Just a beautifully styled presentation by David Burton touching on the five creative behaviors as identified by Gardner, and turning them into 10 practical tips for better brainstorming.
Via tweetrightbrain

J.K. Rowling, author of the best-selling Harry Potter book series, delivers her Commencement Address, “The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination,” at the Annual Meeting of the Harvard Alumni Association. (via harvardmagazine.com)

• Think big. Bigger than that.
• Are you a serial idea-starting person? If so, what can you change to end that cycle? The goal is to be an idea-shipping person.
• Waiting for inspiration is another way of saying that you’re stalling. You don’t wait for inspiration, you command it to appear.
• Don’t poll your friends. It’s your art, not an election.
• Be prepared for the Dip.
• The hard part is finishing, so enjoy the starting part.

Most of these ‘rules’ are about finishing an idea – seeing it through to the end (or in case of the ‘the Dip‘, knowing when to quit).

Read the rest of the list over on Seth’s blog, there’s more than a few left worth reading! (and yes this was a little bit of a Seth Godin fanpost but I really feel he’s on a role lately with the ’shipping’ thing!)

“There never was a moment, and never will be, when we are without the power to alter our destiny. This second, we can turn the tables on Resistance. This second, we can sit down and do our work.”

The reason this book worked for me was because it didn’t focus on the solution, but on the problem. It effectively speaks to the inner nay-sayer in all of us that sabotages your ideas the moment they threaten to become to real.

Loved it because:

• The War of Art provides great context for a recognizable problem, drawing a beautiful metaphor with ‘The Art of War’ – overcoming your fears and knowing your ‘enemy’.
• The author speaks from experience and has a very credible record writing multiple best-sellers
• It manages to inspire effectively with the use of good examples and quotes, making it a real page-turner

You might not like it because:

• The Art of War is an almost philosophical approach to creativity and ‘getting things done’. If you are looking for real ‘GTD methods’ this book offers not many ‘tangible’ pointers to put ideas into practice (and see them get done to the end).

Many people believe that creativity is something you either have or you don’t, and if you are amongst the happy few, you’ll use your creativity to create difficult art the general public won’t understand but your creative counterparts will love.

But; creativity is of vital importance to every act you’ll ever do. Art or no art. The usage of your creativity can change every action you’ll ever do from ordinary to extraordinary.

Bestselling author and entrepreneur Seth Godin outlines a common creative affliction: sabotaging our projects just before we show them to the world. Godin targets our “lizard brain” as the source of these primal doubts, and implores us to “thrash at the beginning” of projects so that we can ship on time and on budget.

“We need ideas and we need them now”, everyone nods in agreement, they know it’s business time. And so the fellowship sets on its journey to this mythical Valhalla of ideas…

“Thank you all for coming, I know you’re busy with your own projects but I invited you to brainstorm with our team today. I expect creativity, and I really want you to think outside the box on this one.”

And so it begins, a journey to The Outside Of The Box: a place of infinite creativity.

Out of the box

As you might have derived from the introduction, I really, really, dislike the expression ‘outside the box’. Just a minor irritation is caused by how it’s often mistakenly referred to as ‘out of the box‘. Out of the box means, as Wikipedia cleverly informs us, ’something ready made’ or ‘off the shelf’:

Items, functionalities, or features provided out of the box are those that do not require any additional installations, plug-ins, expansion packs, or products. In addition to being used for tangible products, the phrase is often used in a less literal sense for software, which may not be distributed in an actual box but offer certain functions “out of the box,” e.g. without modification.

Just plug it in and ‘go’. It’s already been completely designed, tested and is ready to use. Needless to say that is not what people intend to say – they mean ‘creative thinking’, ‘divergent thinking’ or ideation, the process of generating many, unconventional ideas. Clearly the plug and play reference really undermines that intent.

But more significantly is my problem with how the expression undermines your brainstorm from the word go. The ‘fellowship’ as described in the introduction face a major problem for effective ideation from just those three words…

Outside ‘the box’

In order to understand the expression and the problem within, first we need to know where this mysterious box even comes from.

It is said ‘the box’ is derived from a simple puzzles that is used in training unconventional thinking. The subject is presented with a three by three grid of dots, and is asked to connect all dots with four straight lines, without the pen leaving the paper.

The puzzle is solved however, by going ‘outside the box’, moving the pen to points not part of the grid (or ‘box’) and connecting all nine dots.The box is the mental model that is formed by the grid, a container which causes the subject to make assumptions and obey the conventions of the square space.

More commonly though, ‘the box’ is simply seen as a clearly defined ’space’, a metaphor for the office or the teams ‘comfort zone’ where one has to get out of in order to generate original and relevant ideas.

Burning the box

The effect of instructing people to ‘think outside this box’ is deadly for your process of ideation. A brainstorm facilitator should stimulate divergent thinking, and ‘the boundary of the box’ is doing exactly the opposite. This abstract of a box, where ideas either go in our out (and out being good) encourages people to evaluate and judge their ideas. Worst case openly whether an idea is in or out, but also quietly, not sure if your box has the same boundaries as the other participants boxes.

Bottomline result: less ideas and the quality of ideation diminishes, and with that the true power of brainstorming: Connecting a variety of ideas – of which some could possibly come from ‘within the box’, or someones personal ‘box’ – his own comfort zone.

The ideas that come from within these ‘boxes’ are not bad or uncreative per definition, they are simply unfinished. As will any other idea generated in the process of brainstorming. They get polished and evaluated outside the brainstorm, or at least outside the process of creating the sheer volume of ideas to work with. Become a concept where other ideas could spring from, or get discarded with the original but irrelevant ‘outside the box’ ideas.

‘The box’ effectively discourages the free flow of ideas – the essential part of a brainstorm and the most determining factor of its success.

Tim Brown says the design profession is preoccupied with creating nifty, fashionable objects — even as pressing questions like clean water access show it has a bigger role to play. He calls for a shift to local, collaborative, participatory “design thinking.”

Sir Ken Robinson at Creative Company Conference in Amsterdam talks about his new book ‘The Element’. A book about discovering and applying ‘passion’. The things that drives you, motivates you, and essentially makes you valuable. Sir Ken Robinson applies this in the context of our educational system, developing and educating in talent.