Tim de Jardine | Blog

Just finished work on my first report about Innovaton in the 21st Century. Download the beta version for free here and let me know your thoughts?

Creativity cannot be forced,  it cannot be asked for on demand.  It cannot be systematic nor can it be a specific outcome.  That wouldn’t be creative would it? And everyone would have the skill!

Creativity happens by osmosis.  It is a skill, much like music or art.  Creativity cannot be taught.  Sure you can learn how to come up with ideas, tactics or concepts.  You can force ideas out into the wild.  But the real creativity/innovation is spontanious.  While brushing your teeth, showering or walking your brain does what its meant to do and Spit out an answer.

The key to creativity is the questions you give your brain.

At school we were taught that there is only one way to solve a problem.  With test and essays, we had to provide an answer exactly in accordance to the teachers answer book.

If I were to ask you what is 7 and 7 equal, the only answer is 14? right?

Wrong.  I have not said what 7 is, whether its a number 7 or 7 eggs or written like “Seven” or any other definition.

The point from this silly example is that there is always more than one way to do anything.  This is a key insight to the innovation process.

What do we do when we are thinking of ideas?  We often stop thinking of new ideas once we come to one we think is right.  This is exactly the mentality as the 7 + 7 example.  

Keep going, create more ideas.  You will find miracles.

A new company named zzzphone just released their beta version of what looks to be a game changer for the cellphone industry. For years retailers have been making expensive margins on cellphones charging ridiculous prices for phones. For example here in NZ a m600i sells for $900 from Vodafone where I can get it off Ebay for less than $500.

This is different though, its not just margins its the holy-grail. You can customise the cellphone as you choose, adding/removing components. Best thing is there is no middleman here, they sell direct from the factory and phones come with a 2 year warranty.

Head over to zzzphone to have a look.

Seth Godin as usual writes a highly insightful post about the music industry, its evolution and learning from the latest revolution. This post is highly relevant as cd sales were down 10% in the music industry last year…apparantly this is an 8 year trend! This post is just as applicable to many different industries.