Aha! Igniting Your Creative Spark in the Digital Age
This presentation, by SubscriberMail’s Jordon Ayan, was a classic example of how old speeches try to sound current by bolting on the words ”...in the digital age.” The only digital element I witnessed during Jordon Ayan’s speech was a few people text messaging instead of paying attention to his presentation. Ayan acknowledged that his book “Aha! 10 ways to free your creative spirit and find your great ideas” was written 11 years ago, which made me wonder if anyone else in the audience was also feeling bamboozled. But let’s set that aside a minute and consider what we learned.
Apparently there is still a market for training people to run brainstorm sessions. We learned that mental models stop us from achieving our goals and that “patterned thinking” prevents true innovation. The Torrance Test of Creative Thinking, published in 1966 when Dr. Torrance was 41-years-old, taught us that there are four measures of creative thinking; Fluency, Flexibility, Originality and Elaboration. Our ability to elaborate, or create something original, drops significantly between the ages of 5 and 45 because we’re rewarded for conforming. Which brings us to Transveredational Search (TD), or so we’re told, which is the ability to connect two transveredational ideas. And you thought marketing was shallow and wouldn’t improve your intellectual capital.
Did you know the bar code was invented in 1948 by Norman Joseph Woodland who got the idea by drawing lines in the sand at the beach? Whether he knew it or not, Mr. Woodland was increasing his C.O.R.E. , which stands for Curiosity, Openness, Risk and Energy. We were encouraged to increase our C.O.R.E. (which was probably invented while watching The Man from U.N.C.L.E.), by connecting with other people, travelling, reading and tapping into technology. When we expand our horizons, our horizons will expand.
Then we learned about the 4 “D’s” and how Walt Disney went about choosing where to place garbage cans in his park. First, they took all the garbage cans out of the park and then gave visitors a wrapped piece of candy when they entered. Wherever the wrappers were thrown determined where the cans should go, which is exactly 27 steps inside the gates. And then pay phones were invented and a guy named Dennis Dees started a company to profit from them. New brainstorm techniques, such as Round Robin, Free Flow and Eyes Closed (invented sometime in the last century) help speed the flow of ideas and find unique answers.
The audience seemed to appreciate all of the exercises and the presentation, despite the disconnected nature of it. They also seemed to appreciate the nostalgic walk down memory lane. Back when times were more simple, and “the digital age” meant counting with all your fingers and toes.
