I hope you experienced inspired joy, delight. opportunity, and potential during this week, together with so many others all over the world.

Let’s continue to keep the energy moving for new ideas, decisions, actions and products to make the world a better place and make your place in the world better too.

WCIW happens every year from April 15 – 21. I look forward to sharing it with you in 2015, 2016, ….

Marci Segal, MS. Freeing leaders’ thinking so they can create new futures and Founder, World Creativity + Innovation Week April 15-21

• Open thinking to new ideas, new potentials, new solutions, new opportunities
• Explore what might work within the current context that takes things forward
• Smile

Marci Segal, MS, Freeing leaders’ thinking so they can create new futures.

Wishing you flexibility, inner strength, and ingenuity during this World Creativity and Innovation Week April 15 – 21, 2014.  And joy…always joy…

IT BOTHERS MATTHEW LAHUE and it surely bothers you: enter a public restroom and the stall lock is broken. Fortunately, Mr. Lahue has a solution. It’s called the Bathroom Bodyguard. Standing before his Buffalo State College classmates and professor, Cyndi Burnett, Mr. Lahue displayed a device he concocted from a large washer, metal ring, wall hook, rubber bands and Lincoln Log. Slide the ring in the crack and twist. The door stays shut. Plus, the device fits in a jacket pocket.

The world may be full of problems, but students presenting projects for Introduction to Creative Studies have uncovered a bunch you probably haven’t thought of. Elie Fortune, a freshman, revealed his Sneaks ’n Geeks app to identify the brand of killer sneakers you spot on the street. Jason Cathcart, a senior, sported a bulky martial arts uniform with sparring pads he had sewn in. No more forgetting them at home.

“I don’t expect them to be the next Steve Jobs or invent the flying car,” Dr. Burnett says. “But I do want them to be more effective and resourceful problem solvers.” Her hope, she says, is that her course has made them more creative.

Once considered the product of genius or divine inspiration, creativity — the ability to spot problems and devise smart solutions — is being recast as a prized and teachable skill. Pin it on pushback against standardized tests and standardized thinking, or on the need for ingenuity in a fluid landscape.

“The reality is that to survive in a fast-changing world you need to be creative,” says Gerard J. Puccio, chairman of the International Center for Studies in Creativity at Buffalo State College, which has the nation’s oldest creative studies program, having offered courses in it since 1967.

“That is why you are seeing more attention to creativity at universities,” he says. “The marketplace is demanding it.”

Critical thinking has long been regarded as the essential skill for success, but it’s not enough, says Dr. Puccio. Creativity moves beyond mere synthesis and evaluation and is, he says, “the higher order skill.” This has not been a sudden development. Nearly 20 years ago “creating” replaced “evaluation” at the top of Bloom’s Taxonomy of learning objectives. In 2010 “creativity” was the factor most crucial for success found in an I.B.M. survey of 1,500 chief executives in 33 industries. These days “creative” is the most used buzzword in LinkedIn profiles two years running.

Traditional academic disciplines still matter, but as content knowledge evolves at lightning speed, educators are talking more and more about “process skills,” strategies to reframe challenges and extrapolate and transform information, and to accept and deal with ambiguity.

Creative studies is popping up on course lists and as a credential. Buffalo State, part of the State University of New York, plans a Ph.D. and already offers a master’s degree and undergraduate minor. Saybrook University in San Francisco has a master’s and certificate, and added a specialization to its psychology Ph.D. in 2011. Drexel University in Philadelphia has a three-year-old online master’s. St. Andrews University in Laurinburg, N.C., has added a minor. And creative studies offerings, sometimes with a transdisciplinary bent, are new options in business, education, digital media, humanities, arts, science and engineering programs across the country.

Suddenly, says Russell G. Carpenter, program coordinator for a new minor in applied creative thinking at Eastern Kentucky University, “there is a larger conversation happening on campus: ‘Where does creativity fit into the E.K.U. student experience?’ ” Dr. Carpenter says 40 students from a broad array of fields, including nursing and justice and safety, have enrolled in the minor — a number he expects to double as more sections are added to introductory classes. Justice and safety? Students want tools to help them solve public safety problems and deal with community issues, Dr. Carpenter explains, and a credential to take to market.

The credential’s worth is apparent to Mr. Lahue, a communication major who believes that a minor in the field carries a message. “It says: ‘This person is not a drone. They can use this skill set and apply themselves in other parts of the job.’ ”

On-demand inventiveness is not as outrageous as it sounds. Sure, some people are naturally more imaginative than others. What’s igniting campuses, though, is the conviction that everyone is creative, and can learn to be more so.

Just about every pedagogical toolbox taps similar strategies, employing divergent thinking (generating multiple ideas) and convergent thinking (finding what works).The real genius, of course, is in the how.

Dr. Puccio developed an approach that he and partners market as FourSight and sell to schools, businesses and individuals. The method, which is used in Buffalo State classrooms, has four steps: clarifying, ideating, developing and implementing. People tend to gravitate to particular steps, suggesting their primary thinking style. Clarifying — asking the right question — is critical because people often misstate or misperceive a problem. “If you don’t have the right frame for the situation, it’s difficult to come up with a breakthrough,” Dr. Puccio says. Ideating is brainstorming and calls for getting rid of your inner naysayer to let your imagination fly. Developing is building out a solution, and maybe finding that it doesn’t work and having to start over. Implementing calls for convincing others that your idea has value.

Jack V. Matson, an environmental engineer and a lead instructor of “Creativity, Innovation and Change,” a MOOC that drew 120,000 in September, teaches a freshman seminar course at Penn State that he calls “Failure 101.” That’s because, he says, “the frequency and intensity of failures is an implicit principle of the course. Getting into a creative mind-set involves a lot of trial and error.”

His favorite assignments? Construct a résumé based on things that didn’t work out and find the meaning and influence these have had on your choices. Or build the tallest structure you can with 20 Popsicle sticks. The secret to the assignment is to destroy the sticks and reimagine their use. “As soon as someone in the class starts breaking the sticks,” he says, “it changes everything.”

Dr. Matson also asks students to “find some cultural norms to break,” like doing cartwheels while entering the library. The point: “Examine what in the culture is preventing you from creating something new or different. And what is it like to look like a fool because a lot of things won’t work out and you will look foolish? So how do you handle that?”

It’s a lesson that has been basic to the ventures of Brad Keywell, a Groupon founder and a student of Dr. Matson’s at the University of Michigan. “I am an absolute evangelist about the value of failure as part of creativity,” says Mr. Keywell, noting that Groupon took off after the failure of ThePoint.com, where people were to organize for collective action but instead organized discount group purchases. Dr. Matson taught him not just to be willing to fail but that failure is a critical avenue to a successful end. Because academics run from failure, Mr. Keywell says, universities are “way too often shapers of formulaic minds,” and encourage students to repeat and internalize fail-safe ideas.

Bonnie Cramond, director of the Torrance Center for Creativity and Talent Development at the University of Georgia, is another believer in taking bold risks, which she calls a competitive necessity. Her center added an interdisciplinary graduate certificate in creativity and innovation this year. “The new people who will be creative will sit at the juxtaposition of two or more fields,” she says. When ideas from different fields collide, Dr. Cramond says, fresh ones are generated. She cites an undergraduate class that teams engineering and art students to, say, reimagine the use of public spaces. Basic creativity tools used at the Torrance Center include thinking by analogy, looking for and making patterns, playing, literally, to encourage ideas, and learning to abstract problems to their essence.

In Dr. Burnett’s Introduction to Creative Studies survey course, students explore definitions of creativity, characteristics of creative people and strategies to enhance their own creativity.These include rephrasing problems as questions, learning not to instinctively shoot down a new idea (first find three positives), and categorizing problems as needing a solution that requires either action, planning or invention. A key objective is to get students to look around with fresh eyes and be curious. The inventive process, she says, starts with “How might you…”

Dr. Burnett is an energetic instructor with a sense of humor — she tested Mr. Cathcart’s martial arts padding with kung fu whacks. Near the end of last semester, she dumped Post-it pads (the department uses 400 a semester) onto a classroom desk with instructions: On pale yellow ones, jot down what you learned; on rainbow colored pads, share how you will use this learning. She then sent students off in groups with orders that were a litany of brainstorming basics: “Defer judgment! Strive for quantity! Wild and unusual! Build on others’ ideas!”

As students scribbled and stuck, the takeaways were more than academic. “I will be optimistic,” read one. “I will look at tasks differently,” said another. And, “I can generate more ideas.”

Asked to elaborate, students talked about confidence and adaptability. “A lot of people can’t deal with things they don’t know and they panic. I can deal with that more now,” said Rony Parmar, a computer information systems major with Dr. Dre’s Beats headphones circling his neck.

Mr. Cathcart added that, given tasks, “you think of other ways of solving the problem.” For example, he streamlined the check-in and reshelving of DVDs at the library branch where he works.

The view of creativity as a practical skill that can be learned and applied in daily life is a 180-degree flip from the thinking that it requires a little magic: Throw yourself into a challenge, step back — pause — wait for brilliance to spout.

The point of creative studies, says Roger L. Firestien, a Buffalo State professor and author of several books on creativity, is to learn techniques “to make creativity happen instead of waiting for it to bubble up. A muse doesn’t have to hit you.”

Created with Haiku Deck, the free presentation app for iPad

MARCI SEGAL, MS Freeing leaders’ thinking so they can create new futures.

People say no at the drop of a hat, without thinking.  It’s a knee jerk reaction (see the exercise below the table for an example).

Creativity = new ideas, new decisions and new actions. For progress to be made you need all three. Perseverance to navigate through the objections and cautions when new ways of proceeding are offered is also required.

Below are comebacks to people who say no. Theses are guides for presenting and persevering with notions you really like and want to see come to fruition.

With thanks to the University of Houston, College of Technology Foresight from which this list was adapted.

Here’s an exercise for you and your team to become aware of how often ‘no’ is a typical response.

Take inventory of the extent to which your own “No” reflex dominates your life. Notice for 24 hours (even in your dreams) how often you say or think:

“No.”
“That’s not right.”
“I don’t like them.”
“I don’t agree with that.”
“They don’t like me.”
“That should be different from what it is.”

Then retrain yourself to say “YES” at least 51 percent of the time. Start the transformation by saying “YES” aloud 22 times right now.

How might you leverage this activity to build an innovation friendly environment?

This exercise appears in Rob Breszny’s Pronoia Is the Antidote for Paranoia, Revised and Expanded: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings.

Marci Segal, MS

Freeing leaders’ thinking so they can create new futures.

AMC’s Breaking Bad’s RV in which the lead characters of this hit TV show cooked meth amphetamine is touring the city for two weeks. Anyone visiting the van can don the apparel and go through the steps the actors took on camera to make it look like they were doing a ‘cook’. See http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/breaking-bad-rv-to-tour-toronto-for-2-weeks-1.2439727 The timing couldn’t have been better to deliver an important message. It’s obvious.

Torontonians’ will learn to cook meth so they’ll have work to fall back on in the tough economic times ahead.  Our crack smoking Mayor is leading the charge.

Honestly, since when is it okay to teach people how to make illegal substances?  There’s something very worrisome about this picture.

From a creativity point of view – it’s a novel idea – to have the Breaking Bad RV come to town in support of the final season DVD launch.  It pushes the boundaries too and garners attention. What about the kids though?  Do we need to be concerned about what we put in front of them as condoned activities?  Just wondering.

Marci Segal, MS

Freeing leaders’ thinking so they can create new futures.

What’s up with people saying no?  “Simple”, said  one of the leaders of the organization at the session, “people say no to new ideas because….(wait for it)….they are new ideas!” It was a true revelation.  “People are comfortable with what they already know.  Anything that’s proposed that’s different receives an automatic no.”

No is a knee jerk reaction to new ideas. It doesn’t have to be.

What if there was another way to respond to ideas that shows there’s potential to consider?  There is.  In my 2001 book, Creativity and Personality Type: Tools for understanding and inspiring the many voices of creativity, I wrote about the Angel’s Advocate – the counter balance to the Devil’s Advocate, a role many enjoy playing.  Simple to use, it delays  the ‘no’ response so people can consider aspects of a new idea first.

Wouldn’t it be nice if the people you worked with could use an Angel’s Advocate approach?  What if you took the lead and started it yourself, creating a do-ocracy of potential?  Here are the states (they’ve been refined over the years)

Introducing the Angel’s Advocate

After hearing a new idea ask and give a minimum 3 answers to each question:

1. What’s good about it?
2. What’s good about it for the future?
3. What are the cautions, objections, obstacles, concerns?
4. How might the idea be strengthened?  How might some of the cautions be mitigated, etc?

Try it on for size in a safe environment first, maybe with family.  Share your findings. Perhaps you’ll experience how using this approach opens up potentials and stretches thinking.

Signs of confusing times: Are you confused about what to eat? Do you know what’s in or on your food? Have you see the list of 10 foods to avoid like the plague because they cause inflammation?  So sad that with the holiday season upon us; the number one disease causing food listed is sugar. Years ago I would ask people as a creativity exercise to imagine the world without sugar. It was difficult for many to do so. Another eye opener about the effects of sugar was broadcast on CBC in October The Secrets of Sugar.  It’s a drug.  See also Grain Brain, Dr. Perlmutter’s expose on sugar as a cause for: dementia, ADHD, anxiety, chronic headaches, depression and much more.

What other examples of these confusing times are in your awareness?

Please let me know if you have any questions…

Marci Segal, MS

Freeing leaders’ thinking so they can create new futures.

The innovation age began in 1972; people born then have important innovation roles

In 1972, forty-one years ago, the Blue Marble, a famous photograph of the Earth was taken by the crew of the Apollo 17 spacecraft, at a distance of about 45,000 kilometres (28,000 mi).º It was the first time we saw our planet from space. That same year Bhutan instituted  Gross National Happiness (GNH) and not Gross National Product (GNP) as a sign of well-being, an alternate view of what success means.

People born in that era appreciate opportunities to enliven new ideas, make new decisions and take new actions. Ones that engage people to support, sustain and enable life and vitality to flourish. Innovation is in their blood. World Creativity and Innovation Week April 15 – 21 can be used as a time to open the door for that expression and to act on visions, hopes and future dreams.

Watch this brief video for an insight into an innovation-era world view.  Have you others to share?

Marci Segal, MS.  Freeing leaders’ thinking so they can create new futures.

Cisco futurist Dave Evans

Do you see where the world is going? Are you doing something today to create what you want tomorrow? Then you are acting like a futurist.

Think about it.

That’s what unleashing creativity and leveraging innovation is all about.

Marci Segal, MS
Freeing leaders’ thinking so they can create new futures