00:12just by way of introduction i think i
00:14know many of you i'm jeremy utley
00:16i'm a company harry claibon and then our
00:18amazing team catherine segovia
00:21and zhao are in the background making
00:22everything happen as well
00:24um so welcome to the masters of
00:26creativity series session one
00:30uh let's see i'll kick it off i'm going
00:31to try to share my screen and perry just
00:33let me know if that actually works okay
00:35well the good news is if you want to
00:37follow along and chat i dropped in the
00:39deck you can download it
00:41so if that's easier for you and you want
00:43to do it that way or
00:45you want to grab our materials you know
00:49yeah you know where uh perry is the kind
00:51of guy if you ever sit by perry on an
00:53airplane he's fast forwarding through
00:59if you want to fast forward through this
01:00talk you can actually download the
01:02slides at this link and you can you can
01:04go at your own speed
01:05unfortunately you can't get us to talk
01:07faster but you can at least
01:09take a sneak peek and look ahead but uh
01:11we're excited to uh to be with you all
01:13today i want to start for those of you
01:14who we don't know we want to tell you a
01:16little bit about where we're coming from
01:17and what led us actually to want to host
01:22awesome so a little bit of our
01:23background we have so many interesting
01:26um of many different classes here so
01:28these you've probably come through one
01:30of these windows here
01:33so uh if you think about the work we do
01:36with students at stanford
01:38along with catherine we run this program
01:40leading disruptive innovation there's a
01:43past students there we call it d
01:46is the class and it's a it's a class
01:48that we actually put students
01:49into organizations um to lead change
01:53using design tools and it can be a lot
01:57pretty wild and then the other one is um
02:01which is an accelerator using design
02:05businesses for profits it's been around
02:11so many companies but visit the website
02:13and take a look at that if you're
02:14interested and there's
02:15lots of sort of interesting tools and
02:17techniques related to
02:19the early work there i see a few of the
02:22even from this year in the in the group
02:26and then with executives and
02:29boot camps or other types of programs
02:31that are intense programs that happen at
02:35that are um synchronous and um involved
02:38catherine is a big part of that joust
02:40would be part of that we put on these
02:41huge efforts and we just uh just did one
02:45and then stanford online which i think
02:47there's many of you here that came
02:49through the sime program
02:51which is a program we invite you to look
02:53at that that goes through
02:54all the tools and techniques of design
02:56as well as leading design
02:59that's available at stanford online so
03:02welcome i think everybody came through
03:08i'm going to try to hit the eraser here
03:09i don't know if that how that works boom
03:11look at that nailed it
03:12buck welcome from s i and e good to have
03:16um so perry just shared a little bit of
03:18the various windows that folks might be
03:21one of the things that we have been
03:22curious about is what are the tools that
03:26and increasingly we're finding that some
03:28of the tools and some of the entryway
03:30that we have established through
03:32executive education and other programs
03:34school are getting a little worn you
03:37might notice the hexagons are starting
03:38to look a little tired
03:40and we think less and less in terms of
03:43this kind of hexagon driven uh
03:47uh formulaic recipe driven approach if
03:50you think if you think back to where
03:51perry and i at what period i looked like
03:53when we started with the hexagons
03:54we were we were barely out of high
03:56school practically okay
03:58a lot has changed surgery i've been
04:01through multiple pairs of glasses and
04:02major surgery for crying out loud
04:04and also that that photo of you jeremy i
04:06still think just maybe audience vote how
04:08much does he look like george costanza
04:10with the vest on i think i think
04:14it's the costanza photo please drop it
04:17in chat if there's any other crazy
04:19characters drop it in chat
04:20but one of the things that we have
04:22observed as we've been doing this work
04:24inside organizations with graduate
04:26students is there's this
04:28focus on the sprint and by the way we we
04:30value the sprint quite a bit
04:33uh the idea of a short burst of high
04:36if you're coming from launch pad you
04:38know we value this brand we're often
04:40getting folks to sprint but we find that
04:43basically reducing the the design
04:46thinking driven approach
04:47to a sprint is like telling somebody who
04:50needs to come up with ideas
04:52especially good ideas the ideas they can
04:54implement and commercialize
04:55it's like saying just grab a couple
04:57ideas from the grocery store on your way
04:59with the jug of milk and with the you
05:01know with the bunch of
05:03kale pick up a couple ideas too and
05:05increasingly as we're immersed in
05:07organizations as we're connected with
05:08you all as our alums we're finding
05:10it's not really how innovation works and
05:12it's not really how creativity works
05:15creativity if we have to think about a
05:17different metaphor from the grocery
05:18store it's more like a garden
05:20and you're cultivating a set of
05:22behaviors and attitudes and practices
05:26and there's a lot more attention on a
05:30less in terms of sprinting and more in
05:32terms of what we would think
05:33of as practice if you like this front
05:36metaphor then you might think about
05:38the daily activities as stretching
05:41and as training and as warming up
05:43sprinting is great it's very important
05:46but unless your life is marked by
05:49a set of warm-ups and stretches and
05:53you're probably going to pull a hammy if
05:54you start sprinting right and you've
05:56probably seen that in the context of
05:57your work it's just like
05:58drop and give me a 400. you go uh right
06:02like i haven't even stretched right a
06:03lot of times creative action and
06:05innovation efforts are kind of reduced
06:07down to that start sprinting now
06:10and it doesn't have respect for the
06:15that a creative mind lives in and what
06:18and attitudes to cultivate that creative
06:20mindset actually are
06:22so we kind of want to take a step back
06:23from design practice and even from
06:27and talk about the the system and the
06:30environmental factors that enable
06:32creativity individual and team
06:34creativity to flourish so
06:37establishing our sort of premise for
06:40creativity is a craft and you hone it
06:42through practice then that what does
06:46well it makes us kind of like personal
06:50we'll date ourselves a little bit here
06:51with saturday live funds in france
06:53to pump you up um uh it's hysterical if
06:57you don't know what we're talking about
06:58google hans and franz saturn it live
07:01dana carvey it is hysterical um anyway
07:05but the idea is thinking about personal
07:07trainers work directly with you and sort
07:09of almost find a way for these
07:10tools and techniques to to fit into your
07:13life and that's what we think of these
07:16what jeremy said like this perfect
07:18project i'm going to use all these tools
07:20but actually really and we we hope you
07:23see today discreet techniques that work
07:25against all kinds of different things in
07:26your life whether group activities or
07:28individual activities personal life
07:31that you can apply directly so the
07:35we're going to be doing four four
07:39you are in the input obsession session
07:43uh we'll cover collaboration
07:44experimentation and updating your
07:47operating system uh to trademark
07:50you know us today because we just came
07:53up with that before this talk
07:54um but the the whole idea is
07:58really sort of circling around this idea
08:00of practice and these would be different
08:02different sort of categories of
08:06to build your practice around creativity
08:09so part of the part of the fundamental
08:13myth is that creativity is about output
08:16we mentioned this in kind of our
08:19leading into this session most folks
08:22when they think about creativity they
08:24a creative outcome and that's not
08:28the way to think about creativity uh
08:31author arthur coastler
08:32did some research in the mid 1960s and
08:36my favorite definitions creativity is
08:39of apparently unrelated frames of
08:43and you can think about one frame is
08:45your brain today a different frame is
08:46your brain tomorrow etc but
08:48what you're colliding your brain with
08:51the outcomes of those collisions are
08:56but instead of thinking about creativity
08:59output of your effort what we would
09:03creativity is actually a function of the
09:06you're feeding the system and what we've
09:10highly successful and creative
09:14is that they are relentless and
09:17focused and rigorous about cultivating
09:21in order to lead to creative outputs so
09:24a lot of us who are not
09:25experienced creatives or or we don't
09:27come from creative fields
09:29when we hear about creativity we think
09:30about drawing or we think about the arts
09:33some kind of outcome that looks
09:35beautiful and what we know
09:37actually from immersing in organizations
09:40and and immersing with creative
09:42is that creatives are way more concerned
09:46as an example my wife's a fashion
09:48designer and she goes on these
09:50inspiration trips to new york and paris
09:53i i think it's because she likes
09:54macarons but the truth is
09:57she's she's looking at color she's
10:00looking at silhouette
10:01she's looking at form she comes and she
10:03makes these inspo boards
10:05you know and i remember as an mba when
10:06she was making inspo boards i'm going
10:09what are you doing what is the purpose
10:11of that like that i can't put that in a
10:12spreadsheet i can't run a pivot table on
10:14the inspiration board and i love
10:16maybe a 2x2 it's hard to fit an
10:18inspiration board into a 2x2 right
10:20and yet as i watch her i see that's
10:23what's fueling her craft
10:25i had the opportunity to teach a class
10:28with a hip-hop artist
10:29called lecrae last fall
10:32and our teaching team was giving our
10:34students an assignment
10:35where we were telling them you need to
10:38go out and get inspiration you've got
10:40this problem but before you try to solve
10:43and i could see the blank stares on our
10:45students faces and i could sympathize
10:47as a as a former mba i could see
10:51creativity's not even or sorry
10:53inspiration isn't even a topic
10:55on the radar let alone you know anything
10:58and i just turned to lecrae and i said
11:00look craig how do you think about
11:01inspiration i mean he's won
11:02multiple grammys he's a you know wildly
11:07entrepreneur and artist and
11:10i love what he said he just said
11:13inspiration's a discipline
11:15and to me it stood in such stark
11:20how our students that we were we were
11:24to go get inspiration thought about that
11:27topic i think for most people if you
11:29this topic of inspiration you think
11:30about the cheesy poster
11:32in the corporate hallway it's like
11:34motivation or teamwork and
11:36that's inspiration that's not when we're
11:39talking about inspiration and the
11:40discipline of inspiration we're not
11:42talking about plastering the hallways
11:45cheesy posters that's not what we mean
11:47by this word so we want to try to redeem
11:50and give it a new definition yeah you're
11:52otherwise you're not in the dentist's
11:54office that's where i see those posters
11:55they always remind me the dentist's
11:56office the waiting room
11:58um anyway so if you want to point jeremy
12:00this is this is the point
12:01i'm going to point to the side jeremy
12:02there we go screen grab
12:04okay that's funny um it's this you so if
12:08if you want to the premise of kind of
12:10what we're going to talk about here is
12:12in different ways it's you're pursuing
12:15unexpected inputs and if you're going
12:19pursuing these unexpected inputs and
12:21leaving yourself open for them
12:23that's the that's the creative practice
12:26hone as we pump you up today
12:30and it's really unexpected is actually
12:32an important word before perry
12:33palms you up because that's how a mid
12:36imagination is stimulated imagination is
12:39stimulated by surprising inputs
12:42and and the rea i read a research report
12:44i know i'm a nerd but i do that
12:46and it it pictured an organization like
12:50and it says the vast majority of the
12:53organization has no contact with
12:55the outside world only the surface does
12:58but that's the only part of the
13:00likely to come in contact with an
13:03and i like that as a metaphor that if
13:05you want to stimulate your imagination
13:07you're not you need to seek out you need
13:09to be deliberate about finding things
13:11you don't already know
13:13and it requires a trip to or a short
13:17the tendencies in much of organizational
13:19life which is around
13:20reinforcing what we do already know and
13:23and and going in things that we've
13:25already thought about
13:26et cetera et cetera anyway perry i
13:28interrupted your your pump up moment
13:30that's all right it's kind of i can't do
13:32it now that'd be weird so
13:34let's just move on you wanna you wanna
13:36restart should we research
13:38maybe the next slide please all right
13:41so we'll break down these tools into uh
13:44ways of creating connections and it
13:46reminds me just briefly
13:47there's a great lecturer a professor at
13:49uh stanford robert sapolsky wrote a book
13:52called behave it's amazing
13:54and i think the team or myself i can't
13:56remember we had a meeting with him and
13:58he talked about sort of new ideas coming
14:00from he's a neuroscience and
14:02and primatologist and all these things
14:04but talked about the
14:05the act of a new idea is a lot of times
14:07just clashing together
14:08you know two things you haven't clashed
14:10together before so jeremy's point about
14:12something unexpected
14:13coming together with maybe another
14:15problem you're trying to solve
14:16creates a bunch of new connections that
14:19yield new ideas things that are new to
14:23that's the idea we're gonna cover um two
14:27in this category are three techniques
14:32this is real time people this is this is
14:35i'm here i'm just trying to throw a
14:37barrier off so i'm changing the slides
14:38in the background real time he has the
14:40slide deck i have a copy that's now out
14:42i'm like the old operating system now
14:44let's talk about analogies first so
14:46analogies well you go ahead and jeremy
14:47and run it but without much
14:49setup so we want to we want to actually
14:52like this nerdy thing where you read the
14:55this is a this is an insight related
14:58uh it's called actually there's an
15:00official title of it
15:02it's called dunker's radiation problem
15:04you might be familiar with it if you're
15:05familiar with obscure 1930s research
15:08it was written about in a couple recent
15:09books and we when we stumbled across it
15:11we just thought it was such a good
15:13of a challenge well should we have
15:15catherine do a voiceover without the
15:16camera on then it's really interactive
15:19oh catherine you want to yeah i like
15:22she's got a she's she's got the radio
15:24voice let's hear it catherine
15:28suppose you are a doctor faced with a
15:30patient who has a malignant stomach
15:33it is impossible to operate on this
15:36but unless the tumor is destroyed the
15:41there is a kind of ray that can be used
15:43to destroy the tumor
15:45if the rays reach the tumor all at once
15:48in a sufficiently high intensity
15:50the tumor will be destroyed
15:53at this intensity the healthy tissue
15:56that the rays pass through on the way to
15:58the tumor will also be destroyed
16:01at lower intensities the rays are
16:02harmless to healthy tissue
16:04but they will not affect the tumor
16:08what type of procedure might be used to
16:11with the rays and at the same time avoid
16:14destroying the healthy tissue
16:16it's on you to exercise to excise the
16:20and save the patient but the rays are
16:23or too weak how can you solve it
16:27so you're thinking about this problem
16:28let's actually think about it for a
16:30don't be concerned if you can't solve it
16:32only about 10 of people solve it
16:36again these are people from the 1930s
16:38probably it's different in the 2020s
16:40i don't know but uh but uh radio
16:44would you mind to continue
16:48while you're thinking a little story to
16:51there once was a general who needed to
16:53capture a fortress in the middle of a
16:56country from a brutal dictator
16:58if the general could get all of his
17:00troops to the fortress at the same time
17:03they would have no problem taking it
17:05plenty of roads that the troops could
17:07travel radiated out from the fort like
17:11but they were strewn with mines so only
17:14small groups of soldiers could safely
17:17any one road the general came up with
17:21he divided the army into small groups
17:24traveled a different road leading to the
17:27they synchronized their watches and made
17:29sure to converge on the fortress at the
17:32via their separate roads the plan
17:35worked the general captured the fortress
17:38and overthrew the dictator
17:44have you saved the patient yet just one
17:47last story while you're still
17:48thinking years ago a small town fire
17:52arrived let me put that in the right
17:54order a small town fire chief
17:56arrived at a woodshed fire concerned
17:59that it would spread
18:00to a nearby house if it was not
18:02extinguished quickly
18:04there were no hydrants nearby but the
18:06shed was next to a lake
18:08so there was plenty of water dozens of
18:11neighbors were already taking turns with
18:13buckets throwing water on the shed
18:15but they weren't making any progress the
18:18neighbors were surprised when the fire
18:19chief yelled at them to stop
18:21and to all go fill their buckets in the
18:23lake when they returned
18:25the chief arranged them in a circle
18:27around the shed and on the count of
18:30had them all through their water at once
18:32the fire was immediately dampened
18:34and soon thereafter extinguished the
18:37town gave the fire chief a pay raise
18:39as a reward for quick thinking
18:42can we can we uh on so we're all looking
18:44at each other let's give katherine some
18:46fireworks applause for that reading i
18:48that was just marvelous thank you story
18:52story time exactly really is no
18:56fast forward button no but so
18:59so what's interesting is yeah some of
19:01you are getting it in the chat now which
19:03um the interesting thing is the is the
19:07only about 10 of people solve the
19:11um if if they hear both of the the
19:14problem and the fortress story about
19:17solve the problem if they hear both
19:20and the fire chief story half solve it
19:22and then if they're given
19:24those and told to use them to help
19:27solve the radiation problem eighty
19:30uh solve the problem what does this tell
19:33it tells us that you have to have a
19:38of looking to apply an analogy there are
19:42learnings in other fields but they only
19:45yield themselves up to you
19:46if you're looking and if you're having
19:48the attitude of i almost think about it
19:51is having the attitude of i'm gonna
19:54what if i assume for a moment that there
19:57must be a connection between this
20:01and the problem i'm trying to solve what
20:04might i learn from it
20:05and a lot of times trying on that
20:07forcible collision to use coastler's
20:10trying on the collision yields
20:12unexpected insights and possibilities
20:16that wouldn't have come to me if i
20:17hadn't been willing to entertain it but
20:19we've seen it this isn't just a research
20:20phenomenon we've actually seen this in
20:23in many organizations and it's a highly
20:27oh jeremy i'm going to tell this story a
20:28second but i'm also going to put
20:30jeremy's blog link in there if you want
20:31to learn more also it just jeremy needs
20:33a couple ad dollars there
20:36go ahead i don't run traffic but but
20:39you're giving me an idea i should set
20:41generally anyway so for um a bunch of
20:45came through s i e this is a this is a
20:47story we tell on that so this will be
20:50uh new to others um we we had the
20:53pleasure working with a
20:55team out of fairchild semiconductor many
20:58used a technique using analogy and
21:01timely because you've been reading about
21:02these headlines were those shortages of
21:05semiconductors well the challenge they
21:08small small customers would get shorted
21:11on their orders and cause
21:12major major challenges at that point for
21:14example tesla was actually a small
21:16customer many of the car companies are
21:17technically small customers
21:19because they're using one or two you
21:20know chips from a supplier per car but
21:23imagine they don't have it you're seeing
21:24what's happening they can't even you
21:25know build a whole car
21:27um so anyway they had this challenge of
21:30interruptions and supply
21:31affecting smaller customers radically
21:34and they sought to understand and use
21:38to to drive new ideas and they thought
21:40for so what they did is they they went
21:42into the world with this problem and
21:44okay where are places we can learn um
21:47businesses or people that deal with
21:49routine interruptions
21:51but manage to still supply their
21:52customers and one of the places they met
21:55it's a great story they still tell us
21:56about going to a florist and saying how
21:58in the world do you promise somebody
22:01two weeks from now when they're
22:02perishable you know you might have a big
22:06you know order come in the day before
22:07like how the world do you deal with that
22:09and the florist explained we have
22:10relationships with farmers and we sort
22:12of see what they're farming and what's
22:14potentially going to be in and we we
22:15sort of work with that
22:17to manage expectations of our customers
22:21and they took that back and they used
22:22that as sort of an input to their design
22:25and ultimately launched a supplier it's
22:29it's on the internet but it's a it's a
22:31different kind of supply
22:33uh portal for their customers that
22:36production coming from fairchild but
22:38also to see suppliers from other vendors
22:41they realize what they want to do with
22:42those smaller customers is make sure
22:44they like the florist
22:45they have a perspective as to what's
22:47going to be available and what might not
22:50so a good example of like going out in
22:54seeking these unexpected inputs and by
22:56being open they suddenly
22:57noticed we can learn a lot from a
22:59florist and use that an
23:01analog like the problem jeremy just went
23:04to drive their thinking and get to new
23:06places they wouldn't have got to before
23:08yeah it's i i remember distinctly the
23:12they were very skeptical when we said no
23:16go to a nail salon go to a sushi bar and
23:20you're kidding right but they came back
23:24super energized catherine was their
23:26members as well they were super
23:27energized because they're learning from
23:29meaningful insights about supply chain
23:32management and when you abstract a level
23:34you say yeah actually it's not an
23:35unfamiliar challenge
23:37and the fact that it's unfamiliar in
23:41doesn't mean that it's unfamiliar to the
23:42world and a lot of times if you're
23:45and if you've taken the innovation
23:47strategy course in the sie certificate
23:50this method intimately because we walk
23:51through it step by step but
23:53the world will yield up lots of amazing
23:56to the person who's looking there's a
23:59little bit of research
24:00that we've done on analogy that i just
24:02figured i'd mention here but
24:04an analogy empirically speaking leads to
24:08output than a generic prompt that's one
24:11second level is multiple analogies
24:14generate more output than a single
24:16analogy does and then the third level is
24:19the more distant the analogy the more
24:23generative it is so you might think you
24:26or stay focused and actually a lot of
24:28this cultivating inputs
24:30is about entertaining the possibility of
24:32a collision with something highly
24:34unrelated or highly distant
24:35yeah yeah and you think about those
24:37executive teams they're saying well no
24:40i want to benchmark i want to look at
24:41what our competitors are doing but
24:43by going this this is critical like i
24:45like that point jeremy by going beyond
24:47to a florist that has
24:48nothing whatever to do with our business
24:50that's where the big idea came from
24:53so uh um so again we're in this this
24:55sort of driving connection
24:57um this idea of a wonder wonder is
24:59something that we now assign routinely
25:02um jeremy and i are known to do this
25:04also on on a daily basis and they
25:07the basic idea is if you have a clear
25:10on a problem a clear thing you're
25:12working on one of the best things you
25:14is actually step away so right now if i
25:17said how do i make this talk more
25:18interesting the best thing i could do is
25:21with just the idea of how do i make that
25:22more interesting ruminate
25:24go for a walk and uh by holding that in
25:27my head that i'm i'm trying to be more
25:30see a couple dogs playing i might get
25:32inspiration from the outside world
25:34and just drive more inputs it's it's
25:36important you go out
25:37with an objective and then i would bring
25:39something with me we'll talk about
25:41it bring up how to post it to a notebook
25:43to write these things down
25:45and and i i would sort of come back and
25:48have more material with which to
25:50innovate you know this unrelented sort
25:52of pursuit i'd have new
25:54inputs to my practice to get inspired
25:57jeremy does this we oftentimes are
25:59working on something we'll say okay
26:00let's both step away but
26:01but hold each other accountable like
26:02we're going to go work on this frame
26:04jeremy truth be told does live close to
26:07does or a jack-in-the-box
26:12i find i find that he has a lot of
26:15anyway that's one little bonus to this
26:19the viscosity of the milkshake just the
26:21effort required just a pure mechanical
26:23effort it just it's like it sucks ideas
26:25into my head i mean it's really
26:27it's true as you wonder that the key
26:29thing is writing it down
26:30and we'll get back to that at the end so
26:32we said that we were going to cover a
26:35how do you how do you accelerate
26:38i love it the bonus topic but wait
26:41period it's actually not a bonus topic
26:43we realize there's so much interest in
26:45these topics we said
26:46let's make it its own talk next time so
26:49this is a teaser so sign up now yeah
26:53sign up now 49.99 you will get and
26:56you'll get a free gift with purchase now
26:58we we wanted the the topic of
27:01and diverse perspectives and leveraging
27:03and amplifying diverse perspectives
27:05it's such a worthy topic it's actually
27:07an entirely other session on its own
27:09and we've learned a ton from amazing
27:11leadership teams and
27:12and design teams and innovation teams
27:14and creatives that we've worked with
27:15we just want to dedicate an entire talk
27:17to that so it is a little bit of a
27:19teaser but i would say
27:20there's so many rich stories it's it's
27:22not worth giving it a one minute
27:24treatment it's worth giving it a
27:27uh treatment so we talked about
27:28connection but now we want to talk about
27:30something that's unexpected for folks if
27:33input obsession disconnection
27:37disconnection is actually a critical
27:39part of realizing new connections
27:42have you ever had this experience i i
27:45living in you know groundhog day these
27:47days where i get to the end of the
27:49and there's like five things that i
27:51really need to attend to
27:52and then immediately somebody else is on
27:54my screen in the next meeting
27:56and i totally forget all of the other
28:00was just thinking about there's great
28:01ideas there's stuff i need to take care
28:04and then and then that meeting
28:05culminates and a bunch of other things
28:06that then immediately get forgotten
28:09without disconnection we don't harvest
28:12the possibility of the connections that
28:16and part of when we talk about being
28:18obsessed with inputs
28:20part of what is required is that
28:22creative thinkers and innovators
28:25make space to make the connections that
28:28happen in their minds
28:29and not rush from thing to thing to
28:32it's really really hard to do this but
28:35absolutely critical to make the space
28:39to realize connections our our brains
28:42aren't efficient they're efficient in a
28:44lot of ways you know you can't
28:46power a brain size network or a brain
28:48powered network with basically all the
28:50power we have available at our disposal
28:52so incredibly efficient in some sense
28:54but they're actually driven by and
28:56unexpected connections are driven by an
28:58inefficient process that oftentimes
29:01happens at a subconscious level
29:03and as we're hyper efficiency oriented
29:06driven from productivity
29:08you know meeting to meetings to meeting
29:09we fail to maximize those
29:12connections one of our favorite uh
29:15uh researchers amos tursky who is the
29:19partner the research partner of danny
29:20kahneman if he had lived he would have
29:22been the co-winner of the nobel prize
29:24with danny kahneman but they invented
29:26the field of behavioral psychology and
29:28behavioral economics the notion that
29:31people aren't rational
29:32is we have among others we have these
29:36uh incredibly brilliant gentlemen to
29:40one time they devised a bunch of
29:42incredibly insightful and creative
29:45experiments part of their breakthroughs
29:47was because their experimental design
29:48was so creative you can read about this
29:50mike lewis uh the author of the big
29:54he wrote a great book on them called the
29:55undoing project if you're curious about
29:58psychology comes from but when somebody
30:02how did you and kahneman come up with so
30:04many cool experiments this is what he
30:10and he said people waste years by not
30:12being able to waste hours
30:14and what and the joke around their
30:16department they were
30:18at a university in israel the joke
30:20around their department is those guys
30:21are laughing too much
30:23it wasn't a joke it was more of a
30:25comment of derision they're always
30:26laughing they're always cutting up
30:28and yet what they knew was that a little
30:30bit of loose time was critical for them
30:32to realize the value of new connections
30:35and so i want to talk for a second about
30:37a little bit of the dorky side of
30:39so if you read the literature i mean
30:41there's a bunch of different ways to
30:42parse it so this isn't meant to be a
30:45perfect explanation but if you think
30:47about what's happening
30:48in the creative mindset there's a stage
30:53there's a stage of incubation there's a
30:55stage of illumination which is the
30:58aha moment right and then there's a
31:00stage of verification
31:02what we have observed casually this
31:04isn't uh this isn't a clinical diagnosis
31:07because i'm not a clin
31:08i'm not a clinical psychologist but i
31:10would say one of the most
31:12short-circuited processes in the 21st
31:15is incubation giving our brain
31:19the soup space to connect things
31:23and so when we talk about not just
31:24connection but disconnection
31:26part of the part of the underlying idea
31:28there is that disconnection is
31:29actually part of what fuels connection
31:31and if we're not deliberate about
31:33disconnecting we won't be able to
31:34realize those new connections
31:36we want to talk about or often times we
31:38do it by accident and we think oh this
31:40is just magical this happened this
31:41illuminating moment just happened
31:43in this other context i went out with my
31:45kids and i did something and i just
31:46boom but it's we would this is so
31:49interesting jeremy that i think if you
31:51preparation and incubation that's maybe
31:54you know i don't know
31:55another talk boom bonus okay and
31:58fifth in the masters of creativity
32:00series barry claibon on preparation
32:02uh catherine how's my voice there is
32:04that okay i'm not i'm no catherine
32:07very radio thank you very radio so i
32:10want to talk about three
32:11very cool tactics that we've observed in
32:14the lives of prolific
32:16innovators discoverers scientists these
32:20too crazy to be true i kid you not so
32:24so again how do you get to disconnection
32:27so the first is what we have
32:30affectionately called the divergent
32:32diversion and this was a tactic that we
32:36in reading walter isaacson's biography
32:41albert einstein's wife and son both
32:44have a shared experience of einstein
32:48sitting frantically writing at his
32:50journal working on equations
32:52and then he would get frustrated he
32:54would pace in his he had a little you
32:56in the upstairs of their house he'd be
32:58pacing around and you know what he did
33:00whenever he got really stuck on a
33:05he picked up his violin and he started
33:08playing the violin and his son tells the
33:10he would hear the violin clatter and his
33:14and he'd go rush back to the notebook
33:16right but to me what's
33:18awesome is about this example is
33:20einstein didn't do it
33:22for relaxation necessarily he wielded
33:26the violin as a creative tool
33:28when he was stuck he knew that a
33:30meaningful way to advance
33:31on the problem was to think about
33:33something else or to
33:34engage a different part of his
33:38and i love that image but that he's not
33:40the only person who did things like this
33:43incredible innovator i don't know is
33:45anyone familiar with a guy named claude
33:49he's a legendary innovator at bell labs
33:52is the reason we can see one another on
33:54the screen right now
33:55he invented a little thing called the
33:59the the notion that you can encode
34:02information with ones and zeroes that
34:03can be transmitted claude shannon
34:06is our guy i think he has the most
34:08referenced doctoral thesis of all time
34:11okay he was a absolute genius and you
34:14know what he was known to do
34:16in the hallways of bell labs as they
34:18were inventing the transistor and the
34:20satellite and the laser
34:22i kid you not you can't make it up he
34:25juggle on his unicycle and he'd ride
34:29juggling and people knew that's just
34:32claude shannon you know and a lot of you
34:34will probably write it off but you go
34:36he's again he's wielding diversion
34:40as a tool he knows when i'm stuck
34:43approaching the problem in one way i
34:46give my brain time to kind of process
34:49all the stuff that i've been taking in
34:52and so for us one of the assignments
34:53we've started giving to the i know d
34:55leaders that are on this uh session
34:58are familiar with this but we give the
35:02go do something that you enjoy that
35:06phys physically but take a notebook with
35:10and have the discipline to know in the
35:12back your mind you want to be leaving
35:14some of these things in your working
35:16memory you want to be processing
35:18but pro but make progress by doing
35:21and we joke we joked with a group of
35:23saudi executives recently who we gave
35:26this is probably the only ivy league
35:28education where you've been told to go
35:30play video games or something right
35:32and they loved it and they came back
35:35because we're so trained to when i got
35:38to solve the problem i got to sit down
35:40and think harder and work harder
35:41rather than sometimes looking up lifting
35:43up our heads and saying
35:44what else can i do while i think about
35:48and it's no wonder that insights happen
35:51or you know in on the commute right
35:55i read something that said the bed the
35:58are the three you know there's a reason
36:00the bed the bus and the bathtub
36:02are often implicated in these stories of
36:05and if you're aware of that you can
36:08wield those as tactics to your
36:10advantage perry you want to talk about
36:13oh yeah so um the idea of productive
36:17there is an amazing ted talk i'll drop
36:25does and talks about this topic of
36:28um how do we say this like we we think
36:31too many times you know i'm not solving
36:32a problem and procrastinating and
36:34wasting time wasting time
36:36but holding a problem in your active
36:38sort of working brain
36:40while you're procrastinating and maybe
36:42struggling with a little bit
36:43is actually a great way to innovate and
36:46drive innovation and realize that's part
36:49you think about those early stages
36:51that's absolutely that incubation
36:54so next time you're procrastinating
36:57actually more productive time am i
36:59holding still that problem in my head am
37:01you know sort of maybe consternating a
37:04bit on it in my procrastination
37:05that's actually productive time that
37:07you'll actually move forward
37:09and then i think um the do you want to
37:12um bluma the the research i'll drop
37:16this is a hilarious example where
37:20adam grant talks about he's writing his
37:21book originals and he
37:23and he got to this this notion of
37:25procrastination as a meaningful tactic
37:28and he said you know he's an incredibly
37:29organized person he said i'm going to
37:31on for scythe and while he was
37:33procrastinating he put it he put the
37:35chapter in his drawer for a couple of
37:37and he was reminded of the research of
37:40uh zignarak a russian psychologist
37:42who demonstrated how our working memory
37:46he said i never would have thought of
37:47that if i hadn't chosen to procrastinate
37:50this is kind of a meta realization that
37:53and so we again tell students
37:57if you're going to procrastinate be
38:00capturing and write down other ways of
38:04that you've got in the back your mind
38:07if you don't care about the outcome
38:11is poisonous if you really care about
38:16procrastination is a meaningful and
38:19so that's not that's not that's not a
38:22um uh you know blessing upon
38:25procrastination there is such thing as
38:28but it's useful to know that when we
38:30actually care about something
38:32procrastination is a meaningful way that
38:35that our our subconscious can advance
38:39and then the last tactic we want to talk
38:42is taking this to the extreme obviously
38:45but is actually sleeping on a problem
38:49there's a german psychologist uh wagner
38:52ulrich i believe i can post a link to it
38:54later maybe but he he gave
38:56sets of different sets of students
38:58different kinds of insight problems and
39:02and he gave them at different times of
39:05and one of the things that he discovered
39:06was for analytical problems
39:08it didn't really matter when you gave
39:12insight related problems for creative
39:15if you gave a subject the opportunity to
39:20before solving the problem they were two
39:23over two times more likely to identify
39:27that solved the problem and this is a
39:30there's there's a great story uh one of
39:32one of the most prolific inventors of
39:34thomas edison over a thousand patents to
39:38there's uh there's a bit of folklore or
39:41it's it's written up in books but you
39:43can never know with people like this and
39:45but he had what he called his thinking
39:49and the way the story goes he would sit
39:52down in the thinking chair
39:53put two pie pans underneath both arms of
39:56and then he would hold a metal ball in
39:58each hand and he'd sit back to relax
40:01and as he was dozing off his hands would
40:04release and the balls would clatter into
40:06the pie pans and wake him up
40:07and he would tell an attendant standing
40:09there what he was dreaming about
40:12because he so valued the power of the
40:14subconscious to get around some of the
40:17associative barriers that are
40:18predominant when your conscious brain is
40:20working on something
40:22i love he didn't call it his recliner he
40:24didn't call it his napping chair he
40:27thinking chair and what did he do in his
40:30he annoyingly woke himself up from just
40:33i mean i can't imagine how painful that
40:35had to be i also read something recently
40:37that salvador dali did a similar thing
40:40he would use a spoon in his hand and he
40:43would sit down and he would place a
40:46pan and a metal pan underneath the hand
40:49and that's where a lot of the
40:50surrealistic inspiration came from
40:53is this kind of this dream state so it's
40:56it's a good thing to be aware of i have
40:59myself personally this is very practical
41:03beside my bedside a stack of post-its
41:06this is you're like of course you do you
41:08work at the d school of course i'm not
41:11and a sharpie and i kid and i've made
41:14an agreement with myself as i was
41:16talking to a uh to a
41:18perry and i were talking to an executive
41:20in ireland last week
41:21and i like because he said a lot of
41:23times when i'm surfing
41:25ideas come to me and he uses this phrase
41:27i love it and i'll borrow it and i'll
41:28share it with you said
41:29i've made a commitment to my
41:33to hold on to those ideas and i love
41:35that phrase commitment to my
41:38and so what i uh what i've done is i
41:42if an idea strikes i don't care how
41:45sleepy i am i'm gonna roll over and
41:48and i actually had the experience and
41:50then i've gotta i have a whole process
41:52a whole system you know as nerds do
41:55notebook in the back pocket of my jeans
41:57at all times it's small enough that it
41:59fits the back pocket it's thin enough
42:00that i don't take it out
42:02unlike costanza by the way full circle
42:05can i get a witness that was a good
42:07reference and a good joke
42:09unlike costanza it's thin enough that i
42:11can keep it in my back pocket but then
42:13i'll transfer whatever ideas come up
42:15and i actually have two from last night
42:17interestingly enough but what's funny is
42:20this actually happened the other day i
42:24falling asleep we were working on this
42:27i was falling asleep and an idea came
42:30and my first thought was i know i tell
42:32people to write down their ideas but
42:34i know i shouldn't be a hypocrite but
42:35i'm just so tired and
42:37but i'm like no i gotta do it i gotta do
42:39i gotta practice what i preach
42:40and so i rolled over and you know it's
42:42totally dark i don't even know if i'm
42:44writing on the poster
42:45i scroll this thing in the morning i
42:48woke up and i thought of the idea
42:50and i thought man i can't believe i
42:52interrupted my sleep because i totally
42:55and then i picked up my notebook what i
42:58was a completely different idea than
43:00what i thought i remember
43:02it was this amazing experience of the
43:04idea that i have is really cool
43:06and it's totally different from the idea
43:09was the idea i had so it's you know it's
43:13the the men's hair club i'm not only the
43:15president i'm also a member it's like
43:17this stuff works in my life but it
43:19brings us to a very important
43:21uh conclusion statement which is the
43:25of documentation we often say you've
43:27often heard us if you've been at the d
43:28school for any amount of time
43:30if you don't write it down it didn't
43:33our mentor david kelly the founder of
43:35the d-school he told
43:37me an anecdote the other day he was
43:39friends with the late robin williams and
43:40he said robin williams would carry
43:42a yellow legal pad with him everywhere
43:45and he's writing down notes throughout
43:47i read a i read a biography of david
43:48byrne who was one of the founding
43:50members of the talking heads
43:51and he was talking about how in his back
43:54pocket he carried a dictaphone
43:55all the time because he said he'd hear
43:57something in the streets he'd hear a
43:59beat or something and he'd want to
44:00record it or he'd want to sing a melody
44:02but there's this rigorous attitude of
44:06you know just like you and we can think
44:09as professionals in maybe quote unquote
44:13of course robin williams is writing down
44:15ideas he's got a set that night
44:17you know of course david byrne is taking
44:21he's got well is our job
44:24to come up with new things is our job to
44:28frame that email to uh give that piece
44:33to uh to engage the customer to secure a
44:36repeat purchase to close the deal
44:39why why don't we approach it with the
44:41same level of diligence and rigor
44:44the idea of capturing all the ideas that
44:47we can start them later it's actually
44:49not that different and so for that
44:51i i like to think we're all in the ideas
44:54most of us most of us don't really know
44:56it but if we're aware of it we say i'm
44:58in the ideas business too
45:00and you know what my job is is to write
45:03i don't have to do all of them but if i
45:05at least write them down i'll give
45:06myself a fighting chance of discovering
45:08something worth doing
45:10and it's it's that simple it's it's but
45:14incredibly meaningful practice
45:15personally and so i passed that on to
45:18the commitment to your subconscious is a
45:21real thing it is annoying it
45:23is painful at times i mean
45:26my wife can tell you the number of times
45:28i've gotten out of the shower stopping
45:30wet i'm like ah it happened
45:32again i'm writing down ideas but i've
45:35made peace with it i'm in the ideas
45:36business you know what we do when we're
45:38in the ideas business
45:39we write things down and we're focused
45:42cultivating that input
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