Creative connections

Art Fry had a little problem that vexed him: when he sang in his church choir, the bookmarks in his hymnal kept moving around or falling to the floor.  One Sunday in 1973 he recalled that a colleague at work, Spencer Silver, had developed an adhesive.  The glue wasn’t very marketable, but it did have some unique properties: it did not leave a residue, and was strong enough to stick to things but still weak enough to remove easily. Fry decided to apply some of the adhesive along the edge of a piece of paper.  His bookmark problem was solved.
 
You may have heard the story before. Fry and Spencer worked at the Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company, also known as 3M. From that simple idea the company developed the product that we all know as the colourful Post-it notes, now sold around the world.

This story illustrates a point about ingenuity.  As Apple founder Steve Jobs summarized: “Creativity is just connecting things.”

Jobs’ life is an example of how varied experiences can come together to inspire creativity. The idea of calling the company “Apple Computer” came to him from spending time at an apple orchard in Oregon where he attended a spiritual retreat.  Jobs also spent some time at an ashram in India and experimented with calligraphy in a class at Reed College. These were experiences that were quite different from daily life in the suburbs and stoked his creativity. These same memories later shaped his thoughts about simplicity and design, which he so famously applied to the computer business. When Apple built the Macintosh computer, the company hired musicians, artists and poets along with engineers.

Another important innovator, Leonardo da Vinci, also saw the value of those inter-disciplinary connections.  He wrote, “Study the science of art. Study the art of science. Develop your senses - especially learn how to see. Realize that everything connects to everything else."  

A contemporary expert in thinking, Edward de Bono, believes that “creativity involves breaking out of established patterns in order to look at things in a different way.”  

That’s motivation for all of us to get out there and try different things...


A related stories:  
How to foster creativity, previously in this blog.
How great business innovators are made (not born), from Fortune magazine. The article refers to two recent books.

Note:
The Leonardo da Vinci and Edward de Bono quotations are collected in BrainyQuote, a very useful site.

Artists

It's a beautiful summer day in Vancouver. The wonderful thing about a lazy weekend afternoon is that the mind feels free to wander back and forth, from ideas about the future, to things lived in the past, to concepts we rarely consider during the busy work week.  I'm thinking about movies, books and conversations about creativity. Browsing through this blog, I run across something I had posted a few years ago. It seems to fit with the present train of thought:
 
The posting was about a quote from American novelist William Faulkner in an industry newsletter sent to me by e-mail.

I had been wondering how to define art. That's a difficult and subjective thing.  Yet there it was, in Faulkner's words, clear and neat:

"The aim of every artist is to arrest motion, which is life, by 
artificial means and hold it fixed so that a hundred years later, when 
a stranger looks at it, it moves again since it is life."

I don't know if you agree, but I think that's very good indeed.

It's a good reference point for a summer day thinking about movies and stories and illustrations.

Neil Young and the creative process

"We went lookin' for faith
on the forest floor,
And it showed up everywhere,
In the sun and the water
and the falling leaves,
The falling leaves of time."

-- Neil Young from "You're My Girl"


In a recent television interview, singer-songwriter Neil Young talked about the creative process.

He said an interesting thing: essentially, when creating something, to think is one of the worst things you can do. He believes in the truth of the moment. He gathers memories, impressions, without editing much, without the chatter of the mind interfering. Better for something to be presented with flaws but be honest. When performing, being technically perfect doesn't necessarily make it better. Good execution without soul is not his style.

His many fans around the world agree. It's something that has served him well for over five decades of artistic production.

Musings about the classics

Not being a regular visitor to the symphony, I wasn't sure if I would like attending a concert by the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra. I usually don't listen to classical music. I have absolutely no ear for music. But midway through a violin concerto by Dvorak, something stirred in my soul and I realized why classics are classics.

The concerto featured violinist Jennifer Koh. She was mesmerizing. I'm a neophyte, as I said, but I could appreciate both the intensity and subtlety in the interpretation. There was something in her playing, in the dialogue between her and director Kazuyoshi Akiyama, that was not of this world. The audience called her back three times with applause and a standing ovation.

Thinking back on the creative works that have touched my life, I remember certain moments as flashes of deep connection. Maybe the same thing has happened to you.

And there's the answer: sometimes you encounter something so sublime, so deeply emotional and personal, that the experience transcends both the artist and the work. It's a moment that lifts you out of your skin, lets you abandon your problems, allows you to "slip the surly bonds of earth," as the poem goes. It's communication with the universal spirit. I believe that's one reason we call them classics and why they last forever.

How to foster creativity

Let's take a minute to explore creativity.

If you feel like you're in a rut and can't "think out of the box," then go some place you've never been before.

New evidence suggests that creativity flourishes most when we place ourselves in situations we've never experienced. New faces, new places, new thinking.

Why is this? Researchers say the brain's natural tendency is to be somewhat lazy. The mind prefers to take shortcuts and rely on established images and ways of seeing things. To jolt the brain into creative mode, it apparently helps to jump into something you have absolutely no experience with. Take away the "safety net," break your historical mental connections and see what happens.

In an article entitled "Neuroscience Sheds New Light on Creativity," FastCompany.com reveals that when it comes to seeing things differently, Mark Twain may have been right when he said, "Education consists mainly in what I have unlearned." When the brain confronts different situations, it reorganizes perception. It pays more attention to all of the senses. It lives in the moment. The more radical the experience, the greater the chances of acquiring new perception.

If scientists are right, then what a wonderful supporting argument this makes for the benefits of travel and for changing the scenery once in a while.

Just remember to bring a pen and paper with you. You may find solutions to your problems when you least expect them -- on the top of a pyramid, learning to ski or on a hike in the woods.

Willlam James:

"Genius means little more than the faculty of perceiving in an unhabitual way."

Albert Einstein:

"You can never solve a problem on the level on which it was created."

....and my favourite....

Buckminster Fuller:

"There is nothing in a caterpillar that tells you it's going to be a butterfly."

Yes, indeed.

Other links:

Ten Steps for Boosting Your Creativity

The Astounding Power of the Brain

Take a 5-minute test to compare your Right Brain vs Left Brain Creativity (from the Art Institute of Vancouver).

Photo credit: Thanks to Robert Russell for his shot of a Florida sunrise.

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Make your daydreams useful

This morning my wife said to me, “I swear, the house could be falling down around you and you wouldn’t even know it.” She was referring to my tendency to be distracted by personal interests other than the things that need to get done around the house. I admit I’m guilty of daydreaming at times.

What I’m going to say does not replace an apology, but this tendency of the mind to wander is something that is actually quite useful. It’s an important tool for creativity. (One must be careful to not abuse the practice.)

Scientists these days are studying how daydreaming may be the “default mechanism” for the mind.

Jonah Lehrer, an editor-at-large for Seed magazine, a science and culture publication, has looked at recent research into daydreaming. Lehrer explores how the mind starts to focus inward when it decides not to respond to the outside world. This tends to happen, as you know, when we are engaged in very routine things, like driving along an empty freeway or painting a wall. Lehrer points out that “instead of responding to the outside world, the brain starts to contemplate its internal landscape. This is when new and creative connections are made between seemingly unrelated ideas.”

This is something we’ve all experienced, but how often do we turn it into something useful? As an example, he tells the story of how Arthur Fry, sitting in a church, came to invent Post-it notes. And we’ve all heard about the great creative minds of history (Shakespeare, DaVinci, Edison, Einstein, etc.) doing similar things.

Research indicates that letting the mind wander aimlessly is not enough to foster creativity. The key seems to be – ironically – to find a way to pay attention to the dreams and perceive the moment when a daydream can be useful.

To learn more, read Lehrer’s article “Daydream Achiever”, published in the Boston Globe.

Also, for some practical creativity tools, see this.

Now back to those dishes in the sink….

Photo courtesy of Ove Tøpfer.
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Instituting "quiet time" at work.

Today was a very busy day all around. Then, to make things more interesting, during the afternoon, evening and into the night we had another snowstorm pass through and dump a lot of snow all over our area. Driving was a real challenge.

Anyway, let's talk about office work for a minute. If you feel completely submerged by e-mails, voice mails and other messages that require your constant attention, you'll be interested in an experiment underway at Intel and at a few other companies. An engineering group at the tech firm is trying a so-called "quiet time" project, encouraging employees to avoid answering phones and reviewing any e-mail at certain times so that their energy can be devoted instead to creative thinking, the core skill they were hired to exercise in the first place... Sounds very appealing to me.

An Intel group talks about it here.

Wired magazine also looked at this experiment. You can read their perspective on it here.

The graphic above is courtesy http://www.sxc.hu/.

Set yourself free and create!

Want to revitilize your spirit? Then try something creative.

You don't have to be a Michelangelo or an Einstein. You just have to be you. Leave your worries at the door and let your mind play with the world a little bit.

Remember the character of Caractacus Potts, played by Dick Van Dyke in the movie "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang"? He locks himself up in his barn with an old wreck of a car and, after much clanging and banging, emerges days later with an amazing vehicle that can drive, float and fly.

Yes, it was a children's movie, but the process of creating something original is really about letting go of some our mental blocks, prejudices and adult concerns. Being more like children is a great way to tap into our hidden potential.

We don't all have to be great inventors, but deep down we all have creative talents that are just waiting to be discovered. The satisfaction that results is a reminder that there's something quite natural about creating. It's one of the things that make us human.

Incidentally, did you know that the "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang" story was written by Ian Fleming, the very same writer who created the James Bond stories? Talk about versatility.

If you want to get YOUR creative juices flowing, the web has some useful sites.

Here are some of them:

http://www.globalideasbank.org/site/home/
http://www.creativity-portal.com/howto/a/davinci/arte-scienza.html
http://pigpog.com/
http://www.csus.edu/indiv/k/kiddv/CreativeSolutions/pages/links.htm
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Photo: www.pdphoto.org