I would like to do a follow-up to yesterday’s post about innovators and creators, because I recently stumbled up the following quote:

“We think of creative people in a heroic manner, and we celebrate them, but the thing we celebrate is the after-effect,” says Barry Staw, a researcher at the University of California–Berkeley business school who specializes in creativity.

It is taken from a Slate article called: Inside the Box – People don’t actually like creativity. And it’s supported by a bunch of research, including a 2010 study conducted by professors at Cornell University, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of North Carolina.

The key finding was that people generally hold a bias against creativity, and it’s activated when we become motivated to reduce uncertainty. This might be because we fear rejection or because we’ve come to learn that reducing uncertainty and promoting the status quo is often better for career advancement. 

There’s less perceived risk.

But here’s the thing: celebrating creativity after the fact is meaningless. There’s no genius in that. Everyone now knows this truth. The heroics come into play when you’re both willing to be misunderstood and willing to be dead wrong.

Of course, talk is cheap. 

Here are 5 suggestions for promoting greater creativity at your company taken from Tom Tunguz’s blog, who himself is borrowing from Barry Staw (author quoted above):

1. Hire people who’s skills aren’t precise matches for the needs of the company.
2. Encourage employees not to listen blindly to corporate policy and conventional wisdom; not all to speak with the same voice.
3. Those in power should go as far as possible to encourage active opposition to ideas. (Similar to Drucker’s obligation to dissent).
4. Optimize for adaptiveness. Have extra labor capacity and explore side projects. (How many creative companies started or were reinvigorated by side projects? Twitter and Slack are two that immediately come to mind).
5. Lead rather than follow. Take risks.

My friend Dan just introduced me to a terrific podcast called, How I Built This. It’s all about “innovators, entrepreneurs, and idealists, and the stories behind the movements they built.” As soon as he told me about it I immediately pulled out my phone and hit subscribe.

You will recognize many of the brands and entrepreneurs featured on this podcast. The companies span everything from Whole Foods and the Corcoran Group (real estate) to Kate Spade and Instagram.

I’m not that up on podcasts. I think it’s because I don’t really drive that often and I don’t have much of a commute. Podcasts are great when you’re sitting in traffic, which is something people here in LA obviously do a lot of.

But I’m going to make time to listen to this one. I have so much respect for anyone who has built something from nothing. Building and creating is what moves us forward.

Most of us know what déjà vu means. Quite literally, it means: already seen. What you may be less familiar with is the idea of “vuja de.” 

The term was coined by the late comedian George Carlin (above), but it has been appropriated by design and innovation firms such as IDEO, as well as many others. 

Here is one way to describe the difference (taken from a blog post by Andrew Chen):

Deja vu is when you see something new, but feel like you’ve already seen it before.

Vuja de is when you’ve seen something a million times, but see it like it’s the first time.

Why vuja de is valuable is because it can help you and I spot opportunities. If the best ideas are indeed the ones that are non-consensus (they sound stupid at first), then it pays to see things differently, with fresh eyes.

I also think it’s a valuable concept because – as Andrew explains in his post – we have a natural tendency over time toward becoming more, as opposed to less, closed off to new ideas.

As we gain more life and work experiences, we start to become entrenched in how we view the world. We believe that we know what will work and what will not work. Nobody will rent their home to strangers. Nobody will get out of their car and ride a bike to work. And so on.

But the problem with that thinking is that it leads to consensus, rather than non-consensus, outcomes. And as we’ve discussed before, those aren’t as valuable (or cool, depending on what we’re talking about).

So vuja de is not just a great platform for telling jokes. It is something worth working on in business and in life.

Image: HBO

I would like to do a follow-up to yesterday’s post about innovators and creators, because I recently stumbled up the following quote:

“We think of creative people in a heroic manner, and we celebrate them, but the thing we celebrate is the after-effect,” says Barry Staw, a researcher at the University of California–Berkeley business school who specializes in creativity.

It is taken from a Slate article called: Inside the Box – People don’t actually like creativity. And it’s supported by a bunch of research, including a 2010 study conducted by professors at Cornell University, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of North Carolina.

The key finding was that people generally hold a bias against creativity, and it’s activated when we become motivated to reduce uncertainty. This might be because we fear rejection or because we’ve come to learn that reducing uncertainty and promoting the status quo is often better for career advancement. 

There’s less perceived risk.

But here’s the thing: celebrating creativity after the fact is meaningless. There’s no genius in that. Everyone now knows this truth. The heroics come into play when you’re both willing to be misunderstood and willing to be dead wrong.

Of course, talk is cheap. 

Here are 5 suggestions for promoting greater creativity at your company taken from Tom Tunguz’s blog, who himself is borrowing from Barry Staw (author quoted above):

1. Hire people who’s skills aren’t precise matches for the needs of the company.
2. Encourage employees not to listen blindly to corporate policy and conventional wisdom; not all to speak with the same voice.
3. Those in power should go as far as possible to encourage active opposition to ideas. (Similar to Drucker’s obligation to dissent).
4. Optimize for adaptiveness. Have extra labor capacity and explore side projects. (How many creative companies started or were reinvigorated by side projects? Twitter and Slack are two that immediately come to mind).
5. Lead rather than follow. Take risks.

My friend Dan just introduced me to a terrific podcast called, How I Built This. It’s all about “innovators, entrepreneurs, and idealists, and the stories behind the movements they built.” As soon as he told me about it I immediately pulled out my phone and hit subscribe.

You will recognize many of the brands and entrepreneurs featured on this podcast. The companies span everything from Whole Foods and the Corcoran Group (real estate) to Kate Spade and Instagram.

I’m not that up on podcasts. I think it’s because I don’t really drive that often and I don’t have much of a commute. Podcasts are great when you’re sitting in traffic, which is something people here in LA obviously do a lot of.

But I’m going to make time to listen to this one. I have so much respect for anyone who has built something from nothing. Building and creating is what moves us forward.

Most of us know what déjà vu means. Quite literally, it means: already seen. What you may be less familiar with is the idea of “vuja de.” 

The term was coined by the late comedian George Carlin (above), but it has been appropriated by design and innovation firms such as IDEO, as well as many others. 

Here is one way to describe the difference (taken from a blog post by Andrew Chen):

Deja vu is when you see something new, but feel like you’ve already seen it before.

Vuja de is when you’ve seen something a million times, but see it like it’s the first time.

Why vuja de is valuable is because it can help you and I spot opportunities. If the best ideas are indeed the ones that are non-consensus (they sound stupid at first), then it pays to see things differently, with fresh eyes.

I also think it’s a valuable concept because – as Andrew explains in his post – we have a natural tendency over time toward becoming more, as opposed to less, closed off to new ideas.

As we gain more life and work experiences, we start to become entrenched in how we view the world. We believe that we know what will work and what will not work. Nobody will rent their home to strangers. Nobody will get out of their car and ride a bike to work. And so on.

But the problem with that thinking is that it leads to consensus, rather than non-consensus, outcomes. And as we’ve discussed before, those aren’t as valuable (or cool, depending on what we’re talking about).

So vuja de is not just a great platform for telling jokes. It is something worth working on in business and in life.

Image: HBO