Go, Pop, and Fizz!

Tools for Everyday Creativity and Innovation

Womens Leadership Institute 2012
Kathryn J. Deiss Content Strategist Association of College & Research Libraries kdeiss@ala.org

The Creative Process

Photo by tariqs fantasy world

Creative Inventions
Lightning Rounds - 60 seconds 1. Create an invention using your card and someone elses 2. Write it down on back of card

3. Find another person and repeat

4. Find another person and repeat

Who is creative?

Photo by kelsmith1992

Changing perspective jogs the creative impulse

The adjacent possible a concept describing the power of combinatory connections/collisions

Coined by scientist Stuart Kaufmann and cited in Where Good Ideas Come From by Steven Johnson

Definitions
Creativity: a process of developing and expressing novel ideas that are likely to be useful Innovation: the embodiment, combination, and/or synthesis of knowledge in novel, relevant, valued new products, processes, or services
Source: Leonard, Dorothy and Walter Swap. When Sparks Fly. (1999)

Innovation Skills

Photo by James.Robertson

 Innovations are those things that

change the way we can do what we want to do

Innovation is disruptive

Innovation is both revolutionary

and evolutionary innovative

Society decides what is

Practices for Innovation

Identifying question/opportunity

Voluminous idea generation Use of creative thinking tools Tolerance for failure and time lags or
jumps Escaping the end of.. syndrome; embrace the beginning of.. way of thinking

Creative Problem Solving

1. Using Mind Mapping to describe the problem
2. Excursion Technique 3. Prototyping

Test case: How to improve the super market cart?

Photo by niznoz

Mind Mapping

Source: Joyce Wycoff

Excursion Technique

Applying Insight to the Problem

Put your mind map and your excursion together to generate solutions to the problems you identified How can you build a better shopping cart?

IDEO on Nightline

Prototyping
Observation of people & situations

Trials and tests

Three dimensional aspect Inventive Feedback loops

Viability (business)

Innovation
Desirability (human) Feasibility (technical)

www.ideo.com

Quick prototyping is about acting before you have got the answers Good prototypes dont just communicate, they persuade. Tom Kelley, IDEO

Hurdles in the Way of Innovation

Photo by Marjorie Baillie

The desire for perfection interrupts the flow of innovation

Photo by Leo Reynolds

Risk Aversion

Photo by anarchosyn

What are you trying to accomplish?

What does success look like?

Photo by r000pert

Political implications
Cornelis Drebbel and 20,000 (1624) Societal readiness Patterns of behavior Political climate Building the message

 What are the political

implications of some innovations your unit has tried or wishes to try?

Who needs to buy-in? What timing issues exist?

What is the readiness for the

innovation?

Creating an Action Brief

Convince(person, group, demographic)
That by(thinking, doing, considering) They will(think, feel, do differently) Which will(reach for a huge human benefit) Because(embed your idea in shared mission/values)
Used with permission by Ricochet (a graphics, marketing, and PR firm in Denver)

The most successful people are those who are willing to give up their most successful strategies.
Richard Foster

Thank you!
Keep in touch! kdeiss@ala.org