I thought I'd share a few of the nuggets I promised from this week's offsite in Orlando. We had a Disney creative talk to us about fostering creativity inside your organization, and his thoughts were – while basic – good reminders.
1. Creativity comes in different forms. This reminds me of Russell 's t-shirts. Don't think for a minute that creativity is relegated to a department. There are many ways people contribute to a creative enterprise in suprisingly creative ways. E.g. – the accountants have to figure out creative ways to pay for stuff that allows great ideas to happen. Or pitches to be won.
2. Don't filter ideas at the beginning. I think we're all guilty of shooting down or rejecting ideas because we knew going in to a brainstorm or think session what kind of ideas we're looking for. That's actually a negative byproduct of being very smart – because asking the right question is a skill that helps planners enormously. But the trouble with shooting down ideas is that you inevitably throw away possible random connections, or stepping stones, to ideas you'd never have dreamed of. Bottomline: be very open at the beginning and do the weeding later.
3. Let ideas incubate. We had a great, positive & constructive discussion about this with the client. Sometimes when an idea is not on brief, or not answering a very thought through and strategic question/objective, people have the tendency to kill it. Many times it may not "pass through all the filters" you & your client have erected to weed out bad ideas and get to good ones. The problem with this is that you eliminate your gut. Bad idea. If an idea feels great because your gut is telling you so, don't kill it. Ever. Instead, recognize there's a reason for that and shelve it. Park that idea. And let it incubate. Tell people about it. If it's a great idea in the making, somewhere, somehow, someone will breathe life into it in ways you might not have imagined.
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