Bad ideas to stimulate good ones: Monkeys making helicopters

Good Idea/Bad Idea by Fredo Alvarez (Flickr)

Mr. Skullhead is a character from the animated television series Tiny Toon Adventures and Animaniacs. He would feature in a short segment called "Good Idea/Bad Idea." He would first perform a mundane task uneventfully and then be asked to perform a similar task with one crucial detail changed to make it a bad idea. (Good Idea: Having breakfast served to you in bed. Bad Idea: Having tennis balls served to you in bed.) Every time Mr Skullhead did the bad variation of the first activity he'd suffer one way or another.

But what if you reverse the flow? Turns out the entertainment industry uses this approach to stimulate creativity. As described by Scott Adams (of Dilbert fame) in the Wall Street Journal:

I spent some time working in the television industry, and I learned a technique that writers use. It's called "the bad version." When you feel that a plot solution exists, but you can't yet imagine it, you describe instead a bad version that has no purpose other than stimulating the other writers to imagine a better version.

For example, if your character is stuck on an island, the bad version of his escape might involve monkeys crafting a helicopter out of palm fronds and coconuts. That story idea is obviously bad, but it might stimulate you to think in terms of other engineering solutions, or other monkey-related solutions. The first step in thinking of an idea that will work is to stop fixating on ideas that won't. The bad version of an idea moves your mind to a new vantage point.

He then proceeds to demonstrate how his own bad ideas (on his chosen subject of taxing the rich) really do help make you think of better ideas. I think it's a great technique and I'm going to try it the first chance I get. I'll report back if that turns out to be a bad idea.

Why are so few companies the hotbeds of innovation that everyone thinks they should be?

Andrew Campbell, from the Ashridge Strategic Management Centre in London, asks an important question: Why is it, given that we've known for years that the key ingredients of innovation and creativity management are collaboration, encouraging diverse perspectives, nurturing ideas etc, that so few companies adopt these practices?

His answer: "What we don't understand is that innovation and creativity are value-destroying activities unless they are carefully contained. There are many more bad ideas than good ones and many more people who are passionate about ill-conceived business models than about those that will succeed. Give all that creativity a free hand, and you will get poorer--fast."

Agree? Does creativity typically destroy value and, if so, what is realistic expectation for creative processes to thrive in profit-driven corporations?

Source: The letters section of the March Harvard Business Review (subscription required)

"Our relationship is a guerilla marketing campaign."

Creating the right mood for The Women. Brilliant.

(Via: Brand Flakes For Breakfast)

Diamonds just taste better

Sometimes, brilliance is staring you in the face. You just can't see it until you turn your head to one side.

This report from Maclean's discusses the launch of "Diamond Shreddies," an unusual line extension has helped re-energize this 67 year old, originally square, Canadian cereal brand.

Key quote: "One perplexed man wrote the Edmonton Journal: 'I am not usually the suspicious type, but don't the new Diamond Shreddies look like the original Shreddies just flipped on their side?'"

And here's some of the focus group research:



Congratulations to Ogilvy and Mather who were awarded the 2008 Grand Clio for "best integrated campaign" for this "diamond Shreddie" concept and the client, Kraft for being brave enough to trust that consumers would get the joke.

Links:
1) Diamond Shreddies website
2) Diamonds are a brand's best friend: Macleans.ca

These last two blogs courtesy of Chris, the intern. Get back to work!!

The Capitalists will sell us the rope with which to hang them

I'm sure this will be the "post-du-jour" so before I read this too many other places, news today of "Free Tibet" flags being made in China.

Links:
1) First seen on Marginal Revolution (also the source of the Lenin quote in title)
2) Free Tibet Flags Made in China: BBC News

FreeRice

The power of a great idea, well executed. FreeRice was only launched in October but it's already generated over 9 billion grains of donated rice and become the biggest source of traffic for the United Nation's World Food Programme. The story of how John Breen came up with the idea was covered on NPR this morning and is also summarized here.

It's a classic case of the creative technique of connecting two normally unconnected things - in this case, John's passion to end poverty and his search for a way to help his son do well in his SAT's.

The dancer keeps on spinning

This is now more interesting as an insight about what kinds of stories have "blog-stick" than its original, supposed insight into creativity.

The latest (debunk) on the spinning dancer is here and my earlier posts are here and here.

More on the dancer

The dancer test that I posted about a while back is still generating interest.

Steven Levitt, in this Freakonomics post, surveyed his readers to find out which way they saw the dancer spinning. His conclusion is that the dancer does, in fact, have predictive power but that it's the reverse of what the original author suggested. Counter clockwise = creative and I'm back to being a left-brainer.

The dancer test for right brain vs. left brain

I can't vouch for the scientific rigor of this but, since I saw the dancer spinning clockwise, I shouldn't have to.