Bob Schneider is a Texas-based singer and songwriter with a national audience.
However, Bob had a problem.
Writer's block.
According to Schneider,
there's a critical voice inside your head that stops you from writing.
Schneider suspected that other recording artists, yes,
even famous ones, might have the same problem.
And so, he did something about it.
He developed an internet-based, deadline-driven songwriting strategy.
Here are the rules.
All members write one song a week every week of the year.
Yes, that's 52 songs a year.
Schneider puts out a simple phrase or word each week that must appear on the song.
Results?
There are a lot of bad songs written, but, there are a lot of good songs written too.
Jason Mraz said it changed his life and productivity.
Ben Folds said that he wrote more in the first two years of playing the game
than in his entire career.
Most leaders and executives are not professional recording artists, but
they can learn about creative from recording artists.
Let's start by defining creativity.
Creativity is the production of novel and useful ideas.
Creativity is also known as ideation.
Innovation is the production of actual ideas in the form of products and
services also known as implementation.
I don't have to tell you that in the business world,
people put a lot more weight on innovation than creativity.
In business, success is 5% strategy, 95% execution.
Most people put too much emphasis on innovation, and forget ideation.
However, every product starts with an idea.
And one of the things that we will learn is that there are a lot of
ugly ducklings that eventually become beautiful swans.
I'm going to give you two models for measuring creativity,
Guilford's 3-factor model and Finke's quadrant model.
Let's start with Guilford.
According to Guilford, ideas can be evaluated in terms of fluency,
flexibility, and originality.
Fluency refers to the volume of ideas.
Highly creative team have a lot of ideas, they're high in fluency.
However, it is important to measure the number of ideas generated per person.
For example, suppose you're measuring the fluency of a five person group and
a three person group.
Suppose the 5 person group generates 20 ideas in 10 minutes, and
the 3 person group generates 18 ideas.
In our research,
we always divide the total number of ideas by the number of people in the group.
So in this example, the five person group would have a score of four per person
ideas, and the group of three would have a score of six per person ideas.
Flexibility, refers to how many different kinds of ideas a group has.
Suppose your task is to generate as many uses for a paper clip as possible.
Suppose one group says, use the clip to hold receipts.
Use the clip to hold recipes.
Use the clip to hold maps.
That group would get credit for three ideas, fluency.
But since all of their ideas were about holding papers of some kind,
they would only get one point for flexibility.
Now, suppose another group says, use the clip to make a necklace.
Use the clip to pick a lock.
Use the clip to create a suture for a wound.
Okay, let's set aside practicality and judgment.
That group would have the same fluency score, three ideas.
However, their flexibility score would be higher
because they've thought about fashion, engineering, and medicine.
They have greater bandwidth.
Originality means novelty.
Technically, a given idea is deemed to be original if
less than 5% of the population, or cohort, generates that idea.
Ideas that are statistically rare can be more valuable.
What does this all mean?
Flexibility is the key here.
Groups that are high in flexibility are also high in fluency and originality.
If you think of a large number of categories,
you can then unpack those categories and generate a lot of novel ideas.
I love Guilford's model, but people who actually work for
a living like Finke's model.
According to Finke, creative output can be evaluated in terms of two dimensions,
creative versus traditional.
And realistic versus idealistic.
Let's look at these four quadrants.
Creative realism.
High creativity and high realism.
These are novel ideas that can work.
Creative idealism.
High creativity and low realism.
Novel ideas in an impractical context.
Conservative realism.
Traditional ideas and high realism.
Old, tried, and true ideas.
Finally, conservative idealism.
Traditional ideas and low realism, old ideas put in an impractical context.
What do you think is the most valuable quadrant?
If you're like most people, you want creative realism,
ideas that are very original and can work.
In new product development, this would mean novel ideas that can
work with existing supply chain, manufacturing capacities, and so on.
In science, it would mean ideas that are novel and explained all previous research.
Suppose you're a leader of a product development group.
You bring all your smartest people together and
ask them to think of ideas that are very novel and very realistic.
What's the problem?
The problem is that most people will self-censor,
meaning they won't say anything because they're editing and judging.
A far better idea is to encourage your team
to generate ideas in all four quadrants.
Okay. Let's sum up.
First, creativity starts upstream of innovation.
Second, teams that generate a lot of ideas
are more likely to have an idea that is original or high in creative realism.
Finally, encourage people to suggest ideas that are traditional, conservative, and
politically incorrect.
In other words, allow the team to generate a high volume of ideas and
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