Creativity Inside the Box

When does a creative idea get so old that people stop appreciating it and start just expecting it?

I’m not sure I have the answer for that. However, I do know that there are many unappreciated things out there that are still highly creative. In this episode, I explore some of these things.

Everything you see around you is a creative invention that has survived the test of time. It’s important to take the time now and then to stop, appreciate these things, and be amazed by how creative they are. That’s what we’ll do today. 

Tune in to hear my list of the top 10 most underappreciated creative inventions.

#10: Elevators

#9: Water towers

#8: Calendars

#7: Roads

#6: Keys

#5: Currency

#4: The iPhone

#3: Brakes

#2: Hair color

#1: Eyeglasses

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EPISODE CREDITS:

If you like this podcast and are thinking of creating your own, consider talking to my producer, Danny Ozment.

He helps thought leaders, influencers, executives, HR professionals, recruiters, lawyers, realtors, bloggers, coaches, and authors create, launch, and produce podcasts that grow their business and impact the world.

Find out more at https://emeraldcitypro.com

Have you ever been invited to a party or other event but had something else you really wanted to do at the same time? Maybe in these instances, you’ve said to yourself, “Gee, I wish I could be in two places at once!”

Obviously, that’s impossible from a physical point of view. However, it brings up an important concept in the field of creativity: location. 

Location has a very special place in our thinking about creativity. So, in this episode, I want to explore this notion of location. Tune in to learn how location can work for you and make you more creative.

1. The importance of location in our lives.
2. How to apply attribute dependency to location.
3. An example of attribute dependency in GPS locational data programs.
4. How the routes you take could be influenced by your insurance programs or health requests.
5. How social status factors could be correlated to your location.
6. Ways to innovate a coffee cup depending on your location.
7. How using attribute dependency to make your products and services change as your location changes could improve the quality of your life. 

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EPISODE CREDITS:

If you like this podcast and are thinking of creating your own, consider talking to my producer, Danny Ozment.

He helps thought leaders, influencers, executives, HR professionals, recruiters, lawyers, realtors, bloggers, coaches, and authors create, launch, and produce podcasts that grow their business and impact the world.

Find out more at https://emeraldcitypro.com

If you’ve been listening to this show for any length of time, you’ve more than likely come to realize that learning creativity takes time. However, it is time well spent. Becoming more creative will change every aspect of your life for the better.

Today, I want to dig into this concept of time. In this episode, I discuss time as the dimension it is. I also explain how it’s used in our creative thinking and creative output.

I believe that time should be a regular part of your creative output. You should always keep the idea of time next to you while working on your creativity and fold it into all of your efforts. Tune in to learn how!

1. What the principle of constraints is.
2. How putting time constraints on a project can make you more creative.
3. How to use the division technique to rearrange things through time.
4. Examples of using the division technique with time.
5. How to add the element of time to the multiplication technique.
6. Where we see time represented in the attribute dependency technique.

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EPISODE CREDITS:

If you like this podcast and are thinking of creating your own, consider talking to my producer, Danny Ozment.

He helps thought leaders, influencers, executives, HR professionals, recruiters, lawyers, realtors, bloggers, coaches, and authors create, launch, and produce podcasts that grow their business and impact the world.

Find out more at https://emeraldcitypro.com

Brainstorming. We’ve talked about it here on the podcast before. Regular listeners will likely remember that I’m not a big fan.

However, today I want to share insights on brainstorming from someone besides me. Mark McGuinness is a fellow author and podcaster. He recently put out an article called “Is Brainstorming A Waste of Time?”

In this episode, I discuss this article and share the case for and against brainstorming. No matter where your opinion on this method lies, I encourage you to listen to the end to hear both sides of the argument. Mark’s insights are very helpful as we explore what role brainstorming plays in innovation.

1. Mark’s balanced view on brainstorming.
2. The benefits of brainstorming.
3. How brainstorming gives everyone a voice and a chance to air out their thoughts.
4. The four rules of brainstorming.
5. The problems with brainstorming.
6. The dangers of inhibition and groupthink.
7. Why we should compare brainstorming with other techniques of innovation to decide which one to use.

Productivity for Creative People: How to Get Creative Work Done in an “Always On” World by Mark McGuinness

The 21st Century Creative podcast

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EPISODE CREDITS:

If you like this podcast and are thinking of creating your own, consider talking to my producer, Danny Ozment.

He helps thought leaders, influencers, executives, HR professionals, recruiters, lawyers, realtors, bloggers, coaches, and authors create, launch, and produce podcasts that grow their business and impact the world.

Find out more at https://emeraldcitypro.com

We’re getting ready to embark upon the holiday season here in the US. It all starts with one of my favorite holidays, Thanksgiving. I especially love this holiday because the food is so good: the traditional turkey and all of the incredible side dishes. Not to mention, it’s an opportunity to spend quality time with family and friends.

So, what does this have to do with creativity? Today, we’re going to investigate that a bit. We’re going to explore Thanksgiving and do some pattern spotting. 

As I always say, anyone can learn the skill of creativity and a big part of that is noticing the patterns in the things we see around us. Tune in to apply this to Thanksgiving dinner and get some inspiration for pattern spotting in your everyday life.

1. What pattern spotting is.
2. Five kitchen gadgets that have the five patterns of the SIT in them.
3. An example of the subtraction technique in a turkey probe.
4. Where we can see multiplication in a triple timer.
5. How gravy can display task unification.
6. How the division technique has been used to make it easier to get the turkey out of the oven.
7. How attribute dependency could apply to Thanksgiving dinner.

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EPISODE CREDITS:

If you like this podcast and are thinking of creating your own, consider talking to my producer, Danny Ozment.

He helps thought leaders, influencers, executives, HR professionals, recruiters, lawyers, realtors, bloggers, coaches, and authors create, launch, and produce podcasts that grow their business and impact the world.

Find out more at https://emeraldcitypro.com

If you live in the United States, you know that it is football season here. Regardless of whether you’re into pro football, college football, or none of the above, you are more than likely aware that football season is going on and you are probably influenced by it in some way.

Today, I want to get into some of the innovation aspects of football. I’m asking and answering the following: what’s happening in the world of sports (and football, in particular) in regards to creativity?

Tune in to hear some of the ways football has innovated over the years and how we can become more creative by studying this popular sport.

1. Technology-driven innovations in the game of football.
2. Why no-huddle offense is a good example of the SIT technique of subtraction.
3. What’s so creative about the wishbone offense strategy and how it demonstrates multiplication.
4. Where we can see the division technique in zone defense.
5. How to apply other SIT techniques to football.
6. How to break fixedness around football, specifically regarding jerseys.

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EPISODE CREDITS:

If you like this podcast and are thinking of creating your own, consider talking to my producer, Danny Ozment.

He helps thought leaders, influencers, executives, HR professionals, recruiters, lawyers, realtors, bloggers, coaches, and authors create, launch, and produce podcasts that grow their business and impact the world.

Find out more at https://emeraldcitypro.com

As one thing changes, another thing changes.

That may sound like a simple (and perhaps obvious) phrase, but if you can remember it, you will have added a very powerful tool to your creativity arsenal. It is the basis of the fifth tool in the SIT method of innovation. Indeed, it sums up attribute dependency.

In this episode, I discuss this tool in depth. I’ve covered attribute dependency in previous episodes but today I want to go a bit of a different route. I’ll explain some of the things I observe when my students learn this technique and teach you how to get this powerful tool up and ready to use for your own innovation.

1. What attribute dependency is.
2. What an attribute is.
3. Why this technique can be the most challenging.
4. Examples of attribute dependency all around us.
5. The complex way to use attribute dependency.
6. An easier way to practice using this technique.
7. How companies use attribute dependency to make smart products. 

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EPISODE CREDITS:

If you like this podcast and are thinking of creating your own, consider talking to my producer, Danny Ozment.

He helps thought leaders, influencers, executives, HR professionals, recruiters, lawyers, realtors, bloggers, coaches, and authors create, launch, and produce podcasts that grow their business and impact the world.

Find out more at https://emeraldcitypro.com

There’s an old saying that goes like this: “Never look inside a woman’s purse.”

Boy, do I know that to be true! I do everything I can to not look inside my wife’s purse because, when I do, it’s horrifying. It’s truly mass chaos in there.

But, what does any of this have to do with creativity? That’s what we are discussing in today’s episode. We’re going to look around a woman’s purse and see what creative lessons we can take from it.

Tune in to join me!

1. How a woman’s purse is like a bridge.
2. What smartphones and purses have in common.
3. How to apply the task unification technique to a woman’s purse.
4. What the “circle of preparedness” is.
5. A personal story about innovating a purse.

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EPISODE CREDITS:

If you like this podcast and are thinking of creating your own, consider talking to my producer, Danny Ozment.

He helps thought leaders, influencers, executives, HR professionals, recruiters, lawyers, realtors, bloggers, coaches, and authors create, launch, and produce podcasts that grow their business and impact the world.

Find out more at https://emeraldcitypro.com

The title of this episode reveals the question on many of our minds: is it creative to copy someone else’s idea?

At first glance, that wouldn’t seem very creative. If you were to take someone’s idea and claim it as your own, few would label that “creativity.”

However, there is some merit to the idea of copying. There’s a very good and compelling reason for using a degree of copying as a way to boost your creative output. 

That’s what we’re covering in this episode. In it, I explain why we should sometimes copy others’ ideas to increase our own innovative abilities.

1. How architects borrow other architects’ designs and styles.
2. How copying can be a way to master fundamental, foundational ideas.
3. Why copying is really just transferring the style of one creative person to your own.
4. How to transfer a creative idea into another genre.
5. What analog transference is.
6. The difference between innovation and discovery.
7. Why every new idea has an old idea in it.

Stewart Hicks’ YouTube channel

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EPISODE CREDITS:

If you like this podcast and are thinking of creating your own, consider talking to my producer, Danny Ozment.

He helps thought leaders, influencers, executives, HR professionals, recruiters, lawyers, realtors, bloggers, coaches, and authors create, launch, and produce podcasts that grow their business and impact the world.

Find out more at https://emeraldcitypro.com

If you’ve been tuning in to the podcast for a while, you probably remember the one thing I always say: creativity is a skill that anyone can learn.

Just like any other skill, creativity can be taught and it can be learned. This may be hard to believe for those of you who don’t think you are naturally creative. However, that’s just the point. You can learn to be creative.

In this episode, I’m sharing the evidence that proves this to be true. The evidence comes from a group of students that are undergraduates at the University of Cincinnati at the Linder College of Business. I teach a course called Marketing Innovation there and get the chance to hear cool, novel ideas that my students come up with. 

Today I’m sharing a handful of those ideas with you to prove you, too, can learn creativity.

1. An innovative idea my students came up with by applying the subtraction method to a kayak.
2. Another innovative idea that came from the subtraction method being used on mascara.
3. How the task unification technique can be used to innovate suitcases.
4. How such cool ideas can come from standard, everyday objects.
5. Innovations my students have come up with for golf.
6. How I’m training my students to provide valuable ideas to their university.

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EPISODE CREDITS:

If you like this podcast and are thinking of creating your own, consider talking to my producer, Danny Ozment.

He helps thought leaders, influencers, executives, HR professionals, recruiters, lawyers, realtors, bloggers, coaches, and authors create, launch, and produce podcasts that grow their business and impact the world.

Find out more at https://emeraldcitypro.com