Time to Return

 

After six years, I have decided to return to regularly updating The Creativity Paradox. As before, it will cover an eclectic set of topics involving creativity in business management, photography, printing, print finishing, additive manufacturing and other arts.

I have been surprised that these posts have continued to have several hundred page views per month, even without any updates. Since there seems to be interest in the old posts, I have tried to repair or remove any broken links and fix anything else needed.

Originally, this blog began as a serialized version of a presentation on Creativity in Business Model Development for Graph Expo in 2011.  Most of the ideas presented are just as valid today as they were ten years ago.  You might find it interesting to return to the beginning.

I also want to acknowledge my debt to Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi who passed away on October 20th. His research on creativity and flow states contributed greatly to the understanding of creativity and have heavily influenced my writing on the subject.

At the end of this year, I will be retiring from my full time employment with Imaging Solutions which will give me more time to research and write.

What topics would you like to see covered?

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The Age of Creativity

Creating Happiness

No Regrets

Your Personal Moat

Bodiam Castle, a 14th-century castle near Robertsbridge in East Sussex, England

Last week we explored the ways that businesses can build an economic moat to provide protection from competition. I believe that it is also possible to build a personal moat that provides a buffer against the challenges we face individually.

Some of the key elements of a personal moat include:

• Knowledge - Information is power. If you have knowledge and understanding of important concepts in a field that is in demand, you can use that knowledge to navigate through the channels of change.
• Skills - Skills represent your ability to harness knowledge to accomplish specific goals. People who can get things done are always in demand.
• Creativity - Creativity is the ability to synthesize ideas from multiple sources into a new idea or a new solution to a problem. 
• Relationships - It's not just who you know. It's how you have treated them and how they feel toward you. Treat everyone you meet with respect and kindness.
• Resiliency - We all have difficult days, even difficult years or decades. But the only hope of success is to keep pushing forward with new attempts and new strategies to succeed. In the darkest days of World War II, Winston Churchill told the world "If you are going through hell, keep on going!"

With the rate of change accelerating rapidly, the value of a personal moat grows everyday.

What are you doing to enhance your moat?

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Choose the Difficult Assignment
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An Arrogant Assumption

Survival of the Most Creative

Products from R and R Imaging. Creative and Thriving!

One of the perks of my job is showing new specialty substrates to printers and photo labs. In most cases, these products allow the printer to offer their customers a new and improved product. Some people immediately see an application for the paper, but I frequently hear "this is a beautiful product, but I don't see how we would use it."

While pondering this objection, I stumbled upon three interesting articles:

• Why Great Ideas Get Rejected by David Burkus
• Survival of the Small to Mid-Sized Printing Company in Today's Chaotic Environment by Wayne Lynn 
• R and R Images Installs Two HP Indigo 7600, from R and R Imaging

The first article presents the results of recent scientific research by Cornell, Penn and the University of North Carolina that supports the conclusion that people have a bias against creativity. The article observes that anything truly creative has to depart from the status quo and that departure makes people uncomfortable.  In my experience, that discomfort is sometimes a genuine fear of change.

The second article tracks trends in the printing industry that will lead to an industry dominated by a few large successful profit leaders and a large number of flailing small companies. The profit leaders will enjoy higher margins because they offer services that are more relevant to their customers.

Not only do the profit leaders operate more viable businesses they appear to be more relevant in the market and to their customers.  They display better adaptiveness in terms of their ability to change with the market and the environment.  They have built into their DNA an ability to endure hardships, perform at consistently high levels, and keep on going.

Wayne Lynn

While Lynn's article did not use the word "creative" to describe the successful profit leaders, I believe that appearing "more relevant" and displaying "better adaptiveness" requires creativity. The leaders of these organizations will need to be the first to see and understand new opportunities and have the courage to experiment with new products and processes.

The final article serves as an example of survival of the most creative. R and R Images is a major customer of Convertible Solutions and has historically embraced new technology, processes and products long before the rest of the printing industry. The fact that they need to add two Indigo 7600 presses to handle their growing volume is proof that innovation and creativity work.

Convertible's sister companies, Inter-State Studio and Publishing and Black River Imaging have also added several more HP Indigo 7500 and 7600 presses this year in preparation for an extremely busy photo gifting season. We work very hard to continually generate and explore creative ideas and launch new products.

How do you feel about the changes in the printing industry?  Do you feel that "Survival of the Most Creative" applies?

R and R Images in Phoenix, Arizona

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Your Creativity is Scary!

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A Tale of Two Offsets

Rainy Days and Mondays

There is a persistent myth that highly creative people are mentally ill or emotionally disturbed. It doesn’t take much effort to remember individual examples across many disciplines: John Nash, Vincent Van Gogh, Edvard Munch, Syd Barrett, Brian Wilson, Kurt Vonnegut, Virginia Woolf, and Woody Allen come to mind. However, despite these high profile examples, most creative people are not mentally ill and most mentally ill people do not create great art.

Personally, I believe that there can be great inspiration during the times when we are in emotional pain. I am a fan of Bob Dylan’s music and my favorite album is Blood on the Tracks which was written after the breakup with his wife Sara. While Dylan claims the songs are not autobiographical but based upon the short stories of Anton Chekhov, I don’t believe he could have captured the pain of a breaking and broken relationship so accurately if he hadn’t been feeling that pain at the time.

There is a deep seated need in most of us to experience art that shows real emotion. While it can be invigorating to share the confusion of Lady Gaga when she loses her phone or the joy that Rebecca Black feels on Friday, we long to hear from those with deeper issues.

My life has been strongly influenced by decisions made during periods of depression. Most of the time I am an expert at execution.  Set a sales target - I will find a way to hit it.  Want a new product - I can write the specs and organize the team to get it done. Ready to launch the product with a multi-channel media campaign - no problem. These tasks require far too much concentration on the how and now to leave time for asking why.

Then the questions begin to creep in.  Why am I doing this? Who is this helping?  Who is this hurting? Is this really what I want to be doing? What if I have to do this for the rest of my life? Is this what I want on my tombstone?

Now that I am past 50 and some of my parts seem to be wearing out, there are new questions. How much longer will I be here? Will I ever be able to “x” again? How much longer do I have with the people I love? What’s next?

I used to hate the questions. They were a distraction from the tasks at hand and greatly resented. I blamed external factors, usually the company where I was employed. So I changed jobs and sometimes moved to new cities. Life’s been good to me so far, so most of those decisions turned out pretty well.

I have sometimes laughed to myself that my carefully crafted resume masks the real reason behind some of the changes. In reality, in those periods of depression and reflection, I was more aware of systemic problems and where they would lead in the future. I will never know whether the depression made me more aware or the awareness made me more depressed. But it was not coincidence that the decisions turned out well.

I no longer fight the feelings. I can recognize them now and welcome them like an old friend. I let them wash over me and wonder where they will lead me. Since I have a very supportive family and a wonderful employer, it is senseless to look for external triggers. So I try to identify habits and thought patterns of my own that need adjustment.

They are my feelings.  I will take responsibility for them.

I don’t know if my experience is universal, but I suspect it is. Everyone must experience periods when they ponder the existential questions. Those are the best times to reset your compass bearings and sail off into new adventures.

What brings you down?  How has it impacted your life and your creative decisions?

While you ponder the question, I am going to strum a few chords from Tangled Up in Blue.

Creativity Meritocracy

We live in an age that is a creativity meritocracy.  If you have an innovative idea or a creative skill, it is easier than it ever has been to implement your idea and distribute the results through the web.

If you have a software concept that will enhance the way people spend their time, you can build on the communications infrastructure that is already in place, rely on the computer hardware that people are already carrying in their pockets and use an app store for distribution. A single individual can realistically compete with the development teams of large companies.

If you have a passion that you enjoy writing about, you can set up an attractive blog page in a few minutes and share your thoughts with the world. If your content is good, and you put some effort into letting people know it is there, you can build up a following of devoted readers.

If you write a great book, record a great song or film a great video, you no longer have to submit it the publishing companies and hope for the best. You can publish it yourself on Lulu, Blurb, iTunes or YouTube. If the work is good, it can develop a loyal following.

It is no longer possible for the editors and publishers and other gatekeepers to hold you back.

However, every other creator has the same opportunity. So your work needs to be very good to stand out.

What is your creative passion?


Photo at top by Hiro008 on Flickr

Since the Big Bang

According to Lemaître’s Big Bang Theory, the universe originated from a single point 13.7 billion years ago.  

Since the Big Bang, all acts of creation have been derivative.  Everything that has been created or will be created contains the components from that original event.

Ideas fit the same model. All forms of creativity build upon the ideas of other people, whether historic or contemporary.  Great new ideas result from combining existing ideas into new forms. To enhance your own creativity, you need to expose yourself to the ideas of other creative thinkers.

When you approach a new design challenge, your solution will be pulled from your knowledge and experience. When those experiences are broader and deeper, you are able to blend them together in more innovative ways.

Studying the work of the most creative people in your own industry is only a baseline. It’s also important to understand trends in related fields.  For example, a photographer could benefit from understanding graphic design or fashion.  Knowledge that seems unrelated  is also useful and interesting. Perhaps the mechanics of the eye of a fruit fly will lead to entirely new approach to image capture.

To expand your creativity, begin by expanding your intellectual curiosity.

                                  

Freemiums are Frenemies of Creativity

The current resurgence in creativity is a natural result of the economic forces that dominated the last century.  From the creation of assembly line manufacturing by Henry Ford to Walmart’s obsession with supply chain management, 20th century businesses maintained a relentless focus on lowering costs and prices.

In the last quarter of the 20th century, automation and globalization pushed costs down even further to the point where it became difficult or impossible to manufacture many products in the United States.  However, it was an environment where software developers and similar types of creative enterprises could thrive.

The rewards for creating a hit software application or a hit song were enormous.  Once the initial costs of development or recording were covered, the only incremental costs of each additional sale were the packaging and distribution. Mass marketing campaigns and limits on shelf space in retail stores concentrated the successes into a few “hits” each year.

Everything changed in the 21st century. The first step of that change was documented in 2006 by Wired Magazine Editor Chris Anderson in The Long Tail. Anderson observed that the Internet economy makes it easier for electronic retailers to stock and for consumers to find a much broader selection of products.  Using Rhapsody, Amazon and Netflix as examples, the book shows how the Internet democratizes the forces of production and distribution while bringing suppliers with broad product offerings together with consumers with eclectic tastes. As a result, you can now pick from more than 25,000 DVDs on Netflix and more than 100,000 books at Amazon.

Anderson documented an even greater change in 2009 with Free, The Future of a Radical Price. Growing adoption of high bandwidth Internet connections in the home allow digital products like software, music, movies and games to be downloaded directly to the home. This digital distribution pushes the incremental cost of each unit to zero.  With the cost of these digital products at free, it wasn’t long before many of these products were offered to the final customers for free.

The term “freemium” was coined to describe the disruptive practice of making products available to most consumers for free and charging a fee only to those who want a more powerful premium version.  Another approach, perfected by the casual game company Zynga, combines free-to-play games with selling virtual goods like farm animals or weapon upgrades that enhance the players performance or experience. Zynga thrives by selling these items to a tiny percentage of its total users.

There is  a lot of room for debate on whether freemiums are friends or enemies of creativity. I think they are both and declare that freemiums are frenemies of creativity.

A market expectation of free places tremendous stress on traditional content creators.  Free doesn’t include any margin to amortize development costs or cover royalty payments or licensing fees. It makes it much harder to maintain a large revenue stream from a single creative act.  Free also raises quality expectations.  To sell a product in a market crowded with free alternatives, the product has to be really good.

On the other hand, freemium and virtual goods revenue models place a high value on continuous creativity. When a company like Zynga discovers strong interest in one of their games, they assign a creative team of 30 to 40 people to develop a continuous stream of virtual items to keep the players interested and involved. Musicians who make studio recordings of their music available for free are building audiences willing to pay to see their club and concert performances.

In many ways, the new economy limits the value of one-time acts of creation while celebrating the art of continuous creation.  One more reason why all of us need to develop our creative abilities.

Trim the Nonessential - Break a Few Rules

I could not write good ad copy.  My technical writing was good, my articles and press releases were fine, but my ad copy was flat and lifeless.

Whenever I needed to put together an ad, my marketing team would identify the key message and I would draft copy to communicate that message...copy that was clear but boring. Then I would send my draft to a freelance writer and she would send back something stunning.  But she had only made the tiniest changes.

After a few months of this, I asked her how she did it and her answer was stunningly simple. She took my draft and trimmed out nonessential words to let the most important ones stand out.  Then she broke a few grammar rules to shorten the sentences and quicken the pace.  Left out the subject noun. Or began with a preposition.

I believe her advice is magic for any writer or editor.  It is also a metaphor for creativity or even life in general.  

What nonessential elements in your work hide the most important parts of your message?  

What nonessential tasks keep you from doing your real work?

What rules should you break to quicken your pace and give your work clarity?

The Age of Creativity

We live in the age of creativity.  As the economic recovery accelerates, there will be tremendous opportunities for people who can generate ideas and experiences that are unique and authentic. Software, clothing, business models, user interfaces, manufacturing processes....everywhere you look, the demands for creativity are unlimited.

On the other hand, the opportunities for people who don’t create unique value are continuing to fade away. If the tasks that you do, or your company does, can be broken down into a series of easily defined steps, then your job or your company is at risk of being outsourced or automated out of existence.

If creativity is in greater demand than ever before and a prerequisite for success or even survival in the new economy, many of us will need help learning how to become more creative.  How does a person who has been trained by an education system that stresses rote memorization and a work environment that stresses following instructions learn how to create on their own? We need to be taught.

Teaching creativity brings us to the heart of the creativity paradox.  I believe that creative skills can be learned and developed through study and practice. For most of us, we learn best when a skill can be broken down into simple steps which can be rehearsed. After we learn the basics, we can move onto more advanced skills.  However, once we can define a step-by-step process for creativity, is it still creative?

No one can teach us to be creative in five easy steps. Each person has to find their own unique talent and develop that talent in their own unique way. But we can learn methods and techniques from each other that can help us discover our own approach to creativity.

Seth Godin has coined the term “Linchpin” to describe a person who has unleashed their creativity and developed their own unique “superpower.” He calls on all of us to become artists and quotes Steve Jobs to point out that “real artists ship.”  

What I hope to “ship” in this blog are ideas and techniques to enhance creativity based upon my own personal experiences and the writings of experts including Godin, Daniel Pink, Mihalyi Csikzentmihalyi, Malcom Gladwell and others mixed in with musings on marketing, social media, photography and anything else I find interesting.

While contemplating a good name for this blog, I discovered an interesting Lens on Squidoo named Creativity and the Creative Paradox which has been assembled by Todd Edmands.  

As we explore these ideas together, I am looking forward to your comments and learning how you develop your creative talents.