Creativity Unlimited: Thinking Inside the Box for Business Innovation

Creativity Unlimited Thinking Inside the Box for Business Innovation Micael Dahlén

Creativity Unlimited

Creativity Unlimited Thinking Inside the Box for Business Innovation Micael Dahlén

This edition copyright © 2008

John Wiley & Sons Ltd, The Atrium, Southern Gate, Chichester, West Sussex PO19 8SQ, England Telephone (+44) 1243 779777

Email (for orders and customer service enquiries): [email protected] Visit our Home Page on www.wiley.com All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise, except under the terms of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 or under the terms of a licence issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency Ltd, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1T 4LP, UK, without the permission in writing of the Publisher. Requests to the Publisher should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons Ltd, The Atrium, Southern Gate, Chichester, West Sussex PO19 8SQ, England, or emailed to [email protected], or faxed to (+44) 1243 770620. Original edition (Sweden) published by Volante QNB Publishing Designations used by companies to distinguish their products are often claimed as trademarks. All brand names and product names used in this book are trade names, service marks, trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners. The Publisher is not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book. This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. It is sold on the understanding that the Publisher is not engaged in rendering professional services. If professional advice or other expert assistance is required, the services of a competent professional should be sought. Other Wiley Editorial Offices John Wiley & Sons Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, USA Jossey-Bass, 989 Market Street, San Francisco, CA 94103-1741, USA Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH, Boschstr. 12, D-69469 Weinheim, Germany John Wiley & Sons Australia Ltd, 42 McDougall Street, Milton, Queensland 4064, Australia John Wiley & Sons (Asia) Pte Ltd, 2 Clementi Loop #02-01, Jin Xing Distripark, Singapore 129809 John Wiley & Sons Canada Ltd, 6045 Freemont Blvd. Mississauga, Ontario, L5R 4J3 Canada Wiley also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats. Some content that appears in print may not be available in electronic books. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Dahlén, Micael. [Boxen. English] Creativity unlimited : thinking inside the box for business innovation / Micael Dahlén. p. cm. Translation of: Boxen : kreativitet som skapar bättre affärer : träna dig till framgång. Stockholm : Volante QNB Pub., c2006. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-470-77084-9 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Creative ability in business. 2. Creative thinking. 3. Technological innovations. I. Title. HD53.D34 2008 658.4’063—dc22 2008027939 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978-0-470-77084-9 Typeset in 11/16pt Trump Medieval by SNP Best-set Typesetter Ltd., Hong Kong Printed and bound in Great Britain by TJ International Ltd, Padstow, Cornwall, UK

Nothing is impossible. Some things are just more difficult than others.

Contents Acknowledgements

xi

1 Why this book?

1

PART I It’s About Success 2 Why creativity?

7 9

3 Are you creative?

19

4 Why is creativity so important?

29

5 Isn’t creativity dangerous?

49

PART II Think Inside the Box

57

6 What is creativity?

59

7 The creative result

67

viii / CONTENTS

8 The creative process

73

9 The creative person

93

10 Thinking inside the box

103

PART III Expanding the Box

123

11 The four walls of the box

125

12 The first wall: conventions and rules

135

13 The second wall: common sense

159

14 The third wall: physiology

179

15 The fourth wall: consciousness

199

PART IV Filling the Box

219

16 There’s no such thing as ‘useless’ knowledge

221

17 The brain is lazy

229

CONTENTS / ix

18 The power in brands

243

19 Associations

255

20 The context rules

263

PART V Shaking the Box

269

21 Preparations for the final step

271

22 Shaking the box side to side

281

23 Shaking the box up and down

307

PART VI Congratulations: You’ve Become Smarter

335

24 Are you a creative business innovator?

337

Further Reading

343

Index

357

Acknowledgements Study after study has made it clear that creativity and personal success are strongly dependent on the environment in which one operates. Others must be the judge of whether this author has been creative or is successful, but my environment, at least, has always been the best possible. I only wish that everybody could enjoy the advantages of working with the people mentioned below. Claes-Robert Julander is an amazingly wise man who continuously challenges and encourages me to be more incisive. For a researcher and writer with a tendency to indulge in details, it is a blessing to have a boss who can always see the big picture. Magnus Söderlund is my other boss, an inspiration and example both in the matter of academic ‘hygiene’ and other forms of asceticism. I have the further advantage of working on a number of exciting research and education projects – and of laughing my way through the time in between – in the company of a group of gifted and dear friends at the Centre for Consumer Marketing (CCM) at the Stockholm School of Business, who have also been fantastic and well-informed guinea pigs for several of the exercises

xii / ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

contained in this book (Anna Broback, Karolina Brodin, Rebecca Gruvhammar, Hanna Hjalmarson, Fredrik Lange, Jens Nordfält, Sara Rosengren, Henrik Sjödin, Fredrik Törn and Niclas Öhman). And of course there is Richard Wahlund, who is now a boss somewhere else, but still provides very valuable support. Over the years (now I’m feeling old …) I have had the pleasure and the honour of educating a large number of amazingly bright and successful students. You have made a greater impression on me, and meant more than you will probably ever know. I am very grateful that so many of you stay in contact (don’t stop), and that I have the chance to be involved, give support and take pleasure in your successful careers. Particular thanks are due to my magical students in Marketing Communications XL, who have been involved in testing many of the exercises and arguments in this book. A very meaningful and stimulating part of my research work is meeting with businesses and inquisitive and skillful marketers and business creators on a virtually daily basis. These meetings give my work invaluable feedback as well as insights and suggestions for what I should do

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS / xiii

next. Many thanks for the important work you do every day and for your readiness both to learn and to teach! Apropos learning and teaching – it is really wonderful to have a publisher who has evolved from being my student into my teacher and friend. Thank you, Tobias Nielsén.

1 Why this book?

It is up to us to train our brains to be strong. Einstein’s brain, for example, was surprisingly small. This book contains creativity exercises that relate directly to business creativity and various business-related problems. In addition, it describes how and why you might use a number of classical creativity exercises.

What is the body’s biggest muscle? A lot of people think it’s the brain, but this is not true. The brain is not a muscle, but like a muscle it can be trained. And although it cannot be flexed like a muscle (it would look rather odd if your head swelled up every time you did some serious thinking, in the way that your biceps increase in circumference when you tense your arm) your brain can be made stronger. This occurs in exactly the same way in which a muscle becomes stronger, namely by creating more connections between the cells. The thing that distinguishes ‘strong’ brains from others is not that they are bigger, but that they are denser. In spite of the tendency to describe the geniuses and thinkers of the past as having ‘big brains’, research

2 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

has found no evidence that their brains were particularly large. Einstein’s brain, for example, was surprisingly small – it weighed a mere 1230 grams, almost one-fifth less than the average brain. A rather comforting thought, isn’t it? We are not, in other words, born with differing potential (‘Lisa was obviously bound to succeed in life, she had such a large brain’). Instead, it is basically up to us to strengthen our brains by training, by maximizing the number of connections between our brain cells (yes, this was the special feature of Einstein’s brain). That is why I have written this book. My goal is not to strengthen the whole of your brain. Many others have had this goal and many (though not all) have failed to achieve it. Instead, I want to help to make you a better business creator (and this includes chief executives, developers and public sector decision-makers – those whose job it is to create better business opportunities for the Nation/Region Inc.). The work demands only a limited amount of your mental capacity and small improvements can produce big results. Let us permit ourselves a small digression. In general, it is fair to say that our body, with certain exceptions, has a reasonably constant number of cells. Therefore our muscles do not increase greatly in size when we train them. Any increase that results from training depends mainly on the muscles binding more water and sugar. The

WHY THIS BOOK? / 3

reason for the increase in muscle size through training is not the formation of new cells; rather, it is due to the creation of more connections between our current muscle cells. All these connections make the muscle denser (as you know, a well-trained muscle feels harder than an untrained one, just as it is more difficult to squeeze a carrot than a marshmallow). If you have seen body-builders or athletes at close quarters, you know that their muscles are not actually very big (except during the offseason when they store water and sugar in their muscles, and perhaps some fat as a ‘shock absorber’). Their muscles only look big because they are so dense and well-defined. This is a result of the muscle cells contracting and giving the muscles a definite shape. It is the same with the brain. Whenever I summarize my years of research and teaching, I usually arrive at the conclusion that marketing and business creation (the two are inseparable, which we will come back to later in the book) consist in constantly reinventing oneself. All my research results point to the importance of challenging conventional wisdom and breaking patterns and habits in order to reach out to people, attract their interest and gain unique advantages. Just knowing more than others is not enough. You must also be able to use your knowledge in a new way. All the information stored in the cells of the brain must be combined through new connections.

4 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

My research is concerned with developing and testing new opportunities and goals for companies and brands. It might, for example, be a matter of redefining a brand, changing product category, shaking up customer relations or evaluating business results on completely new grounds. This looks promising in theory, but the feedback I have received from companies and experts in marketing and business creation who consider these questions every day of their working lives has indicated that it is not always easy to put these theories into practice. I have therefore spent more and more time developing exercises and ideas about how to put together the challenging results of my research and finding out how, as marketer and business creator, you can continually reinvent yourself. Trying ‘merely’ to make you more creative is not enough. If it was, I would not be writing this book. Thousands of books on how to increase your creative powers have already been published. While there is always room for further texts on the subject, this book is about creativity and business creation. The difference may be slight, but oh so important. I have read all the books I could find on creativity and have discussed them with students and businessmen. In many respects, we have reached the same conclusion: the most important problem is that most of the books contain valuable and entertaining insights and exercises,

WHY THIS BOOK? / 5

but unfortunately often end up as being only ‘entertaining’. The reason such books do not lead to concrete results is due to the fact that the exercises are not directly linked to business creation. This book presents a collection of exercises that I have partly gathered from elsewhere and partly developed myself. It contains exercises that relate directly to business creativity and various business-related problem scenarios. In addition, it describes how and why you might use a number of classical creativity exercises. This book is in five parts and can be used for a number of different purposes. The book’s Introduction (Parts I and II) is there to provide you with arguments for yourself and others as to why it is important to let both the particular exercises in the book and creativity in general become part of your daily work. The exercises in the middle part (Part III) can be used as regular training to develop your creative powers, and also for warming up in various group contexts and in teaching or as metaphors in your daily work (thinking points). The exercises in the final parts (Parts IV and V) are intended for use directly in your strategy and tactics development to help you to find new angles and develop new solutions and business. Welcome aboard! Let’s go.

PART I It’s About Success In this part:

• • • •

Why creativity? Are you creative? Why is creativity so important? Isn’t creativity dangerous?

‘All my research results point to the importance of challenging conventional wisdom and breaking patterns and habits in order to reach out to people, attract their interest and gain unique advantages. Just knowing the most is not enough. You must also be able to use your knowledge in new ways.’

2 Why creativity?

This book is not about luck. It is about how to work systematically with creativity. For the effects are extremely systematic. Creativity is not about taking chances. Creativity is about ensuring success.

Why creativity? Put the question to the state-owned Swedish bank SBAB, which has gone through a radical transformation from the old, established Sveriges Bostadsfinansieringsaktiebolag (Swedish Domicile Financing Ltd) to an aggressive building society with the acronym SBAB. SBAB has totally transformed its business for itself, its competitors and Sweden’s population. Since as recently as 2000, by means of pioneering financial products and marketing programs such as ‘canned’ mortgages and mortgage blogs, the company has almost doubled its market share and tripled its customers. Annual sales have tripled, and according to investment bank Goldman Sachs, the value of the company and the SBAB brand have increased by several billions. Financial services in Sweden will never be the same again.

10 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

Another organization that has reaped the harvest of its creativity since 2000 is the pharmaceutical company Pfizer. Around the millennium shift, they reformulated a blood pressure medicine and marketed it instead as a man’s best friend. With this creative twist, Viagra was born. It has since been sold for billions – annually. Why creativity? Ask 3M that question, who like Pfizer managed to create one of the world’s best-known and successful products. By thinking creatively about how to use a glue that did not work, the Post-it note was born. Today it sells more than all the functioning glues the company markets put together. If you ask the people behind the Swedish free newspaper Metro the same question, you will hear a story of the future that became a reality thanks to a combination of an established product and a new business and distribution model – owing to insights about people’s behaviour patterns and changing habits. The first edition of Metro was distributed in the Stockholm underground in 1995, and within 10 years the free daily had grown to over 60 editions in 19 countries with a readership of more than 18 million. Apart from their success, these examples have one thing in common. They have been successful by being creative within their existing areas

WHY CREATIVITY? / 11

of activity. Instead of looking beyond what they already knew and trying to think up radically new products, they have used and developed their existing products, their know-how and their experience to achieve a creative result. Instead of thinking outside the box they have thought inside the box. Thinking inside the box increases the likelihood of achieving creative results and also strengthens the impact and value of the creativity. The above examples provide some anecdotal evidence of the enormous power of creativity and the revolutionary effects it can have. The list of examples could be considerably longer (and we will see many examples later in the book), but I do not want to concentrate on individual cases. If we spend too much time on particular, brilliant examples, there is a risk that they become just that, brilliant examples, and that these companies may be seen as companies that had special advantages and, perhaps, special luck. But this book is not about luck. It is about how you can systematically work with creativity, for the effects are systematic to a high degree. Creativity is not about taking a chance, it is about ensuring success. Figure 2.1 shows the result of a systematic analysis of 350 European, American and Asian brands within every area from cars to computers, cosmetics, clothes, drinks and cleaning products. Over a two-year

12 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

period, researchers examined how creativity affected the company’s outcomes in the form of sales growth, market share, profit levels and return on investment (ROI). They also measured product outcomes in terms of customer satisfaction with the products, and the perceived quality of the products. The percentages in Figure 2.1 show the extent to which creativity accounts for a company’s earnings and how much the customers like the product. At the top of the figure, you can see that when companies with high earnings are compared with those of lower earnings, 26% of the difference can be accounted for by the fact that the successful companies’ products are improvement innovations. Considering all the factors that

Improvement innovation

26% Business outcomes

35%

8% Paradigmchallenging innovation

Product outcomes

9%

Figure 2.1

WHY CREATIVITY? / 13

can affect a company’s financial results (its market segment, the actions of its competitors, relations with suppliers, pricing of parts, yield conditions and much more) 26% is a surprisingly high figure. In the illustration, we can also see that improvement innovations account for 35% of the reason why certain products are regarded as being of higher quality and have more satisfied customers (this is also remarkable considering all the attributes of customers and their usage of the products that affect the result). It also appears that for paradigm-challenging innovations the connections are evident, but not as strong. In contrast to improving innovations, which are products that the market and the customers can easily accept as a development of existing habits and buying patterns, paradigm-challenging innovations are products that completely alter people’s behaviour and habits. In others words, you may already begin to suspect that it is better/easier to develop people’s existing patterns and behaviour than to alter them. This important piece of the puzzle will be explored in depth later in the book. If you are still not convinced about the enormous impact of creativity, then consider the sum of USD 405 million. This figure captures the net present value of an innovative pharmaceutical product according to systematic analyses that researchers have conducted over a 10-year

14 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

period of 255 ground-breaking products in the USA, UK, Japan, France, Germany, Belgium and Switzerland. Pharmaceuticals are an extreme branch, with very long development and patent times. At almost the other end of the spectrum we find cars, where existing models are constantly being improved and new models are developed at a furious pace. But even in these areas the connection between the companies’ results and creativity are just as striking. American researchers analysed a total of 399 large and small product innovations over a six-year period and were able to summarize the results, as shown in Figure 2.2.

2.4 %

Short-term (one week)

0.4

(6.0

% (2

Sales

%)

.1 %

)

Profit

)

%

5

0.

3

Long-term (two months)

4.

%

(1

)

.7 %

(0 .6 %

(1.

2%

)

0

1.1 % (3.5

%)

Figure 2.2

Company value

WHY CREATIVITY? / 15

If one considers that the numbers in the figure show how the marketing of a single product affects the whole company, the effects are remarkable. If, for example, Ford makes a minor update to its Escort model, one can expect the whole company’s sales figures to improve by 4.3%, profit by 0.6% and the value of the whole company by 1.1% within two months. If Ford were even more creative and marketed a completely new model, they could within a week expect to achieve the figures in brackets (which illustrate the average effect of big innovations), that is, a 6.0% increase in sales, a resulting profit improved by 2.1% and an increase in the total worth of the company of 1.2%. Concentrating on creativity is the best investment you can make. The numbers speak for themselves. In a study of the 3000-plus stocks that were traded on the New York Stock Exchange from 1979 to 2001, researchers found that the major factor that clearly reduced a company’s systematic risk (i.e. strengthened its independence of trade cycles and other external factors that can diminish its value appreciation and gave the company control of its future) was the amount and time invested in research and development (R&D). Table 2.1 shows clearly how investment in creativity gives a company considerably more security than, for example, its assets, age, liquidity, growth and financial strategy (the last two in fact increase the risk!). And even if the creative investment leads to products that do not reach the market for some

16 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

years, you can probably reap your rewards immediately. An American study shows that simply announcing that a company is developing a new product raises its share price. In a study of 419 new product preannouncements from 1984 to 2000 in the high tech industry, it was found that yield increased, on average, by 14% for a whole year after the creative investment was made public. Without even developing or promising new products, a company can gain a high return on its creativity. In a wide-ranging experiment, we conducted marketing campaigns for well-known and established products, including items from headache pills to coffee and washing-up liquid. By varying the amount of creativity in the campaign we could

Table 2.1 Effect on systematic risk R&D

−0.50

Asset size

−0.09

Age

−0.02

Earnings variability

−0.02

Dividend payout Liquidity

0.00 0.00

Growth

+0.36

Leverage

+0.52

WHY CREATIVITY? / 17

measure how people’s reactions to the same companies and products were affected by the creativity the company signalled. The effects were striking. The more creativity there was in the marketing of the product, the higher the quality that people attributed to the product (in spite of the fact that these were established products that had been used before!) But even more interesting was the fact that people had higher expectations that future products from that company would be interesting, of high quality and satisfy their needs. Creativity in itself acted as a signal that the company was smart and flexible and had the ability to find superior solutions and solve problems far into the future. You have now seen some interesting examples and evidence – both for yourself and for whoever you might wish at some future time to persuade or convince – of the very tangible power of creativity, and it is now time to start some serious training. We will now look more closely at how and why creativity works. We will look at market-related reasons for why creativity is so important, proceeding from concepts such as leaking buckets, market ceiling, efficient complexity and suitability. We will also see how in fact you can become a happier and healthier person. We will start in the usual way when designing a training programme – that is, by assessing your fitness. How creative are you and how creative is your company?

3 Are you creative?

A successful business executive is the same as a creative business innovator – he or she promotes the company by increased sales and market share won, creates value for the owners and partners through bigger profits and also strengthens customer satisfaction

Take a minute and score yourself on the basis of the statements in Table 3.1. Give yourself a mark from 1 to 10 according to how well you think you match every statement, where 10 means that you always act 100% according to the statement. Add up your points at the bottom. If you scored 73 or more, you are in all probability a highly successful business innovator. If your score was around 45, you should still not be worried as you are average. And when you have finished reading this book, you will hopefully have approached the magic limit of 73 points. Why just 45 and 73? The numbers are taken from a wide-ranging study, where 73 points was the limit for the upper third that were regarded as really successful and 45 was the average. Researchers studied business

20 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

Table 3.1 Self-test for creativity Statement

Points

1. I know a lot about people’s behaviour, drives and motivations.

…

2. I know a lot about economics and business.

…

3. I know a lot about demographic trends (for example, the effect of motoring tolls, population changes and people’s leisure activities).

…

4. I really feel that I have achieved something when I have thought of a new idea.

…

5. Developing new ideas is one of my favourite pastimes.

…

6. It is challenging to develop new market strategies.

…

7. I do not try to stay on the safe side when I develop new business ideas and programmes.

…

8. I prefer to think unconventionally in business and programmes.

…

9. I am a risk-taker when I promote ideas.

…

Sum of points

executives in 578 American companies, which together covered widely differing products such as cars, hotdogs, mobile phones and syrup. It was found that the really successful leaders in trade and industry differ from the rest insofar as they display the qualities on which you have just assessed yourself to a much higher degree than other people.

ARE YOU CREATIVE? / 21

In a second stage of the same study, 240 ordinary consumers were asked to answer questions and assess the creativity of the products and marketing programmes that the executives had developed. The results showed unambiguously that the products and marketing programmes of the successful executives were judged to be considerably more creative. In the study, researchers also found a direct link between creative business innovation and professional success, but they chose not to measure professional success and the personal qualities that make it possible. So far we have learned that nine specific qualities – those measured in Table 3.1 – determine whether the result of your work is creative (we will have reason to return to this later in the book); and that if you are creative, this means that you will be more successful professionally. But let us now leave promotion, salary increases, benefits and other features of a successful career aside, and widen our perspective. How does it look at company level? In Figure 3.1 you can see the result of a wide-ranging study that can help companies to see how they can be more creative and judge the effects of their progress not only on the company’s market-related and financial results but also on the company’s customers. American researchers examined in total 312 companies involved in everything from abstract service products to

22 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

Customer focus

neg

ligib

le

18 %

22

Product creativity 23 %

%

% 59

Marketing creativity

Financial result %

29 %

45 %

26

Flexibility

16

ble ligi neg neg ligib le

%

Competitor focus

Market result

19 %

Customer satisfaction

Figure 3.1

toothbrushes, but all of which were to some degree engaged in product development. Creativity was scored by the companies and by the customers in the market. They gave marks, firstly, according to how creative the specific product was and, secondly, to how creative the marketing (positioning and brand strategy) was around the specific product. The results were measured in the form of sales and market share (market result), profit and return on investment (financial result) and how satisfied the company’s customers were compared to customers who bought competing products (customer satisfaction). The results in the figure show that there are very strong links between the company’s creativity and its results. If we add together ‘Product

ARE YOU CREATIVE? / 23

creativity’ and ‘Marketing creativity’, we can see that these components explain no less than 77% of the changes in the company’s market result. If we compare companies who have increased their sales and market share with those who have maintained or lost sales and market share, the successful companies have been more creative, which explains 77% of the positive result. The majority of the changes in the financial result – precisely 52% – can also be accounted for by the creativity of the company. Finally we may note that creativity also has a 61% effect on the satisfaction of the company’s customers. A successful business executive – and this, as we have just confirmed, is the same as a creative business innovator – promotes the company through increased sales and market share, generates value for the company’s owners and partners, and contributes to the company’s customers experiencing higher value in the company’s offers and their relations with the company (which is usually the most fundamental factor in customer satisfaction). The study also shows that there are two sides to the creative coin. Professional business creativity is about both the concrete development of products and marketing creativity. With the possible exception of very high-tech companies, there is evidence that marketing creativity – that is to say, the conceptual and strategic development of product marketing – is of greater importance than concrete product creativity.

24 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

Among the average values in Figure, we can see that ‘marketing creativity’ is of greater significance for ‘market result’ (59 versus 18%), financial result (29 against 23%) and customer satisfaction (45 versus 16%). A quick return to the study of ground-breaking pharmaceuticals in Chapter 3 clearly illustrates the importance of marketing creativity: if the company concentrates on marketing in the promotion of the new product, the estimated worth increases from USD 405 million to USD 929 million. Without marketing, it sinks instead to USD 122 million. The finding that conceptual marketing creativity is on average more important than concrete product creativity might come as something of a surprise. Most of us probably associate creativity with brilliant discoveries and revolutionary products such as the telephone, television, the computer, the aeroplane or the motor car. But the fact is that most businesses are based on considerably more modest innovation, just as almost all patents registered throughout history have concerned small changes to existing products. The dominant significance of marketing creativity can be understood from several points of view. Almost all companies are active in mature markets, i.e. markets with many different competing businesses offer-

ARE YOU CREATIVE? / 25

ing similar products. For example, in order to be successful, it is not enough to develop a mobile phone that takes pictures, because competitors will soon be promoting similar telephones that take pictures that are just as good or even better. In other words, it is difficult to make money from pure product innovation. In addition, product innovation in mature markets is fairly insignificant – adding a picture-taking function is far from being as revolutionary as the introduction of the mobile phone, which created an entirely new market. Because most markets offer a wide choice of competing products with similar attributes, the concrete functions of the product are not necessarily the deciding factor in people’s choice. For a mobile phone to be chosen, it is not enough that it can take pictures. It must stand out and offer something more in the way of a concept or meaning. History is full of inferior products that have become superior through marketing, such as the classical examples of the Duorak keyboard and the VHS video (we shall have reason to return to this kind of dynamic market development later in the book). Let us return for a moment to Figure 3.1, concerning product and market creativity. At the far left of the figure you can see how the company’s general knowledge of the world and its organization affects its capacity for product creativity and market creativity. In the light of

26 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

the previous discussion, it comes as no surprise that competitor focus and knowledge of competitors’ activities has negligible significance for the company’s creativity. We have already pointed out that the actual differences between most products are modest. Studying one’s competitors therefore gives very little guidance on how your business can be developed (more about this later in the book). On the other hand, studying customers and applying a customer focus has significance for marketing creativity, because the products acquire their meaning first in the presence of customers. (Perhaps you can now see a connection between the first three qualities in the test you did earlier?) Finally, the figure shows that the way the company is organized has great significance for its capacity for both product creativity and marketing creativity. The greater the company’s flexibility, the easier it is to adapt to new insights and ideas, and the easier it becomes to develop new products and ideas. And in order to guarantee flexibility in a company, you need executives who are motivated to think in new and different ways (questions 4 to 6 in your test of qualities) and who have the courage to renew themselves (questions 7 to 9). With the help of technology, you can quickly learn about your customers and use what has been learned in a flexible way. An example of this is provided by the Swedish sports apparel retailer that not only set up

ARE YOU CREATIVE? / 27

a web shop but gave about 60 selected users the tools to start their own web shops on the site. In this way, the company was able to acquire many different ideas on the basis of how these 60 customers arranged their layout, services and range, and could also see in real time how the different shops attracted other customers. The next stage was continuously to select new and interesting ideas from the web shops and test them in the physical outlets. This was a win–win situation, where the 60 customers could get noticed and impact the big sportswear chain’s website (free of charge, which encouraged their playfulness and genuine involvement). The company’s other customers received offers that had been formulated from a ‘pro-customer’ point of view by people in the same situation as themselves; and the company acquired a perfect workshop for learning and being flexible, which could then be passed on to their large number of retail outlets.

4 Why is creativity so important?

The only way to find new business opportunities and rise in the company hierarchy is to experiment, mutate and find new directions. Not all mutations and directions are successful, but together they guarantee that development is never halted. The economy and society are always dependent on new innovations that create new opportunities and offshoots for growth.

Between 5% and 20% of all products survive the promotion phase. The exact figures vary, of course, between product categories, which explains the wide range. But you may be sure that your promoted product’s chances of survival will never be higher than 20%. There is a risk, in fact, that the odds are considerably worse – roughly 5% or 1 in 20. This prospect might perhaps make you question whether creativity is really a good idea. Why create huge quantities of products (for a vast number of goods and services are introduced every year) that cost lots

30 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

of money to launch and will, in all probability, have been eliminated from the market within a year without even earning their outlay? The answer to this question is worthy of a more extensive treatment, given later in the book. We should, rather, pose a completely different question first: Why do so many product launches fail? The answer to this question is that marketing creativity for the most part is far too low, whether or not product creativity is high.

Leaking buckets Study Figure 4.1. It describes a process that is usually termed macroobjective chains or leaking buckets: macro-objective chains because it involves the various all-embracing objectives that every product launch must meet; and leaking buckets because every stage in the process usually leaks like a sieve (or a bucket). The percentages below each step represent the probability of reaching the target in relation to every individual in the target group. In other words, there is a 90% probability that a given person in the target group will be exposed to or receive information about the product. Inversely one can say that we can expect 90% of the target group to actually be exposed to the product. (Exposure means that the product or informa-

WHY IS CREATIVITY SO IMPORTANT? / 31

Exposure Processing 90% Desired perception

60%

Activation 33% 70%

Figure 4.1

tion about the product is within sight or sound of people who have the opportunity to absorb it.) At this stage, 10% of the bucket content (the target group) has already leaked out. Of the 90% who are exposed, only an average of 60% actually engage with or process the information about the product and their impressions of it (for example, by seeing the advertisement, leafing through the brochure, or reading the text on the packaging). After these first two steps, 90 × 60 = 54% of the target group remains and already 46%, i.e. half of the target group, has leaked away. At the next stage, the bucket leaks most of all. A mere 33% of the target group forms the desired perception of the product, i.e.

32 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

understands what the product has to offer and develops an interest in it. This large loss indicates that it is difficult to interest customers in a new product and that something extra is required if the product is to be attractive. If you are successful in this, then the prospects are fairly good. For statistics show that there is then a 70% probability that people become sufficiently motivated to want to test the product. But even so, the sum total is still rather discouraging: 90 × 60 × 33 × 70 = 12% of the target group can be expected to meet all the objectives in the macro-objective chain and thereby finally be in the market for testing the product. These figures are mean values taken from a metastudy, which means that measurements of large numbers of different products and markets, in several countries, were analysed. A single product launch might therefore go better, or worse, than the process we have just examined in detail here. But still the mostly likely outcome is a worse result. The study is over 20 years old (data collection on this scale is unusual and is not done very often), and every year since then, the launch and marketing budgets have increased steadily, which implies stiffening competition and even greater difficulties in reaching the target group. A normal estimate is that leakage at each stage has probably increased

WHY IS CREATIVITY SO IMPORTANT? / 33

by roughly 20%. If we multiply the decrease in the target group meeting the objective at each stage by the original total of 12%, we get 80 × 80 × 80 × 80 × 12 = 5%. Although a generally expected rate of efficiency of 5% is worryingly low, the potential for an increase in this rate is encouragingly high, at 95%. There is enormous room for improvement! The result from this metastudy says that, all other things being equal, we can expect a given product launch to activate 12 or 5% (choose the most likely figure) of the target group. The crux is of course, all other things being equal. Metastudies are based on how things usually are and have been historically. If we do what we have always done, then the result will be what it always has been, and even if product creativity has been relatively high over the years since the study, we can assert that marketing creativity has been surprisingly low. In a study of all the product launches and campaigns in Sweden during the last eight years within the automotive, banking, airline and TV markets, we found that the more money that was spent and the greater the number of competitors who marketed their products, the fewer alternatives people considered. Let me repeat this: the greater the number of competing products that were launched, and the more

34 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

attention companies tried to gain for their products, the less people cared about them. A closer look provided the obvious answer: the new products were promoted in such a similar manner that it was difficult for people to distinguish them, or to think that it was worth their while to learn about them. Most product launches look fairly similar. There are exhaustive manuals and lists of points to follow. Everybody who has studied basic economics has been taught how one ‘should’ do it. And that is probably the problem. By breaking the mould, we can increase efficiency at every stage, so that people take notice and engage with the product to a greater degree, realize its advantages and activate themselves more readily.

Market ceilings As if it was not difficult enough to launch a product, the market puts a further spoke in the wheel to prevent the product from becoming established and flourishing. Classical concepts such as first-mover advantage, scale advantage and double jeopardy remind us that almost all markets are characterized by a few winners and many losers.

WHY IS CREATIVITY SO IMPORTANT? / 35

The first-mover advantages are enjoyed by those companies that are first to enter the market. As pioneers, they set the standard and force the competing companies to launch considerably better products. And often even that is not enough; just look at the relative strengths of the pioneers Coca-Cola and McDonald’s and their successors Pepsi and Burger King (who in one taste test after another try to focus consumers’ attention by asserting that their products are in fact better).

The law of scale advantage points to the fact that strong agents in the market normally become stronger and stronger only at the expense of the other agents. An obvious example is that all advertising in the market, for whichever company, favours the market leader. The smaller companies are in double jeopardy because they not only get fewer customers, but also get customers who buy less of their product (empirically, it has been shown that big customers almost always choose the market leaders).

All these conditions result in relatively rigid markets that find their shape fairly quickly and where changes in market share are limited. In fact markets are usually so rigid that one can even use mathematical formulas to work out in advance the maximum market share of a product, depending on when it was released onto the market.

36 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

Formula for everyday commodities = 1 (1 + ∑ 1.09x ) Formula for other products = 1 ( 1 + ∑ 1.41x ) The superior x in the formulas stands for the number of competitors already established in the market. The new bank product or new car manufacturer’s maximum market share will therefore be 1/(1 + 1.412 + … + 1.41x). If we calculate the maximum market share for a company coming into the market between the second competitor and the sixth, we can clearly see how the market share rapidly decreases from 0.42 to 0.06 (the whole series: 0.42 − 0.23 − 0.17 − 0.10 − 0.06). The formulas have been tested in a number of different markets, mostly in the USA but also under European conditions, and they agree surprisingly well with the distribution of market share among everything from throat pastilles to washing machines. The fact that the formulas correspond surprisingly well to actual market conditions does not mean, however, that they really reflect market conditions. The formula values are overoptimistic because they determine the market ceiling. The formulas calculate the maximum market share that a company can be expected to achieve, but this is not the same as the company achieving or maintaining that market share. Rigid markets often make early agents stronger and later agents progressively weaker.

WHY IS CREATIVITY SO IMPORTANT? / 37

The market ceiling can function in the same way as when you hit your head on the ceiling. You quickly crouch down and rub the sore spot. First-mover advantage, scale advantage and double jeopardy indicate that it can be quite painful to hit your head on the ceiling and that companies following after can be forced to crouch. As in the case of the leaking buckets, we can say that the problem does not seem to lie entirely with product creativity, because there are countless examples of latecomers who have launched better products than the market leaders. Instead, it is a matter of the latecomers being trapped within a framework that favours the market leader and sets a ceiling for new products. In other words, the market has been allowed to become rigid. But with a high level of marketing creativity, it is possible to stretch and extend the market, reformulate and redefine it, and maybe even create a completely new market . . . with no risk of bumping one’s head.

Efficient complexity The alternative lines of development of a company can be described schematically by an evolutionary landscape, as in Figure 4.2. The development has really only one vertical dimension: success. In contrast to

38 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

1

2

3

Figure 4.2

ordinary graphs, it is better to move downwards – the further down, the greater the success. The horizontal dimension, from left to right, is merely a way of illustrating change. The first, straight arrow describes a company that makes no changes of any kind to its business. Its course is not altered in any way and it therefore does not move downwards. The second arrow describes a company that develops in a certain direction – for example, by position-

WHY IS CREATIVITY SO IMPORTANT? / 39

ing itself distinctly and consistently as ‘the safe car’. It then develops different concepts and improvements on the safety theme within this framework. The third arrow represents a company that develops in all sorts of unpredictable ways. Putting it simply, one can say that the third arrow shows the development that characterizes the most successful companies; the second arrow, the devlopment of the next most successful companies; and the first arrow, the path of the least successful. You have probably never seen a graph like this in a book on economics or business, because it is taken from evolutionary biology and actually describes the evolution of species and the circumstances that allow certain species to survive while others become extinct. The dips in the diagram represent evolutionary basins, and in contrast to economics graphs it is better to be as far down as possible. Each evolutionary basin describes how far a species can evolve in a certain direction before it comes to a halt and the bottom of that basin is reached. When the bottom of a basin is reached it is necessary to rise out of it in order to continue to evolve, and this cannot be done by continuing in the same dip. To return to the arrows, species that do not change will never get further down in the graph and will not develop. Evolution is full of

40 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

short-lived species that were simply treading water, were passed by and eventually died. A visit to a natural history museum can provide considerably more useful insights than a business seminar. Species that change in a certain direction evolve and have a relatively good chance of survival, but they do not reach dominant positions in the food chain because they get stuck in an evolutionary basin and cannot get out. But species that mutate in various and unpredictable directions can escape from all evolutionary basins and therefore never stop evolving. Not all mutations and directions are successful (on Figure 4.2 you can see that the third arrow is at one point actually higher than the first, straight arrow), but together they guarantee that evolution never ceases. Evolutionary biologists call this efficient complexity. Efficient complexity is an excellent way of describing a really successful business. The only way to find vigorous business opportunities and climb the company hierarchy – the food chain, so to speak – is to experiment, mutate and find new directions. If this reasoning seems strange, then take a good look at any of the world’s most successful companies, and you will find that they have done many different things on the way to the position they occupy today. Do you recall that Nokia initially made Wellington boots? Or that Volvo once came up with the idea of making tinned sausages within

WHY IS CREATIVITY SO IMPORTANT? / 41

the group? Even companies such as Coca-Cola and IBM have made lots of different products and gone into a number of different areas over the years – in other words, they provide typical examples of companies that have followed the path of the third arrow. At the same time, the moribund coffee substitute, Postum, and Oldsmobile cars are examples of products that followed the path of the first arrow. Although these companies conducted their businesses very well, they did not evolve. SAAB, introducing more and more aerodynamics, is a case that is evolving in a particular, narrow direction à la arrow number 2. Nature has changed and eradicated many species, and in exactly the same manner market conditions change in ways that are not completely predictable – and no business lasts for ever. A Swedish government report illustrates clearly the great importance of efficient complexity. It found that the yield from creativity in the form of new business among companies was on average 25–40% at the company level and all of 55–80% at the level of society as a whole. We can now go back to the earlier question of whether it is necessary to constantly launch new products. The answer is that the economy and society are perpetually dependent on innovations, which create efficient complexity and provide new opportunities and variations for growth.

42 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

Happiness In all the studies of creativity, the connection with happiness is probably mentioned most often. In an analysis of 193 business executives in marketing-intensive American companies, researchers found a direct correlation between the degree of creativity in the executives’ business solutions and the amount of satisfaction they felt in their work. The correlation was almost 20%, which made the researchers draw the conclusion that happiness is a fundamental condition of creativity.

We will return later in the book to the fact that the literature on creativity is full of encouragement and advice about enjoying oneself, having fun, and seeing the humorous and positive sides of tasks in order to become more creative. It is certainly true that one’s state of mind affects creative capacity at any given time, but for our present purposes the important point is the reverse of this – namely, that creativity makes us happier. People feel at their best when they have to make an effort, and this has been proved by a research psychologist, Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, whose name very few people manage to remember. He is probably as famous for his difficult-to-pronounce and difficult-tospell name as for his research, but his contribution to our understanding of the human psyche has had great importance for the development

WHY IS CREATIVITY SO IMPORTANT? / 43

of the processes behind work. In his model, shown in Figure 4.3, we can see that the correlation between skills and the challenges we face has a direct effect on happiness. Let us get better acquainted with the model. The area at top left represents stress. It is characterized by tremendous challenges and tasks that are completely beyond us because we do not possess the skills to deal with them. It could involve anything from being stuck on a problem in matrix algebra without having learned to multiply and divide, to

Happiness Challenge

Stress

Boredom Creative capacity

Skill

Figure 4.3

44 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

having to balance the company’s books without a knowledge of assets and liabilities. The area at the bottom right of the model represents the opposite – boredom. Boredom arises when the challenges are too small and the tasks are too simple in relation to our skills. This might, for example, be a question of always following a given pattern when launching a new product. The area between the parallels represents happiness. As we can tell from the model, happiness arises when challenges and skills are roughly at the same level, but they can never be at exactly the same level, because as soon as you have learned to meet a challenge, two things occur: (1) the challenge is no longer as great (the arrow points downwards in the model); and (2) your skill has increased (the arrow in the model moves to the right). If you do not accept new and greater challenges, then boredom is the result. The difference between the point of departure (when you take on the challenge) and the end-point (when you have solved the problem and are ready for on a new challenge) make up your creative capacity. Creative capacity determines the extent to which you are able to face new problems. The greater your creative capacity, the greater the challenges you can face and the wider is the area in the middle – your happiness

WHY IS CREATIVITY SO IMPORTANT? / 45

(Figure 4.4). The more you use your creative capacity, the stronger it becomes. This is a natural law, just as a muscle gets stronger the more work it does. This reasoning about creativity may seem utopian and abstract, but according to psychologists, creativity (expressed as our inclination to explore and discover new possibilities) is one of two fundamentals in survival and well-being (the other is our instinct for self-preservation).

Happiness

Challenge

Stress

Developed creative capacity Creative capacity

Boredom Skill

Figure 4.4

46 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

The reason that humanity has survived for thousands of years is that we have the constant capacity to find new solutions and opportunities, overcome obstacles and stay one step ahead of the rest. This is Darwinistically programmed into our genes. You exist because your ancestors were more creative than the other species. We will find reason to return to humanity’s other drive, the instinct for self-preservation, later on. It affects how people accept new products and concepts. It is worth mentioning that creativity has been proved to provide an outlet for other positive feelings in addition to happiness. Shining one’s shoes without shoe polish, starting the car when the starter motor is broken, washing one’s hair without water or making notes without a pen and paper are a few examples of mundane creative activities that researchers have confronted people with. Can you solve these problems? All (!) the hundreds of people who took part in these experimental studies devised new, sometimes unusual, solutions to these everyday problems. Apart from feeling a little happier, they also reported feeling more satisfied, prouder, more confident and of more worth than they had felt before demonstrating their creativity. A concrete expression of these abstract feelings is increased productivity. It is a well-documented fact that in general a company with a happy workforce produces more items, and in particular produces items of

WHY IS CREATIVITY SO IMPORTANT? / 47

higher quality, compared with other companies. Similarly, the cost to society of healthcare and manpower not gainfully employed in the workforce is reduced. If we include these values, then the average yield for creativity is considerably higher than the 25–40% at company level and 55–80% at society level in the government report mentioned earlier.

5 Isn’t creativity dangerous?

A failed product launch is not necessarily a bad thing. Doing something new has, for example, positive learning effects on business innovation. All new enterprises involve risk-taking, but we can be absolutely sure that the disadvantages of creativity will never outweigh the advantages.

So far, we have discussed the positive effects of creativity – increased efficiency in launching products, escape from rigid markets and market ceilings, and also as the basis of happiness, with advantages for the individual, the company and society. However, are there no negative effects of creativity? Keeping in mind our discussion of happiness, it is tempting to think of the oft-cited connection between creativity and madness. Famous creative people have had a tendency to cut off their ears, commit suicide or become hermits. But belief that the one must

50 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

lead to the other is as false as the expression ‘no smoke without fire’ (if you have been to a rock concert you have presumably experienced proof of the exact opposite in the form of dry ice). History has certainly seen a very limited number of creative people cut their ears off, commit suicide or become hermits, but the majority (who did not) have not been interesting enough to remember. Let us instead take a closer look at the dangers of creativity in the sphere of business.

Does the company lose definition or credibility? In business terms, the chief objection to creativity would probably be that the company can lose focus on its core activities or that its brand risks losing definition and credibility. Launching too many defective products and/or concepts may increase the risk level experienced by customers. (This can produce reactions such as ‘Do I really dare to buy this product, since the company made that other one which was a failure? This one might be as bad …’ or ‘I don’t understand this company. They make so many different things. I don’t know if they are any good at the particular product that I want.’)

ISN’T CREATIVITY DANGEROUS? / 51

At the same time, several of my studies show that there can actually be advantages associated with large numbers of products and defective products. A company with many different products tends to increase its general salience. Put simply, it works like this: the more often we are confronted with the company, the more we become accustomed to it and the greater the probability that we will choose that company’s products among the competing alternatives. Because most people either cannot or do not have the energy to acquaint themselves with all the features of different products, it feels safe and easy to choose a product with which we are familiar. The more products a company has to offer, the greater the probability of each individual product being chosen. For example, studies show that brand expansions (when new products are launched under an existing brand name) tend to increase sales of the original product because people are thereby more often exposed to, and more readily think about, the brand. In an amusing study it was discovered that people chose to watch television programmes that they did not think were particularly good because ‘that channel produces so many new programmes all the time they must be good anyway’. It seems both simplistic and unlikely that people should choose a company’s products because they often see them, but it is a fundamental human attribute to which we will have reason to return.

52 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

If the company makes a failed product (which is of inferior quality or fails in the market) or a misguided product (that does not suit the company’s image) then the situation is more serious. But a failed product can actually strengthen the company’s position through what is called the Florence Nightingale effect. For it appears that people have a certain inclination to value a company more positively after having come into contact with a defective product. The defective product shows that the company is human and has weaknesses just like everyone else and that the customer is not the underdog. He or she even feels needed. What is more, the customer can appreciate that the company is making an effort, as though it is demonstrating good will. It is a condition of the Florence Nightingale effect that the company has stable customer relations to start with: the effect has been observed among established and well-known brands or in companies with very loyal customers. A failed new product would therefore hit new companies and companies with limited customer loyalty more severely, but on the other hand they have less to lose. There is also, however, an opposing force in this case, in the form of a contrast effect. In studies of misguided brand expansions (for example, if the elegant and sporty Porsche were to launch a clumsy SUV or if

ISN’T CREATIVITY DANGEROUS? / 53

Coca-Cola were to launch yoghurt), my colleague and I found that the people who came into contact with such contracts were often even more strongly confirmed in their opinion of the existing image of the company. The misguided brand expansion acted as a contrast (‘no, this is really not what the brand represents’), which brings out and clarifies what the brand really does represent (‘the brand is really this, I am sure of it!’). Most people do not think routinely about what the brand is and stands for, but when they come into contact with a misguided product, they have the opportunity to think through and structure their thoughts about the brand with a strengthened opinion as a result. Again it is worth noting that the effect has only been observed among established and known brands or in companies with high customer loyalty.

Wasted money? If it is true that creativity does not necessarily have a damaging effect on a company’s operations, one might in any case object that creative products and concepts lead to the company throwing away money and getting no return. We have established earlier in the book that up to 95% of all product launches fail. There is, therefore, a high probability that an increase in new products and concepts leads to more money wasted. If we now disregard the earlier argument that creativity can

54 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

reduce the probability of failure, we can still state that a failed product launch is not necessarily a bad thing. For there is a lot of truth in the old adage ‘you learn by your mistakes’. Mistakes or not, doing new things has in itself a positive learning effect on business creation. Economic theory was revolutionized decades ago when economies of scope were discovered. Earlier only economies of scale had been known, i.e. the idea that it is more economical to produce on a large scale. With economies of scope, it was found that it is more economical to produce several different things together, because synergies occur between the different parts. The main synergy is that lessons are learned in one part that can be transferred to another. In this way, for example, 3M learned from its failed operation with glue, and later developed the Post-it note. Creative adventures and failed product launches can also function as protection from competition and in this way be an investment for the company. Firstly, a failed product or a concept that flops can have a signal value in that it demonstrates the company’s experimental spirit and flexibility. Competitors cannot expect to succeed in surprising the company or leaving it behind in new fields. Secondly, a failure within a certain area can close the door on attempts from other companies (‘it’s not worth going into, look what happened to our competitor’).

ISN’T CREATIVITY DANGEROUS? / 55

There has sometimes been speculation about the intentions behind Coca-Cola’s and Pepsi-Cola’s many odd product launches that have flopped in recent decades. Have they in fact been initiated for the purpose of intimidation, or to maintain the balance of terror? At this point we can formulate the answer to the question of whether creativity is dangerous: not necessarily. All new initiatives involve risk. In the earlier sections of this book, we have seen that a company is probably taking a risk if it does not think creatively and in a novel way. And in this section, we have added the insights that the risks of new initiatives are not necessarily as great as one might think. Lost focus and reduced definition can be outweighed by increased salience, and offset by contrast effects. Failed initiatives can increase customer sympathy for the brand through the Florence Nightingale effect, and creative initiatives can provide payback in other parts of the company’s operations in the form of learning and protection from competition. Whether or not the dangers of creativity develop into disadvantages, we can be absolutely sure that they will never outweigh the advantages.

PART II Think Inside the Box In this part:

• • • • •

What is creativity? The creative result The creative process The creative person Thinking inside the box

‘By far the most important aspect of creativity is the creative result. In the end that is what really counts: that businesses are successful. The result is creative if it fulfils two criteria – it must be both new and meaningful.’

6 What is creativity?

This book is not about how to define creativity, so we won’t get bogged down in long discussions of concepts and alternative wordings. Instead we will become acquainted with three main aspects of creativity: the result, the process and the person. We will also take the opportunity to kill off some deep-rooted myths.

By this stage, you should be convinced of the importance of creativity. You would now probably do better in the introductory test of your potential as a successful business innovator, because you have increased your motivation to think in novel and different ways (questions 4–6). But let us wait before retaking the test as there are so many other tests we have to take before reaching our goal. The next is the classic dots test shown in Figure 6.1. Take a few minutes to try to solve the following problem: Connect all the dots by four straight lines – without lifting your pen from the paper. Did you succeed? Probably not. But don’t worry about it. Most people who try to solve the problem fail the first time. Of course, it is quite

60 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

Figure 6.1

likely that you have seen the problem before, because it is, as I said, a real classic among creativity exercises. But, as a rule, that is not much help. The bizarre thing is that most of us forget exactly how to do it and then spend more time and trouble trying to remember the solution than using our energy to think creatively and in a problem-oriented way. The correct solution is probably so difficult to remember because it is so simple and obvious once you see it. In the field of memory research, this is known as the Zeigarnik effect, named after its discoverer who found that people find it more difficult to remember complete and easily recognizable pictures because the brain does not have to work at

WHAT IS CREATIVITY? / 61

creating new memory paths. For example, in one memory experiment the test subjects found it easier to remember the motifs of puzzles that were incomplete than finished puzzles, because they were forced to complete the puzzles in their heads. Why are we having this digression on the Zeigarnik effect and the workings of the brain? It is not just to keep you on tenterhooks about the solution to the dot problem! It also provides a clue that creativity is stimulated if we do not give ourselves problems that are too easy. Otherwise the brain sees no reason to get to work, but instead chooses a stored ready-made standard solution. We will discuss this later, but for the moment lets us look at the solution to the dot problem (Figure 6.2). The solution looks like an arrow, and is so simple that one does not have to think about it to understand it (and is therefore sloppy about memory storage). The creative part of the solution, which is where most people fall down, is to move in the area outside the dots. The term gestalt psychology is used to describe the fact that we humans need to see patterns and create wholes out of the different impressions with which we come into contact. The brain wants order; therefore, typically, the nine dots form an enclosed area, frame or box in our heads. Although we may not be aware of it, the walls of the box are so

62 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

Figure 6.2

strong that we have the greatest difficulty in getting past them, which prevents us from solving the problem. The solution then lies in breaking through the walls of the box and thinking outside the frame. This also explains why this exercise is such a classic. Many regard it as the perfect metaphor for creativity: Thinking outside the box. But this solution brings its own problems. In the first place, it is only one solution. Creativity is about generating lots of solutions. Secondly,

WHAT IS CREATIVITY? / 63

it obstructs creativity by blocking other solutions, partly by causing people to think that it is the ‘right’ solution (in spite of there being other solutions that are considerably more attractive and more creative) and partly because people become too occupied with trying to remember the solution instead of thinking for themselves. Thirdly, the metaphor is inappropriate: creativity is in fact not about thinking outside the box. By taking these three objections into consideration, we can make some serious progress in the direction of increased creativity – which is exactly what we are about to do. When you have read the next section of the book, you will be able to join the dots with a minimum number of lines in a maximum number of ways. When you have read the whole book you will, hopefully, be able to do the same thing with all the ‘dots’ you encounter in your business context.

Creativity defined Creativity has been a popular phenomenon for more than half a millennium, since Leonardo da Vinci and other famous Renaissance men produced an explosion of discovery and art. In fact, da Vinci is the model for several different definitions of creativity, as the archetype of creative man.

64 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

As far as research is concerned, interest in creativity was aroused around the turn of the last century when attempts were made to understand the genesis of such earth-shattering discoveries and inventions as penicillin, the telephone and the Zeppelin. Then research gathered speed in the race between the superpowers during World War II, when a certain Albert Einstein, to his horror, found that he had played a decisive role in the fast-approaching and ultimately devastating arms race. Over the years, this research has diversified into completely separate disciplines such as philosophy, psychology, biology and economics, and enormous amounts of written material about creativity have been produced from every imaginable angle. If we confine ourselves to economics and business creativity, we can see that during the last 20 years, according to a search of the scientific database Proquest, 1481 scientific articles have been published with the word creativity in the title. If we then include all the scientific articles since the 1960s that deal with creativity but do not have the word in the title, the total is a massive 5724 articles. Furthermore, the bookselling behemoth Amazon.com lists in its catalogue a total of 19 609 books with creativity in the title. At this point, you can certainly hazard a guess that there is no lack of definitions of creativity, and it comes as no surprise that the field of creativity has

WHAT IS CREATIVITY? / 65

given rise to many creative definitions. But this is not a book about how to define creativity, and we won’t therefore get bogged down in long analyses of concepts and wordings. Instead we will become acquainted with three main aspects of creativity: the result, the process and the person. This will also give us the opportunity to kill off some deep-rooted myths.

Myths about creativity Myths about creativity form one of the important reasons for the failure of so many product launches. They also explain why so few companies work systematically with creativity and why the concept itself is not more strongly coupled to business creation. They probably also explain why you did not get higher marks on the introductory test of your own potential as a successful creator of business. The five most pervasive myths that we will attempt to disprove are: Myth 1: Creative business activity is dependent on lead users or innovators.

66 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

Myth Myth Myth Myth

2: 3: 4: 5:

Creativity cannot be controlled. Creativity is random. Creative business innovators come from the outside. Creative business innovators are untraditional.

7 The creative result

By far the most important aspect of creativity is the creative result. The result is creative if it fulfils two criteria. Firstly, it must be new and contribute something to the field that was not there before. Secondly, it must serve a purpose. Novelty has a very limited direct effect on a company’s result. It is more important that the product is perceived to be meaningful.

By far the most important aspect of creativity is the creative result. In the introduction, we saw evidence that businesses that are perceived as creative are more successful. At the end of the day, success is what counts. Most authors agree that the result is creative if it fulfils two criteria. Firstly, it must be new and contribute something to the field that was not there before. Secondly, it must serve a purpose. A blue ketchup bottle, for example, may not have been on the market before, but it is not particularly meaningful – why would anyone want a blue ketchup bottle? But if instead the ketchup bottle were in the shape of a cube, which is also new, it could then be meaningful.

68 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

A cubic ketchup bottle could be easier to store, both on the shelf and at home in the fridge or in a shopping bag. In contrast to the blue ketchup bottle, the cubic bottle is therefore creative. The example of the ketchup bottle might seem trivial; changing the shape of a bottle is not especially revolutionary. But the fact is that most of the successful innovations – with the exceptions of TV, cars and telephones – are not particularly revolutionary (recall the study of improvement as opposed to paradigm-challenging innovations). For that matter, bottles are a good example of how an innovation that initially did not seem to be especially revolutionary (plastic recyclable bottles) changed the market in a very short time when they replaced glass bottles, which were heavier and less durable. Let us return for a moment to Figure 3.1, which showed how a creative result in the form of product creativity and marketing creativity leads to improved market results, financial results and customer satisfaction. Researchers found that both product creativity and marketing creativity could be divided into two parts: novelty and meaningfulness. In the new model (Figure 7.1), we can see that neither product novelty nor marketing novelty have any real effect on the company in terms of its market position or the company’s profit or loss. Product novelty has a certain effect on customer satisfaction, but does not affect the results.

THE CREATIVE RESULT / 69

Product novelty Customer focus

Market result

19%

9%

% 23

3

19%

3%

Product meaningfulness

29% Financial result

Competitor focus

38

%

23%

30 %

21

79

%

%

Marketing novelty

Flexibility 18%

Marketing meaningfulness

Customer satisfaction

42%

Figure 7.1

One explanation is that only a small group of customers are satisfied by something new (the latest thing). Another explanation is that product novelty does not last, because eventually – or fairly quickly, as a rule – the product is no longer the latest thing and thereby loses its value.

70 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

This gives us an opportunity to destroy the myth that one should always aim for the innovators, or lead users, when developing and marketing new products. The problem with these small customer groups is that although the novelty of the product and the concept is attractive, the novelty does not last, and nor does it appeal to the larger customer groups. It is true that most success stories (the iPod, for example) have started among lead users and then spread to the broader masses. But the same is also true of the majority of failures. Attracting lead users demands great focus on novelty, which is not interesting to the vast majority of people. Furthermore, lead users are, on the whole, bad at passing the product on to other customer groups, because they are not interested in the product’s meaningfulness and therefore cannot communicate it. In fact, research has shown that the most important explanation for the frequent failure in the long-term of cutting-edge and paradigm-challenging innovations is the social implications of the product, and the fact that people have difficulty in understanding and appreciating its usefulness. Focus on lead users, which is easy to understand because they are a rewarding target group that quickly takes to new offers, is therefore an important explanation for the failure of many product launches in the long term.

THE CREATIVE RESULT / 71

Is novelty, then, not so important? On the strength of the numbers, one could easily form that impression because novelty has a very limited direct effect on the company’s bottom line. But marketing novelty fills a very important indirect function. For a product to be perceived as meaningful, people must notice it and be interested in it. We have noted earlier that people either cannot or do not wish to investigate the qualities of every product, and that the brain prefers not to work and would rather use stored information. In order to motivate the extra effort, it is necessary for the product to be noticeable by offering something new or unexpected. The correlation is illustrated in Figure 7.2. Novelty value is a prerequisite for crossing the threshold and for the product to be perceived as creative. The

Perceived creativity Meaningfulness + Interest threshold

Marketing novelty Time

Figure 7.2

72 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

greater the novelty value, the lower the threshold and the longer the period of time during which the product can been perceived as creative. As novelty value gradually fades, the risk that competing companies may be seen as creative increases. As Figure 7.1 shows, it is indeed ‘Competitor focus’ that has the main effect on the novelty value of a product and its marketing.

8 The creative process

That creativity cannot be controlled is a myth. A number of studies show that those companies that generate the best creative results are also those with the most systematic creative processes. Following a rule or a routine implies that one has a working method and a plan for reaching the solution, even if one does not know what it is.

In a study of the potential for becoming a successful business innovator – the basis of the introductory test in this book – research was conducted into the next stage: What is it that drives business executives to fulfil their potential and actually develop new business? Researchers found three main factors that controlled the outcome, as shown in Figure 8.1. As we have seen, prior knowledge (of customers and business) is central to business executives’ creative innovation. Knowledge accounts for 32% of the creative result. Motivation accounts for, in total, 25% of the creative result, partly because it constitutes some of the creative

74 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

Motivation Knowledge 32%

25

%

Situation 43%

Creative result

Figure 8.1

capacity (as you could see in the test), and partly because it affects the way executives utilize the knowledge they have. In other words, it is not enough to have the right knowledge. You must also understand that it is correct and thereby want to use it creatively (which is exactly what we will be working on later in the book). The third and most influential factor is ‘Situation’, which explains 43% of the creative result. The studies treated ‘Situation’ as a measure of the working processes that the executives were part of – the incentives linked to their work and the roles they were allowed to adopt. ‘Situation’, like ‘Motivation’, affects the creative result both directly and via the fact that executives can use their knowledge in the best way.

THE CREATIVE PROCESS / 75

Knowledge Knowledge and experience are invaluable in the creative process. However strong the motivation, and however good the organization, they lead nowhere without the right building blocks. In a study of 363 Chinese CEOs, product managers and marketing executives, it was found that depth of market knowledge (15%) and breadth of market knowledge (24%) were very strongly linked to their ability to generate successful innovations. When in-depth knowledge (i.e. detailed knowledge of the market) and broad knowledge (i.e. the number of aspects of the market that were known about) were added to the equation, it in fact appeared that the specific market, the pertinent technology and the features of the product itself made no difference. The conclusion is simple: you must know what you are doing in order to do things that no one yet knows anything about. ‘By sticking to what you know, you know that your ideas (and products) will stick!’ The statistics speak for themselves. While most people would guess that development in most markets is driven by new agents trying to break in, an American study shows that of the 64 consumer durables that have achieved the widest distribution in the post-war period, 74% were developed by incumbents, companies with good knowledge of the market, its needs and the demands of doing business.

76 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

As we have seen in Part I, creativity is not only about introducing new ideas. In the final analysis what counts is whether or not they are realized. Realization is an important part of the creative process, and the more knowledge one has, the better one’s chances of succeeding in this decisive part of the process. Figure 8.2 shows results from a study of all US drug patents during the years 1980–85. Not too many ideas (which is all that patents really are) are realized – in fact only about 20% on average – but the greater the expertise of a company in the field, the higher the probability that an idea will be converted into a success. More precisely, those with the greatest expertise are five times more likely to succeed than those with the lowest (50% vs 10%).

Probability of conversion 50%

Importance Expertise

40% 30%

Figure 8.2

THE CREATIVE PROCESS / 77

Motivation In Figure 8.2 you can see that motivation has the same positive effect on the possibility of converting ideas into successes. The greater the importance one attaches to the idea, the more effort one makes to ensure that it will work and be understood by others. So meaningfulness lies not only in the eye of the beholder when he or she judges the creative result: in order to generate a creative process, those involved must also feel that the work is meaningful. The meaningfulness and importance of the creative activity have been shown to be of significance in a number of different contexts. The study mentioned earlier of people’s solutions to everyday problems showed that the importance of the outcome and the perceived control increased creativity (in terms of the number of solutions and how good they were) by up to 30%. Personal ability to produce results and the importance of the results were therefore of significance. The same applies to companies. The difference is that people cannot influence the outcome of their ideas on their own. It is therefore not particularly surprising that an American study of 143 middle managers revealed that they were most creative when they felt that their CEO attached great importance to their development work. In one wide-ranging study of more than 200

78 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

American companies, it was found that the more frequently the work was monitored, and the greater the number of ways in which this occurred, the more new and successful solutions were generated providing greater employee satisfaction. ‘To make your business creative, you must make the creative work into a business!’

Making creative work into a business for everybody in the company can be simply a matter of establishing personal responsibility. Instead of working on common general tasks, every individual has a specific task. Whether the individual succeeds in solving the task alone or with others in a larger working context, the result is assessed in the context of the individual’s own work and focus.

Visibility is important. Good solutions get noticed, perhaps by winning the ‘Bright idea of the day’ title or by all ideas being posted on a noticeboard for all to see. If everyone can see everybody else’s ideas, there is a good chance of providing each other with building blocks and inspiring new creative combinations (which we will discuss later). Giving small rewards is also important. In order to prevent creative blocks or performance anxiety, it may be better to reward creativity with such things as choosing the biscuits or the venue for the next staff party than to give weighty financial bonuses.

THE CREATIVE PROCESS / 79

Corporate governance What, then, is the right situation for maximizing the creative result? Researchers found that the situation could be most simply described by a reverse U-shaped correlation between corporate governance and creativity, as in Figure 8.3. The more the work processes were governed, with roles fixed and incentives predetermined, the further to the right the organization moved in the diagram, and it will come as no surprise to anyone that a tightly controlled and rigid organization impedes creative results. More surprising is the fact that a loosely controlled organization produces the same poor performance in terms of creative results. The optimum creative organization in fact turns out to be relatively tightly controlled and unambiguous. These results contradict the widely held idea that creativity cannot be controlled. But that idea is a myth. A number of studies show that the Creativity

Governance

Figure 8.3

80 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

companies that generate the best creative results are also those with the most systematic creative processes. For example, a study of 227 Chinese companies found that the companies that most successfully developed and sold new products had clear routines for competence exploitation and competence investigation. Competence exploitation involves continuously matching new people and processes in the organization with each other; and competence investigation means constantly experimenting with new people and elements in the processes. Creativity must be integrated as a central part of the company in order to succeed. Don’t step outside to be creative! A study of all American patents for the years 1975–2002 shows that those ideas that have arisen within cohesive structures achieve a much wider distribution and lead to successful innovations. For every additional person within a company who was involved in the process, the probability that the creative effort would produce a successful result increased by 14%. A closer psychological examination shows that it is really self-evident that the creative process can – and must – be controlled. Psychologists agree that the creative process in general can be defined as ‘following a rule or routine with an uncertain outcome’. It is easy to see that the outcome is uncertain: it would not be particularly creative to know the

THE CREATIVE PROCESS / 81

solution to a problem in advance. Following a rule or a routine implies having a working method and a plan for reaching a solution, even if one does not know what that solution will be.

Thought tunnels and riverbeds A rule or routine is needed in order to be creative because the brain is lazy. In psychology, words such as ‘thought tunnels’ and ‘riverbeds’ are used to illustrate the fact that our thoughts and ideas automatically follow ingrained patterns in the same way as a train can only travel in the direction of the rails and the water in a river, in spite of its enormous force, obediently follows the course of the riverbed. The brain’s patterns are so strong that they even affect our bodies in predetermined ways. An amusing example of this is provided by an unusual study which compared the ageing of deaf Americans (the report did not reveal what deafness had to do with the study). It was found that a small group of those studied were considerably less affected than the majority by physical degeneration as the years passed. The reason was found to be that this group did not live with the idea that old age was the end of life, as most of us do, with the result that the body begins to deconstruct itself in accordance with a pattern predetermined

82 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

by the brain (‘your hearing and eyesight start to go’, ‘you can no longer take exercise’ etc.). A classic example of a thought tunnel or riverbed is the one about the four friends who took a car out for a spin in the country and got a puncture. Three of them asked themselves the question ‘Where can I find a jack so that I can change the tyre?’ and disappeared in different directions towards a service station they had passed earlier, a farm beyond the big field on the other side of the road, or further up the road to see if there was a garage. When they came back, the fourth friend had already changed the tyre by asking himself the question ‘How can I lift up the side of the car?’ using two logs lying by the roadside. By arranging them crosswise he could use one of the logs as a lever to lift the car with a small amount of force (if you have difficulty imagining a lever, think of a seesaw lying over a log). In another version of the example the fourth friend asked himself the question ‘How can I free the wheel?’ and backed the car at an angle over the roadside ditch so that the punctured tyre was hanging in mid air. The example illustrates how creative and powerful it can be to break free from thought tunnels and riverbeds. Most of us would probably have gone for a long walk to look for a petrol station or a distant farm because we asked ourselves the obvious question ‘How do I find a jack?’

THE CREATIVE PROCESS / 83

Tyres are changed with jacks, so the jack is usually the light at the end of our thought tunnel. In other words, forcing yourself to ask as many and varied questions as possible when you have a puncture is a simple rule or routine for generating an uncertain creative outcome. If we do not give ourselves routines and rules for our work, we will in all probability end up with different variations of our own standard solutions. For that is the easiest way. The brain follows the path of least resistance. You are sure to recognize the term from your school electronics: the current follows the path of least resistance. And your thoughts are in fact only electrical impulses that seek the simplest possible path. Creativity therefore requires a certain degree of compulsion, to make things difficult for itself. Routines and rules can differ widely between individuals, from the more philosophical variety such as ‘I will always do the opposite to my initial instinct’ or ‘For every idea I will think out three new angles’, to concrete routines such as turning the painting upside down every morning (a classic and controversial trick among artists), or always throwing out and rewriting the business plan at least three times. For companies that wish to develop creative business, it is a matter of using controlled processes with routines that force people to think in

84 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

new and different ways and adopt new roles, but without predetermined incentives (for the outcome must be uncertain). The studies mentioned above show that external pressure in the form of processes and deadlines can actually compensate for a lack of motivation in a creative business manager (although motivation is still the optimum driving force). Creative processes can thus, to all intents and purposes, be defined as compulsion. Two ways of introducing compulsion into the process are to limit the time allowed for the work or to limit the input (e.g. ‘you must work with these three components’, or ‘you must keep to these three processes’). Figure 8.4 shows the positive effects of such limitations on creativity in work. It is based on results from several experiments where people in a toy factory were given the task of developing new, attractive toys with or without limited time and/or components. The products developed were assessed by independent experts on the basis of their potential capacity to succeed in the market. As appears from the figure, working without limits, with free time and input, clearly gives the worst result (3). The best result was achieved with limited input and free time (1), where people were working in given routines but had plenty of time to carve out the smartest product. The next best result (2) was achieved with limited time but free input;

THE CREATIVE PROCESS / 85

Creative output Free time 1

2 Limited time 3

Free input

Limited input

Figure 8.4

the limited amount of time forced people to make combinations quickly and left them no time to find the components they would normally use. ‘Boxing in’ the work with limitations forces people to be creative. But ‘boxing in’ the work not only forces people to be creative, it also enables them. Look at Figure 8.5. It shows how 100 ordinary people were required to solve creative tasks, with or without a given target, and with or without step instructions. The results show that people with both target and step instructions feel least enjoyment, autonomy

86 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

Enjoyment Autonomy Competence

3

2 1

No step instructions

Step instructions

Target

No target

Figure 8.5

and competence in their creative work (1). But not far behind come those who had neither target nor step instructions (2). Not knowing where you are going or how to get there makes for work that people are neither motivated nor able to complete. Limitations, such as step instructions telling you to do something in a certain way, provide a ‘boxed in’ security and allow people to get into the process quickly. The journey is most exciting when you do not know where you are going (no target, 3). You feel most empowered (no one has decided the route for you) and use all your abilities. Above all, you find those places, ideas and results that no one has found before you.

THE CREATIVE PROCESS / 87

By killing off the myth that creativity cannot be controlled, a company can enjoy an explosive increase in the usefulness of its creative potential – and, in the process, free itself from empty phrases like ‘process thinking and institutionalization are the worst enemies of creativity’. In fact, it is far more difficult to avoid process thinking and institutionalization in organizations (any organization expert will tell you that in practice it is impossible) than it is to adapt creativity and turn it into a process. For creativity has no solid form, merely a need for rules and routines.

Randomness At this point, you will probably have gathered that even if control of creativity is important (in contrast to the myth), this does not contradict the next myth – that creativity is random. By thinking up three extra ideas, or doing the opposite of your initial instinct, you can arrive at any solution whatsoever depending on what you are influenced by. And this is exactly the essence of bisociations, as psychologists call the smallest building blocks in the creative process (roughly in the same way that atoms are still called nature’s smallest building blocks, although this is only true to a certain extent).

88 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

The word ‘bisociations’ evokes associations, as it is intended to. The word ‘association’ implies a group of objects that belong together. Bisociations, on the other hand, are combinations of two different associations that do not naturally belong together but are brought together to form a new entity. (Actually it might just as well involve three associations, in which case the term should be ‘trisociations’, but for the sake of simplicity they are called bisociations no matter how many associations are combined.) An example of a bisociation could be ‘tyre change–ditch’, the solution that the fourth friend found for the problem with the punctured tyre above. Tyre change goes together with, for example, jack, lift, steady, and fix. Ditch belongs with pit, fall, and lose grip. The bisociation ‘tyre change–ditch’ results in the new entity free. You might think that anyone by sheer accident could come up with the idea of backing the car at an angle over a ditch in order to change the tyre. By spreading out a lot of pieces of paper with different words on them in front of a monkey, one would eventually put the words ‘ditch’ and ‘tyre change’ next to each other. In a similar way, a Swedish newspaper let a monkey choose shares. It turned out that the monkey put together a better share portfolio than several professionals (because of the effect of randomness on share prices). But the monkey would never make the bisociation free. You do not have to be a mechanic to make the bisociation free if you quite accidentally happened to back

THE CREATIVE PROCESS / 89

the punctured tyre over the ditch, but there are certainly people who drive a lot but have never thought about how a tyre is changed. A certain kind of expertise is still necessary to succeed, and the amount of expertise naturally increases with the difficulty of the problem. Thus we can now puncture the myth of the randomness of creativity. The combinations and expressions can arise accidentally, but not the solution to which they lead. We can in fact refer back to the section on the creative result, where it was evident that ‘meaningfulness’ was above all the essential building block in creative enterprises and results: the creative person is not the person who happens to stumble on something, or brings two things together by accident; it is rather the one who makes the whole thing meaningful. Let us play a little more with the idea of using a monkey to find new combinations. A rule or routine in the creative process might be to let the monkey put new combinations of words together, and then make them meaningful. The problem is that there is a risk of an appalling number of words, and a great deal of time spent finding meaningful combinations. In other words, the enterprise might eventually turn out to be creative, but the company would hardly be economically viable. For this is the other objection to the myth that creativity is random. Creative enterprises require one to know which building blocks to

90 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

combine. To continue the image of the monkey, it is a matter of knowing which words to put in front of the monkey, and that choice is not random.

The use of knowledge We can now return to the explanation of why knowledge has such central importance in the development of creativity, as shown in the model that introduced this section. Knowledge affects not only what one chooses to combine and test in different ways, but also how one generates meaningfulness in the result. And the motivation and the situation affect the extent to which one really uses one’s knowledge in the existing steps and thus avoids randomness. Before we leave the creative process, it is worth mentioning that knowledge, which is central to creative business innovation, is not only about understanding customers and businesses. A small but very important part of it is knowledge of the significance of creativity for successful businesses and of how creativity works. In Chapter 1 (if you skipped it when you started the book, it might be worth going back and glancing through it quickly now) it was emphasized that we humans want to know why we are doing something, otherwise we are not inclined to

THE CREATIVE PROCESS / 91

do it. Certainly, one important reason why more business people and companies do not work systematically with creativity is that they regard creativity exercises and routines as irrelevant and unproductive (‘it feels stupid to sit with a monkey and combine words’). The first solution to the problem is to increase our knowledge of the creative result and how the creative process works. The second solution is to use exercises and routines that are closely related to business innovation in particular, which is the purpose of Part V of this book.

9 The creative person

Creative people are masters of what they do. Not everything that Einstein and da Vinci did was brilliant – far from it. But because they worked comparatively harder within their fields than others, they achieved more creative and successful results, even though they also had more failures than most other people.

We know a great deal about creative people but actually not that much about their creativity. Most of us are aware, for example, that Einstein did not do very well at school, or that Leonardo da Vinci had the odd habit of writing backwards. We also know a lot of biographical facts about other creative people, such as the one-eared Van Gogh, but Einstein and da Vinci will do. These disparate facts about the individuals themselves do not serve the purpose of getting to know the creative human being. Few of us can lay claim to any deeper insights into creative people. That there has been such intense focus over the years on descriptions and biographies of certain creative people is probably due to the fact that their lives

94 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

were in fact quite unusual. Roughly speaking, it has been found that 50% of the advances in most fields have come from 10% of the population. In other words, the majority, and the greatest, of all creative results have been produced by a small number of people who have been regarded as unique and exciting. But researchers agree that creative people have many attributes in common. These characteristics are not in themselves unusual; rather it is the combination of characteristics that is slightly different in creative people.

Flow of ideas A first characteristic that creative people have in common with everybody else is that they are not unusually clever. Different studies have tested the correlation between people’s creative capacity and their intelligence and found many times that it is less than 0.5, which means that although there is a correlation, it is chiefly something other than IQ that characterizes creative people. The ‘something other’ that distinguishes creative people is usually termed flow of ideas by psychologists. Flow of ideas means in this

THE CREATIVE PERSON / 95

context the capacity to generate and develop many ideas. Creative people find it easier than others to generate ideas. The reason for this is another characteristic that creative people share with the rest of us, namely, that they work with something specific. Many people think, however, that it is constraining to work with the same thing for a long time (‘I can’t be creative if I only work as an accountant/market retail products all day’). The myth says that creative people come from outside, whereas in fact creative people usually work on the same specific thing for longer than others. They do not come from outside, but rather from inside the field in which they are creative. Creative people are masters of what they do. Einstein, for example, lived and breathed physics (even during the early period when he worked in the patent office). Da Vinci, with his fantastic machines, was as close to being a (madly overworking) mechanic as it was possible to be in that period. Not everything they did was brilliant – far from it. But because they worked comparatively harder than others within their fields, they achieved more creative and successful results, even though they also had more failures than most other people. Thomas Edison, the man behind revolutionary breakthroughs such as the incandescent light bulb, holds more patents than anyone else, but he also did more

96 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

work on electronics and had more unsuccessful projects than anyone else.

Risk-taking Now you have acquired a new piece of the puzzle to improve your result in the book’s introductory test of your potential as a creative business innovator. The last three questions in the test are about taking risks. Most people avoid taking risks; it is a part of our self-preserving nature and is one of our two fundamental drives (as appeared in the earlier section on happiness – see page 42). ‘Why take a chance when I am comfortable with what I do?’ is a common but false piece of reasoning. It is based on the myth that creative people come from the outside and do not have as much to lose by entering a new field, because they have not invested their time, effort, soul and money in it. But creative people come from the inside and they have invested their time, effort, soul and money in the field. And they take risks. The risk-taking expresses itself in the form of taking many risks, but not big risks. Someone who works a lot on the same project increases his or her flow of ideas, and can therefore test more new solutions. In all probability, many of them will be failures (and the risk is therefore considerably

THE CREATIVE PERSON / 97

greater than if you keep to habitual paths and choose to be safe rather than sorry). But there is also an increased probability that some of the solutions will in fact succeed. If we add to this our knowledge from the section on whether creativity and the testing of new business ideas is dangerous – where we considered that failed products are not in fact necessarily damaging to the business – it is easy to see that the risks are well worth taking. We have now looked more closely at two specific characteristics that creative people have in common with everyone else, namely that they are not unusually intelligent and that they often work for a long time on one particular project. Let us now look into other qualities that not only characterize creative people but are also shared by others.

Paradoxes Research has shown that creative people are distinguished by a number of paradoxes in the form of qualities that most people do not have in combination. A first such paradox is that creative people are characterized by a large measure of conventionality (adherence to tradition) and rebelliousness.

98 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

The myth says that creative people are rebels and unconventional, but the truth is that they are to a high degree conventional. There are two reasons why tradition is important for achieving creative results. In the first place, a thorough knowledge and understanding of the field is required in order to know what to rebel against. We have discussed earlier the fact that markets are rigid and it is not very easy merely to launch a new product or solution. It is necessary to know the market well in order to find new paths and formulations that can break through the market ceiling. In the second place, we know that the creative result is based on meaningfulness, and it is therefore important for the creative person to be able to relate to the existing structures and product offerings, in order to make the new product or solution meaningful and easy for people to understand. A second paradox is that creative people make extensive use of both divergent and convergent thinking. (Divergent, chaotic thinking is a matter of thinking differently and breaking patterns; convergent thinking is about collecting thoughts into a pattern.) Creative people therefore spend time thinking along new paths and following those paths to the end. Only one half of creative thinking consists of changing one’s thought patterns; the other half consists of trying to combine even the maddest

THE CREATIVE PERSON / 99

ideas into a creative result. Naturally, you cannot succeed every time, but every attempt helps to train the brain to be stronger and denser with more connections that can be used for problem-solving in the future. That is why creative exercises are so important, because they constantly strengthen the brain and train up both divergent and convergent thinking. Apropos training, there is a third paradox which states that creative people are also characterized by the fact that they have both abundant energy and a great need for relaxation. They often work harder and for longer than other people, but they also take more time off. By working intensively for certain periods, one can sow many seeds which then lie fallow and can start to germinate. When we discussed whether creativity and launching new products was dangerous, we saw that important learning effects arise from testing new products and solutions and simultaneously working with them. In the same way, mulling over several ideas at the same time can produce considerably more favourable results than working on each idea in turn for a shorter period. A fourth paradox of creative people is the combination of humility and pride. Humility helps to avoid the trap of getting stuck in well-worn tracks (‘I already know how it should be done’, ‘My experience tells me to do it this way’). Pride ensures that we dare to stick with new ideas

100 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

even when we do not receive positive reactions from others. Humility means that we dare to fail (for we have established that this is something that is going to happen many times), but pride causes us to stand by our failures and maintain that they were good anyway. Because they are. In Chapter 4, on efficient complexity, we noted that business innovation is based on experimenting and mutating, just like nature and the whole of human evolution. The fifth paradox provides further evidence for this line of argument, as creative people are to a great extent both introverted and extroverted. The introverted side means that they can concentrate on their work without being too affected or bound by how other people work or conduct their business. The extraverted side is necessary to communicate the new solution and make it meaningful for others. It also provides an additional explanation of why it is not enough to have a monkey combining words – the monkey does not have the ability to communicate to others why the new combination is such a good one. Not even the best combination in the world sells itself. History is full of superior products that never gained a foothold in the market, from the Betamax videotape player, which was of much higher quality than VHS; to the Dvorak keyboard, which totally flopped in spite of radically improving typing speeds compared to the established QWERTY system, which we all still use today.

THE CREATIVE PERSON / 101

Finally, researchers have noted that creative people have both feminine and masculine qualities to a marked degree – qualities that individually are common to at least half of the population. The interesting aspect of the feminine–masculine is not how a person behaves or is viewed in social situations. Feminine and masculine sides are in fact just another way of saying that they represent the artistic and logical tendencies, respectively. Artistry and logic characterize the two halves of the brain: our ability on the one hand to see, feel and create totalities, and, on the other, to hear and think and break down the totalities into detail. In our opening chapters we discussed the fact that creative and strong brains are dense brains with the maximum number of connections. By combining the two halves of the brain and getting them to work together instead of individually, the potential number of connections in the brain increases exponentially. We have now looked more closely at a number of qualities that, individually or in combination, characterize creative people. An important insight in this chapter is that creative people are not particularly special beings. It may be of interest that Einstein was a failure at school or that his hair stood on end, or that da Vinci wrote backwards and that his hair also stuck out in all directions. But the similarity of their hair is pure accident – there have been lots of less creative people whose hair also had a tendency to stick out in all directions.

102 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

What is interesting is that they happened to have a number of qualities and combinations that anyone can in fact train and strengthen. In Part III, we will work on increasing your creative abilities and laying the foundations for the paradoxes with the help of a number of exercises.

10 Thinking inside the box

Without a box, there is a risk that creative work becomes very splintered and unproductive, roughly like writer’s block before one knows what to write about. Not surprisingly, creative people also tend to be very productive, because it is easy for them constantly to produce new solutions since they are clear about the limits.

We have now collected enough information about what creativity is and how it works to answer an earlier question: If creativity is not thinking outside the box, then what is it? The simplest answer, and the one that comes closest to the truth, is that creativity is really about thinking inside the box. Contrary to what one might think, creative people have very distinct and limited boxes inside their heads – boxes that bring to mind the box in the exercise you did with the dots in Chapter 6. That box had very strong but invisible walls that prevented people from finding solutions

104 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

outside the area in question. Such a box is really a better metaphor for creative thinking. Psychological research shows that creative people are fully aware of the walls that confine their thinking. Researchers even go so far as to say that knowing where the walls are is a criterion for achieving a creative result. This explanation works on two levels. The first level concerns the box as it is usually thought of and as it functions in the expression ‘to think outside the box’. The explanation is related to our earlier definition of the creative result. The second level is based on the knowledge we have discussed about the creative process, and gives a different picture of what the box really is. On the first, more abstract, level one can say that the totality of knowledge and experience within the field constitutes the box; for example, how one manufactures and markets cars. A creative result implies that one adds something meaningful to the category ‘car’. But for the new product or concept to be meaningful, it must be distinct from whatever already exists in the category on one or more essential points. In order to relate to these points, one must be thoroughly familiar with what is involved in, and what marks the limits of, the category ‘car’, i.e. the walls of the box.

THINKING INSIDE THE BOX / 105

On the second, more concrete level, we can see our own thought patterns as a box. The creative result, as we know, is to do with using a rule or routine to reach an uncertain outcome. The point of the rule or routine is to force the brain to think along new paths and take a different path from the habitual thought tunnel or sunken riverbed. But to succeed in this, it is necessary, firstly, to be aware that we really do have tunnels and riverbeds inside our skulls; and, secondly, to know which paths they take so that we can change direction. Thinking inside the box has a number of important advantages. One such advantage is that the box focuses thought activity. It works roughly in the same way as giving the monkey a box full of slips of paper containing words to choose from, instead of asking it to go and look for the words. In this way, we avoid waiting those millions of years, which, in the first place, would probably be spent simply finding the appropriate words. (Where would the monkey look, and when would it have finished looking? This is hard enough for us to answer and even harder for the monkey to work out.) The monkey would then start the endless work of word combination. Without a box, there is a risk that creative work becomes very splintered and unproductive, roughly like writer’s block before one knows what to write about: the uncertainty can be paralysing, but as soon as one has

106 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

a clear idea of the limitations, the writing starts to flow faster than a well-shaken cubic bottle of ketchup. Not surprisingly, creative people also tend to be very productive, because it is easy for them constantly to produce new solutions since they are clear about the limits.

An additional advantage of the box is that it simplifies creative work. When the monkey has finished combining words, the real work starts – interpreting the combinations and developing them into bisociations. Not everyone would make the bisociation ‘tyre change–ditch’ as easily as the fourth friend did in the example earlier in the book (evidently the other friends did not). Because not many of us have had reason to think closely about changing tyres, we have difficulty in making something meaningful out of that combination. If the monkey were to hand us combination after combination of words to which we cannot relate, we would simply fail in the generation of bisociations and the monkey’s work would have been in vain. To ensure that the creative process produces a creative result, we must be able to relate to the elements that are included in the process: they must be inside the box.

A third advantage follows naturally from this. Because the box focuses and clarifies, it can also give hints on the direction of development. If we know in advance which words the monkey cannot reach or we

THINKING INSIDE THE BOX / 107

cannot interpret, we can make sure they are in the box. We do not have to wait while the monkey searches and fails to find them, or tear our hair when we are defeated by the ‘impossible’ combinations we are given. The box helps us to know our limitations. There is also an advantage in the word ‘box’, which gives the most important advantage of all. The brain uses thought tunnels and riverbeds because it is lazy and does not want to make unnecessary diversions. And the bigger the map surrounding the tunnels and riverbeds, the longer the diversions can be. The word ‘box’ can reduce the size of our imagined map, allowing us to fool ourselves into believing that our thoughts cannot in fact wander very far in odd directions. A box gives a false sense of security in the form of a metaphor. The brain believes it is thinking routinely, which is what it prefers, and therefore feels safer and works better. An efficient method of getting the brain to think in a new way is to get it to believe the opposite. This is also true of organizations. The box as a metaphor can increase the acceptance of creative thinking in organizations by illustrating the boundaries of creative work. For an organization, working outside the boundaries is uncertain (‘we have no experience of new fields’) and probably inefficient (‘we can be fast and cheap by doing things in the usual way’).

108 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

Shaking the box Thinking inside the box is the first step in creative thinking. But thinking only really becomes creative when the box is used in the right way – and the right way to use the box is quite simply to shake it. Various experiments have compared creative people’s problem-solving and their understanding of it with that of other people. The problemsolving studied consisted for the most part of IQ tests (which consist of series of numbers and similar problems) or of performing associative tests (which instead comprise a series of concepts, i.e. rows of words instead of numbers). Generally speaking, researchers found that the results of creative people do not differ to any marked degree from those of other people. We have established earlier that the IQs of creative people are not much higher than the average. On the other hand, creative people succeed in solving associative tests considerably better than others. For this reason, associative tests have become a common way of measuring creative capacity, and are creativity’s equivalent to the IQ test. When the test subjects’ perceptions of the tasks they have been given are compared, it appears, not entirely unexpectedly, that creative people find associative tests much more stimulating than other people.

THINKING INSIDE THE BOX / 109

The researchers also measured the test subjects’ sense of time and found that creative people experienced that they had spent more time on their problem-solving. It may seem strange to measure the sense of time in particular, but the explanation is simple. If someone asks you to say when you think exactly a minute has passed, what do you do? You could count silently ‘one thousand and one, one thousand and two, one thousand and three . . .’ and say stop when you have reached one thousand and sixty. By adding together the different stages of the work (the thousands), the brain can easily judge the passage of time. You behave in a similar way when someone asks you the way to the nearest newsagent: ‘First you go right, then straight on for a bit, up some stairs, a few hundred yards to your left and round the corner – it will take about six minutes.’ The test subjects calculated how long they took to solve their problems in the same way, by adding together the separate parts of their task. Therefore, the answer the researchers received was that creative people have more elements in their creative work. They shake the box more often. We have used the monkey with the slips of paper fairly frequently in order to consider various aspects of creativity. Let us instead, for a moment, conjure up the image of a box containing the pieces of a jigsaw

110 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

puzzle. As a child, you might have thought that doing jigsaw puzzles was a bit boring, and instead amused yourself by shaking the box and opening it to see what had happened. In that case, you will certainly remember that the pieces ended up higglety-pigglety, and that some used to get stuck in each other in pairs, or sometimes threes or more. And they formed completely new patterns (which were no doubt on many occasions more stimulating to the imagination than the pattern the pieces made when the jigsaw puzzle was completed as intended). A hand here and a leg there suddenly became a hand–leg animal instead of Donald Duck. If you had already read this book, you could have shown Mummy or Daddy your nice bisociation! We can now explain why creative people are not particularly fond of IQ tests, while being so good at associative tests: IQ tests are about finding the correct piece of the puzzle, whereas associative tests are about creating combinations of pieces. In an IQ test, the puzzle is as good as finished, apart from a few missing pieces. The easiest way to find the missing pieces is to test them, one by one, against the holes in the puzzle. Shaking the box is an unnecessary waste of time. In an associative test, you must create combinations of several pieces yourself. When you shake the box, the pieces fall into different places and form new combinations. What both tests have in common is that the more skilful you are and the more difficult the problem, the more

THINKING INSIDE THE BOX / 111

pieces of the puzzle there are. But while the number of possible solutions in the IQ test increases at a steady pace, in the associative test, the number explodes. Compare the series of numbers below:

One piece of the puzzle 1 2 3 4 Combinations of pieces 0 1 4 11

5

6 ...

22

48 . . .

When you take out one piece at a time, every new piece requires you to put your hand in the box. When you combine the pieces, the combinations increase exponentially with every new piece. The greater the number of pieces, the more times you can shake the box. And the more times you shake the box, the greater the likelihood that that you will find completely new and meaningful combinations. As we know, the creative process can be described as following a rule or routine with an uncertain outcome. Shaking the box is the rule of rules, the very essence of the creative process: rearranging the contents time and again and seeing the combinations that arise. In the last part of this book, we will see how the box can be shaken in different ways for creative business innovation.

112 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

Expanding the box In Chapter 9 we asserted that the creative person has a greater flow of ideas than other people. What we meant by this was, firstly, that creative individuals create more combinations of associations, and, secondly, that they make more far-fetched connections. We have already determined that a high number of combinations is a condition for achieving a creative result: creative business innovators both succeed and fail more often than others. But there is also a connection between how far-fetched the combination is and how creative the result is. Sit down for a moment and make combinations of banking services (loans, savings, credit reports, insurance), risks (long-term, short-term, high-yield, low-yield), and media channels (computers, postal service, telephone, TV). If you have a strong flow of ideas, you should quickly put together quite a lot of combinations from these terms, and in total you can create 64 new products. Then you might well ask a bank whether they think any of the ideas seem interesting. Unfortunately they will probably reply that they already have such a product. All the 64 products are easy to grasp, and it is therefore not surprising if they have already been set up. Banking services, risks and the media lie close to each other in the puzzle box and most people who shake the box just a little will produce known combinations.

THINKING INSIDE THE BOX / 113

A simple rule of thumb is that your first spontaneous solution is not creative – someone else has already thought of it simply because it is within easy reach. Patent lawyers talk about parallel activity, maintaining that many products cannot be patent protected because they are so easy to think of that many people can think of them simultaneously. As if it were not enough that solutions that are easy to grasp suffer from being common and far from unique, there is also a risk that they will not be particularly meaningful. Figure 10.1 shows the connections found in two American studies between, on the one hand, the distance from a new concept to existing products on the market, and, on the other, perceived meaningfulness. The first study analysed creative marketing concepts in 34 consumer goods companies with a total range from pharmaceuticals to biscuits to storage products. The other study included interviews with more than 400 consumers who had been eager to adopt new marketing concepts. In both studies it was found, not unexpectedly, that concepts that were too distant from what was already on the market were not very successful, because people could not relate to them or see the point of them. We will devote more space to the importance of reducing the perceived distance for the new solution later in the book. However, a somewhat more surprising result emerged from the studies – namely, that concepts that came too close to existing products were

114 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

Meaningfulness

Distance to existing product

Figure 10.1

also perceived as less meaningful. The psychological explanation is very simple. People think, consciously or unconsciously, in the same way as the patent lawyers we have just mentioned: ‘This solution is so obvious that anybody might have marketed it a long time ago.’ And the conclusion is that if no one has used such an obvious idea before, then it is presumably not worth having. Let us return to the exercise with the banks and, instead, try to combine daily routines (for example, eating or travelling, which most people do several times a day) with banking services. This was done in the USA, resulting in drive-thru banks for cash errands, and in Shanghai, where lunchtime banks were started for financial advice. Both concepts have been successful: they have attracted customers and brought something to the market.

THINKING INSIDE THE BOX / 115

Drive-thru banks save time because they are on the route between home and work; they are convenient, which appeals to Americans; and they have been increasingly perceived as more secure as the number of attacks at automatic teller machines has grown. The lunchtime banks have saved time because many people do their bank errands during the lunch break. They have also created a friendlier atmosphere, which is important in the relationship between the adviser and the advised. The concepts have been meaningful by relating to what is already on the market and what people are used to. They were not too easy to think of, or obvious in any way. Banking services and daily routines are pieces of the puzzle that do not lie close to each other in the box. If the box is small, then we would probably not get these pieces to cling to each other when we shook the box. Nor would there be enough space to enable each piece to move sufficiently far from any other piece. We must therefore expand the box in order to make more far-fetched connections. In the psychological study of subjects’ solutions to IQ tests and associative tests, it was found that creative thinking, i.e. the combination of different associations, takes up more space in our heads. What we mean by ‘more space’ is that a larger amount of brain capacity is used and more memory functions are activated. In concrete terms, this could be illustrated in the same way as you may have seen the effect of a gym machine being illustrated

116 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

– by using pictures and colouring the activated parts of the body red: creative thinking requires us to expand the red areas in our heads. To return to our old friend Albert Einstein, we can note that he not only had an unusually small and dense brain, but tests of his brain have demonstrated that he had the capacity to use unusually large areas of it simultaneously. Computer tomography (CT) scans of Einstein’s brain beside an ordinary brain in fact bring to mind large and small boxes. Large and small boxes explain an apparent paradox: while creative people have a great deal of knowledge and experience in their fields, many people in fact seem to be limited in their thinking by what they have previously learned or done. The more we learn, the more pieces of the puzzle there are in the box and the more combinations we are able to make. But the more pieces there are in the box, the greater also is the congestion. So the box must also grow if we are to get any satisfaction from all the pieces. For just as a big box is meaningless if it only contains a few pieces, you will get nothing from the pieces you have collected if they are squeezed into a little box that lacks the extra space required. In the next part of this book, we will work with exercises aimed at expanding the box in different ways, so that we have more room to shake out combinations of more widely disparate pieces of the puzzle.

THINKING INSIDE THE BOX / 117

Filling the box Turn back a few pages and have another look at the number series that represents how the possible combinations of pieces of the puzzle increase for each new piece you put in the box. It speaks for itself. The small effort that is needed to fill the box with another association or bit of knowledge is repaid many times over when you later shake the box. Knowing a little more, in other words, makes you much more creative. There is really no such thing as useless knowledge – there are no pieces of the puzzle or slips of paper that are inappropriate to put in the box. We have already shown that the perception of knowledge as constraining is really a question of the box being too small. When it has been expanded, you can continue to fill it with new pieces and in this way increase the number of possible combinations. But to make the combinations into bisociations, you must find meaning – i.e. a business proposition that is worth marketing. The three first questions in the book’s introductory test (see page 20) provide a clue that even though there are no pieces that are ‘wrong’, there are certain pieces that are particularly ‘right’. In order to obtain

118 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

a really high score in the test of your potential as a successful business innovator, you must have a thorough knowledge of people in the form of their behaviour, drives, demography and trends, and you must be knowledgeable about economics and business. There is nothing odd about that. At the end of the day, all bisociations must be used by people and must therefore be attuned to their wants, needs and behaviour, and if they are to be profitable, they must be realized in an economically viable and effective way. Therefore, there is no knowledge that is wrong or useless. Insights into quantum physics, termite hills, plumbing, poker, tailoring and cooking can all be invaluable and create new, exciting combinations. The more you know and learn, the better. But if the combinations are to be turned into creative business opportunities, they must be interpreted in connection with an extra piece of the puzzle that has to do with people and business. Otherwise, you will be no more than a monkey combining words. Take, for example, the unsuccessful launch of the superior Dvorak keyboard layout, which was thoroughly trounced by the established QWERTY system that we all still use. If the marketers had considered a fundamental fact about human beings, namely that we are lazy, then a warning light would immediately have started to flash. It was difficult

THINKING INSIDE THE BOX / 119

enough to learn to use a keyboard layout the first time, so how likely are we to think it worth learning another? It is in fact much simpler to continue using the old system, which is what we have done. If we then add to this a fundamental economic insight about the economics of scale, then there should have been both flashing lights and sirens. The QWERTY system now has an exponential advantage over any newcomer: for every new Dvorak keyboard there exist many more QWERTY keyboards. To succeed, Dvorak must therefore be produced and sold at a much greater rate in order to establish itself. (But who would bother to write with two different systems in parallel, which would be unavoidable as long as the QWERTY keyboard layout was installed in the majority of typewriters and computers that people use?) Knowledge about people and business can also explain why Internet retail did not take off at the explosive rate that everyone at one time predicted. Another fundamental quality of human beings is that we are cowards: we do not like to take risks. This insight is at the root of all banking and insurance services and explains why brands are so important – they minimize the risk because we feel that we know what we are getting instead of taking a chance with the purchase of an unknown product. So think about what happens when we buy products from the other side of the world via a computer, or, for that

120 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

matter, groceries from the shop round the corner. When we cannot actually handle the product, how can we be sure of what we are getting? Can one trust a company that is far away, or really rely on the local grocer to pick out the best bananas? People will probably want to pay a lower price as compensation for the risk (which is exactly how financial services work and why well-known brands can charge higher prices) and furthermore preferably pay only when they have the product in their hands. With a little knowledge of economics, it is easy to see that it is a difficult business – deep pockets are required, firstly, to lay out the money and, secondly, to get a lower price for the product sold, combined with the necessary investment in distribution (at best digital and computerized – at worst physical transport), and in addition there will be a fairly long period of time before the business turns a profit. And this is precisely how things turned out – many companies ended up going bankrupt around the Internetobsessed turn of the millennium. A third fundamental insight about people is that we are stupid. We do not have the capacity or the energy to learn and comprehend all the features of different products. This explains why product novelty had such a minor effect in the model we looked at more closely in the section on the creative result (see Chapter 7). People do not care too much about a product’s new features. It is more a question of whether

THINKING INSIDE THE BOX / 121

the new features are expressed in a meaningful way and whether the impressions they make are easy to understand, which explains why marketing becomes so important. With this insight in mind, we can understand why Ericsson lost ground for so many years in the mobile phone market: people did not understand the product’s superior technical qualities (if indeed they were superior, which few of us can judge). We can also understand Sony Ericsson’s fairytale surge in the market when the superior qualities began to be packaged and communicated in a meaningful way. The mere name Sony Ericsson is a smart brand bisociation that people understand and like. Insights about demography and trends are also important pieces of the puzzle that can be constantly added and generate completely new and unique combinations. The USB memory stick is an example of a bisociation (or rather trisociation) of increased memory compression, demographic development towards the use of different computers in different places, and trends favouring technology as accessories (e.g. MP3 players). The electric car is another bisociation based on demography in the form of single households, increased traffic and congestion charges, combined with a trend towards increased environmental awareness. Car tolls in major cities are in other respects a demographic feature that can be combined into a large number of bisociations in the transport and services sectors.

122 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

We have now observed some schematized examples of knowledge of human qualities, demography and trends, and also economics and business. They might appear unnecessarily oversimplified and generalized and, to a certain extent, this is of course true, but it is important to remember that people and businesses are in fact fairly simple and predictable. People function in much the same way whether we buy soft drinks or motorbikes – the similarities are much greater than the differences, irrespective of the product category. And the laws of economics are the same whether you are selling oven gloves or caravans. This means that these pieces fit every puzzle and that it is in fact these pieces that distinguish combinations of words from business-oriented bisociations. That is why questions about people and economics and business make up the first three questions in the test of your potential as a successful business innovator. After reading Part IV of the book, you will be able to improve your score on the test as you will have filled the box with fundamental new knowledge about how people view product categories and react to novelty, and about the business-oriented aspects of our behaviour.

PART III Expanding the Box In this part:

• • • • •

The The The The The

four walls of the box first wall: conventions and rules second wall: common sense third wall: physiology fourth wall: consciousness

‘The creative person experiences a greater flow of ideas than other people. Many combinations are a prerequisite of achieving a creative result, and creative business innovators both succeed and fail more often than others. But there is also a connection between how improbable the combination is and how creative the result is.’

11 The four walls of the box

In order to be a successful business creator you have to expand the box. While what you fill the box with and how you shake it is distinctive for creative business innovation, expanding the box is common for many forms of creative thinking. The creative process is about following a rule or routine with an uncertain outcome, something that one needs to be reminded of in order to not get stuck.

It is not difficult to push out the four walls of the box, but to do so is absolutely necessary in order to be creative. We are born with these walls and they have a tendency to grow inwards over the years if we do not actively push them outwards. They are:

• • • •

Conventions and rules Common sense Physiology Consciousness

The walls of the box have been given names in order to emphasize some of the conditions that tend to limit creative thinking and which we

126 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

must therefore work on. You might recognize them from the discussion on the creative person in Chapter 9. In order to expand the box, you have to work in the four different directions shown in Figure 11.1. The first wall consists of conventions and rules. It is easy to get the idea that things have to be done in a particular way. The biggest danger is not from ‘real’ conventions and rules that someone else has established, and which we must adapt to in the form of laws, standard industry practice or social codes. Rather it is those conventions and rules that we create, often unconsciously, for ourselves, and which tend to be ‘truer’ (harder to break) than those created by others. It is in our nature to seek out structures and patterns for our ways of thinking (the brain loves thought tunnels and riverbeds) and to limit Conventions and rules

Common sense

Consciousness

Physiology

Figure 11.1

THE FOUR WALLS OF THE BOX / 127

the risks attached to our activity. This is so natural to us that we are often unconscious of it, and in many cases experience it as an external obstacle when in fact the wall is inside our heads. We stated earlier that creative people are characteristically both conservative (traditional) and rebellious. This means that they can push out the wall of rules and conventions because they have the drive to break conventions and rules (rebellion) while at the same time knowing where to push (knowledge of traditions). The second wall is the wall of common sense. Common sense is one of the most destructive concepts in existence, and should be banned from common usage in any language. Few expressions can have caused as much damage as ‘a bit of common sense tells you that!’ In fact the expression is an oxymoron, a juxtaposition of two opposites. Common sense is restricting and in no way sensible. Presumably it is because we are basically stupid that we feel such a need to be smart, or rather appear smart to other people and (not least) to ourselves. So we are constantly seeking the ‘right’ answer and get stuck with a logical solution. But the problem is that there is rarely just one right answer and that there are almost always several logics and many logical solutions. But our ‘common sense’ prevents us from seeing this, and thus confines our thinking in a box which is altogether too small. In Chapter 9 we explained that he or she combines humility with pride. This means

128 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

that you can push out the wall of common sense by being open to alternatives and investing in several solutions. The third wall of the box is physiology. It might seem trivial because it is so fundamental, but that is precisely why it is also important. The brain has certain physiological limitations. It is divided into two halves, and has a certain size. We cannot affect this, but we can affect the chemical composition of the brain by providing the right conditions and forcing it to make small readjustments. For example: the division of the brain into two halves structures our thought processes in two ways and limits exchange between them, roughly as though the parts of a puzzle were divided into two boxes, instead of being collected in the same box. This means that not all the pieces of the puzzle can be combined. Recall the number series with possible combinations on page 111 and you will realize that this kind of separation implies an enormous limitation on thought and the creative process. We also noted earlier that the creative person combines masculine and feminine qualities. This is an expression of the fact that the physiological wall has been forced out and the cooperation between the two halves of the brain increased. The last wall of the box is consciousness. Of course consciousness has its physical limitations (for example, we require at least an eighteenth

THE FOUR WALLS OF THE BOX / 129

of a second to distinguish an external information impulse), but the wall of the box lies well inside what the capacities of the brain allow. As a Swede I am tempted to think that my consciousness is made in Sweden, it is so attached to the idea of ‘not too much and not too little’. It does not want to process too much information, or too little. But in fact many people have problems with both concentration and focus, and with taking in several impressions at once and seeing new perspectives. We have noted earlier that the creative person combines both energy and relaxation. In this way, the line of consciousness between focused concentration and open reception of impressions can be extended. Chapters 12 to 15 present exercises for pushing out each of these walls. The choice of chapter for the different exercises is based on the author’s experience of how the exercises function best, but of course you must not feel bound by these divisions.

Get smarter through training: about the exercises To become a successful business innovator, you must expand the box. While the items you fill the box with, and how you shake it (which

130 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

you can read about later in the book), concerns creative business innovation in particular, expansion of the box is common to many forms of creative thinking. There are a great many books about how to expand the box and, consequently, many thoroughly tried and tested exercises that can be used. You may recognize some of the exercises. While the great number of books and exercises is a big advantage, they can also be a hindrance in the particular case of creative business innovation. The exercises are very general and difficult to apply to a business context, which is why so many people know about them and so few use them. My aim is to enable you to gain new confidence in the exercises by acquiring deeper insight into how they should be used and the specific role they play in expanding the box in the effort to become a creative business innovator. Most of the exercises are good, and can be used in a number of ways. In the first place, they provide excellent training in expanding the box and establishing new thought patterns, which is their main purpose. This works in the same way as when you have to train a muscle to execute a new kind of movement before that movement can become powerful (roughly like training the chest muscles to work at raising

THE FOUR WALLS OF THE BOX / 131

and lowering the body before you can become good at doing press-ups – the first steps in weightlifting teach the muscles the movements rather than increase their size), or when you are able to play more and better music on the guitar, the more chords you learn. Another function of the exercises is to point out a weakness in your thinking – a wall of the box. As we saw earlier, creative people are well aware of the walls of their boxes, and in this way can constantly develop their thinking. By finding the wall, you then know where to apply pressure to expand the box. The exercises are excellent for measuring, with a certain regularity, how far the box has been expanded since last time. As with weightlifting or guitar-playing, you will get better the more you practice. But it requires a little patience and, above all, you must understand the point of sitting and ploughing through dots and coat hangers or whatever. Apart from functioning as training, the exercises also fill an important recurring role as metaphors. Merely thinking the thought ‘sell the brick’ or ‘bow-tie in an elevator’ has great power when you have got stuck, or when you need to motivate yourself or others for some task. Try sitting down with one or more of the exercises as a short break from the task you are engaged in, and you will see that it creates

132 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

completely fresh lines of thought when you return to the tasks, and generates energy for your work. The creative process is about following a rule or a routine with an uncertain outcome, and you need to be constantly reminded of this in order not to get stuck. When you think about your solutions to the exercises, you are also reminded that nothing is impossible, but that some things are simply more difficult than others. The exercises are very useful when you want to motivate other people or when you want to illustrate a certain point. Precisely because they are so general, they are very easy to understand and most people can relate to them. You can link them to almost any question and use them as a teaching aid in your work. You might, for example, want to simplify communication so that everyone can understand the essence of the work you are doing together. Irrespective of how complicated the matter at hand may be, the essence of it is usually very simple and it is very liberating to gain this insight instead of getting obstructed by details or the complexity of the whole picture. The exercises can also function as a common language, to motivate one another or find new routines. A final area of use for the exercises is for epiphanies (what is sometimes called the ‘Aha’ experience). Whether or not people have seen the exer-

THE FOUR WALLS OF THE BOX / 133

cises before, they usually have an epiphany when they try to solve them. This is an excellent way of breaking the ice in a new context, and opening the way for debate and fresh thinking. When people realize that there are imperfections in their own thought processes, they are often immediately more receptive to the thoughts of others.

12 The first wall: conventions and rules

We impede development by fixing our perceptions on what objects and phenomena have been in the past, when we should really see what they could become. If you had been following the instructions in a 50 year old book about athletics, you would probably never be able to jump higher than 6.5 feet. In those days, the high jump was defined as diving or scissoring over the bar.

Nobel Prize-winner Murray Gell-Mann, the father of modern quantum physics, once discussed a student who made a particular impression on him – by repeatedly giving the wrong answer in an examination. The examination question was quite simple for someone who knew basic physics. It read: Describe how with the help of a barometer you can determine the height of a building. The answer was to read the barometer at ground level, and then go up to the roof of the building and read it again. By comparing the readings one can determine how

136 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

much air there is between the ground and the roof of the building. The air exerts pressure on the ground as a column and increases the air pressure proportionately. The length of the column of air is the same as the height of the building. But the student gave the ‘wrong’ answer: Take the barometer and knock on the door of the janitor who lives on the ground floor. ‘Hi, you can have this really nice barometer if you tell me how high the building is!’

The teacher who corrected the paper marked the answer as wrong. When the student got her paper back, she protested immediately about her marks, for her solution was quite correct. By using the barometer in the way she suggested the height of the building could be determined! This was hard to deny, says Gell-Mann. But as it was not an answer that demonstrated any knowledge of basic physics, the student was given another chance to answer the question, on the condition that the laws of physics should be used in the answer. The student went to work, and the answer was as follows: Go up onto the roof of the building and lower the barometer down on a piece of string until it reaches the ground. Make a mark at the point where you are holding the string and then measure the distance between your mark and the barometer, this is the same as the height of the building.

THE FIRST WALL: CONVENTIONS AND RULES / 137

This answer put the examiner in an awkward position. The answer, just as the previous one, was quite correct. And it also made use of the laws of physics, the length of the string must be the same as the height of the building because a given distance is always the same wherever it is measured. But the solution was trivial and showed no deeper knowledge of physics. So the teacher decided that the student should have another chance to answer the question, on condition that she used more advanced physics in reaching her solution. This time the result was a little explosion of answers: Take the stairs up the building and at the same time use the barometer to measure the distance between two floors. If the distance is 12 barometer lengths and the barometer is 40 centimetres long, this will be 12 × 0.4 = 4.8 metres. If the building is 15 floors its height is 15 × 4.8 = 72 metres. Go up onto the roof and drop the barometer off. Measure the time it takes to hit the ground. With the help of the formula s = 12 gt, where g is the force of gravity (9.8) and t is the square of the time measured, you can then calculate the distance (s) from the roof to the ground, which is equal to the height of the building. Go up onto the roof of the building and drop the barometer. Measure the time interval between seeing it hit the ground and hearing the crash. Multiply the number of seconds by 333, which is the speed of sound (333 m/s) and you will get the distance that the barometer has fallen, which is equal to the height of the building.

138 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

Faced with these answers, capitulation was the only possibility. The student had shown good knowledge of basic physics without even being close to the ‘right’ answer. And she had also shown her teacher that he was a victim of his own rules and conventions – rules and conventions that limited the teacher’s ability to consider alternative solutions without him even being aware of them. One obvious rule is that physics must always be expressed in numbers and formulas. But physics is in fact the study of nature, and embraces such simple phenomena as the length of a piece of string without having to use – and sometimes be limited by – formulas. The teacher was also inhibited by the fact that the barometer is conventionally used to measure air pressure. But the student, who was not inhibited by any such convention, arrived at a number of solutions where the barometer was used in other ways than for the measurement of air pressure. Murray Gell-Mann concluded that the student had great creative capacity, which meant that she could use her knowledge of physics in considerably more and better ways than the students who gave the ‘right’ answers in their physics examinations. She did not give the ‘wrong’ answer in her physics exam because she lacked sufficient knowledge; it was rather a matter of not being prevented by conventions and rules from using more of the knowledge she possessed.

THE FIRST WALL: CONVENTIONS AND RULES / 139

Murray Gell-Mann’s story is a simple illustration of the danger of calling an answer or a solution ‘right’. For the very word ‘right’ is an obvious indication that you allow yourself to be guided by rules and conventions that decide when one thing is ‘right’ (for example, using the barometer to measure air pressure) and something else is ‘wrong’ (for example, using the barometer as a rule or throwing it off the roof). Almost as bad is the fact that the division into ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ leads you at a much too early stage to reject ideas and solutions that might work perfectly well, simply because they do not work as they ‘ought to’ or as they ‘usually do’. Hopefully at this point you can see that they are worth a second chance. In the worst case, rules and conventions can lead to you think of no alternative solutions at all, in which case you cannot even give them a second chance. Like Gell-Mann’s physics student, you can certainly think up more ways of determining the height of a building with the aid of a barometer now that you have been made aware of the possibility of breaking the convention that a barometer must be used exclusively to measure air pressure. History is full of product categories that have exploded after being freed from conventions and rules. Milk is such a category. For decades, producers and consumers alike lived by the rule that milk is sold in tetrapaks. As a result, milk was bought by families with children to be put

140 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

in the fridge and drink at home. Someone suggested the idea that milk could be sold in decorated bottles, and the market exploded when new target groups such as young people and adults started buying milk and drinking it in new situations and places, far from the kitchen table. (It is amusing to note that the market had experienced a similar explosion some time ago when the tetrapak replaced the bulky glass bottle.) In the same way, the publishers of the Encyclopaedia Britannica managed to avoid the threat of bankruptcy and instead find new business models and reach a broader customer base when, after many years, they freed themselves from the rule that knowledge must come in the form of thick books. Encyclopaedias today – thanks to digital solutions – are more extensive than ever, cheaper than ever, and used by more people; an equation that could never have been solved using the old rule. This example may seem trivial, but that is a common reaction when something is freed from a rule or convention. Who, today, would think of buying music in the form of plate-sized plastic discs?

How to recognize a rule or convention We have so far been using the terms ‘rule’ or ‘convention’ alternately to illustrate how people become mentally blocked about what is right

THE FIRST WALL: CONVENTIONS AND RULES / 141

and what is wrong. This is because these kinds of mental blocks can look slightly different. All mental blocks are in fact only in our heads, but they may be more or less structured and affected to differing extents by their environment. Let us look more closely at some examples. The simplest and most obvious example of a rule is a definition. If you look through a dictionary you will find definitions that are a form of summary of how most people think the object or phenomenon behind a word or phrase should be described. In most cases, a definition describes an object’s shape (a brick is rectangular and flat) or what it is used for (building materials). Instruction books and manuals that describe how to behave work in the same way (‘Become a successful marketer in 30 simple steps’). If you had been following the instructions in a 50-year-old book about athletics, you would probably never be able to jump higher than 2 metres. In those days, the high jump was defined as diving or scissoring over the bar. Whether they are in a dictionary or not, we are constantly defining things for ourselves on the basis of our own experiences. Through contact with different objects and phenomena, we have learned what they look like and how they work. The effect of this is to impede development by fixing our perceptions on what objects and phenomena have been in the past, when we should really regard them objectively,

142 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

to see what they could become. Just think about the way in which reference books and milk were defined a few years ago. By completing the sentence ‘XXX is …’, you can draw attention to your own rules, and pin them down. For example, for many years people said ‘a café is a place where you serve coffee and pastries’. This led to the café culture starting to die out as it became possible to buy better coffee and pastries for consumption at home, and the availability of entertainment in cities increased. An easy way to free yourself from a rule is by creating ‘not’ definitions. This involves introducing a creative process routine that consists of constantly adding the word ‘not’ to your definitions. With the help of the new definition of a café – a café is not a place where you serve coffee and pastries – it was possible to fill the café with new content, from Internet access stations to health products, reading, exotic drinks, etc., and lay the foundations for the renaissance that cafés have enjoyed in recent years. The little magic word ‘not’ liberates us from a rule and allows us space to imagine what something could be instead. Conventions are as powerful as rules. Conventions are our perceptions of how other people see our behaviour. They are harder to spot and pin down than rules. In the first place, unlike definitions, they are rarely written down; and, in the second place, they are more firmly rooted in

THE FIRST WALL: CONVENTIONS AND RULES / 143

us because they have to do with our own behaviour. Everything we do is a reflection of ourselves (we experience this irrespective of whether we want to, or whether it is true) and we therefore tend to identify more strongly with behaviour than with objects or phenomena. The easiest way to expose your own conventions is to complete the sentence ‘people would be upset if I …’ or ‘it would be wrong to …’ in the context of some piece of behaviour. Further on in this chapter, in the exercise involving the ping-pong ball in the steel pipe, there will be obvious examples of how you can arrive at new solutions by completing the two sentences above. It’s about highly unconventional behaviour from a general social point of view. The psychologist Edward de Bono tells the story of a boy who was asked by some of his friends ‘Here is a crumpled pound note and a shiny 50 pence coin: which do you want?’ and he chose the coin. After having made the same choice several times, to the delight of his friends, he was asked by one concerned friend, ‘Why do you always take the coin? Can’t you see that they’re laughing at you?’ The boy’s answer was: ‘Yes, but if I had chosen the pound note they wouldn’t have offered me all those coins.’ But in a business sense, it’s about completing these sentences in an appropriate context, for example, in the form of a particular product category. Karl Lagerfeld, the German designer of luxury clothing, could

144 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

complete the sentence ‘people (in the field) would be upset if I …’ with the words ‘sold clothes via a low-price chain store’ when he launched a collection in collaboration with Sweden’s clothing chain, H&M. By breaking the convention, he reached new target groups and gained more attention and renewed interest from all directions for his usual business as well. Since then, a number of fashion designers, led by Stella McCartney and, after her, Viktor and Rolf, have been jostling to follow his lead. Linus Torvalds could complete the sentence ‘it would feel wrong to …’ with the words ‘give away my operating system free’ when he released Linux free on the Internet. But by breaking the convention, Linux has become a thorn in the side of established agents such as Oracle and others, who have been forced to incorporate it into their own solutions, on account of the wide distribution of Linux (with revenue to Linus Torvalds, of course). Sweden’s brewery industry might have expressed a similar sentiment about how wrong it would feel to sell bottled water in the country with the cleanest tap water in the world, when, a few years ago, it launched table water on a broad front. Today table water is the driving force behind the growth of the brewery industry in Sweden. Conventions tie you down because, consciously or unconsciously, you worry about how others will react. To liberate yourself from your inhi-

THE FIRST WALL: CONVENTIONS AND RULES / 145

bitions and push out the walls of the box, you must therefore not only be aware of the convention but also have sufficient self-confidence to dare to break it. Some exercises follow below to make you aware of rules and conventions and train you to break them. By observing the powerful results that you achieve in the exercises and, with the help of the arguments you read about in the opening parts of the book, you should acquire enough self-confidence to challenge the conventions you come across in your business innovation processes.

Selling bricks You have obtained an unlimited supply of bricks. Spend five minutes thinking out how you could empty your stock and sell them to as many people as possible. You will probably get stuck first of all at the rule which states that you should build houses from bricks and therefore think about how to sell bricks to people who build houses. In the first place, there are generally speaking not many people who build houses – particularly not brick houses. This is usually left to professional builders. In the second place, there is the risk that these professional builders already have working

146 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

relationships with competing suppliers, which could be difficult to challenge. Break the rule and make a list of all the ways of selling bricks in order to appeal to as many people as possible. In the first place, the solutions illustrate the power of breaking away from the rule that bricks are for building houses. Among the alternatives listed there is something for everyone, irrespective of whether we intend to build or even live in, or want to live in, a house (for example, home exercise equipment). Secondly, the solutions show the power of liberating oneself from the convention that bricks must be rectangular and flat. By changing the shape of the bricks, we increase the number of possible uses drastically (for example, chalk, gravel or hair dye). Thirdly, they provide examples of how bricks can act as concepts rather than concrete objects (for example, the brickogram or charity). Fourthly, the examples demonstrate how it’s possible to work on increasing demand for bricks by creating campaigns to increase the basic demand (for example, by boosting the development of ‘gated’ living and thus people’s need to build walls around their homes, and by giving free courses in bricklaying to private individuals). The exercise is an excellent metaphor for the work of increasing sales of an existing product, and also for the work of finding new target

THE FIRST WALL: CONVENTIONS AND RULES / 147

Table 12.1 • • • • • • • • •

• • • •

shoe-rack that absorbs moisture weights for bodybuilding alternative to tiles alternative to painting or wallpapering flooring anchor brickogram (send through the window to someone you don’t like) heat in the oven and put on the table as a table-grill home furnishing, e.g. fireplace, bar, TV bench, shelves, stool, item of outdoor furniture table mat bookend chalk file/rasp

• paint (real terracotta!) • hollow brick in the aquarium for fish to swim through • murder weapon (no licence needed) • charity (sponsor a brick to build houses for the needy) • plate/serving dish • to stand on and train your calf muscles at home • PR campaign for increased demolition subsidy • hammer • modern art • door-stop • candlestick • domino • ice crusher

groups and areas of use. It is a reminder that it is always possible to make more and different things out of the available material. It is also a good way of warming up before work in order to concentrate one’s mental activity on thinking in new and different ways. Table 12.1 shows a selection of common ideas. Perhaps you can add a few.

148 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

The brick exercise can also be used to measure your creative capacity with the help of Guilford’s Alternative Uses Test (named after its inventor). This test involves counting the number of different uses of an ordinary object (or product) you can think of, and is one of the two commonest ways of measuring creativity (we will come to the other, RAT, soon), which are reminiscent of IQ tests. The Alternative Uses Test assesses your creative capacity by giving your uses a score for:

• • •

•

Originality – If less than 5% of the group have come up with a certain use, it is extraordinary. If less than 1% have spotted it, it is unique. Fluency – How many different uses have you spotted? Are you numbered among the top 5%, or even the top 1%? Flexibility – How big is the range between the different alternatives, and are they variations of the same idea or do they differ greatly? The more they differ, the better. Scored on a scale of 1–10 usually. Elaboration – More detailed solutions are more creative; for example, ‘brickogram’ is a cut above ‘throw it through someone’s window’. Usually also scored on a scale of 1–10.

Just as with IQ tests, this test is about comparing with others in the same group. One can either compare the group members with each

THE FIRST WALL: CONVENTIONS AND RULES / 149

other, or make comparisons with others who have done the test on different websites, for example, where the test can be found.

Coat hanger: (im)possible tasks A coat hanger is for hanging clothes on. This means that it is not for anything else and that it cannot be used to do anything else. Or can it? After completing the brick exercise, you can surely come up with a lot of other uses. When you have tired of the bricks and want further inspiration for thinking up new areas of work and target groups, then try thinking about coat hangers instead. But the task now is deliberately to think about what you can not do with a coat hanger. Make a list like the one below. Now take each of the examples on your list and think about which convention or rule prevents you from doing these things. In fact, they can all be done with a coat hanger, can’t they? Let us take the 10 ten spontaneous examples shown in Table 12.2. The first two examples challenge the convention that the coat hanger must be used in its original shape. A wire coat hanger can be bent (an alternative and popular convention among car thieves, not for locking

150 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

Table 12.2 You cannot:

Yes you can, if:

• • • • • • • • • •

• you straighten it out in the shape of a key • it is made of wood, you can break it apart and rub the pieces together • you put it inside your pyjamas behind your shoulders and hang yourself from a hook • there is a text printed on it • it is hollow and contains washing powder • the crosspiece is designed like a thermos • the crosspiece has teeth • it is made of graphite • it is made of ice • it is made of raw pasta

lock up with a coat hanger make fire with a coat hanger sleep on a coat hanger read a coat hanger wash with a coat hanger store food with a coat hanger comb yourself with a coat hanger write with a coat hanger drink a coat hanger eat a coat hanger

but for unlocking cars) and a wooden coat hanger can be broken apart (with a little freshening up of your scouting skills, you can then start a fire). The third example breaks the convention of only hanging up clothes on a coat hanger by hanging up pyjamas with you in them when you need to sleep (to be marketed for people with back trouble or sore limbs, who are at risk of bed sores or other medicinal complaints, or for people who want to be taller: ‘Let gravity do the job while you sleep!’).

THE FIRST WALL: CONVENTIONS AND RULES / 151

The examples that follow break the rule that a coat hanger must be made of a particular material, usually wire or wood. Printing a text on a hanger is nothing new – they often have brand names printed on them. But this can be developed. Take, for example, hangers from the dry-cleaners, which are often wrapped in paper. There is much more space for text. The text could be used for advertisements, or why not for crosswords or reading matter for travel (‘Read a short story on the way and then hang up your jacket when you arrive’)? With the help of new material, the hanger can be developed into completely new products and marketing concepts, for example, ‘wash and store in one’ (hanger with detergent) or ‘take care of your appearance’ (hanger with comb). These examples related to changing the material of the hanger, but just imagine all the further possibilities that open up if you change the shape as well! This exercise is a good metaphor to adopt for becoming aware and reminding yourself that nothing is impossible. We easily get caught up in our perception of what a product is and what can be done with it, but this is only a matter of conventions and rules putting obstacles in the path of development. The exercise also uses the classic trick of starting with what you can not do, which is often easier to think of and use to develop many ideas than focusing on the more rigid perception of what you can do.

152 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

Improving on scissors Everyone uses scissors; they have been used forever and have served many different purposes, and yet during all that time they have remained virtually unchanged as regards their shape and material (two metal blades). Spend a few minutes thinking about what you can do to improve on scissors and list your solutions below. Probably it was easy for you to come up with a number of simple improvements. It is not too difficult, as long as you allow yourself to entertain the thought that scissors can be changed and improved. Table 12.3 shows some simple examples of changes: The first three examples make the scissors more efficient for normal use, which often involves cutting soft materials such as cloth and paper. A ruler on the blade can provide more precision when you are cutting patterns or given lengths, a set square on the blade (possibly even folding in to make it more convenient) can make it easier to cut in a straight line or at right-angles, and a pencil tip on the blade enables you to mark material with the scissors and cut more precisely. The next three improvements make the scissors more user-friendly in general terms. A grindstone means that you never have to worry about

THE FIRST WALL: CONVENTIONS AND RULES / 153

Table 12.3 • • • • • • • • • •

Mark a ruler on the blades for measuring. Set square on the blades for cutting straight or at an angle. Pencil/eraser in the point of the blade for marking out. Grindstone on one of the blades so that the scissors sharpen themselves. Childproof, a lock on the blades so that the scissors cannot be opened. Battery-driven. Extendable handles to increase leverage to cut harder material, for example, glass. Extendable blades for cutting thicker material, for example, bread. Flexible blades for cutting different patterns or difficult angles. A foothold and a spring that opens the scissors when you lift your foot, for cutting grass, for example.

the blades becoming dull and needing to be ground; being able to lock the scissors reduces the worry of leaving them within reach of children; and making them battery-driven means avoiding cramping in the hands when cutting for extended periods of time. The following two improvements break the convention that scissors should be used for cutting soft material such as cloth and paper. With the help of extendable handles, it becomes easier to cut, so that you can also cut harder materials such as glass, and the extendable blades enable you to cut thicker materials such as bread. The next improvement challenges the convention that scissors should have straight blades of metal. By employing flexible blades (perhaps graphite), you can easily cut out other patterns

154 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

and difficult angles. The final improvement breaks the convention that you use your hands to cut with scissors. Putting the scissors under your foot reduces the strain on the back when cutting weeds and such. There are of course many more examples of improvements, which is just the point. An everyday product such as scissors can be improved in a number of different and simple ways. If we also break the convention that scissors must be used for cutting, we can further increase the number of improvements: for example, scissors could become an accessory in different colours and materials or be used as cutlery (knife and fork in one). The exercise is a metaphor for the fact that all products can be improved. Just as in the example of milk at the beginning of the chapter, we tend to be tied down to how something looks and adjust its use accordingly. By thinking in the opposite direction, we can not only strengthen existing uses (and probably sell more scissors that are specialized for these uses) but also develop new ones.

The ping-pong ball in the steel pipe Your ping-pong ball has become stuck in the bottom of a steel pipe, which is cemented to the ground. As the diameter of the pipe is only slightly greater than that of the ball, you cannot reach it with your

THE FIRST WALL: CONVENTIONS AND RULES / 155

hand, and the ball is too far down to be reached with a finger (which would not have helped anyway because there is only a very small gap between the inner wall of the pipe and the ball). Take a couple of minutes and make a list below of different ways of getting the ball up and out of the pipe without destroying the pipe or removing it from the ground. To help you, you have a hammer, an axe and a piece of string. Table 12.4 shows 15 possible solutions. Only a few of the solutions use all three tools. This is a first rule that it is easy to get caught by, that all the tools must be used merely because they are available (so they must be meant to be used). In the examples in the top row, the hammer and the axe are used conventionally (to hammer and to chop), but not in contact with the ball, which is what most people aim at in accordance with convention (‘to get the ball up you have to get at it’). In the examples on the second row, the tools break the rules of both function and form (in order to make fire or become splinters and sawdust). In the examples on the third row, the tools only fill an indirect function. In the last two examples, we are definitely approaching breaks of convention that fit the sentences ‘people would be upset if I …’ and ‘it would feel wrong to …’. In the fourth row, the use of tools ceases entirely and in the last row we have arrived at examples that really break conventions in every

156 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

Table 12.4 Vibrate the ball up by striking the pipe with the hammer in phase until the pipe feeds the ball up. (This can actually be done, ask a physicist.)

Use the axe to dig an underground passage to the bottom of the pipe and let the ball fall down.

Hammer furiously on the ground to simulate an earthquake which shakes up the ball (demands great muscle power).

Rub the wooden handles of the axe and the hammer together and start a fire. Set fire to the end of the string and lower it down to the ping-pong ball, which melts and sticks to the string so that you can pull it up.

Make sawdust of one of the wooden handles with the help of the other tool, and pour it down the pipe until the ball ‘floats’ up.

Use the axe to cut sharp splinters from the hammer’s handle. Tie them together with the string to make a spear, spear the ball and pull it up.

Hammer with the hammer, chop with axe, run on the spot until you have dropped enough sweat into the pipe for the ball to float up.

Injure yourself with the axe, bleed on the string so that the ball sticks to it and can be drawn up.

Injure yourself with axe and drop blood into the pipe until the ball floats up.

Exercise patience and wait until enough rain has fallen for the ball to float up.

Suck the ball up (requires strong lungs).

Blow your nose on the string so that the ball sticks to it and can be lifted.

Cry into the pipe until the ball floats up.

Spit into the pipe until the ball floats up.

Pee into the pipe until the ball floats up.

THE FIRST WALL: CONVENTIONS AND RULES / 157

sense of the word. The last solutions are usually the most difficult for people to consider as they break deeply rooted social conventions, so deeply rooted that they do not even pop into our heads to be rejected. The exercise is a strong metaphor for daring to break patterns and challenge existing rules and conventions. For example, thinking ‘pee in the pipe’ opens up completely new lines of thought and offers solutions that are so foreign to you that they would never enter your head (but are maybe for this very reason particularly powerful and radical).

13 The second wall: common sense

To start with, pushing out the wall of common sense requires the insight that the first solution is not always the best. On the contrary, the rule of thumb is that it is never the best. In order to focus your attention on common sense, you should ask yourself questions of the type: ‘Could anyone have thought of this idea?’ If the answer is yes, then the solution is not a creative result, because someone has probably thought of it already, in which case your solution is neither unique nor meaningful.

Let us start with an exercise that probably feels familiar. Join the dots in Figure 13.1 with a minimum number of lines. It is a fairly safe guess that you joined the dots with four lines in the form of an arrow, in the way that was shown on page 62. At best you remembered the solution and drew it from memory. At worst you looked back to Chapter 6 in order to reproduce the solution. In both cases, you have provided evidence of how we are inhibited by common

160 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

Figure 13.1

sense, as this tells us that there is a certain given solution. Mental activity is therefore focused on finding the given solution as quickly as possible. It is implied by the expression itself, ‘common sense’, that the solution should be found quickly: ‘It must be like this, you can figure it out using common sense without complicating things.’ The first answer is often the right one, and the spontaneous thought as a rule is the best. These are two classic thought tunnels. The brain has its own rewards system, so that we do not overstrain ourselves unnecessarily. From my own research, as well as a number of other studies, it is clear that the earlier a possible solution enters their heads, the better people like it and the greater the probability that they will choose it.

THE SECOND WALL: COMMON SENSE / 161

This rewards process is repeated in almost everything we do (we will return to this in the next part of the book) and has an enormously powerful effect on our thinking. The first thought becomes the obvious thought and becomes the logical thought. It is common sense. But there are two problems with the thought tunnel. In the first place, we established earlier in Part III (Expanding the Box) that innovations that are too easy to produce are not perceived as particularly meaningful in the market. This is partly due to the fact that the innovation is in all likelihood not very unique; many others have thought of the same sort of solution, as it is within such easy reach. It is also partly due to people thinking that the innovation must have been so easy to think of that if it has not been on the market before now, it is probably not worth having. In the second place, the thought tunnel equates logic with one solution, roughly as in the description of the IQ test in the section on shaking the box in Chapter 10, where it was a matter of finding the appropriate pieces of the puzzle. Creativity is about using several pieces, without for that matter compromising logic. In the previous chapter we saw that there are a string of highly logical solutions to the physics problem of determining the height of a building with the use of a barometer. Just as we are inhibited and tied down by the first solution we think of, we are limited by external solutions. This is why it is sometimes

162 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

said that knowledge is inhibiting. We established earlier that this is because the box is too small, so that the pieces of the puzzle cannot be shaken about properly. Now we know that it is the wall of common sense that makes the box too small. In an American experiment, two groups of people were asked to build bridges with building blocks. The first group initially observed some people building other sorts of buildings using a variety of methods, whereas the second group did not see a demonstration before setting to work. Although the experiment was performed a number of times with different people and group compositions, the result was always the same. In the first group, 9 out of 10 bridges were built using one of the methods that had been observed before the start and, on average, less than two different methods were used for the work. The second group used, instead, an average of 10 different methods. While the first group did not see any need to use or develop any more methods – they already had the correct solution – the second group was not limited by anything that set their common sense in motion. As a final parenthesis, it is worth mentioning that the reason so many solutions were in fact reached was that the subjects were working in a group. A single individual would quickly have locked on to one ‘logical’ alternative. To start with, pushing out the wall of common sense requires an insight that the first solution is not always the best. On the contrary,

THE SECOND WALL: COMMON SENSE / 163

the rule of thumb is that it is never the best (for reasons we have dealt with earlier). The second requirement is an understanding that there are always several correct solutions to the same problem. Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, it is necessary to be aware of the fact that two contradictory solutions can be equally logical, and have the ability to express all solutions in logical terms. Humans have a great need to be logical, which is one of the reasons why we find it so difficult to mass-produce solutions: they do not seem very logical. The lack of an equals sign between creativity and logic in many people’s minds is a strong contributory factor to the under-use of the vast flora of books on creativity and creativity exercises in companies and business contexts. The purpose of Parts I and II in this book is to place an equals sign in your mind between creativity and logic: it is logical to be creative because you become a more successful business innovator. The exercises that follow in this chapter are also meant to illustrate how you can apply several parallel logics to the same problem, and four logical solutions must surely add up to more logic than a single logical solution. That is logic. Before we start on the exercises, it may be worth keeping the following general recommendations in mind. In order to focus your attention and identify common sense thinking, you should ask yourself questions of

164 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

the type: ‘Could just anyone have come up with this idea?’ If the answer is ‘yes’ then the solution is not a creative result, because someone has probably thought of it already, in which case your solution is neither unique nor meaningful. Also ask yourself whether you like your solution because it entered your head so quickly (it may not be the whole truth, but is in fact always a part of the truth) and challenge yourself by thinking: ‘Wouldn’t a contradictory solution be just as logical?’

Man with bow-tie stuck in the elevator Unfortunately you cannot do this exercise on your own, because it involves comparing people’s results under two different sets of conditions. Both people and groups are shown the diagram in Figure 13.2. The instructions in both cases are: Explain what the picture represents! That is all the information given to the first person or group, whereas the second person or group is also told: You can for example write ‘man with bow-tie who has got stuck in the elevator’. Then let them list explanations for one or two minutes. In all probability those who have only been instructed to explain what the picture represents will list more solutions than those who were given the example ‘man with bow-tie who was got stuck in the eleva-

THE SECOND WALL: COMMON SENSE / 165

Figure 13.2

tor’. When I have conducted this exercise with groups, the first group usually lists an average of about nine solutions, while the second group gets stuck around an average of five solutions. The first group also has more widely varying solutions (everything from ‘a foghorn on a pole seen from the side’ to ‘beak of an albino penguin looking at itself in a mirror’) while the other group’s solutions are usually variations on the same theme (‘girl with rosette stuck in an elevator’, ‘boy with bow-tie hiding in a cupboard’).

166 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

The exercise is an effective eye-opener about common sense and our capacity to get stuck on a given solution. The first solution tends to become obvious and thus limit further thought by functioning as a yardstick that makes other solutions and ideas seem illogical. The exercise teaches us, firstly, that it can be dangerous to give instructions and examples when introducing people to a task because you lock them in and reduce their capacity to take advantage of their own thoughts. Secondly, it teaches us that it can be a good idea to throw out a solution as quickly as possible (however crude it may be, and it might even be a good thing if it is obviously crude) and then move on without getting stuck in common sense. Thirdly, it implies that it can be a good thing to formulate some solutions yourself when you take on a new task, before turning to a possible ‘key’ in the form of a book of instructions or asking someone how it is usually done. In this way, you acquire a counterweight to taking conventions for granted. The ‘key’ may be better than your own solutions. However, by trying to use your own angles as a starting point, you can more easily liberate yourself from the ‘key’ and increase your chances of making big or small changes to the key’s solutions.

THE SECOND WALL: COMMON SENSE / 167

The rope round the Earth Imagine that you encircle the whole Earth with a long rope. The rope is just long enough to go round if it runs along the ground. You think that the rope is rubbing a bit too much on the ground and are worried that it might break. To reduce friction and provide a bit of slack, you lengthen the rope with a piece of string 3 metres long. To stop the rope rubbing, you now lift the rope from the ground, evenly along its entire length (in itself a little test of your imagination, how to lift the whole rope simultaneously). How far above the ground do you think the rope will be? Think about it a bit before you look at the answer below. The right answer is that the rope will be about half a metre from the ground. Did you get the right answer? Most people usually guess that the height will be about a millimetre, or even a fraction of a millimetre. The reason is, of course, that we are limited by common sense. Common sense tells us that 3 metres of extra rope must make a very slight difference in relation to the circumference of the earth, which is 40 000 kilometres. But let us use the formula for the circumference of a circle (which is the form of the rope encircling the earth). The rope’s length is the same as the circumference (C): C = 2πr

168 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

where π is the constant 3.14 and r is the radius and the increase of the radius is equal to the distance of the rope from the ground. If we extract r from the equation we get: r = C 2π ≈ C 6 When C increases by 3 metres, r = (C + 3)/6 and the actual increase is therefore: (C + 3) 6 − C 6 = 3 6 = 1 2 metre

The answer is mathematically logical and correct. But it is contrary to common sense! The first thing we learn from this is that you cannot trust your common sense: it is wrong. Secondly, the exercise teaches that logic and common sense are not the same thing. Common sense says ‘about a millimetre’ but the logical answer is ‘half a metre’. The exercise is useful if you want to prove to yourself or someone else that common sense can lead in completely the wrong direction: ‘What was that about the rope round the Earth?’

The tennis tournament You must arrange a tennis tournament with 56 participants. The owner of the courts wants to know how many matches you want to book in.

THE SECOND WALL: COMMON SENSE / 169

How many matches do you need in total for the whole tournament, including the final, semi-finals, quarter finals and so on? Think about it for a minute and write down your answer.

The correct answer is that you need to book 55 matches. Did you get it right? Most people make a rough estimate of how many rounds need to be played and the number of players, and guess too highly. Some people go through the wearisome task of dividing the number of players per round and adding up the answers. This gives the correct answer, but takes a long time. You can in fact arrive at the answer 55 matches in a flash by reversing the logic and thinking that at the end there is only one winner. This makes the rest of the players losers. Since every match has a loser and there are going to be 55 losers, this means 55 matches all in all.

This exercise is a good complement to the previous one about the rope round the earth. In the previous exercise we opened our eyes to the fact that common sense has a tendency to incorrectly simplify problems (‘it is obvious’) and lead you in the wrong direction. This exercise opens our eyes to the fact that common sense also has a tendency to falsely complicate things and lead you in the wrong direction for that reason.

170 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

The point is that we almost always have a ‘right and proper’ method for solving a task – common sense tells us to do it like that whether it is simple or complicated. So we start at once solving the problem without realizing that we are very often working in completely the wrong direction.

The letters Below are the first letters of the alphabet. Some of them are placed above the line, and some below. Write a few of the next letters of the alphabet above or below the line, placing them logically. A E F -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------B C D G

How did you continue the series? Probably in one or more of the following ways. The solutions below are those that most often enter people’s heads, but the number of solutions is unlimited.

(1)

A E F H L M O -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------B C D G I J K N P Q R

THE SECOND WALL: COMMON SENSE / 171

(2)

A E F M N O P -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------B C D G H I J K L Q R S T U V…

(3)

A E F L M N -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------B C D G H I J K O P Q R S T U

(4)

A E F H I K L M N -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------B C D G J O P Q R S

(5)

A E F I L M N O -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------B C D G H J K P

(6)

A E F L M N R S -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------B C D G H I J K O P Q

The first solution is the simplest and follows the logical rule of continuing to alternate the number of letters symmetrically, above the line one letter is followed by two, which are followed by one and so on. Below the line three letters are followed by one which is then followed by three. The second solution obeys a mathematical rule: the number of letters above the line is doubled every time (1, 2, 4). The number of letters below the line is equal to the number of letters above the line multiplied by three (3 × 1, 3 × 2, 3 × 4). In the third solution the number

172 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

of letters above the line increases by one (1, 2, 3) and the number of letters below the line is the sum of the number of letters above the line immediately before and immediately after (1 + 2, 2 + 3, 3 + 4). The fourth solution is based on shape, and orders the letters according to the logical rule that the letters containing only straight lines go above the line, and the letters with curves go below it. The fifth solution is based on pronunciation and follows the rule that the letters above the line begin with a vowel (‘a’, ‘e’, ‘eff’, ‘i’, and so on) and those below the line begin with a consonant (‘be’, ‘ce’, ‘de’, ‘ge’, and so on). In the same way the sixth solution sorts the letters according to the rule that soft letters are above the line and hard letters are below it. This exercise illustrates the fact that there are many parallel solutions to a problem that are all equally logical. The insight that one can be perfectly logical and correct in a number of different ways comes as a real surprise to many people. Common sense usually asserts that there is one correct solution, and that is why it is so limiting for our thought processes. Because humans want to be logical, we hesitate to seek more solutions when we have found one that is logical. We then assume that any other solutions we come up with will only be ‘concocted or woolly’. The exercise shows that one can discover a large number of logical solutions. In this way, it increases our inclination to think further and

THE SECOND WALL: COMMON SENSE / 173

explore new solutions because we realize that we can be even more logical. Just as we said earlier in the chapter, several logics should add up to more than one single logic. The letters act as a good metaphor for motivating oneself to discover more and more logical solutions: ‘How can I order the letters in a cleverer way?’

The dots We will now once and for all get to the bottom of the problem of joining the dots with straight lines. Common sense tells us that it can be done with four lines. Your task in Figure 13.3 is to join them with only three lines. You will find the solution in Figure 13.4. The trick is to break the unconscious rule that the line must go straight through every dot, when it is in fact enough if it only touches every dot. This, combined with the insight that you can draw the lines far beyond the area between the dots (‘the invisible box’) makes the solution simple. Now think some more about how you could connect the dots with only one straight line and see how many solutions you can come up with.

174 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

Figure 13.3

In fact there are many ways to join the dots with a single straight line. One solution is to use a very broad-nibbed pen or a paint-brush and draw a thick line over all the dots. A variant of this solution is to reduce the size of the dots in a photocopier until they are small enough to be covered by the stroke of an ordinary pen. Another solution is to fold the paper into a tube so that the edges meet and then draw a line at a slight angle through the first row of dots (in the same way as in the solution with three lines) so that after one revolution of the paper tube the line comes level with the second row of dots, and after another revolution with the third.

THE SECOND WALL: COMMON SENSE / 175

Figure 13.4

176 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

The solution can be varied in many different ways by breaking the unconscious rule that the line always has to stay on the paper. In the most extreme case you can draw the line right round the circumference of the earth and come back level with the dots on the second row. Or draw a line along the table, continue underneath the table and then up onto the other side of the tabletop back to the paper. Or put the paper on the surface of a ball and draw the line round it twice. A third solution is to move the dots closer to each other so that it is possible to draw a line through all of them at the same time. The paper can be folded in many different ways, for example into a fan or a fortune teller (the origami kind you made as a child with names or questions on it) so that parts of all the dots (we have already said that it is enough if the line touches some part of every dot) meet at three points on the fan or at one point in the fortune teller. You could also fold the paper so that the dots are aligned beneath each other and stick the pencil through them in a very short line. (With a little more violence, you could simply fold the paper directly over the pencil so that it punches holes through the dots one after the other.) A fourth solution is to tear the paper, for example into three strips (one strip for every row of dots) which you then line up in a row and draw a line through. A variant of this is to tear or cut out every dot and then thread them over the pencil.

THE SECOND WALL: COMMON SENSE / 177

A fifth solution is of a more philosophical nature. If you enlarge the line or one of the dots to an enormous size it will have such a large mass that it will bend both space and time (ask Einstein). The huge line will attract all the dots, and the huge dot would attract the line and the other dots. You can also do the opposite and let the strange laws of quantum physics do their work. If the line is reduced to a minimum size, it will move through all the dots at the same time (ask Murray Gell-Mann)!

After training themselves to break rules and conventions, my students have started to produce ever weirder solutions, such as burning the paper with the dots, collecting the ash on the table with a credit card, rolling a bank note and snorting a line.

The solutions that we have looked at more closely are only a selection of all the ways in which it is possible to connect the nine dots with a single straight line. The exercise is the perfect way to practise breaking away from common sense. There is no end to the solutions, none of them is the ‘right’ one or the last. For this very reason it is suitable for use over a longer period of time, where you try again and again to solve the problem and find new solutions. It is an excellent warm-up exercise for creative work – an exercise that is never solved and never comes to

178 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

an end. The exercise is also an excellent illustration of how we get stuck in conventions and rules. Several of the solutions above require you to break invisible rules such as only drawing on the paper and not changing the paper’s shape.

14 The third wall: physiology

The most restricting wall of the box, and the one that has the greatest effect when it is pushed out, is the physiology wall – our inability to make use of the capacity of our brains. Moving our thought processes out to the extremities, at one extreme (almost) unconscious daydreaming and at the other focused flow, are two ways of increasing the connections in the brain and making better use of the physiological potential of one’s brain.

Take a handful of coins (if your have no coins, then buttons, raisins or whatever is at hand will do just as well). Throw them onto the table. Look at them for two seconds and then close your eyes. How many were there? You probably failed at this counting exercise. If you succeeded, it was probably because there were far too few coins/buttons/raisins or whatever it was you threw onto the table. If there were five or less, then the

180 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

problem is too easy. If you threw down more than five coins/buttons/ raisins and managed to count them, then you are to be congratulated on being one of a minute fraction of the world population who are blessed with unusually good physiology in the form of a slightly more hard-working brain. This simple exercise tests your ability to use both halves of your brain simultaneously. The left half of the brain can count, but only up to seven plus or minus two units at a time. The right half of the brain can deal with considerably more than these seven plus or minus two units, but, on the other hand, it cannot count. If you only threw down five units or less, then the left half of the brain could easily count them (the minimum number of units a person can count at a time is seven minus two), therefore the task was too easy. If you threw down more than five units, preferably more than nine (the maximum number a person can count at a time is seven plus two), then the left half of the brain could not manage the job on its own and needed the help of the right half. The problem is that the two halves of your brain are not very good at collaborating. It is frightening how limited is our capacity to use our brains. Since it is still a matter of argument what using the brain involves, the estimates of how large a part of our brain we actually use differ greatly. The figures usually land somewhere between 3% and 30% of the brain.

THE THIRD WALL: PHYSIOLOGY / 181

Even at 30%, this reveals that there is a very large part of the brain that we do not manage to use (at ‘best’ 70%). It is worth mentioning that the unused part of the brain is not disconnected and idle, of course. Instead it is a question of not being able to control it consciously or use it for a purpose we have formed. You might think that using only 3–30% of our brain is rather a small amount. Let us therefore do a sum, which can at the same time serve to illustrate what is in fact meant by using the brain. The seven plus or minus two units mentioned above is a representation of our working memory; we can call it our focused attention. Our working memory can handle on average about seven bits of information at the same time. (This limitation explains almost everything we do, and it explains phenomena such as why telephone numbers look the way they do and why we choose between a certain number of competing brands in a purchase context. In addition, it is a contributory factor in rigid markets as we discussed at the beginning of the book.) Neurological research shows that our senses need at least an eighteenth of a second to perceive a piece of information. This means that theoretically we could focus on 7 × 18 = 126 pieces of information per second. Or 126 × 60 = 7650 pieces of information per minute. How many thoughts do you have in a minute? Without counting them (feel free to try), it can be seen that our working memory works far below its physiological capacity.

182 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

Why is our working memory so under-used and why do we find it so difficult to use the greater part of our brains in a focused way? We have touched on the answer a few times earlier in the book. The brain works like a muscle and its main development consists of increasing its density, that is to say, packing it full and making it as dense as possible by constantly creating new connections between its different parts. The potential is enormous. The brain contains over 10 billion neurons (an unimaginable number). In order to make it all a little easier to understand we can imagine that we lay all the dendrites – the threads that connect the neurons – in a line. Our line would be more than 150 million kilometres long, which is the equivalent of stretching 3750 times round the earth. But this is still a tiny fraction of what we would have if we were to connect all the 10 billion neurons in the brain to each other. This is the same principle as we observed in the section on shaking the box, where we saw how every piece of the puzzle gave an explosion of new combinations. Go back if you wish to page 111 and imagine that the number series continues to 10 billion – then you will understand. These very abstract numbers are difficult to grasp properly, but they illustrate the enormous number of components that must be activated to enable us to think. (Bearing this in mind it might no longer seem so surprising that the brain is lazy and that we do not have the energy to

THE THIRD WALL: PHYSIOLOGY / 183

use large amounts of it simultaneously.) They also indicate that the potential is enormous if we can increase the number of connections; particularly if we can increase the connections between the two halves of the brain. If, for the sake of simplicity, we assume that there are an equal number of neurons in each half, then we would jump from 5 billion to 10 billion in the extended number series on page 111. There is not enough paper on Earth to write down such numbers. In experimental studies, it has been found that the products and the marketing that appeal most to people activate both halves of the brain when we experience them. People were asked to look at advertisements or information about various products and brands, and then assess their value. At the same time, the electrical activity of the brain was measured to see which parts of it were activated. In the cases where both halves of the brain were activated, their assessments were clearly more positive. The reason is that people understand the products and the marketing in a better way, because the collaboration between the two halves of the brain makes us observe them both logically and emotionally, and we can see how they work both in detail and as a part of a larger context. Collaboration between the two halves of the brain can give the same power to creative thinking. The right side of the brain sees a larger

184 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

context and can identify new angles of approach and detail that the left side can then work out in more detail. Without help from the right side of the brain, the left side tends to get stuck in habitual ‘logical’ paths. The right side of the brain for its part cannot break down the whole into parts and develop thought. Even increased collaboration between the neurons in one of the halves gives great creative power, because a thought can be developed in more logical steps in the left half of the brain or it can capture a larger context with more parts in the right half. The most restricting wall of the box, and the one that has the greatest effect when it is pushed out, comprises physiology: our inability to make use of the capacity of the brain. This is reflected in the fact that the fastest growing field within the measurement of creativity is the testing of the metabolism of glucose in the brain, which is a measure of how hard the brain works (how much energy it uses). The more the brain works, the more thoughts we can have and the more problems we can work on. The more the brain works, the less it has to compensate with riverbeds and thought tunnels to reduce the burden of work. The paradoxical thing about the physiology wall is that while it is the most concrete and measurable (the figures above are only a selection

THE THIRD WALL: PHYSIOLOGY / 185

and speak for themselves), the methods for pushing out the wall are by far the vaguest and most abstract. Expressed in simple terms, it is a matter of constantly thinking and behaving differently. The psychologist with the difficult name, Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, has discovered for example that an excellent way to increase the complexity and capacity of the brain to focus attention and tackle problems is – to daydream. When we daydream, brain activity is along the borders of the working memory’s ‘focused attention’, and impulses jump between the halves of the brain. Because the brain does not have a problem to solve, it is in no hurry to focus and therefore has no need of riverbeds or thought tunnels. In this way, new parts of the brain can become connected. Csíkszentmihályi also mentions studies that show that when we are in a state, it is the opposite of daydreaming, where a challenge exactly matches our skills (go back to the figure on page 43 if you want to refresh your memory), the total electrical activity of the brain decreases. This state is usually termed flow and is characterized by maximum performance capacity and focus on the task (think, for example, of the best tennis match of your life or when you have had an incredible flow in an examination or solved a crossword in next to no time). The decrease in the total electrical activity of the brain is a sign that you have managed to release energy from those parts of the brain that you cannot control and moved some of it over to your focused attention.

186 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

In other words, when you are in this state, you control a larger part of the brain than you do normally. Moving our thought processes out to the extremities – at one extreme (almost) unconscious daydreaming and at the other focused flow – are two ways of increasing the connections in the brain and making better use of the physiological potential of the brain. One method of stimulating daydreaming is to expose yourself to more impressions. Instead of sitting in peaceful surroundings it can be a good idea to surround yourself with people and activities, which allow your thoughts to wander off for short intervals. As an interesting parallel, a Swedish study of children has found, contrary to what one would expect, a positive correlation between TV watching and intelligence. The explanation seems to be that watching TV gives many quick impressions, which stimulate a daydream-like state. A simple method of heightening the challenge and increasing the flow is to put yourself on a deadline. In the study which forms the basis of this book’s introductory test of your potential as a successful business innovator, it was found that the old expression ‘necessity is the mother of invention’ is in fact true in this respect: people working to a deadline achieve more creative results. Another way to achieve flow is to introduce some form of restriction that decreases your ability to use acquired skills – as, for example, not using graphic tools to analyse and develop a product (something that most people are fairly good at).

THE THIRD WALL: PHYSIOLOGY / 187

Yet another way to increase the use of the brain is to give oneself new and unusual tasks that the brain is not used to tackling. It then has to create patterns and routines for the new task without being able to rely on riverbeds and thought tunnels, and can therefore make new connections between different parts of the brain. Some exercises of this kind follow later in the chapter. Let us now return to the comparison of the brain with a muscle. A muscle not only needs training to become stronger, it also needs the right conditions to benefit from the training. It is usually claimed that less than half of the increase in strength is a direct result of the training; the rest is dependent on rest and nutrition. In a similar manner creativity research has shown that it is, for example, important to avoid high levels of stress. While a reasonable stress level increases the challenge and can lead to flow, the result of high stress is that the brain starts to take shortcuts and avoids making new connections and creating new lines of thought. One way to increase creativity is therefore to trivialize the problems you face, to simplify them to make them appear less complex. In this way, you can gain a great deal from the exercises in this book as metaphors: ‘It is not all about developing new processor techniques in order to meet converging demands in the market under pressure from neigh-

188 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

bouring product categories. It’s about joining the dots or improving scissors!’ In their capacity as metaphors, the exercises can reduce stress by making the work more fun – a factor that recurs in almost all the literature on creativity. Not all the exercises in this particular chapter are suitable as metaphors or as warm-up exercises for group work. This is mainly because they are not as immediately effective as the earlier exercises. New connections in the brain develop over time and eventually increase the possibilities of solving problems of the kind we dealt with in the previous chapters. Nor is it possible to experience the result in the same way as in the earlier exercises. (Compare ‘I can break with convention and pee in the steel pipe’ with ‘I have opened up for new flow in the brain’.) But the exercises are not therefore less important. On the contrary, they are most fundamental to our thinking and well worth the effort. Just wait and see.

The monk A monk follows an overgrown and winding path up a mountain to seek wisdom. He starts off at 9 o’clock in the morning and stops a few times to catch his breath. At 5 in the afternoon he reaches the top of the

THE THIRD WALL: PHYSIOLOGY / 189

mountain. The next morning he wakes up eager to get home to his friends. He starts his descent at 9 o’clock in the morning and follows the same path as the previous day. The downhill slope and the monk’s eagerness allow him to keep going the whole way without stopping and he reaches the foot of the mountain at 2 o’clock. Take a minute to think about whether or not the monk at some point in time will be in exactly the same place on the path as he was the day before. And if so, how can you determine the place and time? Did you solve the problem? Presumably you made some more or less advanced calculations and discovered that you lacked sufficient information. This is because the left half of the brain cannot manage to solve the problem with the information available. But the right half of the brain can answer quickly that the monk is going to be in exactly the same place at some time on both days by simultaneously envisaging the monk’s climb up and his walk down. Somewhere on the path they must meet. And at best you can, through collaboration between the two halves of the brain, follow the monk visually and estimate the time and place. This exercise points to our automatic inclination to use the left half of the brain when we have a problem to solve. But the left half of the

190 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

brain is sensitive to incomplete information and uncertainty, which is precisely what often characterizes creative contexts such as business innovation. Therefore it is invaluable to be able to use the right half of the brain also for logical thinking. How else could Einstein have thought out the laws of the universe, which could only be measured and tested later? The right half of the brain can fill in many gaps in the work of the left half by visualizing and analysing the whole picture. The monk is useful as a way of opening one’s eyes to the limitations of the left half of the brain and as an illustration of the value of collaboration between the halves. It can also function as a metaphor to remind us or others to change our ways of thinking when solving problems that are difficult to grasp: ‘Think of the monk.’

The folded paper exercise Imagine that you have a large sheet of paper, A2 format, lying beside a telephone directory and that the thickness of the paper in both cases is the same. Then imagine that you fold it in half 50 times (this is not easy, in fact it is impossible to fold it so many times because in the end the paper will be too small and too thick to grasp, but let us assume that it can be done). Will the folded paper be thinner than the telephone

THE THIRD WALL: PHYSIOLOGY / 191

directory, equally thick, or thicker? Think about it for a moment and write down your answer. The answer is that the paper will be thicker than the telephone directory. Did you answer correctly? Most people usually guess that the paper will be about as thick as the telephone directory by imagining how the paper is folded again and again and conjuring up a mental image of the growing accordion of paper. But in fact the paper will be appreciably thicker than the telephone directory. If you move the problem from the right to the left side of the brain and calculate logically it is considerably easier to make an accurate estimate. First consider that when you fold the paper it becomes twice as thick (the two halves are positioned on top of each other). When you fold the paper for a second time it again becomes twice as thick (the double halves are placed on top of each other as four quarters of the paper). And so it goes on. Logically it can be summarized with numbers: 2 × 2 × 2 × 2 … or 250, which is to say 1 100 000 000 000 000. If we estimate that the paper is a tenth of a millimetre thick, then after being folded 50 times the paper is 110 billion metres, or 110 million kilometres, thick.

192 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

This exercise complements the previous exercise with the monk by demonstrating the value of altering one’s way of thinking in the opposite direction, from the right half of the brain to the left. It is quite easy to imagine a piece of paper being folded, and we therefore tend automatically to activate the right half of the brain. But as we have stated earlier, the right half cannot think. The left half can easily perform the calculation by collaborating with the right half and visualizing how the paper is folded again and again and constantly doubles in every folded part. The above mathematical calculation is not really difficult, and it seems quite obvious when it is explained from the right brain’s holistic and visual perspective, although you might never have worked out how to do the calculation.

The folded paper exercise opens our eyes to how the logical left half of the brain can solve a problem that the right half cannot handle, but which it would not have been able to solve without the right half as the starting-point. It is the actual shift from one half to the other that generates the thinking power, when you make the left half of the brain more effective by starting from the right half. Folding paper is a good metaphor for jumping backwards and forwards between the halves of the brain in order to find new angles of approach when you are stuck on a problem.

THE THIRD WALL: PHYSIOLOGY / 193

Answering the telephone with the ‘wrong’ hand Try using the ‘wrong’ hand next time you answer the telephone. If you usually hold the receiver in your right hand, change to your left; and if you usually use your left hand, change to your right. You will probably find that it feels stranger than you would expect to make such a small change in routine. At worst you may find it harder to concentrate on the conversation, and you will at least feel ‘merely’ handicapped because you cannot write at the same time or eat fruit or whatever you usually do when talking on the telephone. The reason for the surprisingly noticeable consequences of answering the telephone with the wrong hand is that the brain does not want to make unnecessary effort. It therefore activates precisely those connections that are necessary when you go through different routines. To a certain extent, routines are reminiscent of flow, in the sense that brain activity is reduced by the use of a minimum number of connections. But for the brain to become stronger, it must as we know work exactly like a muscle and make new connections. When you break the routine by taking the receiver in the wrong hand, the brain is forced to make new connections. The situation becomes particularly problematic for

194 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

the brain when the problem does not involve only logical mental activity or only feelings and impressions. It is therefore also particularly beneficial, because new connections can then arise between the halves of the brain. Answering the telephone is a simple combination of tasks for both halves of the brain which must work simultaneously. You must conduct the conversation and think logically, and also deal with impressions from your surroundings while you speak, and perhaps write, draw or something similar.

It is difficult to detect any immediate improvement in your thought capacity after having answered the telephone once with one hand, but when you answer the telephone equally readily with either hand you can also try completing one of the other, more direct exercises in the book and observe that you will, in all probability, do better. By then it is also time to break a new routine.

Answering the telephone with the wrong hand may appear trivial and perhaps even unrelated to developed thought, but history is full of evidence of its effectiveness. Take one of the creative people we examined earlier as an example, Leonardo da Vinci. Naturally he could not in his time answer the telephone, but he constantly devoted himself to challenging life’s simple routines, by writing backwards or using both hands

THE THIRD WALL: PHYSIOLOGY / 195

alternately for every sort of task. One reason that creative people have come to be regarded as a bit strange over the years is precisely that they develop odd talents. As a more current example, we can note that for a while it was popular among business executives to have juggling balls in the office to use while they were thinking. Yet another exercise on the theme of breaking routines is to get out of bed in a new way every day. Put down the other leg first, get out on the other side, bounce up, do a somersault, walk on your hands and so on. Everyone who has done this exercise has testified that they have had a real kick in the development of their thinking after a few weeks. Firstly, the exercise fills the same function as the wrong hand on the receiver – that is, the brain must make new connections. Here mind and body must be even more coordinated: partly because rather more coordination is needed than lifting a receiver, and partly because you must think of and imagine new ways both conceptually (over the bed head) and at the level of practical detail (‘grip the frame and swing over the right leg first’). Secondly, you are in a malleable state close to sleep (when the brain, just like all the muscles of the body, builds and repairs itself) which is favourable for creating new connections. Thirdly, as your first action of the day, it sets your attitude to the challenges that show up later. Finally, the demand for constantly new solutions involves breaking conventions, rules and common sense.

196 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

Professor Balthazar Try walking backwards and forwards in your office next time you have to solve a problem. Or go down town, run or cycle. You should see both a direct result in that you come up with a better solution and an indirect result that appears over the long term – that you have improved your thinking capacity. There was a character called Professor Balthazar on children’s TV in the 1980s. There was a recurring segment in every episode where the professor had to think of a new and revolutionary solution. He did it by walking back and forth, back and forth and thinking until the solution hit him. Whether or not you saw the children’s programme, you are sure to recognize the picture of the great thinker walking backwards and forwards, deeply occupied with his thoughts. This is because creative people have long been associated with movement. Perhaps you have had the impression that they find it difficult to keep still because they get so much energy from their creativity and powers of thought, but in fact the connection is the reverse: it is movement that gives energy to power thought and creativity. We can again state that the brain works like a muscle; and it works better with good blood circulation. Just as you can increase your physi-

THE THIRD WALL: PHYSIOLOGY / 197

cal performance, can bench press heavier weights, can putt the shot further or can run faster if you have warmed up beforehand, the brain also works better when the supplies of blood and oxygen increase. All sorts of amusing psychological experiments have measured how people’s ability to make associations and draw conclusions increases when they are physically active. The physical activity increases the degree of consciousness and the ability to focus and make new connections. ‘Doing a Professor Balthazar’ makes you directly more effective in your thinking by creating favourable conditions in which the brain can work. This is another reason why it was a good idea for business executives to have juggling balls at hand. From a physiological point of view, it is optimum to be focused and use the physical energy for concentrated thinking, but doing a Professor Balthazar by moving about (for example, walking around town) can also increase your consciousness and introduce new impulses. We will discuss this further in the next chapter.

15 The fourth wall: consciousness

Consciousness is as slow as the brain is fantastically fast. One can speak of incubation time. When we actively work on a problem for 15 minutes, then it is chiefly those pieces of the puzzle that are close to each other in our heads that catch on to each other. But if the pieces can be left in our heads for a longer period (‘in the back of your head’), they can await the possibility of catching in other pieces that happen to turn up in some completely unrelated thought process.

Just as humans are used to thinking in certain ways in the form of riverbeds and thought tunnels, we are also used to thinking of thinking itself in a certain way. This became clear in the Chapter 13, the wall of common sense: thinking seems to be about making logical and conscious decisions. But in the previous chapter, we discussed how the brain works – and thinks! – without our being conscious of it. If we want to use the full thinking power of our brains, we must expand the box by pushing out the wall of consciousness.

200 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

‘Gut feeling’

Consciousness

‘The back of the head’

Figure 15.1

In order to increase consciousness, we must pull in two directions, as shown in Figure 15.1. The figures vary among different studies and different random tests of people, but on average it appears that we can process a problem consciously for approximately 15 minutes. This is not a particularly long time, which leaves room for appreciable improvement if we extend our consciousness forward in time. After 15 minutes of conscious work, people are usually ready to present a solution. As we discussed in the chapter on common sense, we often go on clinging to this solution even after further thought and even after other alternatives turn up later. But the solution does not take 15 minutes to come up with: it often pops into our heads before we are even conscious of it. If we can become conscious of the solution at an earlier stage, we can work on it and alternative solutions for a longer time with better results. Solutions and ideas that we have not had time to process consciously are commonly known as ‘gut feelings’. Gut feeling does not of course

THE FOURTH WALL: CONSCIOUSNESS / 201

come from the gut, but from the brain, but because we are not conscious of the thought processes, we feel that they must be coming from somewhere other than the head. Thus the gut. A number of interesting experiments have been conducted which show how the brain reacts so quickly that we do not have time to be conscious of it. In one such experiment, people were shown words on a computer screen so rapidly that they did not have time to read them consciously. The subjects could not say what the words were, but they could correctly say whether they were positive or negative. Without being conscious of the words ‘food’ and ‘family’ they answered positively, just as they answered negatively to words such as ‘evil’ and ‘danger’ without being conscious of them. In another experiment, people had to choose cards from one of two piles. Using a complicated system, they were rewarded with money or punished by losing money depending on the order in which they took a card from one of the piles. On average, it was about the 70th turn before subjects could consciously understand the system and choose cards from the correct pile. But after 30–60 cards everyone could choose correctly on the basis of ‘a feeling they had’. No one could consciously explain how the system worked, but they managed to chose correctly each time. In fact, after 7–13 turns, long before the subjects had even developed a feeling for the right or wrong choice, they began to choose

202 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

correctly. The explanation of this experiment and the experiment with the quickly displayed words is that the brain thinks long before we are conscious of it. Therefore, by listening and using our ‘gut feelings’, we can increase our consciousness and employ more of our thinking. Increasing our consciousness in the opposite direction, beyond the 15 minutes of active processing, has been an object of interest for researchers into creativity throughout the ages. One can speak, as in medical research, of incubation time. Just as a virus needs time to establish itself in the body before disease breaks out, problems and solutions need time to establish themselves in the brain and become connected to the right neurons and associations. When we actively work on a problem for 15 minutes, it is chiefly those pieces of the puzzle that are close to each other in our heads that latch on to each other. But if the pieces can be left in our heads for a longer period (in the back of your head), they can await the possibility of latching onto other pieces which happen to turn up in some completely unrelated thought process. The incubation period of a virus, which cannot attach itself to all the molecules of the body but must wait until the ‘right’ molecules arrive, works in exactly the same way. Consciousness can also be expanded in a downward direction, as in Figure 15.2. We have already discussed gestalt psychology – our need

THE FOURTH WALL: CONSCIOUSNESS / 203

Consciousness

Gestalt

Detail

Figure 15.2

to see the whole picture – in connection with our first encounter with the dot-joining exercise in Chapter 6. This need explains why people often fail in the test where they are shown pictures for very short periods: their consciousness has become stuck at the ‘whole’ level, the gestalt level, and they therefore fail to notice the altered clues at the detailed level. Experiments have been conducted in which the subjects were first asked to read stories then tested on how well they remembered the content. One group was instructed to remember the story, another was only told to read it. The test that followed showed that the first group remembered less of the content than the second. The explanation is that the consciousness of the first group was fixed on the whole in order to make it easier to remember, and therefore they missed all the details

204 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

and developments in the stories, which the second group found easier to assimilate. In order to have the maximum number of pieces of the puzzle to combine, you must get past the gestalt and become conscious of the details. You can then make many more combinations (as in the example on page 110 of shaking the puzzle box and producing all sorts of funny hand–foot animals instead of ‘merely’ arriving at the intended Donald Duck subject). By focusing on details, you can find solutions that you would never otherwise have thought of. (The example of milk from the conventions and rules in Chapter 12 also fits in here. Attention to the detail container gave a completely new product, which might never otherwise have seen the light of day if the drink itself and its characteristics had been the only focus of attention.) To this we can add that small changes often lie behind successful innovations. The following exercises train you to expand your consciousness both backwards and forwards in time and to see new details and possible combinations.

RAT RAT is short for Remote Associates Test. In the section on shaking the box (see page 269), we discussed how creative people are both unusually

THE FOURTH WALL: CONSCIOUSNESS / 205

skilful at solving associative tests and enjoy doing them more than others. RAT was developed in the 1960s and has frequently been used since then in tests of creativity and understanding how creativity works. The test involves finding common denominators for apparently completely unrelated words by making remote associations. The test comes in two forms. In its simpler form, the test subject is given a number of words (for example, 50) to choose from, whereas in the more difficult (and more usual) form, they must search for words in their own minds. Below are three degrees of difficulty of the second form of RAT, where you must make remote associations yourself. In addition to testing your conceptual creativity, it is also an excellent indication of how limiting your consciousness is. The difficult part is to obtain of a sufficiently large number of widely differing pieces of the puzzle to combine with the words in the series. Each series consists of three words. In the column at the far right, you must fill in the word (a remote association) that can fit in with the other three words in the series. The words are taken from an actual American test. We start in Table 15.1 with the lowest degree of difficulty. To help get you started, the first answer, foot, has been entered. Foot is the remote association that can combine with athletes (athlete’s foot), web combines through

206 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

Table 15.1 athletes shelf sea car board walker cookies chocolate lounge keel

web read home swimming magic main sixteen fortune hour show

rabbit end stomach cue death sweeper heart tin drink row

foot

webbed feet, and a rabbit’s foot is lucky. As you can see the connection is fairly far-fetched, which is the whole point, to measure your ability to make far-fetched connections. What are the solutions to the other word series? The correct answers are on page 210 (Table 15.4). How many did you get right? The average is 6 right with a range between 4 and 8. If you had more than 6 right, you are therefore above average and if you got more than 8 your conceptual creativity is very good. On the reverse side, your creativity is reasonable down to a score of 4, but if you had lower than that you need to train up your consciousness. Just as it has

THE FOURTH WALL: CONSCIOUSNESS / 207

been shown that you can train your IQ by doing IQ tests (that is, if IQ tests measure IQ, because you can improve your score continuously by doing IQ tests repeatedly), you can of course train your creativity and expand your consciousness by doing RAT tests. But when you have reached a certain limit you need stronger resistance to enable you to continue developing. You can then go on to Table 15.2, which is of medium difficulty. Again, the correct answers are on page 210. As you can see, the associations are more far-fetched this time and the test requires you to broaden your consciousness. When we see how the results of the test are usually

Table 15.2 hot head stalk bald room surprise widow red mouse cherry

butterflies street trainer screech Saturday line bite go sharp time

pump dark king emblem salts birthday monkey car blue smell

208 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

distributed, it is clear that most people need to push out the wall of consciousness in order to expand the box. The average result on the medium-hard association test is a modest 3 right. The normal range goes all the way down to only 1 right, and if you got more than 6 right, you are above it. As a real challenge to broaden your consciousness, you can tackle the test on Table 15.3, which is of maximum difficulty. Do not be in a hurry to check the correct answers; leave the words alone in your mind and let the ‘back of your head’ work on them. Eventually you will find the remote associations.

Table 15.3 bass chamber desert base inch soap blood skunk jump shopping

complex staff ice show deal shoe music kings kill washer

sleep box spell dance peg tissue cheese boiled bliss picture

THE FOURTH WALL: CONSCIOUSNESS / 209

The average result in the difficult test is in fact 0.5 right. In other words, there is no reason to feel down if you did not manage to combine a single word series with the help of a remote association. But if you were to get 3 right, then according to the statistics you are very creative and have an extensive consciousness. One thing to note about these tests is that RAT mainly tests conceptual creativity in the form of words and their associations. This comes quite naturally to those who want to test their potential as a creative business innovator and, above all, have a use for conceptual creativity in that role. But in the previous chapter we examined how the work of the other half of the brain, which could be tested with pictures for example, is equally important. With these reservations in mind we can state that the RAT tests fill several important functions. Partly, they are a common variant of direct measurements of creativity that can be compared with IQ tests. In this way, you can test your own creative capacities and those of others. They also act as an eye-opener for how narrow your consciousness is, and how difficult it is for you to grasp remote associations. And most important of all, they are perfect training for expanding consciousness and making you more skilful at handling many widely divergent associations simultaneously. You can do the tests again and again (as long

210 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

Table 15.4 correct answers to tests Easy test

Medium-hard test

Hard test

foot book sick pool black street sweet cookie cocktail boat

stomach light lion eagle bath party spider stop cheese blossom

deep music dry ball square box blue cabbage joy window

as you do not memorize the answers) and you can develop yourself by constructing tests with your own word series.

Changing details Try changing small details in your daily life. Your first challenge will be to identify different details in your routines and behaviour. We seldom think about them, but they have a strong indicative value. Little acts like holding the door open or staring dreamily out of the

THE FOURTH WALL: CONSCIOUSNESS / 211

window on the bus gives other people a strong impression of you as a person. Observe what happens when you change these details. Start by changing one detail per day in your breakfast routine (if you live with someone) or in your morning routine when you come to work or to school. It might mean not drinking juice for breakfast or not hanging up your jacket when you come through the door. You may not get a reaction the first day, but within a few days you will see that the people around you ask either why you are doing it in a new way or why you are not doing things in the usual way, or else they will become curious and wonder what is wrong or new about you without really being able to put their finger on what it is. You will probably be surprised by how well the people close to you know the details of your routines – details which perhaps neither you nor they were aware of before you changed them. You will also notice that you are seen as a more exciting person when you change these small details, because our lives and the impressions we make on others comprise many small details that we do not think about but which make a (predictable) whole. The exercise can also be used in a group context by giving one person the task of changing a few details in his or her behaviour and the others

212 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

are then asked to identify it and describe their impressions. This has partly the effect of training everyone’s consciousness, and partly it gives everyone food for thought about their real views of people, what that view is based on and how it can be changed. (‘You became colder. You seemed to be such a warm person. Because you lean forward when you sit!’). This exercise is excellent training for increasing your consciousness and capturing more impressions. Merely by being conscious of details, you have increased your creative capacity considerably, partly because you have increased your capacity to match several different associations and phenomena simultaneously (exactly as in RAT) and partly because you have increased the number of pieces of the puzzle and possibilities for combinations in your environment. In addition, this exercise opens your eyes to the indicative value of details. Just as we stated in the section on the creative result on page 69, it is not the big changes and novelties that make a product or concept creative and groundbreaking, it is rather its meaningfulness. In this exercise, you have gained evidence that small details are very meaningful. This clears the way for a completely fresh focus and possibilities in your creative work.

THE FOURTH WALL: CONSCIOUSNESS / 213

Quick and slow solution You can do this exercise in two ways, either in a group or by yourself. In the group version, you adopt the same approach as in the common sense exercise in Chapter 13, which involved explaining what the picture (of a man with a bow-tie stuck in an elevator) represents. In stage 1, a group of people are given the task, to be solved individually, of solving a problem in 5 minutes (for example, thinking up a new slogan or a suggestion for improving the marketing of chewing gum). A second group is given the same individual task to be solved in 30 seconds. Then in stage 2 the members of the second group are a little nonchalantly (so that they will not take it too seriously and think too hard about it) given the challenge of thinking about whether there is a smarter solution. The next day (or the next time they meet) the second group is again given 30 seconds to solve the problem. When you compare the results between the groups in stage 1, you will notice first of all that the different solutions in the second group are often as good as and sometimes better than the solutions the members of the first group suggested. The reason that they are as good is that ‘gut feeling’ (our instant connections in the brain) often controls our ongoing thinking although we are not aware of it, and the quick solu-

214 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

tions are therefore unpolished but similar versions of the 5-minute solutions. The quick solutions are sometimes better because the extra minutes of work tend to ‘smooth the rough edges’ of the original idea and make it stick out less and therefore lose some of its penetrative power.

When we look at the results from stage 2, when the second group found new solutions on the following occasion, we will certainly observe that the solutions are considerably sharper than the 5-minute solutions from the day before. This is because the members of the second group used ‘the back of their heads’ and employed more of their consciousness than the first group in spite of only being focused for 2 × 30 seconds compared to 1 × 5 minutes. By kick-starting your mental activity as quickly as possible (‘spit out a solution in 30 seconds’) the brain can keep the problem in consciousness (‘in the back of the head’) for a longer period of time, where it can then be matched with apparently unrelated pieces of the puzzle which jump in and out and get caught in completely new combinations.

You can do the exercise yourself by tackling a problem as in the group exercise, or by solving one of your current problems in the same way. Throw out a first spontaneous solution as quickly as you can, then wait

THE FOURTH WALL: CONSCIOUSNESS / 215

a day and do the same thing. This can be repeated for several days and there is really no limit to how long it can go on. Normally there are external restrictions or you run out of patience. But if you try to solve a few problems in this way, your patience will increase when you see the powerful results, and you will probably be able to overcome potential external restrictions.

Apart from the obvious advantage of lengthening consciousness, the quick and slow solution exercise has the additional advantage of counteracting common sense. Quickly throwing out a solution means that you do not feel as limited by it (‘ha! I just reeled it off’) and you can easily understand that there must be further and better solutions. If the quick solution is also a bit odd, then it will change your frame of reference as to what constitutes a possible solution, so that you accept many different solutions at a later stage than you would otherwise have done.

Anti-jeopardy How many words do you need to describe an object or phenomenon (for example, a stereo or an evening at the cinema) without others

216 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

guessing what it is? The more clues you can leave without others knowing what it is, the more creative you are.

This exercise can be done in pairs or in a group, where one person gives new words and the others guess. You can also do it yourself by looking for qualities that are not obvious when you think of an object or a phenomenon. This provides training in expanding your consciousness so that you see the maximum number of details in what you observe and find things that you normally would miss or do not think about. When you have done the exercise a few times, you will notice that you have become considerably more sharp-sighted and that you see most of what is around you from new angles and in completely different ways. This opens up new possibilities for your thinking and new pieces of the puzzle to be combined into creative results.

This exercise is often used among artists, where it has long been known that one of the main reasons why many people are not very good at painting and drawing is that they are too unconscious. We do not see and cannot conjure up for ourselves sufficiently detailed pictures of things to be able to depict them. An important part of the artist’s training is therefore not to paint but to see and increase his or her consciousness. Similarly, it is a prerequisite of developing new concepts and

THE FOURTH WALL: CONSCIOUSNESS / 217

achieving creative results that you can see and be conscious of all the pieces of the puzzle and the possibilities that are available. Anti-jeopardy is an effective metaphor for reminding yourself and others to see what we do not see and finding new solutions in the material we do have by looking at it from other points of view.

PART IV Filling the Box In this part:

• • • • •

There’s no such thing as ‘useless’ knowledge The brain is lazy The power in brands Associations The context rules

‘To be successful, you need to challenge yourself and your business continuously, to think creatively and innovatively, and learn more all the time. In this part, we’re going to take a closer look at four aspects of human behaviour that can contribute new pieces to your puzzle to put in your box, so that when you shake it you’ll get more combinations to interpret.’

16 There’s no such thing as ‘useless’ knowledge

These three central areas of knowledge will assist you in finding promising combinations – demographic trends, economics and business, and human behaviour, drives and motivation. But to be successful, you need to challenge yourself and your business continuously, think creatively and innovatively, and keep learning more all the time.

In this book’s initial test of your potential to become a successful business innovator, we asked three questions aimed at measuring some essential knowledge for you to become creative, innovative and successful. Firstly, you need to be knowledgeable about people’s behaviour, their motivations and drives, because all business begins and ends with people and how they are likely to respond to what is being offered to them. In the encounter with the consumer, whether you are selling a car or a bag of sweets, it’s obvious to most people that you need to understand what

222 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

people want to enable you to use the right arguments – to offer them cars (or bags of sweets or whatever) that they can’t resist. The same applies to business-to-business and in relation to other players or stakeholders. For example, whether you are selling components for cars or ingredients to make sweets, you are much more likely to succeed if you: (1) understand your customer’s business, that is, how your customer in turn will be able to put together as appealing an offer as possible to the consumer; and (2) can demonstrate how your components or ingredients will help your customer to create a highly appealing offer that consumers will not be able to resist. Nor should we forget that your customer is every bit as much a human being as the consumer, and that your customer also has motivations and drives to which you must appeal. Knowledge of human behaviour, drives and motivations is absolutely fundamental in all business. You need it for each and every puzzle, so that you can stimulate the bisociations that will help you to succeed. For this reason, this part of the book focuses on pieces of the puzzle that can be useful in the context of all business innovation, no matter what the actual focus of your business. But before we start coming to grips with these, let’s first take a closer look at the other essential areas of knowledge investigated in this book’s initial test of creativity.

THERE’S NO SUCH THING AS ‘USELESS’ KNOWLEDGE / 223

The second question in the test measured your knowledge of economics and business. Previously in the book, we’ve seen examples of the fact that it is very seldom the best product that wins. Success is instead based on other factors, among which a sound knowledge of economics and business is essential to be a winner. These days, it’s difficult to create a superior product and to maintain a market position based solely on the superiority of your product’s characteristics. In the first instance, global competition virtually guarantees that there will almost always be some other company somewhere that can make a similar product with even better characteristics. Secondly, as a rule many alternative technologies can produce more or less the same result in the eyes of the consumer – alternative technologies that you cannot protect yourself against through patents. Thirdly, people are generally not interested in or knowledgeable about the nitty-gritty details of different products, and in any case they will find it difficult to judge which product has the most superior characteristics. By getting their products to market fast and reaching many consumers, companies can create what are termed network externalities, which means that your business creates dependencies inside other businesses. Microsoft, for example, has been highly successful in creating network externalities. Since so many people and businesses use Microsoft’s products, it has become very difficult for companies operating in any

224 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

computer-based business not to use Microsoft’s products. Similarly, we can say that Coca-Cola has created network externalities. Because so many people prefer Coca-Cola and associate the entire category of soft drinks with this corporation’s product, it is virtually impossible for supermarkets, grocery stores, kiosks, etc., not to stock Coca-Cola. They would risk losing appeal in relation to their customers and thus risk losing their business. Getting your product to market quickly also gives people a chance to get used to the product. People’s preferences and behaviours are, in fact, quite difficult to alter once established! In the early chapters of this book, we looked at the kinds of obstacles you can be faced with as a new player in an established market as a result of first-mover advantages, the scale advantage and double jeopardy. In the opposite direction, these forces work to the benefit of the agents who are the fastest to penetrate the market with their products. It’s also part of the scale advantage that a big player in the market will be in a better negotiating position in relation to other companies (with respect to components, distribution and licensing, for example), and that this player will be able to make their production more efficient. Understanding the scale advantage also implies, however, that companies need to work with other players in the market. It’s difficult (if not

THERE’S NO SUCH THING AS ‘USELESS’ KNOWLEDGE / 225

impossible) for a company to establish itself and flourish in the market alone. That is why it’s important to utilize the power of other companies through mutual exchange in the form of joint venture projects and networks, for example. The creators of a successful business not only need to be able to sell their product to customers, they must also include in their calculations the need to conceptualize and promote their business to other companies with whom they are working. So it’s a very good investment in becoming a successful business innovator to fill your box with new pieces of the puzzle that deal with economics and business. This way, you can ensure that your creative result will be feasible, too. The third question in the test referred to knowledge about demographic trends. To be a successful business innovator, you need to have your ear to the ground, ready to discover new opportunities before others do. To achieve a true creative result, you must make your product meaningful to people. You can seek and find this meaningfulness in people’s everyday lives. As a rule, we create meaning based on our day-to-day experiences and environment. When our daily lives change, opportunities arise for new creative results (new products, concepts), since these changes mean that people will be subject to new experiences and environments to which they need to relate. Demographic trends are not concerned with abstract issues such as globalization, but with very

226 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

concrete phenomena such as car tolls, the latest and hottest soap opera on TV or the shortage of student housing. By consistently monitoring the changes affecting people’s everyday lives, you will be creating your own hotbed for bisociations. And the more concrete your observations, the more meaningful your creative result has the potential to be.

There is no ‘useless’ knowledge We concluded earlier that there is no such thing as ‘useless’ knowledge. Everything you learn can be of benefit to you – not just what you learn about people, business and demographic trends. All the pieces of your puzzle have the potential to create powerful bisociations in the right combination. The challenge is in fact to find the right combination. And this is precisely what these three central areas of knowledge can help you to do. (1) Knowledge about demographic trends relates to people’s everyday lives, into which your product must fit or that your product can develop. (2) Knowledge about economics and business relates to the implementation of your creative result and the potential for making your product successful and profitable. (3) Knowledge about people and their behaviour, drives and motivations helps you to interpret the combinations you get from shaking the box and predict people’s reactions to them.

THERE’S NO SUCH THING AS ‘USELESS’ KNOWLEDGE / 227

The aim of this part of the book is not to give you all the pieces of the puzzle you need to be a successful business innovator. If it was that easy, everyone would be a star business innovator! To be successful, you need to challenge yourself and your business continuously, to think creatively and innovatively and learn more all the time. In this part of the book, we take a closer look at four aspects of human behaviour that can help you along the way: conceptual fluency, brand gravity, associative networks and context effects. What they have in common is that they affect human behaviour in general, particularly our reactions to products, and even more particularly, their marketing. These four aspects are easy to understand and apply in your creative work, making it easier to choose new pieces of the puzzle to put in your box, so that when you shake it, you’ll get more and better combinations to interpret.

17 The brain is lazy

We acquire habits that are difficult to break, and we are generally disinclined to change our behaviour. This is one of the most important reasons why so many innovations fail. The adjustments they required in human behaviour were simply too great. The brain tends to choose products based on preconceived patterns, which works to the advantage of established companies and brands.

Just as the brain has a tendency to get stuck in particular ways of thinking (riverbeds and thought tunnels), our choices and preferences within product categories become fixed due to what is termed conceptual fluency. Put simply, conceptual fluency means that we find it easy to understand and relate to a particular concept. By concept we mean here a product or a product category. The easier it is to understand what insurance or a car is, the better we like it. Understanding what insurance or a car is at first glance might appear to be trivial in this discussion. Surely everyone knows what cars and insurance are, and this is true for most product categories. But as

230 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

we know, the brain is lazy and doesn’t like to exert itself more than absolutely necessary, so the faster it can understand something, the happier it will be. In other words, you can say that the faster an answer comes to mind, the better we like it (irrespective of whether it is actually right or wrong, since your brain considers that it is right if it comes quickly to mind). Our views of product categories are based on conceptual fluency, as illustrated in Figure 17.1. We learn about a product category through our contact with a variety of products and our experiences of them. When you think ‘car’, you think of different brands of cars that you know, such as Volvo, Saab, Ford, BMW, Nissan, etc., and this is how you get your concept of cars. The lines in Figure 17.1 above represent the conceptual flows between companies and the product category. As you can see, the market leader

Company A Company B

Product category

Market leader

Company D Company C

Figure 17.1

THE BRAIN IS LAZY / 231

has a thicker line than the other companies, which refers to the fact that the conceptual fluency in relation to the market leader will be stronger. When people think about the product category in general, they will tend to think first of the market leader and that is why the market leader has a bigger impact than other competing companies on how we perceive the product category. It is rather like McDonald’s coming to mind first when you think about fast food, or about Coca-Cola when you think about soft drinks. In this way, these companies define their product categories more than their competitors do and they are evaluated more positively (this becomes a circular argument in people’s minds: McDonald’s means fast food … means McDonald’s). Often this is because the market leader was first to get its product to market and fastest to penetrate the market, and therefore was involved in introducing the product category when it was new (first-mover advantages). But this does not have to be the case. In fact, no matter how it occurs, the strongest conceptual flow wins – hands down. The faster we think of a product, the more that product will be favoured by the brain because it saves us energy, and consequently the better we will like the product. In experiments with thousands of people, we measured their attitudes to and choice of brands in a range of product categories such as coffee

232 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

and jeans to test the effects of the conceptual fluency of brands. As anticipated, the experiment showed that the more rapidly people thought of a brand, the better they liked it, and the more likely it was that they would choose that brand. The conclusion of our experiment was that the most important goal for any business is to increase the conceptual flow from the product category to their product. If they can achieve that, consumer liking for and choice of their brand will follow automatically. In addition, other studies have shown that conceptual flow can change direction once it becomes sufficiently strong. The company that has achieved the strongest conceptual flow has also assured the direction of that flow from the product category to their company (Figure 17.2). This means that people who think about the

Company A Company B

Product category

Market leader

Company D Company C

Figure 17.2

THE BRAIN IS LAZY / 233

product category will think first of that particular company (‘I’m hungry and I want some fast food … McDonald’s!’). For other competing companies with weaker conceptual flow, the direction of the flow will instead be largely from the company to the product category (‘Hmmm, Burger King … fast food!’). This means that the market leader has a dual advantage from its strong conceptual flow. Firstly, the market leader is likely to be at the top of people’s minds when they think about the product category. Secondly, other competing companies will tend to remind people about the product category because of the reverse direction of conceptual flow for them, which in turn makes people think of the market leader. To avoid the conceptual flow that is initiated in the minds of consumers by the products that lead straight back to the market leader, many brands try on cut this connection by positioning themselves in a subcategory, as Company C has done in Figure 17.3. By saying ‘we serve vegetarian fast food’ or ‘we are the ethical investment fund’ or ‘we sell electric-powered cars’, you create a subcategory that effectively blocks conceptual flow in the minds of the consumers from your company to the product category and back to the market leader. Instead, your company can enjoy the benefits of the same reversal of direction of conceptual flow in the subcategory that the market leader has for the product category. Such a strategy has been demonstrated to be effective

234 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

Company A Company B

Product category

Market leader

Company D Positioning/ subcategory Company C

Figure 17.3

in experiments in which people were made aware of a certain brand with the addition that it belonged to a subcategory (for example ‘Meaning Green – vegetarian fast food’) and they then selected this brand more often in preference to the market leader for the product category. There are, however, two problems with positioning yourself in a subcategory to increase conceptual flow towards your company. Firstly, only a fraction of people will readily think about the subcategory – many more people will think ‘car’ than ‘electric-powered car’. In other words, the company will limit itself by being positioned in a subcategory.

THE BRAIN IS LAZY / 235

Secondly, all subcategories ‘leak’. Electric-powered cars remind people to a certain extent of the product category ‘car’ and lead their thoughts into other conceptual flows. This is the explanation behind the rigid markets and market ceilings that we looked at in Chapter 4. Either the conceptual fluency of your product in the minds of consumers will be too weak to be a new company in the market, or you will limit yourself by attempting to position yourself in a subcategory. In addition, the more mature the market, the more subcategories it will have developed and the greater will be the competition in each of these subcategories. In studies it has been found that new products that create subcategories end up winning a smaller share of the market and achieving a lower level of profitability in the long term than new products that position themselves at the level of the product category. In order to break free from rigid markets and achieve stronger conceptual fluency in relation to your product, you can work upwards instead of downwards by positioning in a new product category, preferably by merging two existing categories. By establishing a new product category, you maximize conceptual flow in the minds of consumers between your company and the category and avoid competition from other companies where conceptual fluency in relation to their products is well established. But you will instead be confronted with the problem of creating an understanding of the new product category in people’s

236 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

minds. People must be able to understand quickly and easily what use the product category is to them, and it must be something that springs to mind often. By merging two (or more) product categories, you can increase understanding for the new product category and, at the same time, maximize the conceptual fluency in relation to your product (Figure 17.4). People will then readily think about the category and thus readily think about your product. By establishing a new product category with strong conceptual fluency in relation to your product, you can create new products and new marketing concepts for your existing products. Examples of new products include functional foods, which combine healthy/medicinal properties

New product category

Company A

Product category

Market leader

Company A

Product category

Market leader

Company D Company D Company B

Company C

Your product

Figure 17.4

Company B

Company C

THE BRAIN IS LAZY / 237

with food, mental training that combines therapy with sport (sports psychology) and Kinder Egg or Kinder Surprise, that combines confectionery with a toy. The product development behind Kinder Surprise was minimal, and was mainly concerned with developing a successful new marketing concept. The best option is to communicate the name of the new product category by relating it closely to the original categories from which it has been derived as this will ensure that conceptual fluency is maximized and people can immediately create a picture in their minds and understand what the product offers. Not only will the new product category be easier to understand, it will also be helped along by the merged product categories generating conceptual fluency to the new product category, as shown in Figure 17.4. Our habits contain an additional aspect of understanding. People have a tendency to display what we can call ‘Newtonian’ behaviour. This expression refers to the fact that our behaviour seems to follow Isaac Newton’s laws of motion: i.e. that objects have their own inertia, which means that they do not change state willingly. To put an object that is at rest in motion requires energy, and to stop or change the direction of an object already in motion also requires energy. And that is just the manner in which humans function routinely. We create habits that are

238 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

difficult to break, and we are loath to change and learn new ways of behaving. This is one of the most important reasons why so many innovations fail. The adjustments in human behaviour that they required were simply too great. Just think of how difficult it once was for banks to get people to stop visiting their branches and instead start using automatic teller machines, or using PCs to do their banking. If it hadn’t been for the big savings involved for the banks – making their effort and the time required to get people to change these behaviours worth while – these changes might never have happened. Because of our predisposition to Newtonian behaviour, it’s important to know people’s habits and try to relate to their existing behaviour patterns when you are trying to establish a new product category. Instead of doing something completely new, it’s about ‘doing something else but in a similar way’. The enormous power of conceptual fluency and the potential it has to create a new product category is summarized in Figure 17.5. It shows the results from a big American study of 160 brands in over 40 different categories covering a wide range of products including computers, newspapers and magazines, clothing and sweets. The researchers were looking for the common denominator that distinguished successful brands from the others across all types of products.

THE BRAIN IS LAZY / 239

Brand communication

42 %

Brand sales

11

%

27

%

Brand reputation

56 %

23 %

Market share 19 %

Brand awareness

−17

%

Other competitors

41

%

Relative price

Brand uniqueness

Figure 17.5

The researchers found that brand reputation is the common denominator affecting all aspects of the success of the brand in terms of sales, market share and relative price. Brands with a strong reputation sell bigger volumes irrespective of the size of their markets. They have a stronger position in their markets because they have a bigger market share and can charge a higher price than their competitors. Brand reputation was measured by asking over 4000 people their views on the brands. The brands with the strongest reputation were characterized by people perceiving them as successful, well-known and reliable.

240 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

To the far left of the figure are the factors that result in people perceiving a brand as successful, well-known and reliable, which leads to a strong brand reputation. At the top is brand communication, in the form of advertising and other communications activities. It is worth noting that brand communication has a direct impact on sales. This also backs up the reasoning in our previous discussion that you can generate conceptual fluency and be at the top of people’s mind without necessarily being the market leader. The market leader has a natural head start, but companies that come after the leader can narrow the gap by maximizing their presence. The more often people hear and see the brand, the more readily (faster) they think about it and choose it. As we can see, there is a strong link between brand awareness and brand reputation. The figures show that brand awareness has a 56% effect on brand reputation, which means that if brand awareness is increased by 10%, reputation will increase by 5.6%. This shows how strong conceptual fluency can be. When the brand comes to mind more readily than others, the brand appears to be more and more successful, well-known and reliable. People thus become significantly more likely to purchase that brand and pay a higher premium. The number of competitors and brand uniqueness mirror each other. The fewer the competitors, the more unique is the brand. The main

THE BRAIN IS LAZY / 241

difference is that the number of competitors is measured as actual competitors in the same product category, while brand uniqueness is measured by asking people how unique they perceived the brand to be. Not surprisingly, we can see that perception of brand uniqueness has by far the bigger effect of the two. The effect of brand uniqueness on brand reputation illustrates clearly the power in establishing and defining a new category instead of jostling for position with other companies in a mature product category. By communicating a new category and a new concept, the brand is not compared with those of other companies but creates for itself a unique position and reputation. This study functions as a good way of summing up this section on conceptual fluency. The brain tends to choose products based on preconceived patterns, which works to the advantage of established companies. The more readily a product category comes to mind, the better people like it and the more they use it. The more readily a brand comes to mind when we think about a product, the better we like it and the more often we purchase it, and the more we are willing to pay more for it. To strengthen conceptual fluency in relation to your product, you can position yourself in a subcategory (thus cutting off conceptual flow from your product to the product category), increase your presence through brand communication, or create a new product category. However, positioning yourself in a subcategory carries the

242 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

risk of limiting the brand and serving to reinforce the market ceiling. Brand communication requires creativity in expression to avoid being encumbered by leaking buckets and a low rate of efficiency. Creating a new product category makes the brand unique, but also requires that the category is easy to understand and does not go against people’s Newtonian-type behaviour.

18 The power in brands

To make life easier and avoid thinking more than necessary, we usually try to let past experience be our guide. Brands automatically bring to mind thoughts and ideas and stimulate behaviours in us. This has enormous potential for the development of new products and new marketing concepts.

Just as our choices and our thinking around product categories and products tend to follow riverbeds and thought tunnels, our thoughts about brands are similarly locked into certain patterns. This means that the brand automatically elicits certain thoughts and behaviours in us, which is termed brand gravity. Figure 18.1 is a classic example that you will doubtless recognize. The diagram shows the results of an American consumer study comparing people’s taste experiences of different beer brands when they knew/ didn’t know which brands they were tasting. The left-hand box shows how people rated the taste of the different brands of beer when they didn’t know which brand they were tasting. Not entirely unexpectedly,

244 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

Pabst

Colt 45

Coors Pabst

Colt 45

Guinness

Guinness

Budweiser Coors Miller Lite

Miller Lite

Budweiser

Figure 18.1

the brands came very close to each other (with the exception of the Irish beer Guinness, which has a very distinctive taste). This is the typical result for most product categories; the actual differences in the product are small among competitors. The right-hand box shows how people rated the taste of the different brands of beer when they knew which brand they were tasting. As you can see, the differences are much greater and the distribution is wider. The reason is that the brands have fixed people’s thought patterns to such a degree that they perceive whole new and different tastes in the beer! The link between the brand and its various manifestations in the form of the product or products, advertising and other communications, as well as people’s contacts with the company (for example, sales staff or customer service) is often illustrated by the following arrow:

THE POWER IN BRANDS / 245

Manifestation

The brand

Logic would tell us that people create a picture of the brand as a result of their contacts with its various manifestations: we are coloured by our perceptions of the product, of the advertising and all other contexts in which we come into contact with the brand. This logic holds for new brands of which people cannot and do not have any prior experience. But when it comes to established brands (which comprise the vast majority of all brands and products with which we come into contact), this logic does not hold. Instead people exhibit a reverse logic: Manifestation

The brand

To make life easier and avoid thinking more than necessary, we usually try to let past experience guide our decisions and our responses. Instead of evaluating, forming an opinion about and adapting our behaviour to products with which we come into contact, we attempt to fit them to existing thought patterns. Brands create such fixed patterns in the form of what are referred to as branch schemas. The brand schema consists of a number of riverbeds, or paths, that our thoughts follow when we come into contact with the brand. In experiments with local brands of beer, we tested how people reacted to actual (real) slogans and our own made-up slogans for the different

246 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

brands. We found that it made no difference which type of slogan was used for a well-known brand; because how people evaluated the brand was already firmly fixed in their minds. On the other hand, there was a big difference in how people evaluated the different types of slogan depending on which brands people believed they came from. The same slogan was rated highly when people thought that it belonged to a brand they liked, and poorly when they instead associated it with a brand they didn’t like. In addition, people perceived our made-up slogans as familiar (‘yes, I recognize this’ or ‘sounds familiar’) when they were told that it came from a brand they usually purchased, but experienced a known (real) slogan as new and unfamiliar when they were told that it was from a brand they didn’t normally purchase. This experiment is a clear indication of how the brand schema creates a false sense of certainty when evaluating manifestations of the brand. As people already have a preconceived notion of the brand to which they fit their actual responses when they come into contact with it, they will like or dislike the same slogan, and recognize it or not recognize it, depending on whether they believe that it belongs to a brand they like or one they don’t like. In another experiment, we analysed how the brand schema affects what people read into the advertising for a product, and the product itself. We used a brand of soft drink not found on the local market so that

THE POWER IN BRANDS / 247

people could not have developed a brand schema for it. We then manipulated the content of their brand schemas for this soft drink by manipulating the data in a taste test published in a daily newspaper. The soft drink was part of a test of several new soft drinks to be launched in the summer. In one edition of the test, we added in the words ‘sophisticated’ and ‘elegant’, while in another edition we described it instead with the words ‘thrilling’ and ‘young’. People had no idea that we had added ‘our’ soft drink to the list of brands, or that it had been charged with particular words. The idea was that these words would slip into their minds and form a brand schema for the unknown soft drink. Later, the subjects were shown an advertisement for the unknown brand and a can of the drink. Although all subjects were shown the same advert, one group of subjects were more likely to describe the advert as ‘sophisticated’ and ‘elegant’, while the other group were more likely to describe it using the words ‘thrilling’ and ‘young’. Compared to those in the second group, people in the first group also thought that the can appeared to be somewhat smaller (contained less soft drink) and that the drink would probably be less carbonated. The experiment shows how quickly and easily a brand schema can be established and how directly it impacts our reactions and judgements. A brand schema can perhaps be most simply described as a kind of lens, as in Figure 18.2. A lens collects our visual impressions so that they

248 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

What we perceive

What we actually see

Brand

Figure 18.2

appear to come from a particular point even when, in fact, they do not. This is similar to the way the surface of a body of water refracts light so that things beneath the surface appear to be located elsewhere than they actually are. Similarly, the effect of the brand schema is that we can be exposed to an extensive range of widely differing manifestations of the brand and still form a clear and consistent perception of it, based on the pathways already formed in our brains. The brand schema creates an extraordinary pull in the brand that draws all the various parts of the business and the product’s various manifestations in a specific direction, in the same way as gravity draws us to the Earth and keeps the Moon in the same orbit around the Earth. The fact of brand gravity means that there is enormous flexibility for the development of new products and concepts once the brand is established, because for the most part they simply cannot go wrong. Just as you can jump from a tree, off a cliff or out of a plane and always land

THE POWER IN BRANDS / 249

below, product development and marketing concepts may manifest in a variety of ways and still touch down in the brand. We tested brand gravity in an experiment where people were asked to respond to a number of brand extensions from the category ‘non-carbonated soft drink’. We selected the product that people thought would be the worst possible idea for a non-carbonated soft drink brand to launch, which turned out to be cottage cheese. In the eyes of the subjects, cottage cheese just didn’t fit with the products of a manufacturer of a non-carbonated soft drinks. We therefore produced an advert and packaging for a new type of cottage cheese, using a known brand of non-carbonated soft drink with strong brand gravity, and a relatively unknown brand without brand gravity. The results were very clear. Those people who came into contact with the product launch under the unknown brand were not particularly inspired to try the cottage cheese and had a very sceptical attitude to the product and the brand. Those who had come into contact with the product under the wellknown brand were much more curious and eager to try the cottage cheese. When we asked them to free-associate around the brand and the new product, we could see a clear gravitational pull when the subjects were made aware of those aspects of the cottage cheese that could be associated in any way to the known brand (for example, healthy, natural, fresh), while no attempts were made to make them aware of

250 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

other aspects of cottage cheese that did not fit with the brand (everything from its creamy texture to associations such as ‘gourmet’ or ‘snobbery’). It was interesting to note that brand gravity even rekindled interest in the known brand’s core product of non-carbonated soft drink. Those people who were exposed to the launch of the cottage cheese under the known brand were also more eager to consume the soft drink. An important lesson from this experiment is that brand gravity results in an enormous potential for the development of new products and marketing concepts. Firstly, brand gravity is the antithesis of the conventional picture of the brand as some kind of straitjacket that limits the company’s products. Instead of locking the company into a certain business or perception among consumers, the brand opens up virtually limitless possibilities for new business creation because brand gravity makes new products and marketing concepts credible and assists people to understand them. An interesting observation in the non-carbonated soft drink experiment was that when we were looking for the ‘wrong’ product to launch, it was much harder for people to find fault with the products we suggested if those we asked were also told that it wasn’t just ‘a brand’ of non-carbonated soft drink that would be launching the

THE POWER IN BRANDS / 251

product, but the particular, well-known brand. They then immediately began to introduce characteristics to the products and create associations that were not there just to fit them into the brand schema of the known brand in their own minds. Secondly, brand gravity minimizes the risk in launching new products or marketing concepts. The brand perception is transmitted to these new manifestations of the brand. Unless people have some real reason for being suspicious of the new product because it is tangibly and obviously a failure (which few products are these days), they will be inclined to judge it positively. While it is not certain that the product will be successful in the long term, it is relatively easy to get people to try it, which gives it a very comfortable send-off. A third aspect of brand gravity is that it maximizes the ratio between the creative result and innovative thinking. By this I mean that you don’t need to think in particularly novel ways and develop a lot that is actually new in the product itself or the marketing concept in order to achieve a sizeable creative result. As we discovered previously, the creative result requires something that is meaningful as well as novel, and brand gravity is clearly a powerful generator of meaning. Launching a new soft drink or a new airline of the regular kind is not particularly creative. But doing so under the brand ‘Virgin’ is very meaningful. This

252 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

adds whole new sets of values to an established product category. In this way, you can change people’s view of the product category and thus also the rules of the game for all the various players. And by doing so, stretch out the boundaries of rigid markets and break through market ceilings. Figure 18.3 illustrates how the gravity exerted by a known brand can stretch the boundaries of an established product category and pull it in a completely new direction. As a result, opportunities for new business arise for both the brand in question and for other brands. One way of making use of short-term and long-term brand gravity is precisely to use both the known brand and other brands. The known brand pulls the product category in one direction and creates interest in the shortterm in the new product. Then the company uses a new brand for their

Product Category

New business

Brand Figure 18.3

THE POWER IN BRANDS / 253

business in the long term. For a variety of reasons, the company might not want to invest too much money in a new product category under the existing brand. For example, a long-term investment will eventually change the brand schema as people slowly but surely (because it does take quite some time) add new experiences and contacts and revise their mental picture of what the brand stands for. Or the company might not want to risk a flop under the existing brand in case it has a negative impact on the brand. (As we have seen previously, new products launched under known brands get a propitious start. But, like any product, their survival is not guaranteed after the introductory phase if they do not represent a sufficiently attractive offer to consumers.) The risk of the perception of the company being coloured negatively is not greatest among consumers. In Chapter 5, we mentioned the Florence Nightingale effect, which shows that people don’t necessarily think less of a brand because the company launches an unsuccessful product but paradoxically may, in fact, like the company better for it. Instead, the risk lies in business partners and distributors being reluctant and less willing to participate in future business with the brand (a clear example of how important knowledge of business is to add to the other areas of knowledge discussed in this book). To return to the reasoning presented in Chapters 7 and 8 about the creative result and the creative process, we can say that brand gravity

254 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

creates new bisociations in existing product categories. By using the brand as a lens, you can perceive these bisociations and see business opportunities in a category that no one has previously seen or grasped. A known brand can generate sufficient gravity to pull the product category in a new direction, but to discover any new inroad to the market is a huge step towards generating new business. In actual fact, you can go a long way by using any existing brand as the lens through which to look at existing product categories in order to perceive new directions in which they can be taken.

19 Associations

The colour red might make you think of red, the colour of passion. Out of this associative network, a kind of staked-out pathway is formed which results in consumers understanding and being attracted to brands and products. By drawing attention to and accentuating certain connections through this network, you can lead people to understand and accept a new product to which they might otherwise find it difficult to relate.

In the disucssion on physiology (Chapter 14) we described how the brain consists of dendrites – the threads that connect its different parts – which, combined, would run several thousand times around the Earth. All those dendrites mean that all the knowledge in your brain is connected in some way. Our entire brain and all our collective knowledge forms a gigantic network of many smaller networks. As soon as you come into contact with a person, a phenomenon or an object, you start thinking about apparently unrelated things. This is because your associative network has been activated.

256 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

Semantic association (red)

Brand/product (Coca-Cola) Semantic association (the original) Semantic association (delicious)

Figure 19.1

Figure 19.1 is an example of an associative network for a brand or product. The brand or product is the hub of the network and links a variety of associations that are activated when we think about the brand/product. If you think about Coca-Cola for example, you might get images in your mind of its characteristic red colour, a delicious taste in your mouth (that is, if you like the drink) and that it’s the original (which the brand has stressed for a very long time in its marketing communications). These types of associations are called semantic associations, which means that they are directly linked to the brand and determine what the brand means to you. Through the associations red, delicious and the original, you can generate a picture in your mind and a feeling for what the brand stands for.

ASSOCIATIONS / 257

It’s common when working with brands and business opportunities to focus on the brand’s semantic associations to find one or more of its core values. In many respects, positioning is about communicating as clear and as consistent a picture of the brand as possible so that everyone will rapidly call to mind a very similar picture of what it offers. In the case of Coca-Cola, it might be about particularly calling to mind the association ‘the original’. In the section on conceptual fluency (see Chapter 17), we saw that in the worst case it can limit the company so that people won’t be reminded of the company sufficiently often. But from the point of view of new business creation, there is another problem. By focusing hard on one or more semantic associations, you risk missing the additional and incredible power of people’s own associative networks. As mentioned above and in Chapter 14, all our knowledge is linked together in a gigantic network. The brand’s semantic associations are thus linked to other associations, which means that the brand will also have a large number of secondary associations. Figure 19.2 illustrates associations that you might have to Coca-Cola’s semantic associations. The colour red might make you think of wicked (red devil) or red as the colour of passion. Similarly, the semantic association ‘delicious’ has its own associations to indulgence or something

258 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

Secondary association (genuine)

Secondary association (wicked)

Semantic association (red)

Secondary association (passion)

Semantic association (the original)

Brand/product (Coca-Cola)

Semantic association (delicious)

Secondary association (indulgent)

Secondary association (different)

Secondary association (sweet)

Figure 19.2

sweet, and the semantic association ‘the original’ can associate further to different (‘she’s an original – one of a kind’) or genuine. People won’t immediately think of these secondary associations because they are not directly (semantically) linked to the brand, but they do

ASSOCIATIONS / 259

have brand connections to which people can relate if they are made aware of them. Out of this associative network, a type of staked-out pathway is formed that people follow as you stimulate these associations one by one – a pathway that results in people understanding and being attracted to different concepts and to aspects of the brand and products. By following the path of associations in Figure 19.2, Coca-Cola could, if it wished, develop the concept of love potions and ‘wicked’ products, broaden its position through association to sweets, accentuate aspects such as indulgence when communicating the brand, or create links with phenomena or other products that are different or genuine. A number of possibilities for product development arise from these associations, as well as the creation of new concepts and communications platforms of which people have a ‘pre-programmed’ relationship and understanding. In experiments from the USA and New Zealand, researchers tested the possibility of launching a number of new, semantically unrelated products (that is, products that people do not immediately relate to the brand and are therefore, in this respect, unexpected for the brand) under a soup brand by accentuating secondary associations to the product category of soup. The researchers managed to get people to accept and

260 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

buy quite different products such as spaghetti (soup is usually served with more substantial fare – spaghetti), baby food (soup is liquid – doesn’t need to be chewed – baby food), frozen vegetables (soup is good for you – so are vegetables), and breakfast cereal (you serve soup in a bowl and eat it with a spoon – as you do with breakfast cereal). In another experiment, Michelin launched sports sandals (tyres – rubber – sandals), Crest toothpaste launched chewing gum (toothpaste – oral hygiene – chewing gum), the biscuit company Keebler launched a fruit drink (Keebler – elves are part of the logo – magic potion) and Heineken launched pretzels (Heineken – green in the logo – pretzels are made of ‘green stuff’/grain/flour). These experiments are examples of product and concept developments that might appear at first sight to be remote and far-fetched (and which were also received with scepticism when people were asked about the idea), but which worked because the connections in people’s own associative networks around the brands and products were accentuated and played upon. This demonstrates the enormous power that is just waiting to be unleashed in the minds of potential customers. In summary, associative networks can be very helpful in creating new business opportunities by, firstly, functioning as a map for discovering new products, concepts and communications platforms. Associations

ASSOCIATIONS / 261

that are beyond the direct semantic associations to a product category or brand lead to the discovery of possibilities that might otherwise never have been considered. Secondly, the associative network forms a kind of staked-out pathway for people to follow when they come into contact with the new product or concept. By drawing attention to and accentuating the right kinds of connections along this pathway, you can lead people to understand and accept a new product to which they might otherwise find it difficult to relate.

20 The context rules

Knowing that the context affects people’s judgements of products leads to the insight that it can be both more powerful and easier to change a product’s context than to change the product itself. So we can use situations and behaviours (travel to/from work, lunch, a night on the town) as the springboard for finding new contexts in which the product can engage with the consumer.

We never make our judgements about phenomena or products in isolation. Instead, we use the context as our frame of reference for forming an opinion. In actual fact, the context generally has more significance for our judgements and reactions than the products and marketing in themselves. This is what is termed context effects. Two very illuminating examples of this are the brands Dressmann (a Scandinavian men’s clothing store) and McDonald’s, which are perceived totally differently in several of their markets. Studies have shown that Dressmann – somewhat simplistically – is seen as ‘budgetpriced everyday fashion’ in Sweden and appeals primarily to men over

264 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

30 years of age; while Dressmann shops and clothing in Finland are perceived as trendy and the brand is very successful among the young. In Sweden, McDonald’s is synonymous with fast food and its restaurants appeal primarily to people who want to get something to eat quickly that’s simple and cheap. In some countries in Eastern Europe, however, McDonald’s is a high-status restaurant associated with quite different values. The fact that the Dressmann and McDonald’s brands are perceived in such vastly different ways in different markets is not primarily because these companies have varied their offer, but rather because of the differences in people’s frames of reference within these different markets. This is due in part to the fact that the constitution of product categories offered differs from country to country, with different brands competing with each other, as in Figure 20.1. The black brand offers exactly the same products and concepts and has the same position in Market A as in Market B, for example, on the dimensions of price and trend. But how might you describe the brand in these two very different markets? If you were in Market A, you would most probably say that the brand is cheap and not particularly trendy. If you instead found yourself in Market B, you would probably come to the conclusion that the brand was quite highly priced and was

THE CONTEXT RULES / 265

Market A

Market B

Price

Price

Trend

Trend

Figure 20.1

trendy. Even though the brand has scored exactly the same values on the dimensions of price and trend, the perception of the brand is quite different in the two markets because the other brands in the product category in the two markets are different, too. This is precisely how positioning works: it’s not about what products and brands have to offer per se but about how they relate to each other within a context. Knowing that context effects influence people’s judgements of products leads directly to the insight that it may be more effective and easier to change a product’s context than to change the product itself. We know that to be successful, the creative result of business innovation needs to be new and meaningful. Changing the context of a product creates novelty because people will see the product and what it offers in a new

266 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

context and within different frames of reference. When you relate the product to its context, context effects will also guarantee that people perceive the product as having a certain meaning. In Figure 20.2 you can see, for example, how the Scandinavian company Läkerol was able to change its meaning from that of a mildly medicinal throat tablet to a relatively healthy alternative to regular sweets. At one time chewing gum made the journey from an alternative to sweets to a pleasanttasting and easy alternative for oral hygiene (resulting in over 30% sales growth over a very short period). Changing the context is not just about going from one product category to another. It might also involve finding completely new contexts based on how people live their lives today. Very few people actually think in

Sore throat

Sweets

Figure 20.2

THE CONTEXT RULES / 267

terms of ‘Now I’m going to buy some frozen food’ when they go to a supermarket, or ‘What museum will I visit today?’ when they open up the pages of their local newspaper’s entertainment supplement. Instead, we think in terms of goals such as for example ‘What’s fast and easy for dinner?’ or ‘What can I do for some fun this Saturday afternoon?’ Most of our purchases are made up of such (more or less explicit) goal categories. Products from a wide range of disparate product categories compete with each other in goal categories. For example, ‘something fast and easy for dinner’ might include the product categories frozen food, takeaway food, tinned soup, cereal with yoghurt or milk, the local hotdog stand or salad from the salad counter. And museums might be competing with amusement parks, shops, brunch restaurants, video/ DVD rental shops and tennis times for some entertainment on a Saturday afternoon. Using the consumer’s goals as your starting point, we can discover whole new possibilities for marketing products. Similarly, we can use situations and behaviours (travel to/from work, lunch, a night on the town) as the springboard for finding new contexts in which the product can engage with the consumer. Using new contexts assists your thinking about your current products because you will discover new values and positions (for example, that the throat tablet is a relatively healthy alternative to regular sweets). This may lead to further development of your concept (for example,

268 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

Läkerol has developed bigger lozenges and also started making lozenges you chew rather than suck) and to the development of completely new products (why not chewing gum, jelly sweets or caramel toffees?). As we saw above in this book, bisociations between banking and the situations ‘lunch’ and ‘travelling to/from work’ gave rise to a whole new set of products.

PART V Shaking the Box In this part:

• • •

Preparations for the final step Shaking the box side to side Shaking the box up and down

‘If we combine the exercises from Part I of this book with the insights from Part II, it becomes obvious that there are many ways of shaking the contents of our expanded box. You “shake the box” when you combine all the knowledge you have with the insights you’ve acquired into how people function in order to create new business possibilities. But to get the best results from shaking the box, you need patience and some solid preparation.’

21 Preparations for the final step

Shaking the box is just a simple way of breaking your routines. Because that’s what the creative process is all about: following a rule or routine with an uncertain outcome. But when you are trying to shake the box, you need to make sure that it’s got enough room inside it. And the outcome will, of course, depend on what is inside it.

This part of the book is about bringing together the insights and research results described in Parts I and II. In Part I, we practised expanding the box to free our minds from rules and conventions, common sense, and the limitations of our physiology and consciousness. We tested how easy it can be to think innovatively and find novel ideas if you can break free of self-imposed limitations. In Part II, we filled your now expanded box with some insights into how people perceive products and brands, and how you create meaning.

272 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

When we combine the exercises from Part I with the insights from Part II, we can easily see that there are many ways in which we can shake the contents of our expanded box. You ‘shake the box’ when you combine all the knowledge you have with the insights you’ve acquired into how people function in order to create new business possibilities. But to get the result from shaking the box, you need patience and some solid preparation. Let us therefore now go through what you need to achieve a really creative result before we attack the exercises. What is involved in shaking your particular box will depend on the box having enough room for all the puzzle pieces you added to move around freely and result in the maximum number of new and remote combinations. For this reason, it’s important to keep returning to your expanded box in your mind’s eye and bringing back with you the basic insights gained from expanding it in the first instance. By identifying the rules and conventions that limit the business you are in for example, you can identify appropriate points of departure for shaking the box. By putting your creative result into the context of the prevailing rules and conventions of your area of business, you can identify the meaning for the consumer in your innovation, and also the threats and opportunities in implementing it. Similarly, you can discover new characteristics and unique advantages to make consumers aware of by constantly

PREPARATIONS FOR THE FINAL STEP / 273

reminding yourself to open your mind. And by reminding yourself that common sense has a limiting effect, you can challenge yourself and your colleagues to keep shaking the box and not become fixated too soon on solutions that seem to be the ‘right’ ones. So it is generally a good idea to alternate work on shaking the box with going back to do the exercises designed to expand the box. Shaking the box is in fact just a simple means of breaking your routines. Because that’s what the creative process is all about: following a rule or routine with an uncertain outcome. The outcome will depend primarily on what kinds of puzzle pieces you have in your box. The more of your knowledge you can utilize, the more possible combinations there will be. The difference between a fun exercise and creating new business propositions lies in the preparation. It can be stimulating and eye-opening spontaneously to throw in aspects of your business and associations stemming from it and test what happens when you shake the box, just as with the exercises for expanding the box. But if you want this shaking of the box to unleash your potential as a creative business innovator, and the result to be taken seriously, you need to do some solid preparation. It’s worth repeating that creativity is not about disconnecting yourself from knowledge but rather very much the opposite: it’s about utilizing the knowledge that you have.

274 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

Shaking the box is only a very small part of what it takes to prepare yourself. It’s just as important to prepare yourself as it is to work with the combinations that you shake out from the box. Your creative result needs to be meaningful and novel, and it’s for this very reason that the interpretation of the combinations you shake out from your box is absolutely decisive in the process. We concluded earlier that the novelty value does not need to be particularly great and that the actual change in the product or business can very well be quite minor. The main thing is that it is also meaningful – that it means something to the consumer. It follows from this that the more insights into human behaviour, economics and business that you are able to put into the process, the more powerful bisociations you will make and the more meaningful the result has the power to be. Many of the exercises that follow might appear at first sight to be rather mechanical and may even feel like exercises in accounting. But remember that the mechanics are in fact the important part, forcing you to unleash the power of your thinking in a systematic way so that your thoughts can move beyond your brain’s riverbeds and thought tunnels. Without routines and a systematic approach, you simply won’t see new associations or be able to make new, unforeseen connections. It’s that

PREPARATIONS FOR THE FINAL STEP / 275

‘accountant’ that forces you to notice things that you previously have dismissed as unrelated or irrelevant (information and pieces of the puzzle that go against rules, conventions and common sense), making it possible to see new solutions. Being systematic will also help you to make the creative process something to be taken seriously and assist in getting it accepted within your organization. In Parts I and II of this book, we saw how a relatively strongly regulated organization in fact provides the best foundation for business innovation and creativity. And that creative processes must be well structured in order to become part of what people do routinely in their work, and for these processes to be accepted as an important part of your business activities. Just as everyone understands how important the accountant’s work is in listing and putting a value on all the constituent parts of the company and its transactions, it will be easier for you and others to understand that the creative process is important if, in a similar way, you draw attention to all the possibilities for new business presented by your company’s operations and environment. Systematically following a routine is not the same thing as just marking time. It’s perhaps relatively easier to understand the purpose of the exercises for expanding the box, and when you go back to them the box

276 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

inside your head gets bigger and you automatically get a new point of reference for thinking innovatively. But the process of shaking the box is not quite as clear-cut. For this reason, it’s important regularly to monitor the results coming out of your routines and exercises to be able to build on what’s been done previously and keep moving forward. Firstly, you will want to avoid repeating yourself unnecessarily and risk creating new riverbeds to get stuck in. Secondly, just like the accountant, you will want to record your results: to feel that you have achieved something (which we concluded above was quite important); and be able to build further on your results in the future. While the results might not seem to be immediately meaningful, new and powerful interpretations may occur to you when you see them in a new light (perhaps along with other pieces of the puzzle or additional insights into human behaviour and business). Thirdly, you should evaluate the exercises. Which ones worked best and are therefore worth continuing to use in your creative process? It’s probable that they will not all suit your ways of thinking and working. To unleash the power of your knowledge and thinking, you will want to work in ways that inspire you the most. But it’s worth while remembering that exercises that do not sit well with you today might work better tomorrow after you have gained some new knowledge and insights and/or are working with something completely different.

PREPARATIONS FOR THE FINAL STEP / 277

Enough of the lecturing! Hopefully by this point you will feel well equipped and highly motivated to throw yourself into ‘shaking the box’.

Two ways of shaking the box Figure 21.1 illustrates the two principal ways you can shake the box. You can shake it up and down (vertically) to develop new products and concepts. In doing this, the aim is to free yourself from the product and the business and look for ideas that may end up being in quite different product categories and businesses than where you started from. Or you can shake the box sideways (horizontally) to develop the platform on which your existing business rests. This instead involves making your existing product or operations the point of departure, and bringing out new aspects of it that can expand your business around it. The division into two ways of shaking the box is mainly for the purposes of learning. There is no bulkhead between these two ways of shaking the box, and one often leads into the other. New products and concepts may require different platforms than the ones you are using, or demonstrate a new direction and thus also have an impact on the

278 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

Shake vertically

Shake horizontally

Platform development

Product/ concept development

Figure 21.1

platform for your current business. The development of a new platform may in turn provide the impetus and prerequisites for new products and concepts. The main reason for dividing the exercises into these two groups is to provide concrete goals for the exercises. Among the very first things that we concluded in this book is that, as humans, we need to have goals and to know why we are doing things. If you know that the goal is product and concept development, or platform

PREPARATIONS FOR THE FINAL STEP / 279

development, you will be more strongly motivated to do an exercise because you will know why you are doing it. It’s also easier to interpret and work with the results of the exercises and make meaningful bisociations if you think in terms of products, concepts or platforms separately. The exercises that follow are intended to give you real, worked through suggestions for the creation of new business propositions. A lot of work is required both before and after the actual shaking part, which is really a very small tool for building or modifying a very big machine. But the exercises can also be used of course in the same way as the exercises for expanding the box. By simply spontaneously throwing in a variety of associations and rapidly interpreting the results, alone or in a group, you can open your eyes to how easily we can become blind to the possibilities inherent in our products and businesses and also be inspired to find new angles and combinations. If you then choose to continue working in quite different ways than those suggested by the exercises, they will still have served a very important purpose. The next two chapters contain only a handful of exercises. You might even recognize some of them, as there are many variants of exercises on the same theme in this area in the literature. The exercises in this

280 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

book are fairly basic and can be developed in many different ways based on the business in which you are applying them, and based on your goals; and they can naturally also be combined in new ways. The aim is to give you a feeling for how this process works, and a springboard from which you can be creative in both using these exercises and developing your own exercises.

22 Shaking the box side to side

It is seldom the best product that wins. Instead, it’s about making your offer as attractive to the consumer as you can. In the final analysis, it doesn’t matter why people think about your brand. The most important thing to do is create the right conditions for them to do so. Don’t forget that success begins and ends in the mind of the consumer.

It is seldom the best product that wins. People rarely if ever know which is the best product; we don’t even generally know what it means for a product to be the best. Is the car that is best the one that is the cheapest, the fastest, the best looking, the safest, or the most exciting to drive? And how do you judge different combinations of these characteristics? Instead of making the best product (whatever that is in fact) it’s about making the most attractive and appealing offer that you can. In the study of the importance of brand reputation, we saw earlier how two characteristics of the offer are decisive for it to be perceived as

282 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

attractive. Firstly, the offer needs to be well known, which means that consumers quickly think of it, and it must be easy for us to understand what it means. Secondly, it must be perceived as unique in the sense that it has no other obvious alternatives. To create an attractive offer, in other words, requires that you highlight the characteristics of the product or brand that people can relate to directly but which other competitors have not yet been able to realize. This chapter contains a number of exercises aimed at finding different characteristics that you can accentuate in your offer in order to create new platforms for your product and your brand. You can find these characteristics in your own brand, the product itself, or within the target group for the product, or even in another company’s brand or other product categories. Don’t forget that success begins and ends in the mind of the consumer. It’s about coming to mind rapidly and as often as possible among consumers. You do this by offering a concept that creates meaning in people’s minds. This does not have to be anything particularly revolutionary or big in any concrete sense; what’s important is that it makes people sit up and take notice and remember your product. As you will see, several of the exercises that follow will result in quite way-out and/or contrived concepts. Don’t dismiss these too quickly. They can be very

SHAKING THE BOX SIDE TO SIDE / 283

useful precisely because they get people in; get them interested and curious about your brand communications because of their entertainment value. In the final analysis, it doesn’t matter why people think about your brand. The most important thing to do is create the right conditions for them to do so. A contrived communications concept can serve to create a space for coming into contact with people so that you can then accentuate the real benefits of your offer.

Change the brand voice This exercise is very simple and straightforward and a good warm-up for working creatively. In management, ‘living the brand’ is an expression that is often bandied about, and describes the importance of practising what you preach and letting the brand values and associations permeate every aspect of your company’s operations. However, it can also have an inhibiting effect on creativity and your capacity to innovate. Because the brand has its own gravity (as we saw in Part II), it can lock you into certain ways of perceiving, thus creating very powerful thought tunnels and riverbeds. But in the same way that your own brand can lock you in, other brands can lead you into mental patterns that you might otherwise never have thought of, pointing out a whole new range of possibilities. By changing the brand voice and describing

284 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

your offer in the way that a certain brand in another product category might do, you can utilize that brand’s conceptual fluency to identify new aspects of your offer. Changing the brand voice has several benefits. Firstly, it opens your eyes to new characteristics and benefits in your product. Secondly, it helps you to formulate offers in new ways that extend beyond the obvious in the product category. Thirdly, it is excellent training in itself. In the same way as you learn to play a musical instrument, or kick a football accurately and powerfully by imitating the styles of the best players, you can learn to communicate and package offers in different ways.

Do the Following Select a number of brands from different product categories (not your own). For example, select those brands that you come into contact with on an average day (at home or at work or those that you see advertising for regularly). List the characteristics and associations of each brand. Then take your own product and examine it on the basis of the characteristics and associations of each of the brands. What can you find in your product that could be dressed up in these words? Which words

SHAKING THE BOX SIDE TO SIDE / 285

have no equivalent in your product, and how might they be incorporated if you innovated your offer? As an example, we can try matching up the Harley–Davidson brand with a supermarket chain brand. The Harley–Davidson brand has associations such as ‘rebel’ and ‘freedom’. This brand could be used to offer a supermarket that does not focus on its own brands and the two leading brands in each food category, as the logic of the supermarket would normally have it. Instead this supermarket offers more and different brands, giving the customer greater freedom of choice and the opportunity to rebel against convention and express themselves more through their purchases. If we took Barclays Bank instead, this is a brand that stands for ‘tradition’ and ‘local presence’. So matching up the supermarket chain brand to the Barclays Bank brand would mean something like adapting it to the local environment, by letting customers provide a ‘wish-list’ of products (also a smart way of creating a commitment to the supermarket), such as, for example, offering personal shopping and home delivery in the near vicinity. Of course you would need to work further and incorporate knowledge about the industry and its economics to develop the offer into something that would be attractive and would work in practice, but the example serves to illustrate how easy it can be to find connections between brands from other categories and your own business.

286 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

Change the category voice This exercise is similar to the previous one. It’s about utilizing the logic in other product categories to find new ways of communicating and formulating offers. By selecting and using the perspective of another product category, you can utilize its thought tunnels and riverbeds to lead off your thinking in other directions. The positioning that is typical for one category can be quite atypical and thus stimulating in another. For example: ‘healthy cereal’ is a typical positioning in the breakfast food category, but ‘healthy soft drink’ would imply an innovation of this concept and people would probably sit up and take notice. By taking on the voice of another product category you can also utilize its conceptual fluency, making it easy for people to recognize and understand your new offer. It can also be used as purely and simply a communications device. Studies of advertising show that this does in fact make communications more effective. Firstly, people find it entertaining when they recognize the voice but can’t quite place it, and subsequently they feel clever when they guess it correctly. Secondly, by doing so, you break through the communications ‘schema’ that characterizes many product categories, causing advertising for those categories to become very homogeneous across all competitors.

SHAKING THE BOX SIDE TO SIDE / 287

Do the Following Variant 1 Choose a category and list how offers tend to be formulated and sold within that category. What characteristics are accentuated, what channels are used, what are the factors that differentiate competitors, what payment models are offered, etc. Then mark the characteristics that you don’t find in your product category. Match them to your product: How can your product be sold using each of the characteristics that you marked? By using the category voice for cars, you might be able to sell hotel rooms by letting potential guests put together their own package based on a basic model to which could be added various sorts of equipment to your heart’s desire (using a form of modularization, you can easily move beds in and out, offer different styles of sofa, stereo systems, etc.) so that all guests get the room they want with all the details they want – their own self-composed experience. A fun thought experiment!

288 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

Variant 2 Choose a product category and list typical features of the advertising and communications for its principal brands. Then try using one or more of these features to design advertising or some other form of communications for your product. You can do the same thing with a specific brand (for example, try communicating in the same way as is typical for one of your local high-street clothing store chains, one of your local supermarket chains, or BMW). For example, you could design advertising for shoes using the category voice for cars by demonstrating ‘walking pleasure’, ‘footpath-holding ability’ and the aesthetic features of the shoes. Or what about advertising for crisps with the category voice of dishwashing liquid by showing a comparison of how much tastier your crisps are, how much cleaner your lap will be after eating your crisps (not as many crumbs), how your crisps last longer, etc.

An American hotel was looking into the restaurant category for ideas for getting new business. The two categories have a lot in common. They take care of basic needs (the hotel provides accommodation, satisfying the need for shelter and sleep, the restaurant supplies food to satisfy hunger). But what really lie at the heart of their offer are the care, attention and service they provide. In both cases, this means

SHAKING THE BOX SIDE TO SIDE / 289

waiting on people. But while the hotel by its very nature must offer an environment, restaurants have developed home deliveries. This insight inspired the management of the hotel. You can wait on people without the environment – so we can deliver the hotel experience at home to customers! For many people, the best thing about a stay in a hotel is being waited on, and they don’t necessarily want to travel to another city to get this experience. So the idea was that they could purchase a hotel stay in their own home, with room service, a butler, food, cleaning… in short everything that a hotel offers without the room (and the costs the hotel needs to pay for the building). In this way, the hotel also broadened its target group considerably – from travellers alone to potentially everyone in their city.

Change the size of the company Even if products and offers differ from category to category, the ways in which competition is conducted are almost always the same, no matter the category in which your company operates. That is, the market leader behaves like a market leader, the closest challenger will have similar strategies and ways of behaving, and the various niche competitors will follow a similar set of rules of play. Thought tunnels and riverbeds push perceptions of the various companies in given directions, based on their size and strength in the market. Consequently big companies easily miss out on the creative ideas that may have their genesis in the restrictions on the small company’s freedom to act; and small companies are unable to access the benefits that could be derived from setting their sights on

290 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

brand reputation for example (which we looked at in the section on conceptual fluency), which is an obvious goal for big companies. By changing the size of your company in your mind, and thinking about how you would react if you were much bigger or much smaller than you actually are, you can break free of the rules and conventions that size creates. By following what is often a very strict logic characterizing a certain (other) size of company, you can lead your thoughts in quite new directions and open your eyes to new tactics in marketing and new characteristics to accentuate in your offer. It’s not just companies but also consumers who can recognize the brand manifestations that are usually associated with a certain size of corporation, and in this way you can create a kind of conceptual fluency in their minds by following the ‘logic’ of another size of company.

Do the Following The very successful example of this was SBAB, the Swedish stateowned bank, which decided some years ago to completely alter its strategy and tactics and transform itself into the market challenger: We’re taking on the big banks! By changing its size perception, SBAB started working with everything from the guys operating sandwich

SHAKING THE BOX SIDE TO SIDE / 291

stands outside the offices of competing banks, to setting up mini-offices next to the big advertising billboards all over the city and home delivery of housing loans in a box.

Change the name At the beginning of this book, we concluded that markets tend to become rigid. Almost all products are found in mature product categories with many well-established competitors. Firstly, mature product categories are characterized by limited growth, which means that competitors must take market share from each other in order to grow. Secondly, any changes in market share are often very small. The main problem is that the category creates a structure in people’s minds, which means that they automatically associate with, and think of, certain companies first. This makes it difficult for small companies (consumers might think of them, but too late) and big companies (who are associated in very specific ways to the category) to grow or change. The solution is to establish a new structure in people’s minds that is more advantageous to your company – a structure with new associations that enable your company to come to mind first. In the discussion

292 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

on conceptual fluency (Chapter 17), we saw that the most effective means of establishing a new structure in people’s minds is to combine concepts and categories that are already meaningful to them. Together, these can form a new name that people readily understand, and what use the product is to the consumer becomes both unique and easy to assimilate. Of course many other companies may offer the same actual products, but if they are not communicated in the same way, they will not come to mind as readily. The new name creates a force you can use in your work and a vision to work towards. It provides common ground that everyone in the company can understand and take in. The new platform also opens your eyes to new products and concepts to develop and creates receptivity for them in people’s minds.

Do the Following Variant 1 First list the characteristics of your product and your offer. For each of the characteristics, list categories that offer the same benefits.

SHAKING THE BOX SIDE TO SIDE / 293

Let’s take an off-the-cuff example. Banks offer, on the one hand, a safe place to keep your money and, on the other, investments at varying levels of risk (taking a gamble). You could also keep your money safe in a warehouse or keep it on your person or keep it safe by employing bodyguards. You can also take a gamble at a casino or at the races. Banks could offer wealth warehousing and money bodyguards (combined with insurance against taxes, changes in legislation, reductions in the value of fixed assets, etc.), or business casinos and financial gaming (with direct, discounted earnings on investments at higher risk).

Variant 2 List other product categories that your target group also uses. Combine these with your product. For example, the bank’s customers also purchase exclusive designer clothing and drive luxury cars. This could be combined with, for example, ‘tailoring for your future’ (we tailor your individual financial future to fit you perfectly) and ‘financial mechanics’ (we repair your private economy when it breaks down). These are only two spontaneous examples of how you might bring out certain aspects of the offer in order to create new platforms.

294 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

Variant 3 List categories that compete with or complement your product and combine them. What aspects of your product can be found in descriptions of combinations of other categories? Education, for example, is complementary to bank services (banks can finance education, education makes banking easier), and insurance can both complement and compete with banking services. Or why not groceries? They could be combined to form innovative insurance policies (‘we give you the opportunity and space to grow and develop’), food for thought (‘banking services in themselves give you training in strategy and tactics’) or sweet insurance (‘we make sure that when you really need it, you’ll be able to afford the things that make life sweet’). These are three rather feeble combinations of categories perhaps, but they could give rise to new products or concepts. With a lot more work and thought you could probably do much better.

In working with a real estate agent, we realised that most people don’t just look at one house or apartment on the days they are looking for a new home. Generally, they will look at several options per day, over a long period of time. For example, they might spend every Sunday for a month during the autumn going to view different apartments. For many, this becomes a form of entertainment in itself. In

SHAKING THE BOX SIDE TO SIDE / 295

fact, it is rather reminiscent of – sightseeing. With this insight, it was possible to formulate a whole new offer: house sightseeing. Instead of publishing individual for sale ads in the real estate pages of the newspaper, the real estate agent publishes a timetable for a bus listing which areas and houses/apartments will be visited. The advantage for the agency is that they can attract more potential buyers, and that the people looking will visit more of the agent’s houses/apartments. (If you don’t have the most ads for houses/apartments in the newspaper, it’s much less likely that people will come to view your houses/apartments. With the bus, people choose the agent first in the certainty that there will be many interesting houses/ apartments to view.) The advantage for home-seekers is that it’s an easy and convenient way to view more potential homes, and has some of the fun and entertainment of sightseeing.

Enhance ‘bad’ characteristics Most competing products are very similar to each other. They often use similar marketing concepts, which are based on either generic characteristics that fit virtually all categories (for example price or design), or aspects of the specific category (for example, the speedy bicycle or the healthy breakfast cereal). It’s natural that the categories will tend to follow suit in concept development, as a consequence of the riverbeds and thought tunnels in our minds causing us to always choose whatever lies closest at hand. That’s also why markets easily become rigid. To break free, you must first find and accentuate those

296 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

characteristics that are not closest to hand, and are not those that a number of other companies have already thought of (and have either conceptualized or thrown out as a ‘bad idea’). There is a very simple routine for doing this: instead of looking for advantages, search for the ‘bad’ characteristics and disadvantages of the product and accentuate them. The principal benefit of accentuating the ‘bad’ characteristics is to break free of both general and industry-specific logical pathways. You can then find new aspects and solutions that others have not thought of. Secondly, it makes you focus on something concrete in the product, which means that it becomes tangible and people can relate to it easily (instead of finding an abstract concept). You can try this at both the category and brand levels.

Do the Following List all the genuinely bad characteristics of the product (don’t cheat with something like ‘it’s cheap, so we lose on it because we have to provide support for it to customers so often’). Ask other people who don’t work with the product about its bad sides. Try to elicit as many characteristics as possible, whether they seem important or not, then

SHAKING THE BOX SIDE TO SIDE / 297

take each of the characteristics and list the reasons why people might actually demand that characteristic. Don’t get bogged down with thinking about how and why people use products in the category. Think more freely: what can you do with this characteristic? Let’s take a couple of random examples. Small cars – for example, electric cars – do not have a lot of room. People might want cars that do not have a lot of room because they won’t ever have to use them to do any bulk shopping, give rides to friends, or help their friends to move house. These cars are purely pleasure vehicles, for the individual alone. Daily newspapers, on the other hand, are often big and a lot of space is required to open and read them. Many people prefer large newspapers so that, for example, they can create space for themselves on buses, on the underground, or at the breakfast table. The big daily newspaper becomes your own personal refuge. These are two simple examples that illustrate how, with some careful work and insights, you could discover a whole new platform for your product. Many of the world’s most revolutionary products have come from accentuating bad characteristics. As we know, Post-it notes originated from an adhesive developed by 3M that they were not happy with because it didn’t stick well enough. And this turned into a fantastic product – paper that sticks, but not very well. You can stick it onto

298 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

whatever you like because it’s easy to remove. The multi-million dollar pill Propecia for treating hair loss came out of a prostate medication with the ‘bad’ side effect of increasing hair growth – a bad characteristic that became worth its weight in gold once it was accentuated. The accentuated side effect that became Viagra is probably well-known to all. What is less well known is that this medication was originally intended for regulating blood pressure.

One of the most difficult tasks in developing sticking plasters is finding an adhesive that sticks well enough so it won’t fall off, is flexible enough to wear on the skin and not impossible to get off. In discussions around this difficulty, we realised that the former was a ‘bad’ characteristic that could be accentuated. The result? Sticking plasters with a time-release function. So there is not just a risk that the plaster will come off by itself, it’s guaranteed! That way the patient never has to endure the pain of pulling it off themselves and never has to worry about how long it should stay on. Convenient and painless – a product development that people easily understand and want.

Enhance specifics This exercise is a variant of the previous one. It’s also based on extending yourself beyond the ‘usual suspects’ for a certain product category. We often become blind to anything but the product’s overarching char-

SHAKING THE BOX SIDE TO SIDE / 299

acteristics, and base our ideas on certain given concepts, and purposes (generic and category-specific) that the product is intended to fulfil: ‘What is it that makes us cheaper? Better looking? More useful?’ By doing so, we merely reinforce our prejudices about what the product can be and what it can offer. Begin instead at the opposite end of the scale and examine your product in its every detail. What are its peculiarities? Look for the specifics that make your product unique and enhance them. By focusing on the specifics of your product, you can find new concepts and ideas that do not follow preconceived formulas. When you get right down to the specifics of your product, your platform becomes more meaningful and people can relate to it more easily. It can also lead to concept and product innovation, accentuating and utilizing even more of the benefits represented by those specifics.

Do the Following List all the product’s physical attributes. Make sure you don’t omit anything. Take a moment to recall the exercises for expanding your consciousness and don’t miss out even the smallest, apparently insignificant details or any of the product’s more obvious attributes. For

300 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

example, imagine that you are describing the product to someone who is blind. Then take each of its attributes and list associations and the areas of application they make you think of. Don’t get bogged down in thinking that these must be areas of application within the product category. Instead, let your imagination roam free. What new offers and communications platforms do these attributes suggest? Let’s take a couple of random examples. A tiny detail about a milk drink is that the lid makes a little ‘click’ sound when you unscrew it. That could be associated to ‘we just clicked’ (fell in love) and could be the foundation for a communications platform around falling in love (this ‘love potion’ makes you irresistible or – like chocolate – it’s a good substitute for love); a new packaging platform (couple packs of two bottles, big bottles that come with two straws, the drink in a package that can be sent like roses), and the creation of new products on the love theme (equivalents of boxes of chocolates, bouquets of flowers, etc.). A tiny detail of Citroën cars is that they ‘curtsy’ (sink down) when you start them. Sinking down can be associated with relaxation (‘sink into those cushions and relax’) and curtsying with courteousness (‘we meet you half way’). These are just a couple of trivial examples that don’t involve much thought. With much more work, it’s possible to find really ingenious and innovative platforms both within and beyond these product categories.

SHAKING THE BOX SIDE TO SIDE / 301

Communications RAT We saw earlier how you can train up your creative capacities with the help of an associate test like the Remote Associates Test (RAT). Using remote associations, you combined the oddest assortment of apparently unrelated elements. Similarly, you can train up your communications capabilities by randomly combining unrelated parts of the offer. These random combinations produce unexpected results that induce solutions that would not arise naturally, and which therefore will constitute departures from the usual platforms for the category.

Do the Following List the characteristics of your product in one column. As always, it’s important that you are thorough and don’t discard what might appear to be meaningless characteristics and details. Then list associations to the brand in another column. This is your starting point. Now combine product characteristics randomly with brand associations and try to find a common denominator to create meaning for each of these combinations. Combining concrete product characteristics with abstract brand associations is termed resonance in communications

302 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

psychology. Studies show that communications platforms with resonance are far more effective because they stimulate more thoughts in people’s minds, are felt to be more credible (since the evidence is there for all to see in the product’s actual characteristics), and engender more curiosity (‘I would never have thought that these characteristics mean this’). You can even add a third column of communications devices (for example, exaggeration, metaphor, negative framing, etc.) with which you are familiar to vary the combinations further and be inspired. This will also increase the number of potential solutions exponentially. Just as in the standard RAT, this exercise is fairly mechanical, but therein lies its strength. The mechanics of it guarantee a large number of new ideas that are not expected or predictable. As well as this exercise being almost guaranteed to result in useful platforms that you can work on properly later, the act of listing the product characteristics and brand associations is an excellent way of mapping what the product and brand actually offer, and gives a clear picture of what the offer actually contains (and could contain). An example of resonance between product characteristics and brand associations is Levi’s Twisted and AntiFit platforms. They combined

SHAKING THE BOX SIDE TO SIDE / 303

the seams (always a signature feature of the jeans) and associations from ‘the original’ to create new and original seams that changed the entire garment. For Twisted, the communications device of metaphor was used, with images of people twisted into impossible shapes, and for AntiFit they used exaggeration (that the jeans fitted really badly and that the wearer of the jeans was a total misfit).

When obstacles become solutions In the previous exercise, it was mentioned that small companies can often be more creative than bigger companies because their limitations increase the need for creative solutions. In the early chapters of this book, we saw study results which indicated that some pressure has a positive impact on the creative result. Instead of learning to live within these limitations and thus ceasing to think about them, it can be a good idea to draw attention to them and make them an important part of your work. They also serve to give your work a more concrete focus as opposed to striving to achieve abstract goals such as ‘increase sales’, ‘reposition ourselves’ or ‘win market share’.

304 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

Do the Following Variant 1 List the obstacles in the way of your product’s growth and success. It’s important that you do this thoroughly and in detail. Just as in the exercises about enhancing the specifics and bad characteristics, you must broaden your consciousness so that you can capture concrete aspects and see problems that you might previously not have seen. Don’t stop at ‘we’re too small’ or that ‘the product isn’t good enough’. Take each of the obstacles and place the words ‘I want it to be …’ in front of each one or ‘… means that I can’ after. What associations do you get? The limitation in itself presents you with new possibilities and solutions. As an example, let’s look at obstacles for Burger King. Burger King has always found it difficult to get the better of the market leader, McDonald’s. An obstacle to them becoming market leader is no doubt that, in comparison to McDonald’s, they have too few restaurants. A solution might be to have few restaurants and instead invest in some other forms of distribution, for example, becoming a shopin-shop at other restaurants or service establishments with a stan-

SHAKING THE BOX SIDE TO SIDE / 305

dardized range. (By standardizing their range of products under the brand, they could become a kind of Coca-Cola of the fast food market, with the product and not the retailer being the important factor in people’s choices.) Various parts of the range could be sold at cafés (for example, a ‘lite’ version of their chicken burger, etc.), lunch restaurants (the biggest burgers), department stores (the smaller types of hamburger that can be eaten standing up), cinemas (desserts and their snack range), and so on. Another obstacle for Burger King might be that in comparison with McDonald’s they are perceived as taking too long to prepare their burgers. A solution is to let the preparation take time and make (their few) restaurants into proper barbecue restaurants, where people come to sit down and stay for a while. These two solutions together turn the obstacles into advantages and also broaden the offer.

Variant 2 List the obstacles in the way of your product’s growth and success. Reformulate the description of the obstacle by asking the question ‘why’ in steps. Be specific. For example, don’t say that the product is too expensive but that people think that it is too expensive (cost valuations exist only in people’s minds and are both relative and subjective). This

306 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

will make it easier for you to think of concrete solutions. Continue to ask the question ‘why’ until you have come to a sufficiently concrete answer for which you can directly come up with a concrete remedy. Let’s take ice cream as a simple example. The obstacle for an ice cream company to grow is that there are strong competitors. Why is this an obstacle? Because the market is mature and not growing (in which case you would need to take market share from competitors). Why isn’t the market growing? Because the summer season is so short. Why is the season so short? Because at least in northern Europe, the rest of the year is too cold to be eating ice cream. A solution then is to sell ice cream drinks and similar products that you can actually warm up. ‘Our ice cream makes you warm!’

Like all not-for-profit organisations, the Red Cross had noticed that their street corner collections were hardly worth the effort. It was relatively easy to identify the most important obstacle for collection boxes: on the street it’s difficult to get people to take out their wallets. The solution was not to induce people to take out their wallets, but instead to appeal to them once they had already taken their wallets out of their pockets or handbags. This insight led easily to the ‘Round it up’ campaign in conjunction with a number of clothing chains. A sign was put up at the pay-desks in their shops – ‘Round it up – donate your change to the Red Cross’ asking people who had already surrendered their cash to refrain from taking their change back. By making the obstacle the solution, the Red Cross were able to increase their donations significantly.

23 Shaking the box up and down

This chapter contains exercises to help you to develop ideas for new products and concepts. They are based on your current products or business, and aim to identify potential new orientations towards new target groups, areas of application and categories. It’s easy to be seduced by the idea of big changes but don’t underestimate the small ones. The creative result has nothing to do with the length of the step you take.

Business innovation is fundamentally about the continuous development of new products and concepts. In marketing and management literature, this is often simplified to ‘you should stick to your core business’. This is seldom a piece of advice that holds in the really long term. For example, how would things have gone for the rubber boots manufacturer Nokia, or the record company Virgin, if they had just stuck to their core businesses? In addition, many people tend to interpret the term core business far too narrowly as meaning to keep doing

308 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

the same thing all the time. But even if Volvo, for example, is sticking to its core business of motor vehicles, it is also extending it all the time with new products and concepts; naturally enough through new (and for the company unexpected) vehicles such as cross-country vehicles, but also through services such as rental and financial solutions and even IT (and you can also find the Volvo brand in boats and planes). All products and concepts eventually hit a ceiling for their development and profitability, and sooner or later they start losing value (even the world’s strongest brand Coca-Cola experienced tangibly that its core product of the same name was losing ground in the 1980s). And that’s why you must continuously work on product and concept innovation. The problem is that your existing products and concepts can create thought tunnels and riverbeds that make it difficult to be creative and innovative. But if you use those products and concepts in the right way, they can instead become assets for your creativity. We have already come to the conclusion many times that a product or a concept does not need to be particularly revolutionary to be successful. Instead what is important is that it is meaningful to the consumer. By using existing products and concepts as a springboard and placing them in new contexts and combining them with new associations, you create bisociations that people can relate to. And with every new step,

SHAKING THE BOX UP AND DOWN / 309

you are creating a natural pathway from rubber boots to mobile phones without making any huge leaps or taking any big risks. This chapter contains exercises to help you to develop ideas for new products and concepts. They are based on your current products or business and aim to identify potential new orientations towards new target groups, areas of application and categories. The result can involve both big and small changes. It’s easy to be seduced by the idea of big changes but don’t underestimate the small ones. The creative result has nothing to do with the length of the step you take.

Random verbs This is a simple exercise that is great to warm up with, but can also generate really useful results. A common thought tunnel that hinders us in working creatively with a product is that we already ‘know’ how it is used. Whether it is customer surveys or common sense that is telling us so, we can be hampered by the fact that the product is used in a certain way. That is how a company called Facit died, for example, because they ‘knew’ that you used calculators to calculate with! Instead, handheld game consoles, computers and other products that could calculate, communicate, offer memory functions and much more came

310 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

onto the market. By artificially combining your product or business with apparently unrelated verbs (that is, ‘doing’ words) you can break free from all that common sense and see new possibilities and paths for innovation. The challenge with this exercise is to not give up before you find a solution to how the product can be used, using the verb. The more remote the connection, the greater the possibility for innovation. You might not be able to find sufficiently ingenious concepts and products for all verbs in the final analysis (but remember that nothing is impossible, some things are just more difficult than others), but a random verb can also stimulate worthwhile ideas about cooperation with other brands and products, and new metaphors and offbeat communications ideas (‘this watch look so scrumptious that I could just eat it’ or ‘shoes to put a song in your step’).

Do the Following List as many verbs as you can think of. Don’t be content with verbs that automatically come to mind because you have already connected them to the product. For example, think of your activities during a normal day or what you can do with other products. Then match all

SHAKING THE BOX UP AND DOWN / 311

the verbs you have thought of one by one to your product or a specific part of the product or your business. How can you use the product as the verb suggests? For example, if we take a watch and combine that with the verb to eat, you could develop a watch with a calorie counter that would probably interest many people. Or we could match eating lunch with banks, which you could do in Shanghai as we saw earlier in the book. Combine banking with the verb to go and we get drive-thru banks as in the USA.

Another time of day Just as our thinking is limited by knowing how you use a product, it is also limited by the context that we associate with the product. Very often the context is associated with a certain time of day. Besides the fact that we use porridge by eating it, we also use it primarily in the morning for breakfast. As long as porridge is used for breakfast, its development potential is rather small, and it is scarcely surprising that this product has remained more or less the same for ages. But what would happen if instead we decided to sell porridge at another time of

312 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

day, such as in the afternoon? Immediately potential new concepts and products come to mind, which, for example, a highly successful company in Scandinavia has demonstrated using rice porridge and fruit, with a range of different products and concepts based on healthy snacks with an energy boost, which nowadays even compete with sticky buns and similar alternatives. By thinking in terms of other times of day, you can break free from the conventions governing how your product is intended to be used and instead get leads to the conventions of the new context about what the product can do and what it means. (Most times of day are associated with certain routines and behaviour patterns. Try to list them and you will see that this is correct.) The new context will have its own context effects on the product perception, which means that the product might not have to be developed very much, yet will still acquire a new meaning. In addition, it’s worth remembering that by extending the contexts in which the product occurs, you also increase its conceptual fluency and thus you synergistically promote the original product in its original context, too. But what if your product isn’t associated with a certain time of day? Then think instead of how you would associate it with a certain time of day or a particular occasion.

SHAKING THE BOX UP AND DOWN / 313

Do the Following List a number of times of day and junctures in a day. These might be particular times or routines in people’s daily lives (lunch, school, exercising, dating, taking the bus, etc.). Then match each of these times and junctures to your product. How can the product be used then? What is required for it to fit in to the new context? What are the typical associations to the time or the routine that could be transferred to the product? An example of how you can develop new products by changing the time of day is when Oral-B developed ‘Brush-ups’ teeth wipes (an interesting name in itself for a new product). Toothbrushes are conventionally used in the morning and at night. But the ‘Brush-up’ (which you can have in your pocket or handbag and just slip onto your finger) can give your teeth a quick clean for example when you’re travelling (at the airport, in a taxi, etc.) or going to a date. This exercise is called ‘Another time of day’ because it’s a name that fires the imagination and is easy to work from. But it’s really about choosing another time, which might just as well be another time of year, the season, or the buying cycle. By finding another time of year

314 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

for example, Swedish ice cream company GB broadened its market considerably by launching an ice cream flavoured with a Christmas tradition (Swedish ginger snap biscuits) for the Christmas season. Previously, almost all ice cream was sold during the summer, which is very short in Sweden, and was not popular during the winter period, which is very long in Sweden. In recent years, many publishers have gone against the norm and started launching books during the summer instead of primarily during the autumn and spring. ‘Holiday books’ in paperback form have created new behaviours (people read books everywhere instead of just at home) and increased sales of physical books, which had been dropping due to competition from digital media (which is generally found in the home but not necessarily everywhere else). Working with an insurance company, we started looking more closely at other times for offering services. We found that their services were being offered aroundthe-clock and all year round. The only thing in common was that the services were offered before people needed them (before meeting with misfortune). Another time in this case meant offering the service after the customer met with misfortune. The offer was that the customer could pay a premium after meeting with misfortune and get back the insured amount. Of course this was not profitable for the company (the cost was limited of course by limiting the value of the items that could be covered by the offer), but it was a very effective marketing campaign. Instead of spending money on the usual types of marketing activities, this offer created something meaningful and novel that could attract a lot of attention and recruit many new customers (who additionally at this point were well aware that misfortune does occur and thus were more inclined to become loyal customers).

SHAKING THE BOX UP AND DOWN / 315

Break the assumption In the two previous exercises, the focus has been on challenging the conventions surrounding the use of the product. This exercise is instead about challenging the rules surrounding the design of the product. In most product categories, the designs of all competing products have many similar traits. Some traits are the same because they are necessary; the product cannot be made in another way. For example, trials with both fewer and more wheels have shown that cars are most efficient as products with four wheels. But many traits are the same just because ‘it’s always been like that’, because no one has thought about what would happen if you change them, or because they are the legacy of technical, logistical or economic limitations that no longer apply (for example, the milk carton, or subscriptions for morning newspaper deliveries).

Putting your finger on the assumptions behind a product’s design is the first step in finding new innovation opportunities. Your eyes will then be opened to the characteristics that are common to the product category and create rigidity in the market because the products are very similar and compete within a given framework. By taking yourself outside this framework, you can both break through the market ceiling in the product category and extend the product category as a whole.

316 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

Do the Following List all the assumptions that characterise the product category. Be thorough and be careful not to miss conventions and rules just because they are so obvious. If possible, ask people who don’t work with the product category to describe the product as thoroughly and in as much detail as possible. For each of the assumptions, ask the question why: Why does the product look like this? What would happen if it didn’t? For example, take the assumption that everyone pays the same amount to travel on public transport. What would happen if they didn’t have to? Then maybe those fare evaders, who are a big problem in public transport systems, would be able to afford to travel for less money in more Spartan and crowded carriages, while those who don’t like crowding would be prepared to pay more to travel in a more comfortable and spacious carriage. The basis of insurance services is that people pay a premium so that they can be sure that they won’t lose the value of a possession if it is lost, stolen or breaks. The premium paid is based on how much the item is worth. It is usually up to the insurance company to value the item. But what would happen if the insurance company didn’t do this? We tested breaking this assumption in our work with an insurance company. The creative result was allowing customers to value their own items instead, and this was the basis for determining the premium. It was

SHAKING THE BOX UP AND DOWN / 317

easy to create meaning around the new offer – the insurance company took the customers seriously (instead of being suspicious of them and needing to convince them of the value, as many customers experienced this part of the insurance offer) and gave them control over a service that many otherwise felt powerless over. At the same time the premium was adapted to the value of the item to be insured, which reduced the insurance company’s risk and additionally made it easier for customers to find a model that suited them.

Not-Definitions Just as we can be limited in our thoughts by assumptions that have become so ingrained that we often don’t even see them, we can also become fixated on definitions. We know what a product looks like, and what it consists of. It is only after you have put your finger on the definition of the product that you can see this otherwise invisible limitation and give the product a new form. But definitions are important because they create conceptual fluency in both your mind and the minds of the people you want to reach. Therefore, it is important to create an alternative definition that makes it easy for people to understand and accept the new product, and which can replace the old definition. The simplest way of creating a new definition is to start with the current definition that everyone can relate to and turn it upside down.

318 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

Do the Following Define the product in a sentence beginning ‘the product is . . .’. Remember to be detailed. Then add the word not: ‘the product is not . . .’. What happens now? What new alternatives come to mind? An example we have already touched on is milk. Milk is a drink that is sold in cartons. By instead defining it as a drink that is not sold in cartons (but in funky bottles), new markets have been found reaching new target groups (primarily young people) and times of consumption outside the home and school and a whole string of new products has been developed. A local cocoa drink has made a reverse journey by redefining itself as a drink you do not have to mix yourself. It can now be purchased in cartons. A local brand of hamburgers has created the first low-carb hamburger using lettuce leaves instead of a bread roll with the help of the definition ‘hamburgers are not comprised of meat patties in a bread roll’.

Product RAT This exercise is about combining characteristics of the product with characteristics of the target group to identify new concepts. You can

SHAKING THE BOX UP AND DOWN / 319

use the characteristics of your current customers to find new areas of application and products for them, but you can also simply list the characteristics of target groups that you would like to reach in the future and use these as the basis for developing products that would appeal to them. Just as in the original form of the Remote Associates Test (RAT), here it’s about making use of apparently unrelated characteristics to bring out remote associations and concepts that you otherwise would never have thought of. Take advantage of what you have learned from the RAT exercises in Chapter 15 and remember that all characteristics can be combined if you just shake the box enough to make sufficiently remote connections. Besides inspiring you to think of new concepts and products, the exercise is useful for getting an overview of what the product has to offer, and what characterizes the target groups. It also helps you to put your finger on any gaps between what you are offering and what the target group wants.

320 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

Do the Following Variant 1 List all the characteristics of your product in one column. In an adjacent column, for each characteristic indicate if and how it is connected to other characteristics. These two columns form the basis for making new connections between different characteristics. In some instances, this might involve breaking existing connections, and in other instances it might involve making connections between characteristics that currently do not exist. Let’s take cars as an example. Not so long ago it was discovered that by bringing together previously unrelated parts of a car (the chassis and the battery) you could reduce the occurrence of corrosion and rust considerably (an electronic device transmits electrons from the battery to create an electrostatic charge that hinders chemical corrosion processes). Similarly, you could do away with the fragile (and not particularly aesthetically pleasing) antenna by connecting the radio to another external part of the car, namely the defroster. A connection that is so obvious that few people would even think about it is the connection between the roof and the remainder of the car body. By removing this connection, the convertible car was created.

SHAKING THE BOX UP AND DOWN / 321

And talking about cars, an April fool’s joke led to Volkswagen starting a new trend with its Polo Harlequin model which has different colours for the different parts of the car body. The company published a novelty advertisement in which the car had different colours for different parts of the body, which made customers see for the first time the value of a novel connection between the characteristics ‘body part’ and ‘colour’. The demand in response to this advertisement was so great that both Volkswagen and competing car brands began to offer multi-coloured cars. Colour can serve an unexpected – but highly desirable – purpose for wound dressings as well. Working with a company that sells wound dressings, we listed the characteristics ‘colour’ and ‘compress’ (to stop the flow of blood). When you combine them, you get a wound dressing that changes colour when it is dry, indicating when bleeding has been stopped and the dressing can be removed. Wound dressings that change colour are functional, easy to manufacture and people immediately see the value of them. The company created something meaningful and novel around which they were able to create several new concepts. Working with a financial services provider, we conducted a similar exercise and saw that it would be possible to connect the characteristics time (the most central feature of all financial services is time – timing, term, discounting, etc) and commission. Instead of the commission being a percentage of the total amount, you could make it dependent on time. Thus, the company created an offer where their commission was higher the faster the investment earned money for the customer, and lower the longer it took to yield a return on the investment. When it was introduced, the possibility of negative commission was also part of the offer, that

322 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

is, if the investment did not yield a return to the customer, the company paid a bonus to the customer instead of taking payment for the service. This was a highly effective way for the company to profile itself. It created a sense of security for the customer, an incentive for the company itself to do a good job (while still being able to make it work for them economically) and identified a unique new value.

Variant 2 List the characteristics of your product in one column. Because this exercise is about developing new concepts and ideas, the characteristics you list should not be at the detailed level as in the exercises in the previous chapter but rather at a more overarching and flexible level (instead of ‘chrome handle’ for example you would list ‘design’ or ‘aesthetics’). Then list the characteristics of your target group in another column in the form of their behaviours, habits or needs. Then combine the characteristics randomly from the two columns. You can develop this exercise and help yourself along by adding a third column with emotive values (such as fun, weird, luxurious, kind) to function as your remote association. With the emotive values as a third part of the combination, you will often get a clearer picture of how the concept could be developed.

SHAKING THE BOX UP AND DOWN / 323

As a conceivable example we could take watches again, in this case designer and luxury watches. They are exclusive. Think for a moment that you want to broaden the market and target a group of consumers that are not as wealthy as the core target group (a more economical target group). Then we get the combination exclusive (product characteristic)/economical (target group characteristic). If we add the emotive value ‘fun’ we could develop an offer where you can purchase the components from the company, and design and build your own watch (‘it’s fun to create your own style’). Just as in the communications RAT exercises in the previous chapter, this work is mechanical, which will guarantee a large number of unexpected results but will also involve very challenging and thoughtprovoking training, which will develop your capacity to think. Obviously you can also combine characteristics from the columns intentionally when you have them listed in front of you if can see obvious connections.

Associations squared In this exercise, the combinations you get will grow exponentially. In Part II of the book, we looked more closely at how associative networks

324 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

link together the knowledge you have in your brain. By using your product or business as a springboard and expanding out from semantic associations to indirect associations, you will naturally find opportunities for innovation. This exercise is also excellent for giving you an overview of your product or brand in the form of what semantic associations people tend to make (which comprise brand awareness and position in the market), which associations could improve brand awareness and position, and what opportunities exist to develop new products and concepts.

Do the Following Draw the brand or the product (this exercise works at both levels) as a circle in the middle of a piece of paper. First add the direct semantic associations to your brand or product by drawing them as circles surrounding the brand or product. Then take the indirect associations (closely associated with the semantic associations, for example red – passion) and link them directly back to the product or brand (see Figure 23.1). What could you do with the product to create a direct association to what is currently an indirect association? In the same way, you can connect the indirect association to your current target group (how should this association be materialized in a

SHAKING THE BOX UP AND DOWN / 325

Semantic association

Target group

Indirect association

Indirect association

Brand/ product

Semantic association

Indirect association

Semantic association Indirect association

Semantic association

Figure 23.1

product concept for them?) or go off in another direction that leads to a whole new target group (what kind of people will the association appeal to and how can you create a concept for them?). To return to an example we looked at previously, Coca-Cola could be linked more directly to ‘passion’ via the semantic association to red by extending the product line to include a ‘love tonic’ or a version with extra caffeine for energy. You could make energy candies with the Coca-Cola taste, love potion sweets, etc. Via its semantic association to fruit drink, the Fanta brand could launch vitamin-enriched, healthy

326 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

drinks and sweets; or via its association to summer, offer drinks (perhaps a kind of cider), and other products (what about ice cream) suitable for barbecues, picnics and beach parties. These are just some trivial examples to illustrate how, with much sharper insights and more thorough analysis, you could come up with solid ways to broaden the brand. What kinds of associations do people have to real estate agents? We asked ourselves this question when working on creating novelty and meaning in their offer. An association that came up was changes in social circumstances. People change residence when their social circumstances change, such as when they move out of home for the first time, or when they separate from someone they have been living with. Changes in social circumstances can also occur when you meet someone new in your life. Which is of interest to singles. For this reason, singles could be seen as a relevant type group for real estate agents. By offering a kind of dating service (viewings targeted at singles combined with some smart home staging), real estate agents could attract new target groups who were not part of the home buyer’s market and in the long run get them into the market (sell the homes being viewed and potentially also their previous residences when they moved into their new homes together!).

Change category In the previous chapter, we looked at exercises based on borrowing the voice and logic of another category to use for your product. This exercise is about doing the opposite to that. How could you sell your

SHAKING THE BOX UP AND DOWN / 327

product in another product category? We have seen many times previously how knowledge about your own product and product category can have an inhibiting effect, creating riverbeds and thought tunnels that make the market rigid. But the same knowledge and thought patterns can soften up the rigidity of the market for another category and add new values to it. In its existing or developed form, your product can give new dimensions to products in the other category. Changing category is particularly effective if it involves not just your product but also your brand. In Filling the Box, we saw how brand gravity can serve to pull a rigid product category in new directions and create more space in that category than it in fact has room for.

Do the Following Make an associative network around your product. What characteristics and associations does it have? Do the same with a number of different product categories. Now place the associative networks beside each other and work outwards in the network through the semantic and indirect associations until you find connections between the product and category as in the figure below (see Figure 23.2). In this way, you should be able to identify inroads into the new category.

328 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

Semantic association

Brand/product

Semantic association

Semantic association

Semantic association

Indirect association

Indirect association

Category

Semantic association

Semantic association

Figure 23.2

SHAKING THE BOX UP AND DOWN / 329

An interesting thought experiment might be, for example, that SBAB, which is associated with challenging the establishment and better terms for banking services, could go into gambling services, which are associated with high stakes and competition. These associations can be indirectly connected to each other to give SBAB the same obvious values as the rising gaming corporations. You can perform the same thought experiment with your own product or business and virtually any product category and find interesting inroads. The British brand Virgin has very successfully expanded their associative networks outwards into new categories. The brand established itself as an independent, ‘no fuss’ player in the record industry. It appropriated the semantic associations ‘worldly’ from its artists and ‘independence’ and ‘no fuss’ through its actions. The worldly association pointed to travel and a category where the associations independence and no fuss were in demand – the airline industry. The same associations (along with a new one acquired from the airline industry – communications) pointed to mobile telephony. And so on. Even if it has involved huge leaps to move between such diverse categories, Virgin has always offered something meaningful and novel to the market based on its associative network, and its organisation has always worked in the same way and according to the same principles, that is, ‘inside the box’.

330 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

Next customer A growing problem in marketing is that companies have become much too clever at knowing their customers. Obviously it’s good to give your customers what they want, but you also need to avoid the risk of focusing on your existing customers to the exclusion of all else. Empirical studies show that profitable and growing companies are characterized by continuously being able to attract new customers. Getting stuck with the same customer base is a contributory cause of market rigidity, since existing customers over time create habitual purchasing and consumption patterns, and therefore cannot be expected to extend the usage of your product to any great degree. Rather your product will be used less and less in the long term because those customers sooner or later will want some variation or will leave the category. In addition, they are often conservative and do not contribute anything to the development of the product (on the whole it’s difficult for consumers to think along the lines of what a familiar product might look like in a different form). By changing focus and always thinking about the next new customer and how you might attract that customer, you are forced to consider new ideas and propositions. Why isn’t the customer using my product?

SHAKING THE BOX UP AND DOWN / 331

Do the Following Set an extreme goal such as, for example, ‘all teenagers will purchase my product’ or ‘all car owners will use my car wash’. Move away from your existing customer base. Who are left? Choose different groups and describe them with the help of associative networks. Do the same thing with your product. Continue to work outwards from the core (the target group and the product, respectively) with the help of semantic and indirect associations until you find a connection between the networks as in Figure 23.3. This way you can identify associations that could form the basis for new products and concepts that will appeal to your next customer. This exercise works to develop completely new products and concepts, but it can also be used to develop strategies for attracting new target groups. You might already have the target group, product or concept in mind, but don’t know how to achieve your goal. In that case a gradual ‘picking off’ of the next customer might be the solution. You first target those who lie within close range of your current offer in terms of their behaviours and needs, then move on to those who are a little further away with a suitable product, and so on. This allows you to create a gradual acceptance for the innovation and sound business cases along the path to achieving your ultimate goal. You can find the right strate-

332 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

Semantic association

Brand/product

Semantic association

Semantic association

Semantic association

Indirect association

Indirect association

Target group

Semantic association

Semantic association

Figure 23.3

SHAKING THE BOX UP AND DOWN / 333

gic direction by connecting up the target groups in a similar way, using associative networks. McDonald’s is an example of a corporation that is very good at working towards the goal of attracting the next customer. For those who are not fond of hamburgers, they first developed chicken nuggets and fish burgers. For vegetarians, they developed the vegetarian burger. For those who think their product is not healthy, they developed healthier products and provided more information about the nutritional value of each item on the menu. For those who don’t eat at their restaurants during the day, they developed breakfast menus. For those who don’t have time to stay or don’t want to eat a meal, they developed cafés. They never stop working on redefining their target groups and continuously look for new opportunities to make contact with consumers. A Swedish taxi company noted that almost all its customers had the same profile. They were all older people who had managed to make some money who valued the security and comfort offered by using a taxi service. It’s difficult to grow with the same customers without offering significantly different services. But there are always many new customers to acquire, for example, younger people. What’s typical for them is that they don’t have much money, but they do have parents. Parents are concerned about the safety of their young people (teenagers and young adults) who cannot afford taxis. And voilá! the taxi company started to offer credit cards for parents to give to their children so that they could travel by taxi whenever they wanted to and their parents would pay (with the additional benefit for parents of being able to keep track of where their children had been!).

PART VI Congratulations: You’ve Become Smarter ‘The more puzzle pieces you have, the more puzzles you can make from them – or rather shake out. It’s said that pigeons move their heads all the time in that peculiar way because otherwise they can’t see properly. When it comes right down to it, they’re actually quite smart.’

24 Are you a creative business innovator?

The exercises in this book provide examples of how you can become a better business innovator, but their main purpose is to provide inspiration and a foundation for you to develop your own creative processes and routines. By putting your own knowledge into these exercises, you can develop new processes and routines and hone your creative processes for your business. Because it’s impossible to know too much.

You have now almost finished reading this book. Congratulations are in order! Hopefully, by reading it, you have taken many strides along the path towards becoming more creative and thus more successful in your business. The aim of this book has been to increase your point score on the introductory test of your potential as a creative business innovator. Do you remember what your score was? Go back and refresh your memory.

338 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

Table 24.1 Self-test for creativity Statement

Points

1. I know a lot about people’s behaviour, drives and motivations.

…

2. I know a lot about economics and business.

…

3. I know a lot about demographic trends (for example, the effect of motoring tolls, population changes and people’s leisure activities).

…

4. I really feel that I’ve achieved something when I have thought of a new idea.

…

5. Developing new ideas is one of my favourite pastimes.

…

6. It is challenging to develop new marketing strategies.

…

7. I don’t try to stay on the safe side when developing business ideas and programmes.

…

8. I prefer to think unconventionally in business and programmes.

…

9. I am a risk-taker when I promote ideas.

…

Sum of points

Because now it’s time to do the same test again (Table 24.1) to see (1) if you have improved your knowledge in the areas that are essential for being creative, (2) if you’ve been motivated to think in new and different ways and to bring creativity into your work processes, and (3) if you have understood that it is necessary to take more risks.

ARE YOU A CREATIVE BUSINESS INNOVATOR? / 339

If this book has served its purpose, your score on the test should be higher than it was the first time. In Part II of this book, we talked about filling the box with knowledge about people’s behaviour and their likely responses to marketing. In Part I we also discussed how economics and business are intimately connected with innovation and creativity. These two areas of knowledge combined are at the foundation of all business enterprise. All business is about putting together an economically feasible offer that will appeal to consumers and fit with current or probable future behaviours. As you add to your knowledge in these areas, your capacity for innovation and creating new business opportunities will grow. Add to this the knowledge that you must keep up to date with demographic trends, and you will be open to new opportunities and will be able to develop new ideas continuously.

Only the beginning In Parts I and II of this book, we looked at what makes people creative, and found that a creative individual takes more risks than others, but that the risks in themselves are relatively small. Knowing this will hopefully help you to become a greater risk-taker, because it is the quantity and not the size of the risk that matters. In Chapter 4 (Why is creativity so important?) we also discovered that the real risk lies in

340 / CREATIVITY UNLIMITED

fact in not being creative and innovating your business. We saw evidence from several different areas concerning how important it is to be creative; for yourself and your career and as a human being, and for businesses and society as a whole. You’ve seen why it is in fact more important to think inside rather than outside the box. But that in doing so, it’s also important to expand the box, which you saw was possible in at least four ways, and to fill the box. Hopefully you gained some new insights and started to enjoy the process of thinking innovatively. This enjoyment and inner motivation to create and innovate is extremely important for the creative result, which we could see from the studies to which we referred. In the final part of this book, there were exercises designed to help you to shake the box, and hopefully you found out how easy it can be to develop new ideas for products, concepts and platforms. With many solutions come many risks, but also many opportunities for success. Your journey to becoming more creative and a more successful business innovator obviously doesn’t stop when you put this book down. On the contrary, this book is intended merely to get you started. It has given you some new arguments that you can use with yourself and in relation to your environment in stressing why it is important to be creative in business. It demonstrated how many opportunities there are to achieve

ARE YOU A CREATIVE BUSINESS INNOVATOR? / 341

creative results: firstly, through the insight that innovations do not need to be particularly great or particularly novel (but they must be meaningful); and, secondly, through the exercises in Filling the Box and Shaking the Box. Another aim of this book has been to motivate you to continue to develop on your own and make creativity and innovation part of your everyday working life. The exercises in this book are examples of how you can become a better business innovator, but their main purpose is to provide inspiration and a foundation for you to develop your own creative processes and routines. By adding your own knowledge about businesses and industries with which you are familiar, and insights and ideas that you get continuously from observing demographic trends, you can develop new processes and routines and keep on honing your creative processes. This probably won’t be the last book you read about creativity. Hopefully you will read many more books on the subject and, even better, about how we humans function. Because it’s impossible to know too much. The more puzzle pieces you have, the more puzzles you can make from them – or rather shake out. It is said that pigeons moved their heads all the time in that peculiar way because otherwise they can not see properly. When it comes right down to it, they are actually quite smart.

Further Reading It’s about success Creativity’s effect on business Andrews, J. and Smith, D. (1996), ‘In Search of the Marketing Imagination: Factors Affecting the Creativity of Marketing Programs for Mature Products’, Journal of Marketing Research, Vol. 33, May, 174–187. Balachander, S. and Ghose, S. (2003), ‘Reciprocal Spillover Effects: A Strategic Benefit of Brand Extensions’, Journal of Marketing, Vol. 67, January, 4–13. Buzzel, R. and Gale, B. (1987), The PIMS Principles: Linking Strategy to Performance, The Free Press. Chandy, R. K., Prabhu, J. C. and Antia, K. D. (2003), ‘What Will the Future Bring? Dominance, Technology Expectations and Radical Innovation’, Journal of Marketing, Vol. 67, No. 2. Chaudhuri, A. and Holbrook, M. B. (2002), ‘Product Class-Effects on Brand Commitment and Brand Outcomes: The Role of Brand Trust and Brand Affect’, Journal of Brand Management, Vol. 10, No. 1, 33–58. Dahlén, M., Lange, F. and Smith, T. (2008), Marketing Communications, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester.

344 / FURTHER READING

Dahlén, M., Rosengren, S. and Törn, F. (2008), ‘The Waste in Advertising Creativity is the Part that Matters’, Journal of Advertising Research. McAlister, L., Srinivasan, R. and Kim, M. (2007), ‘Advertising Research and Development, and the Systematic Risk of the Firm’, Journal of Marketing, Vol. 71, January, 35–48. Pauwels, K., Silva-Risso, J., Srinivasan, S. and Hanssens, D. M. (2004), ‘New Products, Sales Promotions, and Firm Value: The Case of the Automobile Industry’, Journal of Marketing, Vol. 68, October, 142–156. ‘Profit Impact of Market Strategy’ [database], www.pimsonline.com. Robinson, W. T. (1990), ‘Product Innovation and Start-Up Business Market Share Performance’, Management Science, Vol. 36, No. 10, 1279–1289. Sorescu, A. B., Chandy, R. K. and Prabhu, J. C. (2003), ‘Sources and Financial Consequences of Radical Innovation: Insights from Pharmaceuticals’, Journal of Marketing, Vol. 67, October, 82–102. Srinivasan, R., Lilien, G. and Rangaswami, A. (2006), ‘The Emergence of Dominant Designs’, Journal of Marketing, Vol. 70, No. 2, 1–17. Van Heerde, H. J., Mela, C. F. and Manchanda, P. (2004), ‘The Dynamic Effect of Innovation on Market Structure’, Journal of Marketing Research, Vol. 41, May, 166–183. Vedin, B.-A. (1993), Innovationer för Sverige – Betänkande av innovationsutredningen, SOU 1993: 84. Vedin, B.-A. (2000), Innovation och kreativitet, Alhambra. Vishwanath, V. and Mark, J. (1997), ‘Your Brand’s Best Strategy’, Harvard Business Review, Vol. 75, No. 3, 123–129.

FURTHER READING / 345

Zhou, K. Z., Yim, C. K. and Tse, D. K. (2005), ‘The Effects of Strategic Orientations on Technology- and Market-Based Breakthrough Innovations’, Journal of Marketing, Vol. 69, April, 42–60.

Creativity’s effect on the person Burroughs, J. E. and Mick, D. G. (2004), ‘Exploring Antecedents and Consequences of Consumer Creativity in a Problem-Solving Context’, Journal of Consumer Research, Vol. 31, September, 402–411. Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1990), Flow. The Psychology of Optimal Experience, Nightingale-Conant Corporation. Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1996), Creativity. Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention, HarperCollins Publishers. Gell-Mann, M. (1995), The Quark and the Jaguariver, Henry Holt & Co.

Examples of advantages with ‘mistakes’ Bharat, A. and Shachar, R. (2004), ‘Brands as Beacons: A New Source of Loyalty to Multiproduct Firms’, Journal of Marketing Research, Vol. 41, No. 2, 135–150. Dahlén, M. (2003), Marknadsförarens nya regelbok. Varumärken, reklam och media i nytt ljus, Liber. Meyvis, T. and Janiszewski, C. (2004), ‘When are Broader Brands Stronger Brands? An Accessibility Perspective on the Success of Brand Extensions’, Journal of Consumer Research, Vol. 31, No. 2, 346–357.

346 / FURTHER READING

Ringold, D. (1988), ‘Consumer Response to Product Withdrawal’, Psychology & Marketing, Vol. 5, No. 3, 189–210. Sjödin, H. (2005), ‘Dirt! – An Interpretive Study of Negative Opinions About a Brand Extension’, European Advances in Consumer Research, Vol. 7. Yeung, C. and Wyer, R. (2005), ‘Does Loving a Brand Mean Loving Its Products? The Role of Brand-Elicited Affect in Brand Extension Evaluations’, Journal of Marketing Research, Vol. 42, November, 495–506.

Think inside the box The creative result Andrews, J. and Smith, D. (1996), ‘In Search of the Marketing Imagination: Factors Affecting the Creativity of Marketing Programs for Mature Products’, Journal of Marketing Research, Vol. 33, May, 174–187. Avnet, T. and Higgins, E. (2006), ‘How Regulatory Fit Affects Value in Consumer Choices and Opinions’, Journal of Marketing Research, Vol. 43, No. 1, 1–10. Boulding, W., Lee, E. and Staelin, R. (1994), ‘Mastering the Mix: Do Advertising, Promotion, and Sales Force Activities Lead to Differentiation?’ Journal of Marketing Research, Vol. 31, May, 159–172. Hoeffler, S. (2003), ‘Measuring Preference for Really New Products’, Journal of Marketing Research, Vol. 40, No. 4. Moreau, C., Lehmann, D. and Markman, A. (2001), ‘Entrenched Knowledge Structures and Consumer Response to New Products’, Journal of Marketing Research, Vol. 38, February, 14–29.

FURTHER READING / 347

Narayanan, S., Manchanda, P. and Chintagunta, P. (2005), ‘Temporal Differences in the Role of Marketing Communication in New Product Categories’, Journal of Marketing Research, Vol. 42, No. 3, 278–290. Rao, V., Agarwal, M. and Dahlhoff, D. (2004), ‘How is Manifest Branding Strategy Related to the Intangible Value of a Corporation?’ Journal of Marketing, Vol. 68, October, 126–141. Singh, V., Hansen, K. and Gupta, S. (2005), ‘Modeling Preferences for Common Attributes in Multicategory Brand Choice’, Journal of Marketing Research, Vol. 42, No. 2, 195–209. Thompson, D., Hamilton, R. and Rust, R. (2005), ‘Feature Fatigue: When Product Capabilities Become Too Much of a Good Thing’, Journal of Marketing Research, Vol. 42, No. 4, 431–442.

The creative process Atuahene-Gima, K. (2005), ‘Resolving the Capability-Rigidity Paradox in New Product Innovation’, Journal of Marketing, Vol. 69, October, 61–83. Biyalogorsky, E., Boulding, W. and Staelin, R. (2006), ‘Stuck in the Past: Why Managers Persist with New Product Failures’, Journal of Marketing, Vol. 70, April, 108–121. Chandy, R. K. and Tellis, G. J. (2000), ‘The Incumbent’s Curse? Incumbency, Size, and Radical Product Innovation’, Journal of Marketing, Vol. 64, July, 1–17. Chandy, R., Hopstaken, B., Narasimhan, O. and Prabhu, J. (2006), ‘From Invention to Innovation: Conversion Ability in Product Development’, Journal of Marketing Research, Vol. 43, August, 494–508. Coyne, K. P., Gorman Clifford, P. and Dye, R. (2007), ‘Breakthrough Thinking from Inside the Box’, Harvard Business Review, December, 70–78.

348 / FURTHER READING

Dahl, D. W. and Moreau, C. P. (2007), ‘Thinking Inside the Box: Why Consumer Enjoy Constrained Creative Experiences’, Journal of Marketing Research, Vol. 44, August, 357–369. Dahl, D. W. and Moreau, C. P. (2002), ‘The Influence and Value of Analogical Thinking During New Product Ideation’, Journal of Marketing Research, Vol. 39, February, 47–60. De Luca, L. M. and Atuahene-Gima, K. (2007), ‘Market Knowledge Dimensions and Cross-Functional Collaboration: Examining the Different Routes to Product Innovation Performance’, Journal of Marketing, Vol. 71, January, 95–112. Fillis, I. (2002), ‘An Andalusian Dog or a Rising Star? Creativity and the Marketing/ Entrepreneurship Interface’, Journal of Marketing Management, Vol. 18, 379–395. Fillis, I. and McAuley, A. (2000), ‘Modeling and Measuring Creativity at the Interface’, Journal of Marketing Theory and Practice, Spring, 8–17. Fleming, L., Mingo, S. and Chen, D. (2007), ‘Collaborative Brokerage, Generative Creativity, and Creative Success’, Administrative Science Quarterly, Vol. 52, 443–475. Goldenberg, J., Lehmann, D. R. and Mazursky, D. (2001), ‘The Idea Itself and the Circumstances of Its Emergence as Predictors of New Product Success’, Management Science, Vol. 47, No. 1, 69–84. Klein, R. (1990), ‘Organizational Barriers to Creativity . . . and How to Knock Them Down’, Journal of Consumer Marketing, Vol. 7, No. 1, 65–66. Knox, S. (1990), ‘Creativity in Marketing Management – A Unified Approach’, Journal of Marketing Management, Vol. 3, No. 3, 245–257.

FURTHER READING / 349

McGlynn, R. P., Gibbs, M. E. and Roberts, S. J. (1982), ‘The Effect of Cooperative Versus Competitive Set and Coaction on Creative Responding’, Journal of Social Psychology, Vol. 118, 181–182. McIntyre, R. (1993), ‘An Approach to Fostering Creativity in Marketing’, Marketing Education Review, Vol. 3, 33–36. Min, S., Kalwani, M. U. and Robinson, W. T. (2006), ‘Market Pioneer and Early Follower Survival Risks: A Contingency Analysis of Really New Versus Incrementally New Product-Markets’, Journal of Marketing, Vol. 70, January, 15–33. Moreau, C. P. and Dahl, D. W. (2005), ‘Designing the Solution: The Impact of Constraints on Consumers’ Creativity’, Journal of Consumer Research, Vol. 32, June, 13–22. Nielsén, T. (2003), Styrning av kreativitet. En studie av reklambranschen, Paper, Stockholm School of Economics. O’Sullivan, D. and Abela, A. V. (2007), ‘Marketing Performance Measurement Ability and Firm Performance’, Journal of Marketing, Vol. 71, April, 79–93. Prabhu, J. C., Chandy, R. K. and Ellis, M. E. (2005), ‘The Impact of Acquisitions on Innovation: Poison Pill, Placebo, or Tonic?’ Journal of Marketing, Vol. 69, January, 114–130. Ray, M. (2002), ‘Strategies for Stimulating Personal Creativity’, Human Resource Planning, Vol. 10, No. 4, 185–193. Voss, H. G. (1977), ‘The Effect of Experimentally Induced Activation on Creativity’, Journal of Psychology, Vol. 96, 3–9. Wernerfelt, B. (2005), ‘Product Development Resources and the Scope of the Firm’, Journal of Marketing, Vol. 69, No. 2, 15–23.

350 / FURTHER READING

The creative person Bouchard, Jr. T. J., Lykken, D. T., Tellegen, A., Blacker, D. M. and Waller, N. G. (1993), ‘Creativity, Heritability, Familiarity: Which Word Does Not Belong?’ Psychological Inquiry, Vol. 4, No. 3, 235–237. Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1996), Creativity. Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention, HarperCollins Publishers. Eysenck, H. J. (1993), ‘Creativity and Personality: Suggestions for a Theory’, Psychological Inquiry, Vol. 4, No. 3, 147–178. Gardner, H. (1993), Creating Minds: An Anatomy of Creativity Seen Through the Lives of Freud, Einstein, Picasso, Stravinsky, Eliot, Graham, and Gandhi, Basic Books. Johnsson-Smaragdi, U. and Jönsson, A. (2001) ‘Tidsanda eller mediearv? Föräldrars och barns inställning till och användning av TV’, Barn, nr 4. Norsk senter for barneforskning, Trondheim. King, B. J. and Pope, B. (1999), ‘Creativity as a Factor in Psychological Assessment and Healthy Psychological Functioning’, Journal of Personality Assessment, Vol. 72, No. 2, 200–207. Vedin, B.-A. (2000), Innovation och kreativitet, Alhambra.

Thinking inside the box Ansburg, P. I. (2000), ‘Individual Differences in Problem Solving via Insight’, Current Psychology, Vol. 19, No. 2, 143–146.

FURTHER READING / 351

Frauenfelder, K. (1980), ‘Creativity and the Experience of Duration’, Journal of Psychology, 106, 27–35. McFarlin, D. and Blascovich, J. (1984), ‘On the Remote Associates Test (RAT) as an Alternative to Illusory Performance Feedback: A Methodological Note’, Basic and Applied Social Psychology, Vol. 5, No. 3, 223–229. Noppe, L. D. and Gallagher, J. M. (1977), ‘A Cognitive Style Approach to Creative Thought’, Journal of Personality Assessment, Vol. 41, No. 1, 85–90. Wansink, B. and Gilmore, M. J. (1999), ‘New Uses That Revitalize Old Brands’, Journal of Advertising Research, Vol. 39, No. 2, 90–98.

Expanding the box Conventions and rules, common sense and various exercises Adams, J. L. (2001), Conceptual Blockbusting. A Guide to Better Ideas, Perseus Books. Biyalogorsky, E., Boulding, W. and Staelin, R. (2006), ‘Stuck in the Past: Why Managers Persist With New Product Failures’, Journal of Marketing, Vol. 70, No. 2, 108–121. Buzan, T. (2001), The Power of Creative Intelligence, HarperCollins. Cameron, J. (1992), The Artist’s Way, G. P. Putnam’s Sons. Clegg, B. and Birch, P. (2002), Crash Course in Creativity, Kogan Page.

352 / FURTHER READING

Dahl, D. W. and Moreau, C. P. (2002), ‘The Influence and Value of Analogical Thinking During New Product Ideation’, Journal of Marketing Research, Vol. 39, February, 47–60. De Bono, E. (1970), Lateral Thinking, Penguin Books. Gell-Mann, M. (1995), The Quark and the Jaguariver, Henry Holt & Co. Härén, F. (2003), Idébok, Interterras. Johansson, F. (2004), The Medici Effect. Breakthrough Insights at the Intersection of Ideas, Concepts and Cultures, Harvard Press. Vedin, B.-A. (2000), Innovation och kreativitet, Alhambra.

Physiology Eichenbaum, H. (1997), ‘Declarative Memory: Insights from Cognitive Neurobiology’, Annual Review of Psychology, Vol. 48, 547–572. Golman, D., Boyatzis, R. and McKee, A. (2001), ‘Primal Leadership’, Harvard Business Review, Vol. 79, No. 11, 42–50. Rossiter, J. R. and Silberstein, R. B. (2001), ‘Brain-Imaging Detection of Visual Scene Encoding in Long-term Memory for TV Commercials’, Journal of Advertising Research, Vol. 41(2), 13–21. Srinivasan, N. S. and Balasubramanian, G. (2003), ‘Strategic Thinking: A Neuronal Architectural View’, Journal for Decision-Makers, Vol. 28, No. 4, 1–7. Vernon, P. E. (1984), ‘Intelligence, Styles, and Brain Lateralization’, International Journal of Psychology, Vol. 19, 435–455.

FURTHER READING / 353

Consciousness Bechara, A., Damasio, H., Tranel, D. and Damasio, A. (1997), ‘Deciding Advantageously Before Knowing the Advantageous Strategy’, Science, Vol. 275, 1293–1295. Dubin, M. W. (2002), How the Brain Works, Blackwell Science. El-Murad, J. and West, D. (2004), ‘The Definition and Measurement of Creativity: What Do We Know?’ Journal of Advertising Research, Vol. 44, No. 3, 188–201. Goldenberg, J., Mazursky, D. and Solomon, S. (1999), ‘Toward Identifying the Inventive Templates of New Products: A Channeled Ideation Approach’, Journal of Marketing Research, Vol. 36, May, 200–210. Mishra, S. P. (1983), ‘Cognitive Processes: Implications for Assessing Intelligence’, Theory Into Practice, Vol. 22, No. 2, 145–150. Thompson, D. N. and Clark, P. M. (1981), ‘Differentiation-Integration and Creativity’, Journal of General Psychology, Vol. 104, 153–154.

Filling the box Conceptual fluency Alba, J. W. and Chattopadhyay, A. (1986), ‘Salience Effects in Brand Recall’, Journal of Marketing Research, Vol. 23, No. 4, 363–369. Chaudhuri, A. (2002), ‘How Brand Reputation Affects the Advertising-Brand Equity Link’, Journal of Advertising Research, Vol. 42, No. 3, 33–43.

354 / FURTHER READING

Lee, A. Y. and Labroo, A. A. (2004), ‘The Effect of Conceptual and Perceptual Fluency on Brand Evaluation’, Journal of Marketing Research, Vol. 41, No. 2, 141–155. Menon, G. and Raghubir, P. (2003), ‘Ease-of-Retrieval as an Automatic Input on Judgments: A Mere-Accessibility Framework?’ Journal of Consumer Research, Vol. 30, September, 230–243. Öhman, N. and Dahlén, M. (2005), Brand Salience vs. Brand Attitude, CCM Working Paper, Handelshögskolan i Stockholm. Schwarz, N. (2004), ‘Metacognitive Experiences in Consumer Judgment and Decision Making’, Journal of Consumer Psychology, Vol. 14, No. 4, 332–348. Ye, G. and Van Raaij, W. (2004), ‘Brand Equity: Extending Brand Awareness and Liking With Signal Detection Theory’, Journal of Marketing Communications, Vol. 10, No. 2, 95–114. Ziamou, P. and Ratneshwar, S. (2003), ‘Innovations in Product Functionality: When and Why Are Explicit Comparisons Effective?’ Journal of Marketing, Vol. 67, April, 49–61.

Brand gravity Braun-Latour. K. A. and Latour, M. S. (2004), ‘Assessing the Long-Term Impact of a Consistent Advertising Campaign on Consumer Memory’, Journal of Advertising, Vol. 33, No. 2, 49–61. Dahlén, M., Lange, F., Sjödin, H. and Törn, F. (2005), ‘Effects of Ad-Brand Incongruency’, Journal of Current Issues and Research in Advertising, No. 2.

FURTHER READING / 355

Dahlén, M. and Rosengren, S. (2005), ‘Brands Affect Slogans Affect Brands? Brand Equity, Competitive Interference, and the Brand-Slogan Link’, Journal of Brand Management, Vol. 12, No. 3, 151–164. Kumar, P. (2005), ‘Brand Counterextensions: The Impact of Brand Extension Success Versus Failure’, Journal of Marketing Research, Vol. 42, No. 2, 183–194. Kumar, P. (2005), ‘The Impact of Cobranding on Customer Evaluation of Brand Counterextensions’, Journal of Marketing, Vol. 69, No. 3, 1–18. Rosengren, S. and Dahlén, M. (2006), ‘Brand-Slogan Matching in a Cluttered Environment’, Journal of Marketing Communications, Vol. 12.

Associative networks Boush, D. M. and Loken, B. (1991), ‘A Process-Tracing Study of Brand Extension Evaluation’, Journal of Marketing Research, Vol. 27, Februrary, 16–28. Bridges, S., Keller, K. and Sood, S. (2000), ‘Communication Strategies for Brand Extensions: Enhancing Perceived Fit by Establishing Explanatory Links’, Journal of Advertising, Vol. 29, No. 4, 1–11. Keller, K. L. (1993), ‘Conceptualizing, Measuring, and Managing Customer-Based Brand Equity’, Journal of Marketing, Vol. 57, January, 1–22. Lane, V. R. (2000), ‘The Impact of Ad Repetition and Ad Content on Consumer Perceptions of Incongruent Extensions’, Journal of Marketing, Vol. 64, April, 80–91. Pryor, K. and Brodie, R. J. (1998), ‘How Advertising Slogans Can Prime Evaluations of Brand Extensions: Further Empirical Results’, Journal of Product and Brand Management, Vol. 7, No. 6, 497–508.

356 / FURTHER READING

The context rules – contextual effects Dahlén, M. (2003), Marknadsförarens nya regelbok. Varumärken, reklam och media i nytt ljus, Liber. Dahlén, M. (2005), ‘The Medium as a Contextual Cue: Effects of Creative Media Choice’, Journal of Advertising, Vol. 34, No. 3. Moreau, C., Markman, A. and Lehmann, D. (2001). ‘What Is It? Categorization Flexibility and Consumers’ Responses to Really New Products’, Journal of Consumer Research, Vol. 27, March, 489–498. Ratneshwar, S., Barsalou, L., Pechmann, C. and Moore, M. (2001), ‘Goal-Derived Categories: The Role of Personal and Situational Goals in Category Representations’, Journal of Consumer Psychology, Vol. 10, No 3, 147–157. Schocker, A., Bayus, B. and Kim, N. (2004). ‘Product Complements and Substitutes in the Real World: The Relevance of “Other Products” ’, Journal of Marketing, Vol. 68, January, 28–40. Van Heerde, H., Mela, C. and Manachande, P. (2004), ‘The Dynamic Effect of Innovation on Market Structure’, Journal of Marketing Research, Vol. 41, May, 166–183.

Index alternative technologies 223 Amazon.com 64 anti-jeopardy exercise 215–17 artistry 101 associations 250, 251, 255–68 combinations of 112 remote 204–10 secondary 258, 259 semantic 256–8, 260–1, 324–6, 327 squared 323–4 associative network 227, 255–61 associative tests 108, 110, 11, 115, 205 assumptions, breaking 315–17 ‘bad’ characteristics, enhancing 295–8 banking services 113, 114–15 Barclays Bank 285 behaviour, knowledge about 221–3, 226, 274 Betamax 100 bisociations 87–8, 106, 110, 117–18, 121, 122, 222, 274, 279, 308 Bono, Edward de 143 boredom 44 box as metaphor 107 ‘boxing in’ work 85–6

brain blood circulation 196–7 capacity to use 180–1, 184 connections 101 dendrites 182, 255 halves of 180, 183–4 neurons 182–3 rewards system 160–1 sides of 189–90, 192 size 1–2, 116, 128 brand awareness 240 brand communication 240, 241–2, 283 brand gravity 227, 243–5, 248–50, 251, 252–4, 283, 327 brand manifestations 290 brand perception 251 brand reputation 239–40, 281 brand schema 245–8, 251, 253 brand uniqueness 240–1 brand voice, changing 283–5 brick selling exercise 145–9 Burger King 35, 233, 304–5 category voice, changing 286–9 change category 326–9

358 / INDEX

changing details exercise 210–12 chaotic thinking 98 coat hanger exercise 149–51 Coca-Cola 35, 41, 53, 55, 224, 231, 256, 257, 259, 305, 308, 325 combinations of associations 112 common sense 125, 126, 127–8, 159– 78 communication schema 286 communications RAT 301–3 company size, changing 289–91 competence exploitation 80 competence investigation 80 competitor focus 72 concept development 278 conceptual creativity 205 conceptual flow 230–1, 232–5 conceptual fluency 227, 229–42, 257, 284, 286, 290, 292 consciousness 125, 126, 128–9, 199– 217 conservatism 127 context effects 227, 263–8 conventionality 97–8 conventions and rules 83, 125–6, 127, 135–57 convergent thinking 98 core business 307 corporate governance 79–81 cost of creativity 53–5 cost valuations 305 creative blocks 78 creative capacity 44

creative person 63, 93–102 creative process 73–91 creative result 67–72, 251 creativity exercises 59–60 credibility, loss of 50–3 Crest 260 Csíkszentmihályi, Mihály 42, 185 customer loyalty 52, 53 customer satisfaction 68 cutting-edge innovations 70 Da Vinci, Leonardo 63, 93, 95, 101, 194–5 daydreaming 185, 186 deadlines 186 definition (rule) 141–2 definition of creativity 63–5 demographic trends, knowledge about 225–6 divergent thinking 98 dot exercise 59–63, 103, 159–60, 173–8, 203 double jeopardy 34, 35, 37, 224 Dressmann 263–4 drive-thru banks 114–15, 311 Dvorak keyboard 25, 100, 118–19 economics and business, knowledge of 223–5, 226, 274 Edison, Thomas 95–6 efficient complexity 17, 37–41 Einstein, Albert 2, 64, 93, 95, 101, 116, 177, 190

INDEX / 359

elaboration 148 electric car 121 Encyclopaedia Britannica 140 enhancement of specifics 298–300 epiphanies, exercises as 132–3 Ericsson 121 evolutionary basins 39 evolutionary landscape 37–40 extroversion 100 Facit 309 failure of initiatives 53–5 feminine qualities 101, 128 first-mover advantage 34, 35, 37, 224, 231 flexibility 148 Florence Nightingale effect 52, 55, 253 flow 185–6 flow of ideas 94–6, 112 fluency 148 focused attention 181, 185 folded paper exercise 190–2 Ford Escort 15 GB 314 Gell-Mann, Murray 135, 136, 138–9, 177 gestalt psychology 61, 202, 204 Goldman Sachs 9 Guilford’s Alternative Uses test 148 Guinness 244 gut feelings 200–2, 213

H&M 144 happiness 42–7, 96 Harley-Davidson 285 Heineken 260 humility 99–100, 127 IBM 41 improvement innovations 12–13 incubation time 202 innovative thinking : creative result ratio 251 insight 118–21 Internet retail 119 introversion 100 iPod 70 IQ 94, 207 IQ tests 108, 110–11, 115, 148, 161, 207, 209 jigsaw puzzles 109–10, 204 Keebler 260 Kinder Surprise 237 knowledge 73, 75–6, 221–7, 273 use of 90–1 Lagerfeld, Karl 143–4 Läkerol 266, 268 lead users 70 leaking buckets 17, 30–4, 37 lens, brand as 247–8, 254 letter exercise 170–3 Levi’s 302–3

360 / INDEX

limitations on creativity 84–5 Linux 144 living the brand 283 logic 101, 163, 245, 290 luck 11 macro-objective chains 30 man with bow-tie stuck in the elevator exercise 164–6 market ceiling 17, 34–7, 315 market leader 231, 289 marketing creativity 23–4, 25–6, 68 masculine qualities 101, 128 maximum market share of product, calculation of 35–6 McCartney, Stella 144 McDonald’s 35, 231, 233, 263, 264, 304–5, 333 meaningfulness 68, 89, 274 perceived 113 measurement of creativity 20–4 memory 60–1 working 182 mental blocks 140–1 merging of product categories 235–7 metaphors, exercises as 131, 187–8 Metro 10 Michelin 260 Microsoft 223–4 milk exercise 204 milk tetrapaks 139–40 monk exercise 188–90 motivation 73, 74, 77–8, 84

muscle brain versus 187 training 1, 2–3 myths about creativity 65–6, 87, 89 name, changing 291–5 negative effects of creativity 49–50 network externalities 223–4 New York Stock Exchange 15 Newton, Isaac 237 Newtonian behaviour 237–8, 242 next customer 330–3 Nokia 40, 307 not-definitions 317–18 novelty value 71–2, 274 obstacles as solutions 303–6 Oldsmobile 41 Oracle 144 Oral-B 313 originality 148 paradigm-challenging innovations 13, 68, 70 paradoxes 97–102 parallel activity 113 patents 113 Pepsi-Cola 35, 55 perceived distance 113 perceived meaningfulness 113 performance anxiety 78 Pfizer 10 physiology 125, 126, 128, 179–97

INDEX / 361

ping-pong ball in the steel pipe exercise 154–7 platform development 277–9 Porsche 52 Post-it notes 10, 54, 297 Postum 41 pride 99–100, 127 product category 252, 315 product creativity 22–3, 25, 26, 68 product development 278 product innovation 25 product novelty 68–72, 120–1 product RAT 318–23 product to market 223–4 Professor Balthazar exercise 196–7 Propecia 298 Proquest 64 quick and slow solution exercise 213–15 QWERTY system 100, 118–19 random verbs 309–11 randomness 87–90 RAT (Remote Associates Test) 148, 204–10 communications 301–3 product 318–23 realization 76 rebellion 97–8, 127 Red Cross 306 Remote Associates Test see RAT remote associations 204–10

research and development (R&D) 15 resonance 301 reverse logic 245 rewards system 160–1 risk 119–20 risk-taking 96–7 riverbeds 81–7, 107, 126, 185, 187, 227, 274, 289, 327 rope around the Earth exercise 167–8 routine 83, 275–6 breaking 193–5 changing 210–12 rules see conventions and rules SAAB 41 SBAB 9, 290–1, 327 scale advantage 34, 35, 37, 224 scissors, improving on, exercise 152–4 secondary associations 258, 259 self-preservation 46 self-test for creativity 20, 338–9 semantic associations 256–8, 260–1, 324–6, 327 sense of time 109 Situation 74 Sony Ericsson 121 step instructions 86 sub-category positioning 233–5 suitability 17 Sveriges Bostadsfinansieringsaktiebolag 9 systematic risk 15–16

362 / INDEX

targets 85–6 telephone, answering with ‘wrong’ hand 193–5 tennis tournament exercise 168–70 thought tunnels 81–7, 107, 126, 130, 160, 161, 185, 187, 227, 274, 289, 309, 327 3M 10, 54, 297 time of day, association with 311–13 time, sense of 109 Torvalds, Linus 144 training 99, 130–1 brain 187 muscle 187 training exercises 129–33 trisociations 88, 121

USB memory stick 121 Van Gogh, Vincent 93 VHS video 25, 100 Viagra 10, 298 Viktor and Rolf 144 Virgin 307, 327 visibility 78 Volkswagen 321 Volvo 40, 308 Zeigarnik effect 60, 61 Index compiled by Annette Musker