work
with the people who grow ideas and avoid the ones who kill them. If you know
who is who, you’ll have far more success with your thinking.

Write down your thoughts on each of these and use them to guide you. If you’re
not sure of the answers to any of them, experiment to discover what works best
for you. These elements are the foundation to build great ideas on. Go and find
your mojo!

HARNESS YOUR INVOLUNTARY DIVERGENCE

If you have a natural difference, you have an immediate advantage. What makes
you different to the majority is what gives you valuable perspectives,
knowledge, and ways of doing things. But you can only harness this properly if
you understand what makes it a benefit and how you can use it.
Divergence isn’t just about you; it’s also about the group you’re part of.
Context is everything. If you’re physically disabled, your disability offers little
distinction if you’re surrounded by other physically disabled people. But when
you’re in an organization predominantly staffed by able-bodied people, your
divergence can offer real value. However, your difference is worth little if you
ignore it and try to fit in with everyone else in the group. In that case it becomes
superficial, and you become only as valuable as anyone else who conforms to
the norm.
Of course, it’s easy for me to say this as a white, university-educated man. I
know that I’ve led a privileged life: I can never claim to know what it’s like to
be a true minority in the workplace. But I have used a small involuntary
divergence to my advantage over the years.
When I first moved down to London to work, I found myself the only person
in the office with a Scottish accent. This wasn’t a big difference, but it was
something I could use to help me in my day job. In meetings I would speak my
mind and give my opinion, regularly caveating my actions as being the natural
behavior of a straight-talking Scot. I could get to the issue faster without having
to pussyfoot around with social niceties. This became a real advantage, and I got
a reputation as a creative leader.
When I left Scotland, I was considered to be a junior in the industry. Within
two years of moving to London, I was running creative departments. I wouldn’t
have been able to do that if I’d just fitted in.

Your difference is worth little if you ignore it and try to fit in with
everyone else in the group

DEVELOPING YOUR VOLUNTARY DIVERGENCE

Whether or not you have natural divergence, you can still develop your
voluntary divergence. The main ones we covered earlier are contrarianism,
dreaminess, altered states, and play.
Let’s go through them in order.

CONTRARINESS
You can start doing this by developing the habit of asking “Why?” a lot. If you
don’t know why you’re doing something, there’s a good chance it’s not the right
thing to do.
It’s amazing how seldom people actually question the things they do on
autopilot. Like peeling a banana with the stalk at the top. Chimpanzees worked
out a long time ago that it was easier to hold it the other way up and pinch the
end to break it. The banana peels far easier without you having to dig a nail into
the skin.
People tend to do things because they’ve always done them that way. Or
because other people do it that way. Repeatedly asking “Why?” opens up a
world of new opportunities. But you can’t just stop there.
If you merely question everything, you become obstructive. And that makes
you a problem. You need to come up with alternatives too.
When you ask why properly, you get valuable information. You find out
things like:

What you’re trying to achieve

 How the current solution came to be
The restrictions you’re working within
Who is ultimately responsible for this thing
The criteria that would make a successful solution

This gives you the information you need to come up with alternatives. It’s
how you generate ideas that will make things faster, better, more interesting,
more efficient, or cheaper. If you come up with a valuable idea, it makes you
valuable too.
Don’t just disagree. Offer better alternatives.

DREAMINESS
Daydreaming has a bad rap. It’s seen as the opposite of being productive. But if
you’re after good ideas, it’s the very thing that’s most likely to get you there.
When you let your mind drift you activate your Default Mode Network.1 This
is the state that allows you to build mental simulations based on your knowledge,
past experiences, and understandings of the world. It specializes in imagining
future outcomes and picturing alternative scenarios. This is the state you’re in
when you start replaying situations in your head, imagining the witty put-down
you could have made instead of the inarticulate mumble that actually fell out of
your mouth.
Without an inspiring problem to work on, your brain will put its imagination
to use on romantic fantasies, self-reflection, or prancing across a rainbow on a
unicorn. But you can put it to work on solving problems too.
You first need to get the information into your head and understand the
moving parts of the issue you’re dealing with. But once you understand the facts,
it can be useful to kick back and let your mind drift. Imagine possibilities.
Picture what might happen if you change certain elements. Put yourself in other
people’s shoes to get an understanding of how they might interact with your
ideas. Write down your thoughts as you go. If it’s a good thought, spend time
developing it.
This kind of thinking gives you access to ideas that you just can’t get by
consciously applying your mind. But you may need to find a good place to do it.
Your office desk is probably not the ideal place for dreaming.
One of the best ways to get into this state is to do a mentally undemanding
task like washing the dishes, having a shower, or going for a walk.2 When you
do menial activities like these, your brain will naturally start to wander. And
that’s exactly what you want. Plus, it makes you look busy, so people don’t think
you’re just being a slacker.

ALTERED STATES
If you’re working by yourself on your own project, you can be as drunk or as
high as you want. I’m not going to judge you for that. But I will recommend you
don’t rely on this approach. That’s opening a can of worms that’s hard to close.
You just don’t need to use controlled substances to get your mind in a valuably
different place.
In recent years, lots of companies have been putting on mindfulness sessions
for their employees. That’s a great thing if it helps them reduce stress. But it
turns out that a particular kind of meditation also appears to be good for creative
thinking. A study done at Leiden University in the Netherlands got test subjects
to spend 25 minutes meditating before they set them some creative tests.3 These
individuals were a mix of people who were experienced meditators as well as
some people who had never done it before. The researchers found that Open
Monitoring meditation, where people are receptive to all thoughts and
sensations, resulted in better divergent thinking, whereas Focused Attention
meditation, where people try to focus on just one thing, had no noticeable effect.
Most interestingly, it worked just as well on novices as it did on those who
regularly practiced meditation. If you want to try it yourself, just search for
“body scan meditation” on YouTube or Spotify.
Exercise is another great way to alter your mental state. As well as the
obvious long-term benefits, getting your heart pounding releases hormones and
neurochemicals that improve your thinking.4 For a start, it releases endorphins
that reduce stress and improve your feeling of wellbeing. Just as stress closes
down the mind to a kind of hyper-focused tunnel vision, happiness opens it up to
more opportunities.
In a test that set out to explore the effect of happiness, doctors were asked to
make a diagnosis based on the contents of a hypothetical patient file.5 On the
way into the test, half of them were given a bag of candy (which they could eat
later) as a thank you for participating. The other half were given a stack of
medical journals to study in advance. The difference between the two groups
was startling. The simple act of putting doctors in a good mood by handing them
some sweets led to them giving the correct diagnosis twice as fast as the other
doctors. They were also better at considering different possibilities, as opposed
to sticking to their first idea and trying to make the facts fit.
 There are lots of ways to change the way your brain functions. But the main
lesson here is probably to carry a bag of gummy bears with you next time you
visit the doctor.

PLAY
Play is another way to get out of your mind. And, strangely, it’s far less accepted
by most adults. Play is simply a framework that allows you to think in a different
way for a limited period of time. You can use it to help you approach problems
in new ways, but you don’t always need to have a purpose for it.
Tinkering and purposeless play is a great way of discovering opportunities
that conscious applied thought would never lead you to. I reckon that most early
human discoveries like the flute, flint knapping, knots, and pigments came from
tinkering rather than through focused thought. They weren’t trying to solve any
problems, they simply unlocked the potential of objects by accident. This is a
seriously underused approach.

Play is simply a framework that allows you to think in a different

way for a limited period of time

Tinkering isn’t just about physical objects. You can just as easily tinker with
digital products—in fact, many of them seem to be built for that very use. There
are lots of publicly available data-sets you can play with and plenty of digital
functionality you can access through APIs (these are like digital sockets that
allow you to plug into online services like GoogleMaps or Spotify). You only
get to understand the power of these things by tinkering with them. The tinkering
results in learnings that can then be applied to real-world problems.
Most of the time, however, play is used to give new perspectives and generate
new thoughts for a specific purpose. To do this successfully, you need to remove
yourself—and anyone else you’re going to play with—from the factors that
constrain your thinking to normative approaches. These are things like internal
politics, your environment, your assumptions, and a joyless workaday approach.
You may believe that to have any serious outcome, you need to think in a serious
way, but the opposite is true. Play should be fun. Because when you’re having
fun, you’re in a curious state. And curiosity is what leads to new ideas.
OOOH! HOW DOES THAT WORK?

If there’s one natural attribute that gives you a real advantage when it comes to
generating ideas, it’s curiosity. The most creatively productive people I know are
incessantly curious. They just can’t help it. They love discovering new things
and feeding their minds. So their eyes are always open and their minds are
always questioning. Many of them carry around notebooks to jot down the stuff
they spot so they can use it at a later date.
Curiosity leads people to keep digging until they understand the reason why
something happens. It leads them to wonder what would happen if you
combined this with that. It leads them to tinker and ponder and question and
challenge. If it wasn’t for curiosity none of the things that currently surround you
would exist.
Curiosity is natural in kids. There is a whole world for them to discover, after
all. But most people lose their curiosity as they grow older. By the time they
reach adulthood, it’s just a shadow of what it formerly was.
It doesn’t have to be that way. You can always reignite it. All you have to do
is identify what interests you, put some time aside to immerse yourself in it, and
let your mind do the rest.

RESTLESS CREATIVE EXPLORERS

There are some people who get so fired up by learning new stuff that it’s hard to
keep up with what they’re doing. I’m one of these people. I’ve been a musician,
a stand-up comedian, an illustrator, a breakfast show DJ, a veterinary assistant, a
farmhand, a busker, a patented inventor, a writer, a lecturer, a designer, a TV
presenter, a director, and a number of other things. I regularly develop new
interests, like photography, jam making, brewing, animation, gin making,
furniture design, and learning a new language. After I’m done with this book,
I’m considering learning watercolor painting.
This ever-expanding breadth of interests has often been seen as a problem.
However, in the last few years, all my disparate skills and knowledge have come
together under one unified banner. Now everything I do is focused on
demystifying creativity and innovation. Each of my skills is simply a channel
that helps me achieve that aim. My breadth of interests used to be a weakness.
Now it’s my biggest strength.
 A similar transformation recently happened to a friend of mine. Tony Patrick
is an amazing polymath. In the years I’ve known him, he’s been a screenwriter, a
musician, a traveler, a teacher, a bartender, the founder of an eSports team, and
now he’s a graphic novel writer. As I type this, he’s just finished the third issue
of his latest DC Comics series, Batman and the Signal. And you can find his
short film Black Card on HBO.
For years our friends would wonder when he was going to grow up and settle
down. He never did. As Tony said, “Polymaths encounter a hell of a lot of
criticism and judgment. Perhaps you’re flighty or fickle. You’re a musician this
week and you’re a chef this week. You have no direction. And I think a lot of
people have it wrong.”6
What people don’t understand is that the motivation for polymaths is usually
not to find a destination, it’s to enjoy the journey.
“It’s the process that becomes fulfilling, not the result. But that’s a different
kind of wiring, if you will. And for one to commit to that or allow themselves to
be a polymath, that’s an incredible revolutionary act.”
That’s not an understatement. People like Tony turn their back on society’s
assumption that you must find one thing and stick to it. They’re committed to
discovery. But, like me, Tony’s disparate interests have converged into a unified
purpose.
“Now I’ve proclaimed myself as a World Builder.” Like most people, you’ll
be wondering what on earth that is. Tony explains: “It’s taking real-world data
and science and using that to create fictional worlds or projected futures which
can have a real-world impact.”
And that’s a really valuable purpose. Much of the technology we have today
comes from science fiction. The way we interact with technology is becoming
more and more like Minority Report. Star Trek helped to lead us towards all-
knowing, pocket-sized, voice-operated devices, as well as fully immersive VR
experiences. The entertainment industry invented our today. If we want
humanity to head towards a rosy tomorrow, we really need to start inventing it
now.
Tony has become the living embodiment of one of humanity’s creative
explorers. He’s still not understood by his friends and family—but he’s hard at
work creating their future, regardless.

LONE WOLVES AND ROAMING PACKS

The popular image of creative thinkers is pretty inaccurate. We often think of
them as solitary geniuses, bravely battling against a world that misunderstands
them. But as much as these individuals deserve credit for driving their
innovations, they probably can’t take credit for all of it.
People who make breakthroughs tend to surround themselves with others who
support them, collaborate with them, and use their own expertise to help make
the ideas happen. Just look at what Elon Musk has accomplished in the last few
years. He had no expertise in space travel before he began SpaceX. He didn’t
have much working knowledge about magnetic levitation technology before he
started work on his Hyperloop. And he wasn’t trained in car design before he
started Tesla Motors. He founded all of these companies with a vision and then
surrounded himself with the expertise. He was the original thinker who gathered
the doers. And together they’ve made amazing things happen.
This is nothing new. In the late 1800s, Toulouse-Lautrec organized salons
where artists, dancers, musicians, actors, writers, and thinkers would meet to
debate and exchange ideas. One regular attendee was Vincent Van Gogh. These
gatherings introduced him to new artistic styles and influences. Without this
network of like minds, it’s unlikely he’d have reached the artistic heights he did.
Sadly, he didn’t live long enough to see his own success.
It’s normal for one person to take all the credit. It’s easier for the writers of
history books. But most successful thinkers only achieve their success thanks to
the shoulders of giants, the support of their peers, and the hard work of
uncredited colleagues.
If you want to do anything of any significance, don’t try to do it alone.

PRACTICAL EXERCISE

FINDING THE RIGHT COLLABORATORS

Thanks to the Internet, you can learn just about anything. A quick search
will bring up a list of online guides and tutorial videos, many of which are
free. But that doesn’t mean you should learn everything. The more complex
the project, the more skills it needs to make it happen. If you put your time
into filling the gaps, you’re taking it away from doing a good job at
something else. It took me a long time to learn that often it was better to
work with brilliant people who would do an amazing job than to invest the
time learning how to do something adequately myself.
At the start of a project, it’s good to think about assembling the right
team. Here are a few questions to help you plan:

WHAT SKILLS DO YOU NEED?

Look at the project from start to finish and make a list of all the skills you
think you’ll need. This will probably include things like project
management, research, strategic thinking, idea generation, prototyping,
finding suppliers, and sales. Make the list as exhaustive as you can.

WHAT SKILLS DO YOU HAVE?

Be realistic and tick off the things you have experience of and are happy to
do. These will be your responsibility.

WHAT SKILLS CAN YOU LEARN?

Are there any skills you can learn for the project? Be realistic about time
and how much knowledge the skills require. Make sure they’re also things
you want to learn. If they don’t interest you or motivate you—or if they
need a depth of expertise—don’t volunteer for them.

WHAT SKILLS DO YOU NEED TO FILL?

Whatever’s left on your list are the skills you need to outsource. Your job is
now to find the right people. Choose carefully. You want people with good
skills but you also need to make sure they’re people you can work with who
will get behind the project. Otherwise, they can sap your energy, create
more work, and put the entire project at risk.
 Chapter 9

SHAPING YOUR MIND

or

Fill your brain with good stuff

When I lived by myself, there was an experience I often had just before I
decided to take a trip to the supermarket. I’d open the fridge, take a look at the
shelves, rummage around in the salad drawers, and inspect the line of jars in the
back of the door. At that point, I’d sadly realize I didn’t have the right
ingredients to make a decent meal, so I’d revert to something easy and familiar.
That usually involved boiling some pasta and finishing off a jar of pesto that was
on one side or other of a sell-by date. You might be able to relate.
In this situation, the only thing that would make things better was a trip to
Tesco.
It’s pretty obvious, isn’t it?
Yet, as someone who helps people and businesses come up with better ideas,
I’ve regularly been asked to teach idea-generation techniques. Of course I can do
that, but it doesn’t address the real problem. It’s like teaching people how to
sharpen a knife or chop an onion or fillet a halibut. They’re good skills to have,
but they won’t take you far when you have a badly stocked larder filled with
generic ingredients.
Up until this point, we’ve mainly looked at how you can encourage your mind
to work differently to come up with different ideas. We’ve focused on taking the
knowledge that’s in your head and doing more with it. But if you want to really
supercharge your creative thinking, you need to get into the habit of stocking the
shelves in your brain.
To put it simply, the broader your thinking and knowledge, the more
opportunities you have for ideas. This section is about helping you develop the
habits that will increase your chances of coming up with great ideas.
INPUT. PROCESS. OUTPUT.

OK. Let’s get this clear first. The brain is not like a computer. It handles
uncertainty, doubt, and probability completely differently to a computer. It
doesn’t store information accurately, like saving on a hard drive. And it
processes information unpredictably, depending on the weather, how sexy it
feels, and a myriad of other whimsical factors. This organic temperamentality is
what makes our brains so good.

Narrow input limits your potential for having ideas

But like computers, our brains follow the classic flow of input, process,
output. If you’ve got limited input, you’ll have limited output.
In organizations, this narrow field of information tends to be pretty similar for
everyone. Breaking out of this limitation of knowledge takes work. But it’s
important to do it, because if you have the same input as everyone else, you’re
likely to come up with the same kind of ideas.

If you’ve got limited input, you’ll have limited output



The secret is to get into the habit of filling your mind with unusual and diverse
input. You should always make an effort to collect knowledge that other people
in your group are unlikely to have. If you do that, you’ll be able to come up with
ideas that no one else can. And that makes you valuable.
But there’s one other thing our brains have got in common with computers.

GARBAGE IN, GARBAGE OUT

Not all information is equal. If you have mediocre data going in, you can’t
expect anything other than mediocre results to come out. A computer
programmer would say GIGO—garbage in, garbage out.
If you need to come up with ideas to stay relevant, knowing about IBM’s
approach to Artificial Intelligence is probably more useful than knowing what
brand of leggings Paris Hilton prefers. Having an understanding of foreign
cultures is likely to lead to more useful ideas than knowing the lyrics to every
Osmonds song.
Think of it like nutrition. Some input nourishes your mind better than others.
And too little input will leave you starved of ideas. A little sugary froth is fine in
small doses. It just shouldn’t be your entire diet.
Feeding your mind needs to become a habit if you want to be a powerful idea
generator. This is where curiosity helps.

GOING COMPLETELY DOTTY

If ideas are about connecting the dots, you’ll obviously have a more valuable
mind if you’re storing more dots in it. So before you look at connecting the dots,
you should probably work on collecting the dots. Let’s expand on this analogy to
get an understanding of different ways you can feed your mind with inspiring
information.

PASSIVE DOT COLLECTING

If you’ve got your foot off the gas and you’re just drifting along in life, you’re
probably not going to be collecting very many or very interesting dots. If you
watch the same television shows as everyone else, walk the same streets, and do
similar jobs to everyone else, you can’t expect to come up with very different
ideas to everyone else, no matter how well you process your limited information.
With a cupboard full of crisps, you can’t make lasagna.

TASK-SPECIFIC DOT COLLECTING

As I explained with the RIGHT Thinking approach, you need to start with
research. Most people try to do this the easy way and assume they can get
everything they need from a search engine. They may get some information
that’s relevant to what they’re working on, but there are a couple of problems if
this is your primary way to inform yourself.
The first is that you only get obvious input. The very purpose of a search
engine is to select the most relevant information for a specific search term. The
algorithm it uses makes sure everyone gets pretty much the same results,
whoever they are and wherever they happen to be. To help people get to this
relevant information, Google even suggests what you might be looking for as
you type. And it often corrects your search, if it thinks you might have made a
mistake. That’s all very helpful, but it results in the same input phrases and
further limits your chances of moving beyond the obvious.
With most people getting pretty much the same results, we now have to look
at how people interact with them. Stats indicate that the first page of Google’s
search results accounts for 89 percent of all clicks.1 And even on that one page,
the first entry accounts for a whopping 44.6 percent of clicks, while the bottom
entry scores a paltry 2.2 percent. If this is what you decide to work with, you’re
most definitely not moving beyond the norm. The obvious information you start
out with limits your potential end result.
The second problem is the Google Effect, where you tend to forget
information that’s stored on a device.2 That means the input you collect from a
cursory online search is probably going to be of no use to you in the future. You
search, you read, and you let it go.
This approach is about only feeding your mind with the very minimum. It
doesn’t equip you with the breadth of knowledge that leads to interesting ideas.
If you want to think more effectively, you need to do more.

OBVIOUS DOT COLLECTING

The typical thing for people in business to do is tune in to the thinking of
industry thought leaders so that they can regurgitate it in their workplace. This
behavior leads to predictable echo chambers where clichéd phrases are spouted
by people who want to sound smart. This in itself is more irritating than harmful,
but the more these nuggets of orthodox wisdom are uttered, the less valuable
they become.
When an opinion, an approach or a piece of knowledge is adopted by a large
number of people it becomes a norm. And that greatly reduces its value.
I was doing street art when Banksy started to make it big. Very quickly his
stencil approach was emulated by a lot of my fellow wall-botherers. Many of
them were probably wondering why they weren’t getting the attention Banksy
was. It was obviously because they just became another me-too copyist with a
spray can. They were ten-a-penny, and the bottom fell out of the market.
Meanwhile, I was sticking poems up on the street, and that just wasn’t cool
enough to crib.
In the marketing world, I saw people being “over-influenced” by work that
won awards. In the two years following the introduction of the Nike FuelBand, I
was party to several conversations where people wanted to do the wearable
wristband of banking, retail, vehicles, or whatever. Collecting obvious dots is
more likely to lead to plagiarism than to inspiration, and that’s not what you
want to achieve, is it? No one remembers the fifth man on the moon. Or the first
Rolling Stones cover band. Difference is the only known way to stand out.

Difference is the only known way to stand out

GENERALIST DOT COLLECTING

When you’re really curious, you can’t help but find most stuff interesting.
Recently I’ve been totally gripped by the engineering of Roman guttering and
found myself ogling at the weird hooves of newborn foals. (Do an image search
for it, they’re seriously strange!) I didn’t have any need for the information at the
time. I just have an insatiable appetite for new knowledge.
But it’s not just about having a head full of facts. Truly curious people like to
try things out and pick up new skills. Because you learn through doing. I’ll
regularly set about doing projects for no other reason than to learn from them.
They don’t earn me money. I don’t do them for attention. They’re purely about
discovery and teaching myself something new. And I’m fortunate to have friends
who think the same way.
 A couple of years ago I embarked on a one-month experiment with my friend
Relja Dereta. We wanted to see how quickly our brains could learn something
new, and decided that teaching ourselves to draw with our non-dominant hand
would be a good way of measuring this. So we challenged each other to draw a
self-portrait with our opposite hands every day for a month. We’re both
relatively good at drawing with our dominant hands, so we wanted to see how
much our weaker hands could improve in just over four weeks. I was really
surprised by the result.
If you’d asked me before the experiment if I could draw with my left hand, I’d
have said “No” without hesitation. Within less than a week, that all changed.
But it didn’t start well. My first attempt was terrible. My drawing was all over
the place. It looked nothing like me. The second day I took my time and ended
up with a squint but a relatively good likeness. Day three brought a really loose
but accurate likeness. My lines started off quite wobbly from lack of motor
control, but again that started to improve.
In just one week I was drawing nearly as well with the wrong hand, so I
started to experiment with my pose. By the end of the second week, I wanted to
push things further, so I started to experiment with technique. I developed a new
style of shading. Then I moved past that and tried other techniques. By the time I
got to day thirty-one, there wasn’t much difference between the quality of
drawing in my two hands—it just took me twice as long with my left hand. Relja
experienced exactly the same thing.
This taught us that the phrase “I can’t do that” should always be followed by
the word “yet.” And that is a valuable lesson.
My wrong-handed portraits started off embarrassingly and improved over the month
 Relja’s wrong-handed portraits started off good and just got better

However, most people would never embark on a journey of discovery like

this. They’d ask the question “Why should I do this?,” fail to come up with a
satisfactory answer, and not bother. Curious generalists ask themselves the
question: “Why shouldn’t I do this?,” fail to come up with a satisfactory answer,
and go ahead with it.
It’s all about embarking on a journey to see where it leads rather than
expecting there to be a pot of gold at the destination. Your riches are in the
journey itself. You often don’t know why you did it until after you’ve finished.
The finishing bit is important. That’s when you need to review what you’ve
done to see what you’ve learned from it. Maybe you get wonderful results you
can share with the world; maybe you learn what not to do; maybe you pick up
new skills; or maybe you just get an entertaining story to tell down the pub.
 I’ve been doing experiments for years. Most of them are pretty ridiculous, but
I don’t think I’ll ever stop doing them because there’s just so much I want to
learn.

SPECIALIST DOT COLLECTING

If you’ve got a passionate interest in a topic, you tend to pick up everything you
can on it. If you see something about it in the newspaper, your eye will be
naturally drawn towards it. Your passion makes your brain particularly
absorbent in that special area.
There’s a good chance you’ll find yourself surrounded by people with the
same passion, either because you’ve picked up the bug for it from them, or
because your interest has led you to become part of a community of like-minded
people.
It’s likely that you’ve picked up some skills along with the knowledge. If you
have an interest in photography, you’ll have played with composition, lighting,
and focus, even if it’s just on your smartphone. If you’re a bookworm, your
interest in words, grammar, structure, or story will influence the way you write
an email. Specialist knowledge is valuable, especially if you make it your job.
Specialists enjoy the doing. They relish the opportunity to put their skills and
knowledge into practice. That makes them especially valuable when it comes to
making ideas happen, because the value of any idea is greatly improved by the
quality of the execution.

YOUR BRAIN’S FOUR MODES

It’s easy to confuse being busy with being effective. I regularly witnessed this
confusion during my time in advertising agencies. People would be watching
videos of kittens hiding in shoeboxes, skateboarding accidents, and other things
that had mysteriously attracted millions of views, in the hope they would
somehow absorb whatever magic these videos contained. They convinced
themselves that clicking through the sidebar of inanity was somehow inspiring
them; that if they watched enough of these eyeball-magnets their credit-card ads
would magically go viral.
 The brain’s four modes. Occupying your mind is the least valuable of all of them.

But I think that’s pretty unlikely. Their minds were in the wrong place to get
value out of what they were watching. I believe the mind has four modes and
they were probably in the least valuable one.

OCCUPY YOUR MIND

Let’s get the least valuable mode out of the way first. This is simply doing
something to save you from staring blankly at a wall. It may keep your mind
busy but it doesn’t put much value into it.
There are two ways you can do this. The first is to consume low-quality
content that contains little mental nutrition. This diet doesn’t improve you as a
person, teach you any valuable lessons, or make the world a better place. If you
imagine a quality scale of content that runs from Kardashian all the way up to
Hawking, this stuff sits low in that scale. It includes Candy Crush, most
Facebook content, Russian car-crash videos, celebrity gossip, reality TV, and
other anti-intellectual diversions. It sucks you in, but offers you little reward for
your attention.
The second way is not to pay attention to whatever you are watching. So it’s
possible to spend a few hours watching TED videos, where everything washes
over you and very little goes in. If your mind is not engaged, you’re not growing
it. This also applies to doing repetitive tasks that don’t require much cognitive
intervention. If your job is so routine that time can pass without you
remembering what you’ve just done, then you’re occupying your mind.
It’s only up from here.
FEED YOUR MIND
This is the better alternative to occupying your mind. It is about collecting the
dots that may become the ingredients for new ideas. You need to keep filling
your brain with nutritious nuggets because otherwise you’ll end up with a mental
larder stocked with stale and out-of-date items.
Obviously, it’s better to fill your mind with high-quality content. That
information could be relevant to what you do or it could be something
completely different. But it doesn’t come from just staring at it: you need to
activate your brain to get the value out of it. You should be looking for lessons
that might be useful at a later date. If you do this well, you can also get value out
of low-quality input. You can learn from monster trucks, reality TV and toilet-
wall graffiti if you approach them in the right way.
You should make a habit of feeding your mind. You do this by giving yourself
new experiences, learning things you never knew before, and talking to people
you normally wouldn’t spark up a conversation with—a homeless person, a
pensioner, the teenager beside you on the train. Buy a magazine you’ve never
read before— like Hotel and Caterer, Guns & Ammo, or Girls and Corpses (yes,
that was actually published). Visit places you wouldn’t normally go—a Bavarian
castle, the International Spy Museum, the basement of a grubby Soho bookshop.
Keep expanding your mind. Because without continual effort, it can only go
the other way.

Keep expanding your mind. Because without continual effort, it

can only go the other way

APPLY YOUR MIND

This is about activating your brain and using the new information, skills, and
understandings you’ve built up. You can do this on active projects or as a way of
practicing your thinking skills.
It’s important that you get into the habit of working with the information in
your head, even if you’ve nothing to apply it to right now. Think of it as mental
exercise. If you spend time in the gym lifting weights, you’ll find it easier when
you have to lift a fridge into a removal van. So it is with thinking. The more
exercise you do, the more capable your mind becomes. Then when you really
need to think of ideas for a specific project, you’ll be able to lift heavier
thoughts, and have the stamina to keep thinking when others give up.
It’s a great habit to spend your downtime coming up with all kinds of ideas.
How could you eliminate waiting times at a hospital? How would you combine a
mortgage, a pension, and an insurance policy in one product? Could cinemas
make more money if they let people in for free? Set yourself little challenges like
these. You’ll start connecting some of the dots you’ve collected and you’ll
seriously develop your thinking muscles.
Each time you use the information you’ve gathered, you write it that much
stronger to your brain, which makes it easier to access in the future. Playing with
information also gives you an understanding of the opportunities it offers. The
more thinking you do, the more you are capable of.
Put in the practice, and I promise it will pay off.

REST YOUR MIND

You may imagine that this is the least useful state for your mind to be in, but it’s
actually really useful. It can give you distance, put your brain in the right state
for bursts of insight, and improve your thinking performance. It’s certainly more
valuable than occupying your mind.
I really love sleeping. When I still worked in offices I used to hunt out places I
could nap. I found that short naps would help to reset me if I was tired or
hungover. Not long ago I discovered that there’s science to this, and that
different lengths of nap have different benefits.
Your sleep follows a pattern, traveling through deep sleep and back up to a
lighter REM state.3 There are two lengths of nap that you’re likely to find most
helpful. A short nap of fifteen to twenty minutes is great for increasing your
alertness and motor skills.4 If you’re feeling a bit sluggish, this is the one to go
for. It will help you reignite your spark and improve your concentration. Your
other option lasts longer—about 90 minutes. This is when you’re most likely to
be in REM sleep.5 It’s good for new connections and helping you solve
problems.
But you don’t need to fall asleep to rest your brain. Meditation is also great for
your thinking. And, as I’ve already pointed out, just to sit still and allow your
mind to wander can be a priceless activity.
Some big companies have embraced the power of napping. It may not surprise
you that they include Google, Zappos, and Uber, but what about PwC, Cisco,
and Procter & Gamble? These companies have seen the value of daytime naps.
They understand it’s better to have an alert mind for a shorter period of time than
a sluggish one for an entire day. If your organization doesn’t allow power naps,
maybe you should have a word.

WE USE ALL THE STATES

Of course, none of us lives our life in just one of these states. I’m not constantly
feeding my mind. I regularly occupy it with watching some kind of mental
chewing gum on Netflix. So don’t beat yourself up because you’re not
constantly cramming valuable dots into your mind. Just make sure you put aside
a decent amount of time to keep it fed. In my experience, it’s the most
worthwhile thing you can do if you want to grow valuable ideas.

PRACTICAL EXERCISE

CREATE AN INSPIRATION LIST

Feeding your mind should be a habit. The more you do it, the more valuable
your mind. I find that lots of people don’t know how, but it’s actually pretty
simple. Here’s an exercise I’ve been encouraging my students and clients to
do for a number of years.

SPOT SOMETHING YOU THINK IS REALLY GOOD

Keep an eye out for things you think are brilliant. These could be ideas
from within your industry, but they could also be things you’ve spotted
elsewhere. It could be a product, a service, a design, a piece of writing, a
strategy, a behavior—anything else that strikes your mind. Get into the
habit of looking around you. The world is filled with amazing things.

NOTE DOWN SOME PRINCIPLES

Now that you’ve got something great to work with, figure out why you
think it’s so good. Write your answers down in the back of a notebook or in
a digital document. Your principles will likely be things like: “Make it
really simple,” “Make the audience feel something,” or “Repurpose old
technology.” Write down at least three such principles you can learn: your
personal commandments. Dig deep and try to get to the essence of what
makes the thing good. Keep your observations simple and focused.

NEVER BE STUCK FOR INSPIRATION AGAIN

Whenever you’re asked for new ideas for something, go to your list. Start
using the principles to nudge your thinking in new directions and spark
ideas you wouldn’t normally have. If you collect a decent list, you never
need to be stuck for inspiration again. (You can see some of my learnings at
ThisSiteInspires.me)

ANOTHER BENEFIT
Collecting these principles helps you understand what makes ideas good.
That hones your judgment skills, and the more you do this, the easier you’ll
find it to differentiate between good ideas and great ones. That’s an
invaluable skill to call upon.
 Chapter 10

IDEA KILLERS

or

Can companies really be creative?

In 2010 IBM released the results of a study that aimed to find out what was on
the minds of the world’s top business people.1 They’re no slouches when it
comes to research. They had conducted face-to-face conversations with 1,500
senior leaders in the public and private sector across 60 countries and 33
industries, with a view to learning what these individuals’ priorities were and
what they felt their future success depended upon.
The results were pretty surprising.
At the time of the study, the business world was emerging from a painful
global recession. Big corporations were worried about their futures.
Traditionally that would lead to conservative behaviors like cost-cutting and
rationalization. Which is why it came as such a surprise that the number one
leadership quality they were seeking was creativity.
The report said: “CEOs now realize that creativity trumps other leadership
characteristics.”
I was pretty excited at the time. I’d just started up a business helping
organizations come up with better ideas. I was hoping that I’d suddenly find
myself in demand. But it didn’t work out that way. The message failed to reach
the people who really mattered.
Organizations may be using words like “innovation” and “creativity,” and
describing people as “intrapreneurs,” but their behavior has not changed. Most
of them are still structured in a way that resists anything new.

THE BIG MISUNDERSTANDING

After the study was released I did some asking around to find out why this
peculiar answer had risen to the top. I spoke to people I knew in leadership
positions of large companies, and their thinking went something like this:
We know the world is changing faster.
We know we need to do something different.
We don’t know what that is.
Therefore … creativity.
That sounds relatively logical. The problem comes when you then ask what
creativity is. People know that it’s somehow involved in coming up with new
ideas. Beyond that, they have little understanding of what creativity means, how
to use it, how to manage it, how to encourage it, how to inspire it, how to judge
it, or how to build environments where it flourishes.
What companies are experts at, however, is how to kill it.

WHAT STAGE OF LIFE ARE YOU AT?

Over the last few years, I’ve heard of companies flying to San Francisco to go on
a Silicon Valley safari. It sounds like great fun. They get to visit some of the tech
behemoths, as well as to witness some exciting startups in their natural habitat.
They drink organic coffee, see some pretty impressive facial hair, and wish they
were as confident as the 22-year-old CEOs they meet. The whole purpose of the
trip is to be inspired by the scene and pick up some lessons on how to innovate.
I think they’re wasting their time.
The way I see it, these companies are like an incontinent pensioner asking
nursery kids for bladder-control advice. The kids might tell them a thing or two,
but they don’t have as much experience as the pensioner, they don’t understand
the pensioner’s priorities, and most of them haven’t even mastered the skill
they’re being asked to advise on.
People at different stages of life have different needs and understandings. And
the same goes for companies.
 The longer a business is around, the less welcoming it is to new ideas

LAUNCH STAGE
All businesses start out creative—even health and safety training providers.
They have to work out who they are, what makes them special, what they mean
to offer, how they mean to offer it, and where they will find clients. That all
involves applied thinking and new ideas. They’re creating something out of
nothing. This is the most exciting and glamorous stage of a company. Creating
stuff makes you feel good. Every little win gives you a buzz. The upward
trajectory feels as if there’s a world of opportunities. Your focus is on finding
and creating the magic that will become the foundation of your future success.
Some companies even survive into the next stage.

All businesses start out creative

GROWTH STAGE
If you find your magic, the money comes in and you grow. Again, super-
exciting, but for different reasons. The founders of the business get excited, and
that spreads through the company. Employees have to put in more effort to
service the increased workload, but they’re part of something bigger, so it’s
worth it.
The company has to make an adjustment from making it up as they go along
to creating something scalable. Their creativity is focused elsewhere. They now
have to develop a way of repeating the magic as effectively and predictably as
possible. That involves creating systems, processes, methodologies, and
consistent behaviors.
Once this is done, creativity is unnecessary unless it’s part of the offering.

MATURITY STAGE
Once a company has created the systems and processes to replicate their secret
sauce, there’s only one thing left to do. It’s time to focus on efficiency and
profit. You earn more money by doing more things cheaper and faster. So the
energy goes into cost-cutting, rationalization, and new business. Some of it may
go into developing new products, but too many companies value what they’ve
already got above anything they could possibly have. They don’t want to risk
that.
When an organization focuses on efficiency and profitability, it turns its back
on any form of risk. In fact, if the company has shareholders, it has what is
known as a “fiduciary duty” to act in their best interests. That interest is to
maximize their investment. Anything that can be seen as risky or unproven runs
counter to that. An idea that is too adventurous could be seen as a breach of
fiduciary duty.
At this stage, a company is set up to kill interesting ideas, which is why I find
it ridiculous that mature companies with everything to lose would try to learn
from startups with little to lose.

BUSINESSES DON’T WANT CREATIVITY

With this understanding of business-life stages, I think it’s a good idea to read
between the lines when companies say they want creativity. I don’t actually
think they do. I think, instead, what they want is a great solution or an idea that
could add value to their business.
Organizations want the end result of creativity, not the process.
Saying you want creativity is like saying you want to travel in an airplane.
That’s nice, but if you do it blindly without working out first where you want to
go, you could end up in Iceland as easily as you could in Thailand. If you focus
on your destination, you’ve got a much better chance of getting there. And you’ll
know when you’ve arrived.
 Creativity is the vehicle, not the destination

Creativity is just a vehicle that gets you where you want to be. People who
neglect the destination will say unhelpful things like “I don’t know what I want
but I’ll know it when I see it.” That just doesn’t work. You need to have
direction. You need to understand the steps in the process. And you should
probably pack some sweets for the journey.

WANTING TO WANT CREATIVITY

This misunderstanding of what creativity is and how to apply it has resulted in

lots of organizations claiming that they want creative ideas when—in reality—
they don’t really want them at all. Instead, they want to want creativity. There’s
a big difference.
Lots of companies would like to like fresh thinking, but, in truth they’d really
like to be left alone to carry on doing what they’re familiar with. Which is why
they don’t invest much in generating ideas. And they don’t create a system that
gives ideas the best chance of flourishing and making an impact. The
organization’s lack of support and commitment makes sure that nothing sees the
light of day undamaged, if at all.
But by dipping their toes in the water and making some token efforts they can
at least say they’ve tried something. The lack of success only backs up their
argument that it’s best to just keep doing what they’re already doing. They’ll
convince themselves that the idea wasn’t good enough, rather than addressing
the real problem: their organization’s resistance to fresh thinking.

HOW CREATIVITY AND INNOVATION FIT TOGETHER

The very fact that companies are saying they want creativity can cause problems
when it comes to innovation. Because the relationship between the two things is
unclear to most people.
 It’s easy to find a number of different definitions that vary slightly, but I think
it helps to take one step back and look at creativity and innovation in the wider
context of ideas.

Creativity and innovation in the wider context of ideas

Ideas are the catalyst for change in any organization. When you’re looking to
solve a problem, to improve the way you work, or to develop new approaches,
you need an idea. Without one, you’ll just keep doing what you’re already doing.
When you start generating ideas, they fall into two camps:

Existing ideas These are ideas you’ve spotted elsewhere. Maybe your
competitors are using this one, or maybe you’ve seen it work in another
industry. It’s not new to the world—maybe not new to your industry—but
it’s new to your organization.
Creative ideas These are ideas you’ve generated using a creative
process. You’ve started with information, applied imagination, and ended
up with something you’ve not seen before.

Within this wider Venn diagram universe of ideas, there is a huge variety in
quality. Some are fantastic and others terrible, some are useful and others
useless. You hopefully prefer to work with the great ones.
Innovation happens when you implement an idea that’s new to your
organization. It can be a new creative idea or an existing idea, but it’s something
that creates change within the system.

Ideas are the catalyst for change in any organization

A lot of innovation is focused on existing ideas. Which is absolutely fine. For

example, most digital transformation, which often comes under the remit of
innovation, involves implementing existing platforms that other companies are
using. There’s nothing wrong with that. The companies who created the platform
you’re implementing have invested in the creative thinking, so you don’t have
to.
Other companies borrow innovations from different industries. Earlier, I
explained how the McDonald brothers borrowed Henry Ford’s production-line
idea to make their burgers faster and more consistent. However, many years
before, Henry Ford had himself borrowed the production-line idea from the
abattoirs of Chicago.2 He’d been amazed at how an animal went in one end of
the meat-packing plant, passed through various areas where specific cuts were
removed, and left the building as nothing more than a skeleton. He just changed
the focus from disassembly to assembly and the product from meat to
automobiles.
So in summary, creativity is the creation of a new idea. Innovation is the
implementation of an idea that’s new to the organization.

HIERARCHIES HATE IDEAS

Hierarchies have been the dominant structure in business for as long as we’ve
had large corporations. The assumption that most people have in the workplace
is that if you work hard you get promoted, and promotion is the organization
showing that you’re better than everyone else below you. On the flipside, it also
means that everyone above you is more important than you are. So people know
their place in the pecking order.
Managers therefore have power over the people below them. In many
organizations, they like to keep on proving that they have it. The resulting
hierarchy is made up of layers of fear. Aspirational employees don’t want to
look ignorant to those in power above them, so they try to eliminate anything
that might result in criticism or punishment.
It’s the natural side effect of a power structure. It’s just a slightly more
sophisticated version of how groups of chimpanzees, bonobos, and gorillas
operate.

LAYERS OF LAWYERS

If you sent your lawyer a business contract, how would you measure how well
they’d done their job? It would probably be by how many problems they’d
spotted. If they flicked through it and went “Yeah, yeah, yeah, that looks fine.
Go for it!” you probably wouldn’t trust them. Their job is to protect your best
interests and spot any potential issues. That’s why they earn the big bucks.
Because of their organization’s power structure, most people in management
positions think like lawyers. Whenever they see something new, they
immediately look for the risks. They believe that’s the responsible thing to do.
They think that’s how they add value to the process. But the protectioneering
actions they take with all good intentions are more likely to damage any ideas
that pass through their office.

Ideas tend to be diminished as they pass through layers of decision-makers

The most effective ideas are likely to come from the people who are actually
doing the job. The miners on the coalface are likely to have a better
understanding of how to extract more coal than the directors in their oak-paneled
offices. If your organization is lucky enough to get one of these valuable ideas
from someone lower down the pecking order, it probably has to travel through
several layers of management before it reaches the ultimate decision-maker.
Each layer of management takes a look at it, second-guesses what the person
above them might say, and makes appropriate adjustments in an effort not to
look stupid.
They prioritize their own survival over the survival of the idea. They look for
problems rather than opportunities. The more people involved in approval, the
less focused and effective the idea becomes. Occasionally ideas survive the
process to make it up to the ultimate decision-maker, but they tend to arrive
bruised and battered.
If a company wants valuable and undamaged ideas, it needs to have the right
strategy, processes, culture, contracts, education, environment, and management
styles in place. This will be different for each company. But there’s lots to learn
from other organizations here, and the one thing they all have in common is an
accelerated route to the decision-maker. That avoids the damaging effects of the
hierarchy. There are a few ways to do that.

THE WISDOM OF THE WORKFORCE

In 1951 Eiji Toyoda, the managing director of Toyota, introduced the Toyota
Production System to the company. It was based on an idea he had seen working
at a Ford manufacturing plant he’d visited, but he improved on it by introducing
the Toyota Creative Ideas and Suggestions System (TCISS) to encourage
employees at all levels to propose improvements.3
This wasn’t just a bunch of boxes scattered around the office saying “ideas
welcome.” It was a company-wide system that demonstrated a real desire for
ideas and a full commitment to making them happen. And it continues to this
day. Every employee knows how important their ideas are to the company. So
important, that the responsibility to constantly improve the company is included
in everyone’s job description. All employees are clear on how to suggest an idea
and the process that it goes through.

Create a system for ideas to travel directly to the decision-maker, avoiding the traditional
hierarchical route

The key thing to note is that Toyota created a very clear system to bypass the
curse of the hierarchy. The ideas go from the employee’s level directly up to a
decision-maker at the top. This accelerated route to a decision-maker is vital.
A bottom-up approach like this can only work if the employees feel valued
and understand that ideas are part of their job. A tentative suggestion box is
unlikely to do the trick. You need to make it part of the fabric of the company,
make sure employees know that you expect them to come up with ideas, and
maybe even measure their success in performance-review meetings. Otherwise,
if you’re simply measuring staff on their efficiency and effectiveness, they’ll
concentrate on doing rather than thinking. And they won’t contribute any ideas
that might ruffle feathers—which are the very ones that are likely to make a real
difference.

STAFF EMPOWERMENT

This is about putting the power to innovate in the hands of your employees. It’s
asking them to come up with the ideas and giving them the support and the
resources to make those ideas happen.
You’ll doubtless have heard of Google’s 20 percent time.4 Giving employees
the flexibility to pursue their own ideas led to Gmail, AdSense, and a number of
other highly profitable business areas. This is an incredibly powerful way of
getting great ideas from a motivated workforce.

Give your staff the opportunity to make their ideas happen themselves

The secret to this approach is to give employees the permission and resources
to get started on an idea without first asking permission. When the project is
more developed, they can present it to leadership to get approval. At that stage
they’ll have prototypes and data—maybe even some user cases. Best of all, the
idea will be focused, because it hasn’t endured the pernicious effects of the
hierarchy.
For this to work, you need to give employees time to work on their projects. If
you expect people to work on ideas in their own time, you’re showing a lack of
commitment and belief in the process. You need to create the conditions for
innovation and then get out of the way. Trust your staff to be brilliant and there’s
a good chance they will be. Treat them like dumbasses and they’ll act like
dumbasses.


Trust your staff to be brilliant and there’s a good chance they

will be

CROSS-DISCIPLINARY TASK FORCE

Your workforce is likely to have a heap of latent knowledge, skills, and

understanding that you could benefit from tapping into. But if you put people
together from a single part of the business, they are likely to come up with ideas
from a limited perspective. You can benefit greatly from having
multidisciplinary teams working together to combine their collective knowledge
and understandings. That may just help you develop ideas that have a greater
impact across the organization.
To do this, pick passionate and talented people from multiple departments to
work together on a defined brief. You can improve this group further by bringing
in people from outside the organization to join the team and offer their wider
expertise.

A team of passionate people from across the organization will challenge each other’s thinking and
develop interesting ideas

The group will be helped by strong leadership, a framework to operate within,

and a definite outcome to aim towards. This aim can be a specific problem to
solve or an open-ended brief to explore possibilities. Working on the task force
needs to be a priority for the members, otherwise their day job will get in the
way and the project will be neglected. So their direct managers need to be kept
in the loop and given the responsibility of making sure they’re free when they
need to be.

DEDICATED INNOVATION DIVISION

Many companies approach innovation as a specialism all on its own. They set up
a company function with all the skills to come up with ideas, develop them, and
implement them. They imagine that having an area of expertise will result in
more effective innovation. Often it does, but there can be pitfalls here if they’re
not careful.

An innovation division can operate as an independent part of the company, separate from the main
hierarchy

The first thing that needs to be agreed is the innovation strategy.

You need to decide if your remit is to create new products, to improve your
existing products, to improve internal processes, to generate marketing ideas, to
develop digital capabilities, or something else. And you need to define how
you’ll measure success. Without these in place from the start, the results will be
hit and miss.
This direction will also dictate how you staff the department, how much
budget it will need, and what its relationship should be with the rest of the
business. The relationship part really matters. If you’re not careful, the
innovation division can be viewed as the enemy by the rest of the company,
especially if they develop ideas that change people’s jobs without their input.
That will naturally lead to resistance and resentment.
OUTSOURCED INNOVATION

There are a number of established industries that have a thriving community of

exciting startups. Currently, there are lots in finance, pharmaceuticals, and retail.
Most big industries have some upstarts on the edges. The large, established
companies typically deal with them in one of two ways.
The first is to reject the nimble little startups and even make things tough for
them. That will work for a while until the little guys take great pride in stealing
the big guys’ lunch.
The second approach is to invite the little guys to the table to collaborate on
opportunities. You cherry-pick the best ideas and become the catalyst to help
make them happen. Their success is your success. And when the inevitable wave
of change sweeps across the marketplace, you’re more likely to be riding it like a
pro surfer.

Inviting innovation from external companies can be a great way to access ideas you couldn’t have
internally

To tap into this group of external innovators, you need to create a facility that
liaises between the company and the community. On one hand, this team will be
responsible for creating the briefs, setting the challenge to the community,
giving them anything they need to come up with great ideas, selecting the best
ideas, and helping to make them happen. On the other, it will deal directly with
the ultimate decision-maker to define the aims, agree on the success criteria, and
choose the best ideas.
A great example of this approach is the BBC Connected Studio.5 Over the last
few years they’ve built up a large roster of interesting external suppliers who
keep an eye on their email for a brief they can get involved with. To give
themselves the best chance of success, the BBC often host workshops to help
with the idea-generation process. So far, projects have included interactive
video, virtual reality experiences, smartphone storytelling, games, drama, and
other experimental projects.
This is a phenomenally powerful way for the BBC to experiment with new
kinds of content they don’t have the skills to create in-house. And the
community relishes the opportunity of doing something cutting-edge with an
organization as highly respected as the BBC.
Instead of excluding the startups and hoping they’ll disappear and leave you in
peace, it may be better to embrace them and get ready to embark on the
adventure of your career.

DON’T AIM TO BE DISRUPTIVE

For the last few years, conferences, bookshops, and boardrooms have been
echoing with the term “disruptive innovation.” It was popularized in the book
The Innovator’s Dilemma (1997) by Harvard Business School professor Clayton
Christensen. But, in my view, most people who talk about it have taken it out of
context and have little idea what they’re talking about.
These people usually go on to talk about Uber, Airbnb, Google, Facebook,
Snapchat, and whoever the latest startup superstar happens to be. They then try
to guilt-trip their audience by asking them why they’re not the Netflix of their
industry, warning them that they could be the next Polaroid instead.
It’s a rousing message. But I also think it’s a load of tosh.
Clayton Christensen described disruptive technology as a “new emerging
technology that unexpectedly displaces an established one.”6 That means you
can only really talk about disruption in the past tense after the displacement has
occurred. So you can say: “This company has been disruptive” but you can’t
really say: “We’re going to be disruptive.”
I believe that aiming to be disruptive has been the primary contributor to the
shocking stat that 94 percent of CEOs aren’t satisfied with their innovation
efforts.7 Yes, 94 percent. If a film had a paltry 6 percent on Rotten Tomatoes,
you’d almost certainly not watch it. Not sober, anyway. So imagine the negative
impact this is having on the world of business.
The disruptive bubble has burst.
 Disruption is focused on making leaps

To most people in the world of innovation, the idea of being disruptive

involves making a leap to create something that people haven’t seen before. If
they succeed at that, they actually do become disruptive. But in a bad way. They
disrupt their own organization, their suppliers, their distributors, their retailers,
and—most dangerous of all—their customers. They are essentially telling
everyone to “unlearn that and start learning this.” That’s costly and massively
risky. Yet it’s the way a lot of businesses approach it.
In our book Iconic Advantage, Soon Yu and I looked at how the most
successful long-term innovators go about introducing new ideas. And it’s
definitely not this sporadic, seismic-jolt approach. Instead, innovation tends to
be an ever-present part of their process. They regularly update their products,
keeping them fresh and focusing on enhancing the essence of their brand.

Each iteration of a product should have more familiarity than unfamiliarity

The secret of constant innovation is to retain familiarity. It makes it easier for

people to accept the latest version. It helps to hold on to their trust. It makes the
job of selling so much easier. But it also helps to draw attention to the changes
you have made. The iPhone doesn’t visually change that much from version to
version, so when a dual camera is introduced, it’s a bigger thing. When the
larger screen of the iPhone X is introduced, it feels ground-breaking. But it’s not
really. You’ll find similar examples with software and fashion and automobiles
and insurance products. And when a change feels too radical, like the Gap logo
debacle in 2010, the audience revolts.8
Aiming to be disruptive might sound cool. But it’s possibly the biggest
innovation mistake you can make.

 The secret of constant innovation is to retain familiarity

INNOVATION IS AN INVESTMENT

The wise companies know that innovation has to be part of your financial model.
It’s an investment that, if done wisely, will bring you returns.
It’s a good idea to look at company expenditure in a similar way to an
investment portfolio. Wise investors will put most of their money into low-risk,
low-return investments. These stocks have proved to be pretty steady over the
years and are likely to give you marginal gains in line with market growth. This
is where you might put 80 percent of your money. The rest you’d put into high-
risk, high-return investments. These are ones that may not earn you anything, but
on the other hand, there’s a chance they’ll bring in the big bucks. These riskier
stocks have the potential to change your fortunes in a way that safe stocks never
can.
This isn’t just about having the money set aside to do the projects, it’s also
about streamlining the decision-making process. If there’s a pot of money set
aside for unproven ideas, it makes it easier for interesting projects to get funded.
It helps to get around the hierarchy’s resistance to risk.
This is how Coca-Cola deal with their content marketing budget.9 They
famously use a 70/20/10 approach, where most of the money goes on the stuff
they’ve always done, a smaller amount goes on the new and innovative
opportunities, while a lesser amount is set aside to invest in the completely
unproven. If a brand as successful as Coke sees the potential in using their
budget like an investment fund, maybe some other big companies should try it
too.

HOW TO BENEFIT FROM FAILURE

There’s a cult of failure in the startup community. Founders will often talk about
businesses that didn’t work out, catastrophic mistakes they made, and how they
lost all their money on a bad decision. That’s not what this is about. Those
stories are entertaining but I don’t think they’re something to glamorize.
Failure is something that can happen with anything that’s unproven. But if
you have a good system in place, you can still benefit from it. All projects,
whether successes or failures, should include a learning step. This should answer
the following questions:

What worked well?

What could have worked better?
What unexpected events happened along the way?
What was the main thing that led to the success or failure of the project?
In retrospect, what could we have done differently?
And what would we definitely do again?
What skills do we need to develop?
How can we improve our process?
What knowledge should we share with the rest of the organization?

Add to these questions if there are other lessons you want to learn. For
example, you may want to look at how well the team worked together, or how
the project fitted in with people’s day jobs, or if it was an enjoyable experience
for people. Add the appropriate questions to your list and get everyone together
to answer them.
This isn’t a chance to point fingers or bitch and gripe. It’s a session to get
valuable information that can help the organization improve at developing ideas.
And, even if the project has been an abject failure, this kind of learning process
gives every project that follows it a better chance of success.

THE CONFLICT OF DOING AND THINKING

In the last few years, businesses have become increasingly focused on data and
measurement. That works when you’re dealing with predictable work units. If
you find that a change to an automated production line, an online checkout, or a
financial reporting system improves your operation, roll it out across the
business. That makes sense.
But humans are not predictable. What works for one employee will not
necessarily work for other employees. Yet businesses have been treating their
staff as identical work units, driving them to ever-higher utilization rates.
Many companies have started moving beyond the hated timesheet system to
simply tracking employee behavior through the technology they use. Some
companies are going as far as to implant technology into their staff to make that
even easier.10 It sends a very clear message to employees: their value is
measured by how much they do. No value is assigned to how much they think.

MOTIVATE PEOPLE TO THINK

The traditional way of improving employee performance has been to chivvy

people into line with rewards and punishments. If someone hits a target, give
them a financial bonus. If someone screws up, give them a dressing down. And
that works for the majority of business tasks. But it doesn’t encourage ideas.
In Dan Pink’s bestselling book Drive, he explains that financial incentives can
actually be damaging if your task requires people to truly engage their brain.
Rewards are great for getting people to hammer out more widgets or hit a higher
sales target, but they have a negative impact on sparking ideas.
The reason seems to be that financial incentives encourage people to take the
most direct route to the solution. They don’t explore, they just head directly to
GO to pick up that $200. Which is perfect for improving performance, but
effectively generating ideas involves you wandering off in different directions,
breaking out of your normative approaches, and maybe getting lost in a mental
thicket for a while.
If you want to encourage new ideas, you’re better off taking a different tack—
one that’s focused on intrinsic rather than extrinsic motivations. Instead of
offering rewards, you should offer the promise of recognition.
The creative industries have understood this for a long time. That’s why they
have so many awards shows. The Oscars, The Grammys, The BAFTAs, The
Olivier Awards, The Booker Prize, and the Turner Prize all motivate artistic
types to try harder. Other commercial industries like advertising, architecture,
design, retail, restaurants, and fashion have no end of awards. Because the
potential of picking up a shiny gong in front of your peers drives people to come
up with better ideas.
You can offer recognition within your organization too. You can put a
message out on email, post something to your intranet, put a picture up in
reception, give a namecheck at a company event, or find some other way to
acknowledge the great thinkers.
The best way to do this is to not just recognize the great successes, but to also
recognize the great efforts. If you tip your hat to the people who came up with
great ideas that you wish had been successful, you’ll encourage even more
people to try harder with their thinking.
THE MUSES DON’T VISIT OFFICE CUBICLES

One of the great curses of modern business is presenteeism. People are expected
to be seen at their desk. Mainly because the company doesn’t trust them to do
their work if someone isn’t standing over them. But desks are probably not the
best place for ideas.
Just think of what takes up most of the space on a desk: it’s usually a
computer screen, a keyboard, and a mouse, plus a few pieces of office
paraphernalia like a desk tidy, an in/out tray, a stapler, and a hole punch. All of
the stuff that’s on there enables doing. So the way you show your worth to a
company is by rattling the keyboard.
Desks are designed for doing, not thinking. They are places where you get
constantly interrupted. They put people in a mindset that probably doesn’t
welcome fresh thinking. And people don’t want to be seen staring into space
thinking about a problem while everyone around them is clacking the keys.
That’s why most ideas tend to come to you when you’re not sitting in your
swivel-chair.
If you want people to come up with better ideas, encourage them to escape
from their desks. Or even better, escape the office altogether.

One of the great curses of modern business is presenteeism

MAKE THINKING PART OF YOUR SYSTEM

Heimo Hammer is the founder of one of the most successful marketing agencies
in Austria. He’s not your standard company boss. In fact he’s one of the happiest
and most energetic people you’re ever likely to meet. And he thrives on the fact
that the business regularly reinvents itself.
“I reinvent my company on a bi-annual basis,” Heimo told me. “Every two
years I do a strategy job on my company, gathering new ideas, business ideas,
developments.” It’s the way he does this that’s really impressive. It starts with
his employees.
“My employees and my freelancers, that’s a little more than a hundred people,
are not forced but are invited to inspire me with their ideas. So they deliver to
me on a weekly basis things they found on the Internet, things they heard in
conferences, things they saw on television. And so we have this open eyes and
open ears principle.”
The employees don’t just send links and images; they write a short abstract on
their observation to explain what’s so interesting about it. Every Sunday
evening, while planning the week ahead, Heimo goes through these abstracts.
Once a month, the company holds an advisory board meeting with twelve
employees from all across the agency to talk about the most interesting ideas that
have been submitted. They discuss them, defend them, expand them, and decide
whether they are worth pursuing. Budget is then released for the best ideas.
But Heimo doesn’t stop there. He’s also collected thirty of the brightest minds
he knows from all over the world. Each of them contributes one idea every
month. That adds up to 360 ideas a year.
“Sometimes the ideas are stupid or quite common or not really special, but for
me it’s important. It’s a little bit like a detector to find things under the surface.
And so I listen carefully to these inputs because it’s the personal view of the
different people.”
Heimo sees his company as something that needs to evolve and shape itself to
embrace new opportunities. Just think what would be possible if every company
ran a similar system.

HARMONY ISN’T ALWAYS A POSITIVE

Most people in business will agree that conflict isn’t good in the workplace. It’s
better if employees don’t disagree with each other. A good office is a
harmonious office.
Sadly this isn’t great for ideas. Positive conflict can be incredibly beneficial.
I’m not saying that we need to turn the workplace into a war zone. I’m saying
that we need to understand how to give and take criticism in a positive way. It’s
a two-way situation. How it’s received is just as important as how it’s delivered.
Here are some pointers:

Respect There needs to be respect on both sides. The person who is

delivering feedback needs to do it with the full respect of the person
they’re delivering to. And the person receiving it needs to acknowledge
that it might be hard for the other person too. When you respect someone
else you don’t want to belittle or insult them. If you have that as a starting
 point, you’re off to a good start.
Not about the person Any criticism is not aimed at the individual, it’s
about the idea. It’s also not about making the person delivering the
feedback look good. The focus should entirely be on making the idea as
good as possible. In that way everyone is aligned on the same goal.
Constructive The way you deliver feedback is crucial. It’s not about
telling someone their idea stinks and then reeling off all the reasons why.
It’s about pointing out the areas that can be improved. It’s often a good
idea to start by talking about the attributes you like before moving on to
the things that could be changed. And don’t stop just at saying: “That
doesn’t work because …” Take it through to: “I think it could probably be
improved by …”
Listen The person getting the feedback needs to make sure they don’t
interrupt with defensive comments. They should listen fully and make sure
they understand the feedback before responding.
Both directions Let the person who’s just been given the feedback offer
their own feedback on the feedback. Maybe the other person doesn’t
understand the important elements of the idea, or certain elements of the
brief. Again, this feedback needs to be delivered with the same level of
respect.
Appreciation After the feedback has been delivered, both parties should
thank each other for their honesty and for working with them to get to the
best idea.

This kind of approach should be adopted across the company. In that way,
you’ll end up with better ideas through constructive collaboration. And you’ll
avoid the petty fights and personal snipes that really do cause damage in the
workplace.

BE CAREFUL WITH CULTURE

In the last few years, culture has become one of the big topics in business. Gurus
have been preaching about it from conference stages all over the world.
Hundreds of magazine articles have talked about how important it is for the most
successful companies. And the echo-chamber of blogs has been sharing the top
3, 5, 7, 10 or whatever number of tips to help you create the best culture for your
business.
 This has all fed into boardroom conversations and has been allocated budget
accordingly.
Of course, the world’s most successful companies do indeed have great
cultures. But most businesses are going about culture in entirely the wrong way.
And all because they don’t understand what culture actually is and how you get
it.
Great culture is a by-product of truly valuing the humans within your
organization. All the little tactical activities happen because the company cares
about the people it employs and everything that makes them human. Most
culture-change programs I’ve seen simply involve companies implementing
these by-products without changing how they operate and how they respect their
employees.
It’s like me buying the same suit as George Clooney, emulating his accent,
and casually drinking Nespresso at every opportunity, then wondering why
Hollywood refuses to pay me $60 million to appear in a film. It’s because I’m
still just a little, bald Scotsman who wears trousers with a larger waistline than
he really wants. I have none of the Clooney magic that people love.
Most companies that try to implement a culture-change program still fail to
respect or trust their employees during office hours. They still want them to do
more work than is reasonable for the money. They still don’t want them to err
from the established systems and processes. They still treat them like meat-cogs
in an inflexible machine. The cultural programs they implement are nothing
more than hollow and inauthentic imitations of how a truly caring company
would act.
But it’s worse than that. Especially when it comes to the world of ideas.

CULTURE KILLS DIFFERENCE

The idea of having a strong company culture may sound good. It may nudge
people to behave in a more cohesive way. It may help people feel like they’re a
company person. It may influence how people behave and do their job. But none
of these things is good if you’re hoping for valuable ideas from any of your
employees.
Defining who you are, what you do, and how you behave simply creates a
stronger norm that’s harder to break out of. It causes the square pegs to be
hammered down even more firmly to fit into their round holes. It creates even
more excuses to say: “That’s not the way we do things around here.” And it
influences hiring decisions in favor of people who fit in comfortably.
That leads to a monoculture of similar people thinking in similar ways and
reinforcing each other’s similar opinions.
This modern approach to culture may have some short-term gains (because at
least dress-down Friday is a slightly more palatable Friday than the previous
version that felt exactly the same as a Thursday), but in the long term it leads to
less diverse people and less divergence of thought. And that is the highway to
irrelevance.

PRACTICAL EXERCISE

DOES YOUR ORGANIZATION CULTIVATE OR KILL

IDEAS?

If you want to see if your business is set up to destroy or nurture ideas, just
ask these questions.
Would you be able to take an idea directly to a decision-maker?
Do you feel the company is interested in your ideas and opinions?
Do members of the leadership team visit your department from time to
time?
Are you regularly asked for your ideas?
Do your staff appraisals discuss how much thinking you’ve contributed?
Does the company celebrate people who come up with ideas?
Is the workforce diverse?
Are staff encouraged to develop their skills?
Is the company always improving its offering?
Does your company have regular knowledge-sharing sessions between
staff?
Does your company use something other than brainstorms to come up
with ideas?
Would decision-makers value opportunity more than risk?
Are you given the time to simply think about things?
Are you encouraged to get away from your desk?
Would your boss still support you if a project failed?
 The more answers you’ve said “Yes” to, the more chance your
organization has of benefiting from ideas. If your answers are mainly “No,”
your leadership team has serious work to do.
 Chapter 11

MANAGING FOR IDEAS

or

Leading minds to where the best ideas are

Computers are marvelously predictable devices. If you were to put one in a

depressing concrete room with no daylight it would operate in exactly the same
way as another computer in a sunny beach bar. Its performance would be exactly
the same at 8.30 a.m. as it would be at midnight. And if you put it alongside a far
more powerful computer, it wouldn’t be intimidated or try to impress it.
Not so with humans. We’re marvelously unpredictable creatures. We’re
affected by everything that surrounds us, our social context, what we’ve eaten,
the events we’ve recently encountered, the time of day, how much exercise
we’ve had, how comfortable our underwear is, the weather outside, and
hundreds of other factors.
These elements can have a significant impact on us. But that impact doesn’t
have to be negative. You can use these understandings to your benefit if you
know how.
Another significant contributor to the quality of thinking is structure. The
wrong kind of structure can stifle thinking and keep you firmly inside the norm.
Having no structure leaves people insecure and directionless. The right kind of
structure allows people to venture outside of their norm in safety to discover the
ideas they wouldn’t normally have.
Then there’s leadership. You need to know when to give people space and
how to give feedback. People are easy to demotivate. Ideas are easy to kill. The
wrong approach can entirely ruin your chances. Just as with sports teams, it’s the
manager’s responsibility to get the best performance from their collection of
talent.
MANAGING FOR BETTER IDEAS

Idea generation is pretty badly managed in most organizations. Most people

imagine that because this is a business exercise, you manage it in the same way
as you would if you had a team working on processing forms, compiling a
business report, or preparing a quarterly budget. But the typical hierarchical, top-
down approach just won’t get the best ideas out of people.
Amazingly, even companies in the creative industries still don’t seem to get
this.
This chapter explores the preparation and leadership that gets the best thinking
out of people.

IT STARTS BEFORE YOU START

Success isn’t something that just happens magically, it’s something you prepare
for. When you’re looking for great ideas from a team, you need to begin with a
plan.
The first thing you need is to assign a single person to lead the project. They
will have responsibility for the outcome of the team. They will be there to
support them, guide them, direct them, motivate them, and lead them through to
an effective solution. It’s important that it’s just the one person for a number of
reasons.

ONE VISION
If there’s more than one person responsible for a project, the team members have
to consider more than one opinion and point of view. And the more
considerations there are, the harder it is to come up with ideas. A single vision is
vital for the team to follow.

UNIFIED FEEDBACK
If you’ve ever seen a director in action on a film set, you’ll understand the
importance of their role. The good directors are open for other people’s opinions
and observations—especially if they’re working with people they respect—but
no one speaks to the performers and crew except them. If everyone felt they
could get involved, the whole shebang would go completely off track.

PROTECTOR
Not everyone’s good at giving feedback. A little bit of negativity can completely
sap the energy and motivation of the team. That will stop their flow of ideas and
might prevent them from exploring a potentially worthwhile area. If all the
feedback goes through the leader, the leader can protect the team from
demotivating stuff and give them positive direction instead.

FOCUSED DECISION
When it comes to ideas, democracy doesn’t work. The person with the vision is
the best person to know whether that vision has been met. Group decision-
making tends to gravitate towards the safer, less remarkable options that don’t
offend anyone. These are also the very ideas that tend to have less impact.
This team leader needs to do some preparation before they kick off the first
stage of any idea-generation process (hopefully using RIGHT Thinking,
naturally).

When it comes to ideas, democracy doesn’t work

PLANNING BEGINS WITH FOUR PS

From experience, there are four main things to consider before you get started.
These will help you focus on the problem, understand the limitations, get the
best group of people together, and give the ideas the best chance of happening.
It just so happens that they all begin with “P.”

PROBLEM
It’s hard to solve a problem if you don’t really understand it. So spend some time
getting your head around it.
Make sure you know what the issue is, the different factors involved, and how
you know if you’ve got a good solution. Understand what knowledge is missing
and make sure you make a note to collect it in the research phase.
Even at this stage, you should question things. Is the problem really what you
think it is? For example, it may be your checkout process rather than your high
prices that are losing you customers.
Whatever you decide to focus on here affects everything that comes after.
 Action plan:

Write your problem down as an easy-to-understand sentence

Elaborate on it in a short paragraph
List up to five criteria that the solution should tick off

PARAMETERS
This is the logistical nitty-gritty. How long do you have to work on it? What’s
the budget? What resources do you have access to? Do you need a quick fix or
something more robust? What are the limitations you need to work with? What
things can you change and what things are immovable? The answer to questions
like these helps you understand what you’re working with and dictates the
approach you will take. Limitations aren’t always a bad thing. They can give you
direction and force decisions on you that help to focus your efforts.
Once you understand the timings you’re working within, it’s a good idea to
map out the dates and work your way back from delivery to get an idea of how
much time you’ve got for each part of the process.

Action plan:

Write down all the parameters you’re working with

Create a timeline of actions, working your way back from the end

PEOPLE
The typical brainstorm approach involves rounding up whoever happens to be
free for an hour. That’s a pretty awful way of doing things. You want the best
people working on your project at the right time rather than a random bunch of
work-avoiders.
I recommend you look at your problem and work out the skills you’ll need at
different stages. For example, you’ll want research skills to start with. And then
strategic thinking to turn that information into workable insights. Then you’ll
need imagination, and so on. When you get to the prototyping and testing stages,
you may need people with more niche skills, depending on the problem you’re
trying to solve.
Use your timeline to map the skills you need at each stage, then select the best
people to fill those needs. It may be that you need to bring in external people. If
you get the best people on your team, the process will be smoother and the
results will be better.
 Action plan:

Write down the skills you need at each stage

Map them on your timeline
Select the best people with the right skills for each stage

POWER
Your job is not just to solve the problem. It’s to solve the problem in a way that
the decision-makers will be happy with. Doing some work at this stage can save
you a heck of a lot of disappointment at the end.
Make sure you know who the decision-makers are, and how you’ll be working
with them. Who is the ultimate decision-maker? Can you deal with them
directly? If not, who else is involved? And will you be dealing with these people
together as a group or independently?
Write down the motivations of each individual with the power to support or
destroy your idea. What will they like and what will put them off? It may not be
obvious, business-focused criteria. In many cases, you have to deal with ego-
driven motives like wanting the project to make them look good, or wanting to
make sure the project doesn’t cause them too much work. This is valuable
information to have.
However, don’t just accept all of these as limitations. Interpret them.
Otherwise, you’ll end up confining yourself to the same old predictable norms.
Use them if they help you, ignore them if they don’t.

Action plan:

List the people with decision-making power

List their motivations
Assess what’s vital and put the rest to the side

TURN IT INTO A PLAN

Take all of this information and turn it into a document that will be your guide
throughout the process.

NEVER GO WITHOUT BRIEFS

Once you’ve done your research and insight steps, it’s time to turn it into a
document before you ask people to start generating ideas.
 This stage is really useful because it helps you crystallize your thinking, make
sure you’ve done your preparation properly, and gives the team something to
refer to throughout the process. Some of the points will also be useful when it
comes to judging and developing the ideas.
This briefing document should be a short summary of all the information
people need to work on the problem. And I do mean short: it should fit on one
sheet of paper, and ideally just one side of it. Giving people more information
tends to make things more difficult. The job of the brief writer is to filter the
information so that only the most important things make it in there.
Your job is to transform a situation, so I find it helpful to talk about State A
and State B—the situations at the start and end of the process. A good solution is
an elegant bridge between these two states. The job of the brief is to give people
the information they need to point them in the right direction, but enough
latitude to explore broadly on the way there.
The information I recommend putting in a brief is:

State A Describe the current situation. What is the problem? How did it
happen? This may come from your insight step. For example, a piece of
technology could be breaking because people keep hitting a button too
hard. Your insight could lead you to find out that the problem isn’t the
button or the people pressing it. It could instead be that the interface
doesn’t give people immediate feedback, and they don’t know if the
button has worked. So they hammer it out of frustration. That would then
be the problem you describe.
State B What is your ideal end state? Keep it short and clear. This is what
people are aiming for.
Task In one easy-to-read sentence write what it is that will move the
situation from State A to State B. This is the summary of the entire brief.
It’s the most important sentence on the page. Don’t fudge it by adding
“and”s and “or”s—it’s no longer single-minded then. And don’t write it in
legal speak. If you’re paining over finding the precise words, or find
yourself filling the box with jargon, you’re doing it wrong. The sentence
should be capable of being understood by the average 10-year old.
Timings List all the relevant dates: review meetings, presenting to the
decision-maker, the delivery date for the solution.
What makes a good solution? Write up to five points that you would
like the solution to meet. These give you something for everyone to aim
for, they’ll help you judge the ideas, and they’ll help you improve the
 ideas at the end.
Support information What other facts, stats, or nuggets of knowledge
might be helpful here? Don’t go overboard. Just put in the most valuable
stuff. Too much information can overwhelm people.
Audience If your problem involves people, who are they? And what
useful facts do you have about them? If you need to change their behavior,
your Task box will feature a sentence that would motivate them to change
from State A to State B.
Inspiration If you’ve seen anything that demonstrates the standard of
solution you’re looking for, add a reference to it in the brief. If your
problem is marketing, what campaigns have you seen that you like? If it’s
behavior change, what examples have you seen that impressed you? If it’s
an engineering task, what examples would be great references? Make it
clear why you think these examples are good. This isn’t about giving
people stuff to copy—it’s about exciting them with the possibilities.
Project leader Who is leading the team? This is the point of contact for
everyone involved. They’re ultimately responsible for the success of the
project.

I recommend you take the opportunity to put the brief before the decision-
maker to keep them in the loop. You want them to give you the thumbs up
before you get started. That will make it easier to get approval on ideas that
answer the brief at the end.
But before you do that, let’s make sure your brief has the best chance of
inspiring the best ideas.

A LIBERATING BRIEF

Not all briefs are equal. Some will naturally lead to better ideas than others.
That’s down to how you communicate the information. Of course, you’re
working within restrictions: you want to achieve something specific and there
are certain things you just can’t do. The list of dos and don’ts can sometimes be
long, but if you focus on these restrictions and limitations, you’re likely to block
people’s thinking.
Instead you need to create a brief that inspires people and ignites their
imagination, that encourages them to explore beyond the norm. You do that by
focusing on the opportunity.
 I find it helpful to think of these approaches in terms of fence and field.

One approach discourages exploratory thinking and the other enables it

THE FENCE
This is the most common way for a company to write a brief. It often comes
from the brief-writer trying to protect themselves by specifying all the
restrictions. The brief usually reads as if it’s been written by a lawyer, because if
things don’t work out as hoped, they’ll show this document to the boss as
evidence that the fault must lie with the other participants.
But it doesn’t. This kind of brief is the cause of bad thinking. It locks people
firmly inside the norm.
It’s like describing a piece of land by its boundary fence. When people start to
work on the brief, they are so focused on all the stuff that hems them in that they
miss out on the potential of the land. Instead, they wish that they could move the
fences, and gripe about how green the grass looks on the other side.

THE FIELD
This approach focuses on the opportunity of the area you’ll be working within. It
clearly talks about the hopes for the solution and the amazing difference it will
make. It inspires people with examples of the kind of thing we hope this idea
will be like. It doesn’t avoid the restrictions, it just doesn’t dwell on them either.
It’s more about defining the opportunity, and it does it in a way that a 10-year-
old would understand rather than a trained lawyer.
This kind of brief allows people to explore beyond perceived boundaries and
norms. Because sometimes you need to do that to reach the most interesting
ideas.
The way you write and deliver a brief dictates the standard of work you can
expect. Get people excited about the opportunity and they’re more likely to rise
to your expectations. Especially if they have a good way of generating ideas.

 The way you write and deliver a brief dictates the standard of
work you can expect

IT’S TIME FOR BRAINSTORMS TO RETIRE

Brainstorming was first introduced to the world in 1942. It was outlined in the
book How to Think Up by Alex Osborn, the “O” of the advertising agency
BBDO.1 He started experimenting with ways of improving group creativity in
his agency and found that his brainstorming technique helped to do just that. It
was designed for the world of advertising at a moment in history. And, funnily
enough, these days ad agencies are the last places you’ll find the technique being
used.
Almost as soon as the brainstorming technique became popular, academics
began to study it. And right from the start, the results have been less than
favorable. Many of the studies compared the technique with individuals working
independently on the same problem and found that brainstorming produced
fewer and less diverse ideas than the same number of lone thinkers.2 That’s
pretty damning stuff.
But there are lots more reasons to ditch the brainstorm. Lots of them!

NARROWING DOWN THE THINKING

You would think that getting a group of diverse brains together in a room would
broaden the thinking. That having a collection of people who think differently
would expand the scope of ideas that are generated. But it seems that the
opposite is true.
Studies have shown that when people are working together in a room, they
tend to over-focus on a smaller number of concepts.3 The social dynamic of a
group naturally limits the breadth of thinking. This is exacerbated as new ideas
tend to conform to those already suggested by other participants. The pull of the
norm seems to be hard to resist in a small group, and it leads to the very opposite
results from those you’d hope to get from an idea-generation session.

THE RACE TO THE BOTTOM

There are two psychological effects that have the tendency to reduce individual
input in a brainstorming session.
 The first of these—the matching effect—explains why a few lethargic and
cynical people in a room tend to bring the whole room down.4 People tend to
undergo a regression to the mean, where the more able members of the group
end up matching the performance of their less able counterparts.
Related to this is the sucker effect.5 It’s similarly damaging for group
sessions. People with lots to offer tend to tone down their contributions when
they know there are freeloaders and slackers in the room who aren’t putting in as
much effort. You’ll never get people with equal energy and talent in a room, so
this is always going to be an issue. And it’s compounded by the fact that
grabbing whoever happens to be free preselects the less dedicated members of
your team.

THE IDEA BOTTLENECK

The typical method of brainstorming involves one person with a marker pen and
a flipchart noting down the ideas of one attendee at a time. This method causes
something known as production blocking, where the valuable ideas that come to
people while someone else is speaking often get lost.6 They are either forgotten,
discarded as off-topic, or left behind as more thoughts come to mind.
Without a suitable means to capture these, a brainstorm session fails to be a
truly effective way of generating ideas.

A BUMPER BAG OF FIRST THOUGHTS

The attendees of most brainstorms have no idea what they’re working on until
the session starts. Without the chance to get their mind around the issues, they
come up with uninformed first thoughts. Using the input/process/output model,
you can see that poor input and a poor approach to processing is pretty unlikely
to produce output that has much value at all. At best, you can expect to do some
of the exploratory groundwork that could potentially lead to good ideas. But
you’re unlikely to produce the good ideas themselves in this kind of session.

LET’S ENCOURAGE BAD IDEAS

During brainstorm sessions, the facilitator will often try to coax people to
contribute by saying: “C’mon, there’s no such thing as a bad idea!” Except, we
all know that there is.

Lowering the creative standards can actually be a really good thing for
encouraging the flow of ideas, but it has to be matched with people looking for
the potential and then raising ideas up to a higher level. Instead, this poisonous
phrase just encourages the loudmouths to fill the airtime. These people are often
uncomfortable with silence and would rather fill the space with talking,
regardless of the quality of their contribution. Which only makes it harder for
other people to think and contribute.

Pretty compelling points, aren’t they?

But don’t let it get you down. Really! This is great news. Brainstorms were a
fantastic starting point. They helped corporations understand that they could
harness the creativity of their staff. And all of these learnings can help us build
better and more effective ways of doing that.
One of the reasons I started RIGHT Thinking was to come up with a better
alternative to the B.S. (my personal abbreviation of “brainstorm”). Because
brainstorms have had their moment in the spotlight and now it’s time to move
on.

PRACTICAL EXERCISE

TURN THE RESTRICTIONS INTO OPPORTUNITIES

The field vs fence approach is all about moving people’s focus from the
restrictions to the opportunities. Below is some information to work with.
Write two versions of the brief, one that focuses on the restrictions and one
that focuses on the opportunity.

Our customers have recently been complaining about our delivery times.
Some of them have been switching to the competition, even although they
have pretty much the same delivery time as us and are slightly more
expensive. They say it’s because they get a better experience than they do
with us.
Our sales are dropping by tens of thousands a month. This is about more
than stopping people switching—it’s about winning them back.
The CEO doesn’t understand the situation and is holding our department
responsible. He’s demanding a solution in time for the global director’s
meeting in ten days.
We need to prove ourselves here or our jobs are at risk. We have no
budget to work with and we’re currently so busy we can’t spare any more
than a couple of people to work on it.
We’d greatly appreciate whoever helps to dig us out of this hole.
This exercise isn’t about solving the problem, it’s about writing the brief
and working out how to best deliver it. Fill in any information you feel is
missing to complete two contrasting approaches.
 Chapter 12

INTO THE UNKNOWN

or

Time to switch off the corporate SatNav

For as far back as anyone can remember the Xhosa people of South Africa have
had a pretty brutal coming of age ceremony for their young men.1 If they want to
be considered a man, the initiates have to endure a several-week ordeal that
involves them being stripped naked and chased out into the wild by men with
sticks. For the first week, they eat only half-boiled maize and are not allowed to
drink any water. All they have to keep them warm in the cold winter nights is a
thin blanket.
Weeks of trials and lessons begin. The boys are punished if they transgress the
rules or fail at their tasks. Injury and death are real risks. Every year lives are
lost. No one in their right mind would ever choose to put themselves through this
experience. The young men do it because they have little choice.
This is how most people feel about being taken out of their norm. It’s scary.
It’s disorientating. You feel ill-prepared and uncertain about how you should
respond to the alien environment you find yourself in. There’s risk of
punishment if you do it wrong. You’re in constant discomfort while you’re away
from your familiar environment. It’s understandable that people will do
whatever they can to avoid venturing into the unknown.
Fortunately, there are the equivalent of survival skills you can develop for
creative exploration. These skills allow you to respond to any environment, face
uncertainty, and spot the opportunities that can lead to new ideas.
This survival skill is called “improv.”

YOU’RE HAVING A LAUGH, AREN’T YOU?

When I was a student, one of my favorite TV shows was Whose Line Is It
Anyway? I used to watch both the British and American versions of the show,
amazed by the participants’ abilities to create comedy out of nothing. Sometimes
they’d be making up a Broadway musical about the janitor onboard the Death
Star. Other times they’d be attending an imaginary dinner party playing a
character that the host had to guess. It was all the more magical because I was
certain I didn’t have the skills to do it myself.
A few years ago I was lucky enough to be involved in an experiment to see if
the show could be adapted to the internet age. We assembled some of the
regulars from the show to broadcast a web version where the audience
participation came from social media. I was the host, throwing tweeted
suggestions at the improv performers. It was a dream come true!
My main collaborator on the project was Neil Mullarkey, one of the founders
of The Comedy Store Players. Twice a week for over 30 years he’s been
entertaining audiences without a script. Alongside his fellow cast members, he
steps into the unknown on a mission to put smiles on the faces of a few hundred
people. I can’t think of anyone better to teach people how to venture into
unfamiliar territories.
Not one for embracing the normal way of doing things, Neil spent a period
teaching at Ashridge Business School, showing students the importance of
structure in liberating creative thinking.2 As he eloquently puts it, it’s about
“Minimal structure, maximum autonomy. You can’t have no structure, but each
team can do it in their own way.”3
The Comedy Store Players shows are based around a number of improv
games that give just enough structure to liberate thinking. Even after playing
each of the games hundreds of times, the group comes up with something new
every time. It’s quite different from the rigid structure and predictable outcomes
of most workplaces. Improv methods have been developed through hundreds of
thousands of live experiments all over the world. The lessons are not all about
chuckles and belly-laughs. They’re about collaborating effectively on ideas and
venturing into the unknown together as a group.
These lessons from the world of comedy can make a serious difference to
your organization’s ability to come up with ideas.

IT STARTS WITH TRUST

The biggest killer of ideas is fear. Employees tend to be afraid of what others
might think, about potentially damaging their career prospects, and even—in
their worst fantasies—about being fired for saying something unforgivable. Fear
isn’t just something you can expect people to choke back and pretend that
they’re not being affected by. It needs to be eliminated.

The biggest killer of ideas is fear

Fear is often activated by unknowns, so if people are venturing into an

unfamiliar territory full of unknowns, they need to have the security of knowing
that they’re OK. You create that security with trust.
Talking of his improv sessions, Neil told me: “People still occasionally say:
‘Well, surely you have something already in your back pocket.’ The thing we
have in our back pocket is the trust we have in each other, the trust in the
process.”
If you’re not getting quality ideas, it’s not the fault of the individuals, it’s the
fault of the exercise you’re using. When people embrace that, it takes the
pressure off. Unless someone decides to be an obstructive saboteur, the blame
cannot be laid at their door.
Secondly, people need to trust the team they’re working with. When I’m
working on a creative project with someone new, we’ll usually start with idle
chit-chat. It’s all about getting to know each other, understanding each other’s
motivations, and working out where our boundaries are. That’s not time-wasting,
it’s trust-building. It’s vital for what is to come.
Everyone needs to know that the people in their team are not going to turn on
them, judge them, or blame them for anything. If a workplace is particularly
political, this can be a difficult hurdle to get over. But it can be done.
If I’m working with a particularly hierarchical organization, I like to take
them out of the office environment—usually to someplace quite striking that
makes them feel different. When you change the environment, it’s easier to
change the assumptions and rules of engagement. I’ll then make it clear that
we’re operating in a different way and define what good and bad behavior are
within this new environment.
Safety isn’t about staying where you are and not venturing into the unknown.
That’s fear. Safety is about double-checking your parachute when you’re
skydiving, trusting your team and your equipment when you’re mountaineering,
and having faith in your car’s airbags when you’re driving on the motorway. The
more trust you can develop within your organization, the further you can venture
into unknown thinking territories together.

WHEN TRUST BREAKS DOWN

I know first hand what happens if you don’t trust the people you’re working
with. And it’s not pretty.
In my early days in advertising, I was teamed up with a hotshot art director
who had just won some big awards. I was flattered that he wanted to work with
me, so I jumped at the opportunity to be his writer. On the very first day I
worked with him, I realized I’d made a mistake. We started work on our first
brief. I suggested an idea. He told me it was stupid. I put forward another idea.
He hated it. He asked me to come up with something better. I was embarrassed,
so I picked up the brief and pretended to read it again. He came up with an idea.
I thought it was pretty good. And I told him so. He then disagreed with me and
said his idea was terrible, so my judgment must be flawed.
It went on like this every day until my mind refused to come up with any
ideas. I was creatively paralyzed. I could no longer do what I was being paid to
do.
So I got fired.
The following day I was fortunate enough to be immediately hired by a better
agency. The creative director loved my ideas. He built on them and encouraged
me, and I found that I had an endless well of them inside of me. The blockage
was gone.
Negativity is a sure way to destroy creative thinking. And positive
encouragement is a sure way to nourish it.

GOOD STRUCTURE ENABLES IDEAS

There’s an assumption that structure limits creative thinking, but that’s a

misunderstanding. The wrong kind of structure limits thinking, the right kind
liberates it. Few people know the difference.
As Neil points out: “Creativity scares people because it sounds like you’re just
hanging loose running around in flip-flops. And most creativity these days is
within some sort of confines. Improv is creativity within constraints.”
The structure of improv actually helps with the ideas.

The wrong kind of structure limits thinking, the right kind

liberates it

In its simplest terms, a limiting structure focuses on what you want people to
do, while a liberating structure focuses on what you want them to achieve. As
you can see, trust comes into play again here. This is all about trusting the team
to get the job done their way. In improv, that trust comes from the audience and
the players. In the workplace, it comes from the leadership and each other.
The second part of a liberating structure is giving the team everything they
need throughout the process to enable them to do the best work possible.
This requires different things at each stage of the process. Let’s look at it in
terms of input, process, and output.

A liberating structure gives the team everything they need to do the best work at every stage of the
process

INPUT
A liberating structure makes sure the thinkers have the very best material to
work with. This tends to be in the form of an insightful brief. High-quality input
frees people up to get on with generating ideas rather than having to go back and
root around for valuable nuggets themselves.

PROCESS
You need to have certain things in place if you want to give people the best
chance of coming up with ideas. These include giving people dedicated time to
work on the project, giving them the space to think, supplying resources and
information as they need it, and offering a good environment to work in. It’s
about giving the team control over how they work. And being there for them, if
they’ve got questions. Throughout the process, the decision-maker should check
in with the team regularly to see how they’re doing, make sure they’re going in
the right direction, and keep their energy up.

OUTPUT
At this stage, you need quality control to make sure the best ideas happen. This
ensures that the ideas are suitable and they don’t get damaged on the way out the
door. The decision-maker will be involved to make sure the ideas are hitting the
mark, and the team leader should be involved all the way through to
implementation to make sure the ideas don’t lose their focus. Having gone
through the thinking, they understand better than anyone what’s important. So
no changes should be made without their approval.

Most people think creative thinking needs a loosey-goosey, uncontrolled

approach. But that’s unlikely to work in a business environment. A good
structure is vital for ideas to flourish and survive the harsh corporate
environment unscathed.

TWO EARS, ONE MOUTH

When you see live improv, you probably think the comedians’ minds are
constantly working on the next clever thing to say. Because surely they can’t just
come up with that stuff in the moment. But that’s not the case. Good improv
comes from letting go of your own agenda and listening to what your fellow
players are saying. And this is the same skill that leads to any great creative
collaboration.
 If anyone in the group has an agenda, it steers the group’s thinking in that
person’s direction. And moving it towards their own predefined area means
they’re moving it away from all the other opportunities. A good system will
always give people an opportunity to share their ideas, but it’s the joint
exploration that adds real value to a group’s thinking.
When people are part of a group, they should be aiming to travel as a team
and help each other clear the path to new ideas and perspectives. If they don’t
listen to each other and all try to direct the thinking, they’re like a bunch of cats
with their tails tied together. They’ll make a lot of noise and get nowhere fast.
Team members need to put aside their own motivations. Their role should be
to make others look good. That will result in better thinking, which in the long
run will reflect well on everyone.

AGREE AND GROW

The most common piece of advice you’ll hear about improv is the phrase: “Yes,
and …” It’s the foundation of all improv exercises, where participants agree with
what has gone before and then add something to it. That allows the scene to keep
flowing and growing.
If someone disagrees, they bring things to a halt. It takes time to build
momentum again. You may have seen it in a brainstorm where someone kills a
discussion by saying something like: “No. We tried that before and it didn’t
work.” The conversation suddenly stops and silence descends as people don’t
know what to say and are now worried that if they do say something it will be
similarly shot down.
It would be better for the naysayer to spot something good in the idea and
encourage people to develop it in another direction. For example, maybe
someone is suggesting the company gets people to pay using an app instead of
going to the checkout. And from experience, someone else in the group knows
that it’s difficult to get people to download a new app. Instead of saying: “No,
we tried apps before and no one ever downloads them,” they could accept the
suggestion and add to it with: “I love the idea of getting people to pay using their
mobile, let’s take it a step further and allow them to do it without downloading
an app. Could they do it by just tapping their handset on the shelf?”
That would keep the thinking moving. And it could open up a whole new
bunch of opportunities.
EMBRACE MISS STEAKS

Most businesses aren’t very welcoming of blunders, and yet when it comes to
improv, a mistake can be the catalyst for the most interesting outcome. But only
if you’re open for it.
Thinking tends to go in a logical flow. And logic will tend to take you to
logical places. A mistake can lead you down a path that you would never
otherwise have explored. That’s how we ended up with penicillin. Alexander
Fleming accidentally left the lid off a Petri dish and it started to grow mold.
Instead of chucking it away, he examined it and discovered that the penicillium
mold appeared to kill the bacteria he was studying. Embracing his mistake
revolutionized the medical industry and saved countless lives.

A mistake can lead you down a path that you would never
otherwise have explored

As a young musician, I was given a great piece of wisdom that was attributed
to Chuck Berry: “If you make a mistake, do it again. People will think you
meant it.”
I remember the first time I followed the advice. I played a bum note on the
guitar. The audience went “Ugh!” So I did it again. The audience went “Oh!” So
I did it again and the audience went “Aaah!” I’d gone from looking like a
bumbling twit to a brave genius. Soon I started to make deliberate mistakes. It
became my thing, and a great way of keeping the audience on their toes.
You need to resist the temptation to shut down mistakes. Instead, open them
up and they may lead you somewhere magical.

RELAX AND ENJOY IT

To effectively embrace an improv approach, everyone needs to relax and let go

of any need to be businesslike. Improv is a state of play that allows a group of
people to explore the Unknown, whereas being businesslike puts people in a
self-censoring mode that discounts anything that doesn’t feel suitably serious.
And, in this case, being businesslike is bad for business.
 This isn’t about trying to get to a solution as fast as possible. It’s about asking:
“What if” rather than saying: “It just is.” It’s about rooting around in new
territories. And that’s something people do best with a smile on their face.
Most people find they can relax and get into a playful state more easily if
they’re not sitting at their desk. Let them go to where the great ideas are, because
they sure as heck won’t come to their office cubicle.

PRACTICAL EXERCISE

DO SOME IMPROV ON YOUR OWN

A lot of improv exercises involve the players getting into character to

respond to different situations. These characters are where a lot of the
humor comes from. Getting into character helps you break out of your
standard thinking. Do it right, and you’ll no longer come up with the kinds
of ideas you would normally.
Imagine this situation:
A shopping precinct has recently been refurbished. It’s now a beautiful
piazza with minimalist concrete benches for people to sit and eat artisanal
snacks from a selection of food stalls. This new environmental design has
made it popular with skateboarders. The open space makes it great for kick-
flips and the benches are ideal for grinding. Every weekend skateboarders
congregate here.
The shops aren’t happy. They claim it’s driving business away. An
upmarket dress shop that was already struggling claims the skateboarders
pushed them out of business. This is causing conflict in the community, so
a reporter from the local radio station has turned up to ask everyone the
same questions:

What’s your opinion of the redesigned piazza?

Who should benefit from the new space?
What do you think should be done about the current situation?

Your task is to answer the questions from different points of view. You
can write down these answers or—even better—go fully into character and
act them out. The more you get into the mind of your character, the better
your responses will be. How do you think the following people would
respond?

A policewoman who has dealt with several complaints in the space

A shopkeeper who wants the skateboarders banned
A skateboarder who loves the space and the community it has
attracted
A skateboarder’s parent who is happy about their hobby
An entrepreneur looking for their next opportunity

You should have some very different responses from each person. Most
of which would be quite different to your own response.
This kind of exercise can help you see problems and opportunities from
very different perspectives. It’s a great way of coming up with ideas that
you wouldn’t normally have. It can work even better in groups, as the
different characters take the interactions in surprising directions.
 INTRODUCTION

Yes, I know. Introductions normally go at the front. But this isn’t an introduction
to the book, it’s an introduction to your life after reading the book. Because if
this book doesn’t change you in some way, one of us has done something wrong.
I’m hoping that you now have a clearer understanding of what creativity is,
how your brain comes up with new ideas, and how organizations can thrive on
fresh thinking.
I hope you also understand the importance of having ideas, and understand
that your brain is capable of brilliant creative thinking if you’re willing to put in
the effort. Because great ideas are not simply the result of spending half an hour
pondering; they’re the result of everything you do in your life. The more effort
you put into feeding and exercising your mind, the better placed you are to come
up with world-shaking ideas.
And we need those world-shaking ideas now more than ever.

THE WORLD NEEDS BETTER IDEAS

The world is in the state it’s in because of ideas. Bad ideas. Ideas that have led to
pollution, wars, poverty, famine, and an epidemic of mental health issues. The
only things that can combat bad ideas are good ideas. And that’s where you
come in.
Hopefully, you’d like to make the world a little bit better. You may even have
a specific cause you would like to address. If not, a browse through today’s
newspaper will doubtless reveal something you’d like to address. You may want
to begin by making little bits of your own world better first. If you look around
you, there will be no shortage of things that can be improved, from the design of
your kitchen to your personal relationships. It’s good to get into the habit of
making improvements wherever you can.
Hopefully this book has equipped you with everything you need to know to
come up with ideas that will make a difference. Take your problem and put it
through the RIGHT Thinking process. Look for the less obvious stuff at every
stage. That’s how you get to the new and valuable ideas.
If you end up with a brilliant idea, don’t keep it to yourself. Because the only
truly valuable ideas are the ones that happen. Share it with your friends and with
people you respect. They may be able to improve on it or help you make it a
reality. The more minds we have working on the world’s problems, the better
our collective futures become.

EMPLOYEES NEED MORE THINKING

Our workplaces are in constant need of ideas. The established corporations are
looking for ways to outthink the nimble startups. The startups are looking for
ways to outthink the established corporations. Ideas are the currency of business
success, and those who can provide them are valuable to organizations.
A creative approach may also be needed in your own work life. When most
people are expected to have several careers in their lifetime, it’s important to be
able to adapt. You become valuable when you can take skills and knowledge
from one industry and apply them to another. That’s a creative skill. Being able
to access experience and knowledge that comes from outside a company’s norm
makes you valuable.

MANAGEMENT NEEDS TO ADAPT

If you’re in a leadership position, you have a responsibility to help change your

organization to make it more welcoming to ideas. Otherwise, the smaller upstarts
who are out to steal your lunch will end up stealing your dinner, your elevenses,
and your afternoon snack too.
You can start by embracing people’s differences, rather than forcing them to
conform to a limiting norm. That’s better for your employees and better for the
organization in the long term.
You can adopt a better way of solving problems than the traditional
brainstorm. I’m currently developing a training program for RIGHT Thinking.
Maybe that will help you.
Just like with evolution, the organizations that are best able to adapt are the
ones that will survive.
CREATIVE THINKING MAKES US FULFILLED

Creative thinking is what has made us human. Studies show that not only does
happiness make us better at coming up with ideas; coming up with ideas also
makes us happier.1
Many of the people who fill our history books have earned their way into
those pages with ideas. Not always good ones, admittedly, but it’s ideas that
allow you to make a mark on the world.
Don’t fall for the lie that you are not creative. Creative thinking is your
birthright. Use it to leave this world a little bit better than it was before you
arrived. That involves improving the small things as much as it does
revolutionizing the big things.

EMBRACE YOUR DIFFERENCE

Resist the urge to conform. That just removes everything that makes you special.
Instead, celebrate what makes you different. Because your difference is what
allows you to think in ways that other people don’t.
But don’t be a pretentious pain in the backside about it. Difference alone
won’t help you. It only really becomes valuable when you put it to use
generating ideas, whether in the field of art, business ideas, or whatever else
floats your brain. So find something that drives you and get to work.

DEVELOP YOUR MIND

Remember that your norm will naturally contract over time. If you want to keep
developing your mind, you need to combat that shrinkage. Make a habit of
feeding your mind with new information, giving yourself new experiences, and
questioning everything around you. I hope to spend my last days on earth with
the best mind I’ve ever had. The alternative terrifies me.

EMBRACE THE PROCESS

I’m hoping that I’ve managed to convince you to give the RIGHT Thinking
process a try. It’s certainly going to give you better results than a typical
brainstorm. Check out my online resources to help you get started at
davebirss.com. And if you’re ready to revolutionize your company’s approach to
ideas, I’m ready to talk.

ENGAGE YOUR BRAIN

If you’re getting ready to close this book and slot it into that sliver of space on
your bookshelf, pause for a second. This book is designed to live on your desk,
hang out in your top drawer, or maybe linger in the basket of reading material in
your bathroom. You’re always going to need ideas, and this book should be
close at hand to help you have better ones.
Any banjo player can tell you that you’ll only get better by practicing. So start
working on your idea-generation skills whenever you have a spare moment.
Because, unlike a banjo player, people will actually want to listen to you when
you’re the person who’s continually coming up with great ideas.
 BIG THANKS

You may have gathered that I’m not a big fan of taking all the credit. Maybe it’s
because I feel so deeply indebted to the many people who have helped me,
encouraged me, taught me, debated with me, and opened doors for me along the
way.
First, I want to thank the wonderful Holly Bennion, Louise Richardson, Jamie
Hodder-Williams, and the brilliant team at Nicholas Brealey Publishing and
Hodder & Stoughton. You are a delight to work with and I’m looking forward to
filling more shelf space with you in the future.
Grateful hugs to my brilliant manager, Miriam Staley, for making this book
happen. And to her team of Chris Latterell and Jan Stringer for helping to make
my life easier and better.
I doff my cap to the super-smart Aran Rees, who helped to shape my thinking
around divergency and the value of difference.
I bow humbly to my old friend Chris Penny, who came up with the mnemonic
‘RIGHT’ for my thinking approach.
The incredible Soon Yu, whom I co-wrote Iconic Advantage with, deserves
tons of thanks for his support, friendship, and diplomatically honest advice. He
understands this journey better than anyone.
Heaps of thanks to Gordon Young for his friendship, advice, and
encouragement. And to the rest of the team at The Drum.
A debt of gratitude to my friends from the advertising industry who have
taught me lessons, shaped my mind, and inspired me through the years: Ian
Thomas, Simon White, Marc Lewis, Piggy Lines, Patrick Collister, Steve Henry,
Dave Buonaguidi, Pedro Garcia, Reuben Webb, Rory Sutherland, Andy Archer,
Tom Richards, and many, many more.
Hvala vam to Vladimir Vulic, Darko Buldioski, Relja Dereta, Aleksandar
Petković, Ivan Minic, Robert Petković, and the rest of my Balkans buddies.
Much gratitude to the brilliant minds that are Neil Mullarkey, Mark Evans,
Ben Wheatley, Kaiya Stone, Heimo Hammer, Balder Onarheim, and Tony
Patrick for talking to me and generously sharing their thoughts and stories.
 I’d like to tip my hat, whatever color of hat that happens to be, to Edward de
Bono, who pioneered creative thinking in business. And pay homage to Sir Ken
Robinson for getting people to think about the role education needs to play in
nurturing rather than destroying the creative spark in our children.
I am deeply grateful for having had such wonderful parents who never
discouraged me, dampened my curiosity or told me to get a proper job.
Finally, I want to thank my wonderful family. My wife, Valerie, is the most
patient and tolerant person I’ve ever met. Not once has she complained about the
weekends I’ve sacrificed in my attempt to hit deadlines. My eldest daughter,
Iona, regularly inspires me with her own creative journey. And my youngest
daughter, Simone, amazes me with her endless stories and wild imagination.
Thank you, my special ladies!
I’ve probably forgotten some really important people. My deepest apologies if
you feel that your name belongs in this section. If that’s the case, please write it
neatly below and send me a picture. Unless you’re reading this on a Kindle. In
that case, feel free to send me an abusive email and I’ll reply with the
appropriate apology right away.

Much gratitude and humble apologies to ___________________.

For tools and resources and to find out more about
speaking, workshops and consulting head along to:

davebirss.com
 ENDNOTES

Chapter 1
1 “Muse”, Encyclopaedia Britannica, https://www.britannica.com/topic/Muse-
Greek-mythology
2 Arya, Manisha, and Prasad Maurya, Suman, “Relationship between Creativity,
Intelligence and Academic Achievement among School Going Children”,
Studies on Home and Community Science, 10:1–3, 2016, pp. 1–7, https://‐
doi.org/10.1080/09737189.2016.11885359
3 Harris, Charles, Jaws in Space: Powerful Pitching for Film and TV
Screenwriters, Kamera Books
4 Krauss, Lawrence. M., “Beam Me Up an Einstein, Scotty”, Wired, 1
November 1995, https://www.wired.com/1995/11/krauss/
5 Devlin, Hannah, “Beam me up, Scotty! Scientists Teleport Photons 300 Miles
into Space”, Guardian, 12 July 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/science/‐
2017/jul/12/scotty-can-you-beam-me-up-scientists-teleport-photons-300-
miles-into-space
6 Patrick, Sean, Nikola Tesla: Imagination and the Man that Invented the 20th
Century, Oculus, 2013
7 Boden, Margaret A., “Creativity in a nutshell”, Think, 5(15), 2009, pp. 83–96,
https://doi.org/10.1017/s147717560000230x
8 Gross, Daniel, “Ray Kroc, McDonald’s, and the Fast-Food Industry”, Wiley,
1996, https://www.wiley.com/legacy/products/subject/business/‐
forbes/kroc.html

Chapter 2
1 Berry, Sarah, “Our Body Shapes Have Changed Over the Years, and They’re
Still Changing”, Sydney Morning Herald, 1 August 2017,
https://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/health-and-wellness/how-our-bodies-have-
changed-and-are-still-changing-20170801-gxmvr2.html
2 Stringer, Christopher, “Why Have Our Brains Started to Shrink?”, Scientific
American, n.d., https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-have-our-‐
brains-started-to-shrink/
3 Weiner, Sophie, “Why Do Domesticated Animals Have Tiny Brains”, Popular
Mechanics, 8 December 2017, https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/‐
animals/a14392897/domesticated-brains/
4 Thompson, Helen, “The Oldest Stone Tools Yet Discovered Are Unearthed in
Kenya”, Smithsonian, 20 May 2015, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/‐
science-nature/oldest-known-stone-tools-unearthed-kenya-180955341/
5 Walter, Chip, “Why Are We the Last Apes Standing? How Childhood Let
Modern Humans Conquer the Planet”, Slate, 29 January 2013,
http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2013/01/‐
evolution_of_childhood_prolonged_development_helped_homo_‐
sapiens_succeed.html
6 Ibid.
7 Wuchty, Stefan, Jones, Benjamin, and Uzzi, Brian, “The Increasing
Dominance of Teams in Production of Knowledge”, Science, 316, 5827, 18
May 2007, pp. 1036–9, https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1136099
8 David Cope biography, http://artsites.ucsc.edu/faculty/cope/biography.htm
9 Cope, David, Bach by Design: Computer Composed Music Experiments in
Musical Intelligence, Centaur Records, CRC 2184, 1994, https://www.‐
discogs.com/David-Cope-Bach-By-Design-Computer-Composed-Music-
Experiments-In-Musical-Intelligence/release/7531356
10 Garcia, Chris, “Algorithmic Music – David Cope and EMI”, Computer
History Museum, 29 April 2015,
http://www.computerhistory.org/atchm/algorithmic-music-david-cope-and-
emi/

Chapter 3
1 Limb, Charles J., and Braun, Allen, R., “Neural Substrates of Spontaneous
Musical Performance: An fMRI Study of Jazz Improvisation”, PLoS ONE,
3(2), 27 February 2008, https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/‐
journal.pone.0001679
2 Limb, Charles J., transcript of “Your brain on improv”, November 2010,
https://www.ted.com/talks/charles_limb_your_brain_on_improv/transcript
3 Ibid.
4 Kosslyn, Stephen M., and Miller, G. Wayne, “Left Brain, Right Brain?
Wrong”, Psychology Today, 27 January 2014, https://www.‐
psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/the-theory-cognitive-modes/201401/left-brain-‐
right-brain-wrong
5 What Is The Default Mode Network? (2017, August 27). Retrieved from
https://reliawire.com/default-mode-network/
6 Latham, Tyger, “The Google Effect”, Psychology Today, 16 July 2011,
https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/therapy-matters/201107/the-‐
google-effect
7 May, Cindi, “A Learning Secret: Don’t Take Notes with a Laptop”, Scientific
American, 3 June 2014, https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-
learning-secret-don-t-take-notes-with-a-laptop/

Chapter 4
1 Pearce, Eiluned, Stringer, Chris, and Dunbar, R. I. M., “New Insights into
Differences in Brain Organization between Neanderthals and Anatomically
Modern Humans, Proceedings of the Royal Society B, Royal Society
Publishing, 13 March 2013, http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/‐
content/280/1758/20130168
2 Sullivan, Walter, “The Einstein Papers: Childhood Showed a Gift for the
Abstract”, New York Times, 27 March 1972, https://www.nytimes.com/‐
1972/03/27/archives/the-einstein-papers-childhood-showed-a-gift-for-the-
abstract-the.html
3 Albert Einstein biography, http://www.notablebiographies.com/Du-Fi/‐
Einstein-Albert.html
4 “Gedankenexperiment”, Encyclopaedia Britannica, https://www.‐
britannica.com/science/Gedankenexperiment
5 Overbye, Dennis, “Gravitational Waves Detected, Confirming Einstein’s
Theory”, New York Times, 11 February 2016, https://www.nytimes.com/‐
2016/02/12/science/ligo-gravitational-waves-black-holes-einstein.html
6 Conversation with the author, March 2018
7 Braff, Zach (writer and director), Garden State, Camelot Pictures, 2004
8 Conversation with the author, March 2018

Chapter 5
1 Birss, D. (writer and director), The Day Before Tomorrow (television series),
Community Channel, 31 May 2015

Chapter 6
1 Ohno, Taiichi, “Ask ‘Why’ Five Times About Every Matter”, March 2006,
http://www.toyota-global.com/company/toyota_traditions/quality/‐
mar_apr_2006.html
2 Boyd, Drew, “A Creativity Lesson From Betty Crocker”, Psychology Today,
19 January 2014, https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/inside-the-box/‐
201401/creativity-lesson-betty-crocker
3 Feynman, Richard, “The Challenger Disaster”, n.d.,
http://www.feynman.com/science/the-challenger-disaster/
4 “The Digital Universe of Opportunities: Rich Data and the Increasing Value of
the Internet of Things”, IDC Analyze the Future, April 2014,
https://www.emc.com/leadership/digital-universe/2014iview/executive-
summary.htm
5 Gallo, Carmine, “Steve Jobs: Get Rid of The Crappy Stuff”, Forbes, 16 May
2011, https://www.forbes.com/sites/carminegallo/2011/05/16/steve-jobs-get-‐
rid-of-the-crappy-stuff/#3ef1f77d7145
6 Savoia, Alberto, “Pretotyping”, 20 August 2010, http://pretotyping.‐
blogspot.com/2010/08/one-of-my-favorite-pretotype-stories.html

Chapter 7
1 Blonsky, George B., US Patent No. 3216423, US Patent and Trademark
Office, 1965
2 Hadhazy, Adam, “Think Twice: How the Gut’s ‘Second Brain’ Influences
Mood and Well-Being”, Scientific American, 12 February 2010, https://www.‐
scientificamerican.com/article/gut-second-brain/
3 Rao, Meenakshi, and Gershon, Michael D., “The Bowel and Beyond: The
Enteric Nervous System in Neurological Disorders”, Nature Reviews:
Gastroenterology & Hepatology, 13(9), 20 July 2016, pp. 517–28, http://doi.‐
org/10.1038/nrgastro.2016.107
4 “Background: Function of the Adrenal Glands”, American Association of
Endocrine Surgeons, n.d., http://endocrinediseases.org/adrenal/‐
adrenal_what.shtml
5 Barrett, Lisa Feldman, How Emotions Are Made, Macmillan, 2017

Chapter 8
1 Sinicki, Adam, “How to Use the Default Mode Network to Increase
Creativity”, Health Guidance for Better Health, n.d.,
http://www.healthguidance.org/entry/17327/1/How-to-Use-the-Default-Mode-
Network-to-Increase-Creativity.html
2 Fox, Kieran C. R., and Christoff, Kalina, The Oxford Handbook of
Spontaneous Thought: Mind-Wandering, Creativity, and Dreaming, OUP
USA, 2018
3 “Meditation Makes You More Creative, Study Suggests”, ScienceDaily, 28
October 2014, https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/10/‐
141028082355.htm
4 Whitney, Derek, “Exercise: Nature’s Mood Enhancer”, PsychCentral, 23
October 2012, https://psychcentral.com/blog/exercise-natures-mood-enhancer/
5 Achor, Shawn, “Happy Doctors Make the Right Diagnosis Faster and Exhibit
Much More Creativity Than Unhappy Ones”, The World Counts, n.d.,
http://www.theworldcounts.com/life/potentials/increased-creativity-one-of-‐
the-benefits-of-happiness
6 Conversation with the author, March 2018

Chapter 9
1 Selbach, Johannes, “Update: How Many Clicks Get the Results on Google’s
First Results Page?”, SEO profiler, 30 May 2017,
https://blog.seoprofiler.com/update-clicks-results-googles-results-page/
2 Latham, Tyger, “The Google Effect”, Psychology Today, 16 July 2011,
https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/therapy-matters/201107/the-
google-effect
3 “Brain Basics: Understanding Sleep”, National Institute of Neurological
Disorders and Stroke, n.d., https://www.ninds.nih.gov/Disorders/Patient-‐
Caregiver-Education/Understanding-Sleep
4 Soong, Jennifer, “The Secret (and Surprising) Power of Naps”, WebMD, n.d.,
https://www.webmd.com/balance/features/the-secret-and-surprising-power-of-
naps#1
5 Nguyen, Linh, “Science Says This is Exactly How to Nap to be at Your Best”,
Forbes, 24 June 2016, https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2016/06/24/‐
science-says-this-is-exactly-how-to-nap-to-be-at-your-best/#51a47ff677de

Chapter 10
1 Capitalizing on Complexity: Insights from the Global Chief Executive Officer
Study, IBM, 2010, https://www-01.ibm.com/common/ssi/cgi-bin/ssialias?‐
htmlfid=GBE03297USEN
2 “Assembly Line – History”, n.d., NetIndustries, http://science.jrank.org/pages/‐
558/Assembly-Line-History.html
3 Toyoda, Eiji, “Good Thinking, Good Products”, May 2005,
http://www.toyota-global.com/company/toyota_traditions/quality/may_‐
jun_2005.html
4 Robinson, Adam, “Google Employees Dedicate 20 Percent of Their Time to
Side Projects: Here’s How it Works”, Inc., 12 March 2018,
https://www.inc.com/adam-robinson/google-employees-dedicate-20-percent-
of-their-time-to-side-projects-heres-how-it-works.html
5 “About Connected Studio”, BBC, 11 January 2017, http://www.bbc.co.uk/‐
connectedstudio/about
6 “Disruptive Technology: With Major Challenges Come Opportunities for
Engineers”, Create, 19 October 2017, https://www.createdigital.org.au/‐
disruptive-technology-opportunities-engineers/
7 “Growth & Innovation”, “Strategy & Corporate Finance”, McKinsey, n.d.,
https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/strategy-and-corporate-‐
finance/how-we-help-clients/growth-and-innovation
8 Halliday, Josh, “Gap Scraps Logo Redesign After Protests on Facebook and
Twitter”, Guardian, 12 October 2010, https://www.theguardian.com/‐
media/2010/oct/12/gap-logo-redesign
9 Edwards, Ryan, “A Taste of 70/20/10 Content from Coca-Cola”, ABZ
Creative Partners, 3 May 2016, http://www.abzcreativepartners.com/taste-‐
702010-content-coca-cola-2/
10 Astor, Maggie, “Microchip Implants for Employees? One Company Says
Yes”, New York Times, 25 July 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/25/‐
technology/microchips-wisconsin-company-employees.html
 Chapter 11
1 Osborn, Alexander F., How to Think Up, McGraw-Hill, 1942
2 Mullen, Brian, Johnson, Craig, and Salas, Eduardo, “Productivity Loss in
Brainstorming Groups: A Meta-Analytic Integration”, Basic and Applied
Social Psychology, 12:1, 7 June 2010, pp. 3–23, https://doi.org/10.1207/‐
s15324834basp1201_1
3 Kohn, Nicholas W., and Smith, Steven. M., “Collaborative Fixation: Effects of
Others’ Ideas on Brainstorming”, Applied Cognitive Psychology, 25(3), 20
May 2011, pp. 359–71, https://doi.org/10.1002/acp.1699
4 Birss, Dave, “Science Shows Brainstorms Don’t Work. Why do we still use
them?”, Open For Ideas, 23 November 2016, http://openforideas.org/blog/‐
2016/11/23/science-shows-brainstorms-dont-work-why-do-we-still-use-them/
5 “Sucker effect”, Oxford Reference, 16 June 2017,
http://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.‐
20110803100540621
6 Nijstad, Bernard A., Stroebe, Wolfgang, and Lodewijkx, Hein F., “Production
Blocking and Idea Generation: Does Blocking Interfere with Cognitive
Processes?”, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 39(6), November
2003, pp. 531–48, https://doi.org/10.1016/s0022-1031(03)00040-4

Chapter 12
1 Bullock, Richard, “It’s Hard to be a Man”, Africa Geographic, 29 May 2015,
http://magazine.africageographic.com/weekly/issue-48/xhosa-circumcision-‐
ritual-south-africa-its-hard-to-be-a-man/
2 Neil Mullarkey, http://www.allthatmullarkey.com/neil_mullarkey.html
3 Conversation with the author, March 2018

Introduction
1 “Eric”, “Scientific Evidence That Creativity Makes You Happier”, Brain Flux,
7 December 2016, http://thebrainflux.com/creativity-makes-you-happier/