For the record, I’m totally over using Wikipedia as an example of anything except as an example of an overused example. Is a Wiki encyclopedia the only creative thing the internet has produced? Please pardon my digression.

What do the movies Ishtar and Rain Man have in common? They are the consecutive movies in 1987 and 1988 in which Dustin Hoffman starred. I’ve often wondered why an obviously great actor would choose a role in a notoriously bad movie. Couldn’t he see that Ishtar was going to suck? Did he know Rain Man was going to be great? Apparently not.

By now we must all know the secret is in doing, especially since Nike changed their tag line back in the ‘80’s. Take your shot. Be overly cautious and you’ll end up sitting on every idea you’ve ever had.

I’m never “all in” though; I have doubts. Well, don’t. Have no doubt about it, your idea will fail. Your concept at the start will not be the one you take to the goal.

As a photographer I “shoot around it”; my typical success rate is 100:1 if I’m being vaguely creative. If I close the ratio I’m going safe and less with creative instincts.

My new adventure is scripting stories for film – a newbie. In a short 6 months the best quote I’ve applied is that your film is shot 3 times: once in your head, once on film (or video), and once when editing. With each success, the effort that goes out with the trash should be considerable if you’re doing it right.

I guess we don’t know until we try; we’re not as good at predicting success as one might think. Truth is, innovators fail far more than those who aren’t. That’s not what it looks like on the surface. At quick glance, you’re innovative and I’m not. In reality, I’m not failing enough; I’m looking for that 1 in 100 before it happens.

According to Frans Johansson, research tells us that the single strongest correlation between innovator success is the number of ideas they try to make happen. Example: Einstein published 240 unreferenced papers. That’s 240:1.

The secret is in taking the smallest executable step to move your idea forward. What is the minimum investment you need that will convince you to take another step? The strategy is to convince yourself it can work.

Additionally, accept failure of your first step. Start walking northeast even though your final goal may be true north. Do it right and your goal moves, the idea changes as we conduct research, collect resources and create prototypes.

[via the99percent.com]
Frans Johansson is an entrepreneur and thought leader. He is also a consultant and the managing director for a hedge fund. Frans previously co-founded and managed two companies, a Boston-based software company and a medical device company operating out of Baltimore, Maryland and Stockholm, Sweden.

Raised in Sweden by his African-American and Cherokee mother and Swedish father, Frans earned an MBA at Harvard Business School and a BS in environmental science at Brown University.

A successful author, Frans has written on a variety of topics, from business management to healthcare to sport fishing to how to save our oceans. His bestselling book, The Medici Effect, has been translated into 17 languages and was named “One of the Ten Best Business Books of 2004″ by Amazon.com.

Although Thomas Thwaites is a masters graduate of the Royal College of Art Design Interactions, and considers himself a Designer (of a more speculative sort), it seems to me that he’s just a very curious fellow.

My thought is that Thomas’ toaster building project illustrates two main truths:

1) As a civilization with a variety of cultures, we’re all slave to existing technology. Our knowledge is technology dependent.  Go ahead, try building a toaster from scratch. Try and build anything from scratch for that matter; how about a tooth brush or a pencil?

Allen Kay‘s definition of Technology: anything that wasn’t around when you were born.

2) The second and in my opinion the more salient point is, that while we may not be able to build a pencil from scratch, we can find something with which we can draw; we can toast bread, and we can clean our teeth. All of this can be done if we remain creative at the core.

It’s easy to be obsessed with building a toaster and forget that all we need is toasted bread.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Why bother investing more – money, time, energy – on projects than it takes to consume them? Instead, search the collective for marginally unfamiliar mediocre creativity that will conform by meeting salable expectations. Furthermore, it’s easy to conform because the crowd is on your side when no risks are taken.

It was the mid nineteenth century when Ralph Waldo Emerson lectured about creativity being part influence, part interpretation. What happens when the parts aren’t equal? What if influence devastates interpretation?

We’re getting to the answer. Likewise, around this time – mid/late 1800’s – we find the idea of a meme [understandably a concept returning to the dialogue in this century]. The meme is – more or less – a societal component; a style or concept widely deemed worthy of replication.

The 19th and 20th century memes as influencers evolved much like a childhood game of telephone. Remember? Classmates’ whispers yielded a surprising result of imitation and interpretation. This is a creative model, perhaps a thoughtless one but creative none the less.

One very key creative element is the passing of information in a way that keeps it free for interpretation. It may be as simple as an analogy or an imitation of a meme. Yet, concepts and styles that jump from individual to individual, as if crossing a gap, are naturally interpreted, i.e. Emerson finds his balance, and imitation isn’t duplication.

Don’t underestimate the importance of the gap; it’s a creative gap. The individual owns that interpretive space. Influence is the whisper and senses are interpreters escorted by introspective thoughts and emotions.

The internet has thrown Emerson’s balance out of whack. The creative gap is diminishing as analogy loses to duplication; imitation swaps with cloning, analog becomes digital. On occasion the creative gap literally shortens to Ctrl>C:Ctrl>V; no time for interpretation. Generally yet more precisely, the time of creation comes treacherously close to the duration of consumption.

As if performing on a stage, open on-line culture thrives on recognition. In real life, we tell a good joke and it becomes ours. A reasonably obscure joke has no attribution requirements, i.e. we’re the comedian. Netiquette (on-line etiquette) requires more attribution but only one or two levels back. With independent discovery, you get “finder’s credit” as though the creator is your alter ego; you’re a curator of good taste but deserve byline credit.

The Good: Crowd accelerated innovation. TED’s Chris Anderson presents a notable case in his talk about what the internet has done for creativity.

The Bad: An elevation of mediocrity and low expectations. Consumption is massive and fast with low interpretation and high influence that’s homogenizing creativity.

Following our move from analogy into duplication, we structure our creativity to avoid criticism and receive acclaim deserved or not. It has the effect of homogenizing outcome. The courage it takes to introduce disruptive forms comes with too much risk of ridicule. There is more equity in conformity than rebellion.

To meet the requirements of the “mob mentality” [as defined by Jaron Lanier - American computer scientist, musician, composer, visual artist, and author of  “You Are Not A Gadget”] consuming becomes more important than producing. When culture is completely open, creativity is lost.

The individual matters. The individual makes structure out of mush. Jaron Lanier calls it encapsulation: don’t publish until you’re ready. We are the definers; we have an inner life.

As proof, connectivity has created fame without talent; people who are famous for being famous. In turn, mediocrity (and the occasional garbage) lives an implausibly elevated status because mob members fear the consequence of truth; the massively naked emperor. This is a continual theme in today’s politics.

Consider Wikileaks: here we find – counter intuitively -  mob censorship of individual thought. Give me your honest opinion, and it had better not be controversial or disagreeable. Honesty through transparency, but at what cost? Complete openness destroys individuality; individuality is creativity.

Lanier marks a strong difference between the internet and open culture. In this Jaron Lanier talks about the failure of Web2.0 with Aleks Krotoski of The Guardian.

My life is a trial of slow hunch and error; semi-baked ideas patiently awaiting resolution. Epiphanies are ideas that move suddenly from semi to mostly baked after a slow burn. They benefit from 10,000 hours of practice, knowledge and tipping points but ultimately rely on staying connected to adjacent possibilities to facilitate the serendipity of adaptive re-purposing.

A superb titles by different authors:

Drive – Dan Pink
Outliers – Malcolm Gladwell
Linchpin – Seth Godin
Where Good Ideas Come From – Steven Johnson

Steven Johnson has been making blog appearances through his RSA Animate and TED videos, but his latest book is the unabridged version of his five year research into the formation of good ideas. He breaks it down into seven chapters: The Adjacent Possible, Liquid Networks, The Slow Hunch, Serendipity, Error, Exaptation, and Platforms. Each chapter of Johnson’s book fits comfortably with experience yet offers a significantly alternate angle.

Ideas don’t happen in isolation. One thing leads to the next as we stand on the shoulders of giants. There needed to be a carbon atom before discovering oil, just as there needed to be Kranz before Prince. Clearly some adjacent ideas are more enduring while others are more harmful to a genre but we don’t move forward without error.

On my “to do” list:

Find ways to creatively mingle.

Bump elbows with dissimilar yet like minded creatives; “like minded” meaning open and curious, dissimilar meaning not always agreeable. A denser mix gives rise to more sparks that facilitate idea baking. Will the creative genius be demoted to the merely talented by virtue of our new “Third Place”; the internet? The breakthrough coming from out of nowhere will henceforth be traceable to many adjacent connections.

On my “to do” list:

Find a collaborative space to work.

Good ideas are new connections made from previous knowledge.  The key is knowledge; anything else relies on ignorant chance, which is good but highly unreliable. Knowledge of a genre takes time to explore.  It’s harder to find the adjacent possible without knowing the adjacent exists.

On my “to do” list:

Keep learning but take care not to build a house of mirrors; diversify.

Serendipity is practiced luck; luck that you can rely upon. Stuff happens randomly when at rest; serendipity is to creativity what entropy is to thermodynamics. Serendipity is the uncaptured idea, like energy unavailable for work until acted upon by a force.

On my “to do” list:

Stay open. Let accidents happen. Embrace Serendipity.

Ideas need to be exposed to failure. It’s as though we have to get through the crap to find the gold. Poor information, inappropriate preparation, ill-fated execution all lead to greatness.  Einstein was an idiot until he wasn’t.

On my “to do” list:

Give myself permission to suck.

There is a scrap heap of ideas waiting to be adaptively repurposed; a.k.a. exaptation or in past tense: exaptated.  One-liners become a book if we collect enough of them to piece together in a meaningful way.  Was the appendix really a vestigial organ or one waiting for exaptation in the evolution of man?  A great idea is a great idea but maybe not for the solution you’re attempting to find.

On my “to do” list:

Start keeping an idea book; one that isn’t a computer.

[more via TED website] 

A dynamic writer and speaker, Johnson crafts captivating theories that draw on a dizzying array of disciplines, without ever leaving his audience behind. Author Kurt Anderson described Johnson’s book Emergence as “thoughtful and lucid and charming and staggeringly smart.” The same could be said for Johnson himself. His big-brained, multi-disciplinary theories make him one of his generation’s more intriguing thinkers. His books take the reader on a journey — following the twists and turns his own mind makes as he connects seemingly disparate ideas: ants and cities, interface design and Victorian novels.

Why do some individuals lead with their creative ideas?

We all get attention for what we do.  To get more attention we’re told to get a plan or a better design: goals, objectives, tactics, a proprietary process, a unique value proposition, distinct messaging, a brand strategy.

Rarely are we asked, “why do you do this thing you do?” What’s more, in our deepest frustration, if we fail to find an answer to why, enthusiasm is lost for how we are doing it, and we risk abandoning what we do altogether.

What’s your purpose, your cause, your belief?  What gets you out of bed in the morning? What we do is clear to others. How we do it is less transparent but the “why”  is fuzzy maybe even invisible.  Yet, according to Simon Sinek, “people don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it.”

Photographers, musicians, writers make things – creatively wonderful things.  What they make has a style, a voice, and a viewpoint which makes it easier for the creator to ignore the “why”.

The artifacts are deeply connected to the creator’s ego that gets bruised with rejection. Rejection brings focus back on the artifacts; what we make and how we make it – “why” is forgotten in order to focus on the pain of rejection.

Simon Sinek inspired me to add a law to the Permission To Suck Manifesto. In the #1 position it now reads:

1.  Hold on tight to your “why”. Why do you do this thing you do? It is the root of all you create and the power of your inspiration.

“Why” is your deepest inside stuff. If you don’t know why you do what you do, how can you expect others to believe in you; why should they care?

Actions without a cause don’t accumulate followers.

Leaders act from the inside “why” and move on to how they do what they do. Mr. Sinek is codifying the passion for creating in a counter intuitive approach. He starts with why and calls his approach the golden circle -  concentrically from the inside out: why > how > what.

People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it.

[via TED website]

Beginning as a student in anthropology, Simon Sinek turned his fascination with people into a career of convincing people to do what inspires them. His earliest work was in advertising, moving on to start Sinek Partners in 2002, but he suddenly lost his passion despite earning solid income. Through his struggle to rediscover his excitement about life and work, he made some profound realizations and began his helping his friends and their friends to find their “why” — at first charging just $100, person by person. Never planning to write a book, he penned Start With Why simply as a way to distribute his message.

Sinek also contributes to several efforts in the non-profit sphere: He works with Count Me In, an organization created to help one million women-run businesses reach a million dollars in revenue by 2012, and serves on the Board of Directors for Danspace Project, which advances art and dance.  He writes and comments regularly for several major publications and teaches a graduate-level class in strategic communications at Columbia University.

“I try to find, celebrate and teach leaders how to build platforms that will inspire others. “

Simon Sinek

Crowdsourcing is tainted so let’s gift it to corporations for their Power Point presentations.  It belongs to those who use the millennium’s broad bandwidth of human connection to capture creative innovation for personal or corporate profit.  It’s Jargon. Crowdsourcing is using the innovation of a crowd with similar interests to further a cause. Ultimately, in most cases, this means financial profit.

It’s not evil, but let’s get real, crowdsourcing isn’t innovation as much as novelty. Structuring a business around crowdsourcing is doing little more than upping your pool of freelance talent in order to put downward pressure on price and upward pressure on uniqueness. The former almost always happens, the latter is much tougher to achieve. [see iStockPhoto]

The tendency is to focus on what something triggers; what it can do to us (fear) and for us (profit). Where will it take our business? What can I do to harness the new thing? Conduct a SWOT analysis. Crowdsourcing models are an answer for what we can do to take advantage of motivated people through technology and its broad reach. It does little to answer how our interconnectiveness (is that a word?) will change creativity or its landscape.

Chris Anderson

TED conference curator Chris Andersen’s characterization, “Crowd Accelerated Innovation”, is the foundation for why we are in a creative awakening.  Finding the best and learning from a larger pool is why we pay heed. The pool is really a stream filled with potential geniuses who are showing passion, knowledge and skill while screaming, “look at me”. We look, learn and long for the spotlight to shine our direction.

The crowdsource model is a plan to capture innovation for a purpose.  Crowd Accelerated Innovation however, is driving the ideas, skills and dreams of creative individuals. The spotlight is on; everyone is on stage in a global “Gong Show”. Crowdsourcing is a funnel while Crowd Accelerated Innovation is a megaphone.

What seems to be easy to forget is that people are doing it for themselves; answering, “what’s in it for me?” Equally easy to forget is that money clouds passion by focusing on an end game that rarely has anything to do with passion’s origin. For the creative, “what’s in it for me” is not a plan to make money; money is an attractive by-product not a root creative passion.

In this TED presentation, watch what Chris Anderson has to show us about Crowd Accelerated Innovation:

Something well designed is compelling; we are drawn to its efficiency, effectiveness, elegance, beauty, and often it’s cleverness and humor. You’re a designer when you arrange your clothes in an order that gets you out the door faster in the morning, or when you plan a route to the office.

Then why is “design thinking” so hard for so many to understand?

In my view it’s because we have a tendency to think things more complicated than they are; the enigmatic isn’t routinely unpacked but rather labeled something else or believed to be something we understand easier or perhaps ignored completely. Maybe we find the easiest remedy for complexity is to go to the end result and call it design: an iPod, Ferrari, or the elegant kitchen utensil.

Great designers design great things from information architecture to artifacts for living, but the truly great designer finds the right problem to solve that makes a difference and connects emotionally to the end user. They advance humanity by forward thinking with the support of observation and research, empathy for the end user and serendipity in the process.

I put together this 13 minute video with the help of 5 great design thinkers; Matt Munoz, David Burney, John Loftin, Jonathan Opp and Todd Coats.  In it they help us to understand design thinking.

To paraphrase David Burney in this video: Design is a way of life. Designers find solutions to the right problems through the balance of science, analytics, and math + art, spirit and intuition.

[Via Wikipedia:]

Design thinking is a process for practical, creative resolution of problems or issues that looks for an improved future result.^[1] It is the essential ability to combine empathy, creativity and rationality to meet user needs and drive business success. Unlike analytical thinking, design thinking is a creative process based around the “building up” of ideas. There are no judgments early on in design thinking. This eliminates the fear of failure and encourages maximum input and participation in the ideation and prototype phases.

I’m screwed. The flight is full. I need to go where I’m going but there are only middle seats. The guy in the middle is in no man’s land and no one wants to be associated with “no man”. Aisle seat gate keepers refuse to look me in the eye. The strategy seems to be: block the entrance with a briefcase.

No man’s land is a term for land that is not occupied or is in dispute between parties that will not occupy it because of fear or uncertainty.

You’re fighting for real estate with no ability to define your space. There are no clear boundaries; no arm rests dedicated to your seat. Action appears to be at the fringes but the fringes aren’t accessible on your boarding pass; you’re a middle seat guy for this trip.

Without a pass one can only play at the fringes for short periods. You can sit on the aisle but if it’s not indicated on the boarding pass you’ll soon get busted back to the middle. In the middle you are unrecognizable, uncomfortable, ignored, assigned token worth, or dismissed out of hand no matter how very good you are.

Some how you need to reserve that aisle seat; get in that exit row with A/B choices.  Ride the middle for a while but if your a traveler and get the middle seat on every trip, I may suggest you use the exit slide. You’ll need to create an authentic story of a fringe player and live it.

Here are some of the famous “middles”:

Middle America is beloved but horribly abused, misunderstood and misquoted.

Middle class is a proud group but one whose definition is unclear and shifty. My father was one and so am I, but there couldn’t be two more different people in the same category.

Middle Management, even the name sounds unimportant. “Hi, I’m a middle manager” – I can’t imaging a greeting more apt to inspire escape. Having been one once, I know what a lonely position this is. You have all the responsibility with none of the position power or ability to directly affect things on the ground.

Middle Name: It’s rarely used and less often recognized as you. Those without one don’t miss it all that much.

The Middle Aged are typically lost in a crisis of neither starting nor finishing. They’re stereotypically on a bridge to nowhere, upset by their aimlessness while lamenting dreams unfulfilled.

Middle of the Road has a firm reputation for boredom and a dead lock on the inadequately mundane result.

Middle Ground is impossible to defend, but then, no one will attack you anyway since you have nothing remarkable to offer. Well, that is unless you are in the way of some fringe element trying to cross your path.

Middle Passage: Synonymous with death to would be slaves. At the very best it meant months of torture followed by a lifetime of servitude.

The Middle Man is always in danger of being squeezed out; Rumored as worthless. There is even a word for eliminating him: Disintermediation [an economic term for cutting out intermediaries] and is considered a method for gaining efficiencies.

Middle Child: There is a syndrome attached to this position, one defined by a sense of not belonging. Need I say more?

Middle Urinal: As the middle airline seat is to travel, it’s the last resort for queued personal relief. There is an instant calculation upon entering a men’s room: “Which of the remaining spots is least likely to attract a neighbor?”

Everyone should know Seth Godin – there is no disputing he’s perpetually reserving an aisle seat.  If you haven’t seen his presentation from 2003 you must view it. If you have it’s worth a revisit – I’ve viewed it half a dozen times at least.  It’s seven years old but will remain fresh in seven more, with the possible exception of the Hummer – it may not be here but the message is still dead on accurate. He speaks of the middle brilliantly and is guaranteed to make you laugh.

I must have had ½ dozen conversations with musicians, photographers and designers in the last week about artistic soul searching. Perhaps we’re looking for meaning, or overcoming creative block, or simply have too much free time, yet my wager is on the speed of which our cultural environment is changing.  We simply can’t keep up so we are gradually choosing an alternative: finding a place to plant our flag.

When asked about including fret tapping in his playing, one of my guitar heroes answered, “I don’t like the sound enough to spend the time necessary to master it”. To help me out, immediately following my question, I watch as he fret tapped a solo only to abandon the sound in seconds.  Message received: “I’m willing to try anything but I’ve got to have it inside me if it’s going to have meaning”.

The choices are so vast; the horizon is expanding at such a rate it’s as though we are pioneers racing west to find the most fertile land to which we can lay claim. We can only sprint for so long before every square mile passes in hopes of something better around the corner.  At the end of the day, we’re still homeless and looking.

We, the more experienced folks (please accept my generosity), get fooled into thinking our legacy habits are getting in the way of younger seemingly more agile talents.  I’ve watched vigilantly with the wisdom that human capacities don’t change all that much; human is human, look for the patterns they’re consistent through history.

Probing for artistic soul can make an agile impression but experience easily keeps pace with enthusiasm by avoiding needless wholesale experimentation. Edginess is commonly a dormant tradition, like 80’s fashion, tweaked then labeled fresh.

What I see is an increasingly large group of creatives probing deeper inside to find what they own; what unique individual value can inform their work. In spite of that, we make comparisons to a growing creative class: we see things, hear things, and witness ideas that shake our confidence.

“I would never have thought of doing that.”

The Truth:

Of course not, because it’s not you; why do you expect any “other” to be something you could have done? Look inside, plant the flag and do what’s authentic.

Permission To Suck Manifesto Law #2

The boss is the problem; the puzzle to solve, the idea to create, the crowd to excite, or your soul to satisfy.  Don’t piss off the boss.

Seth Godin had a great post last week about adding value, avoiding factory work, and staying true to your art:

A small island grows sugar cane. Many people harvest it, and one guy owns the machine that can process the cane and turn it into juice.

Who wins?

Go Here for more: Seth Godin – The Sugar Cane Machine

Building Art - James Powderly

In my research for my post on Banksy I stumbled onto James Powderly, an incredible high tech street artist.  James gives us a demonstration in this video [via The Creators Project]. You’ll be shaking your head by the end.

James Powderly:

[via F.A.T. Free Art and Technology]

James was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee, U.S.A. in the year of the dragon, 1976. He has been making technology and media at the fringes of robotics, graffiti, space science, tattoos and rock n roll since 1992. James was a Senior Research Fellow in the Eyebeam R&D OpenLab developing creative tools and media to directly enrich the public domain.    more …

http://graffitiresearchlab.com/

http://robotclothes.com/

http://honeybeerobotics.com/

http://research.eyebeam.org/

Powderly’s CV