Summary

Creativity is self-efficacy built through practice. Design thinking balances technical feasibility, business viability, and human desirability thru cycles of inspiration, synthesis, ideation, and implementation. The key is becoming numb to failure through many small experiments rather than one big bet. Think like a traveler, seek ideas from different cultures, adopt a "do something" mindset favoring rapid MVPs over perfect plans. Teams need karaoke culture – a social norm of innovation backed by humor, trust, and minimal hierarchy.

“Everything in modern society is the result of a collection of decisions made by someone”

Key Takeaways

Notes

1: Design thinking → creative confidence

• “Creative confidence is an inherently optimistic way of looking at the world”
• Empathy towards target audience
• 3 factors of innovation to balance:
  1. Technical feasibility
  2. Business / market factors
  3. Human factors
• Design-driven innovation process
  1. Inspiration: seek sparks of innovation
     • Seek experiences that breed creativity
     • Needs, desires, motivations of people
     • Observe people in their natural context
     • Speak to extreme users
  2. Synthesize: recognize patterns
  3. Ideation and experimentation:
  4. Implementation:
• “Everything in modern society is the result of a collection of decisions made by someone”
• First principles: don’t accept the world as-is

2: Fear → courage

• Self-efficacy: learned belief in ability to create change
• Creative people simply do more experiments
• Multiple small projects > big project
• Become numb to the fear of failure
• Techniques for customer empathy:
  • Fly on the wall in online forums
  • Try your own customer service
  • Talk with unexpected experts (repair)
  • Interview some customers
• Urgent optimism: trying b/c known possible
• Rapid innovation cycles

3: Blank page → insight

• Choose creativity: decide you are creative
• Think like a traveler: notice everything
  • Seek many small ideas
  • From diff cultures, orgs, walks of life
• Relaxed attention: no cognitive tasks, allowing for creativity
• Why? Keep reframing question
  • Continually update world view
  • Reframe playfully: “let’s say…”
• Reframe process: humanize (vs machine)

4: Planning → action

• Personal inertia
• “Do something” mindset
• Bug list: noticed things that are broken
• Commit to rapid, continuous improvement
• Be sloppy with your MVP
• Release before it’s ready
• Frame “changes” as “experiments”

5: Duty → passion

• Heart ↔︎ dollar seesaw
• Viewed as: job, career, or calling
• Find your flow, passion and take small steps

6: Team creatively confident groups

• To create organizational change: support from top management and ICTs
  • “Ground troops and air coverage”
• Karaoke culture: social culture of innovation
  • Keep sense of humor
  • Build on others
  • Minimize hierarchy
  • Value team camaraderie, trust
  • Defer judgement (temporarily)
• Tailor physical environment
• Percolate ideas from the frontline (ICTs)

7: Move creative confidence to go

• Mind map: map of random associations
  • Better than lists for creativity
• Increase your creative production
  • Dream journal
• Group ideation: post-it notes
• Constructive critique: “I want / wish”
• Forge creative habits

8: Next embrace creative confidence

• Normalcy is overrated
• Embrace continuous learning
• Start designing your life
• ↑ observe, experiment, iterate
• Double deliver: do assigned task but also present creative alternative