Tag: creativity

• Writing every day

  I often get asked about my daily routine and how I manage to write, every, single, day.

  Oftentimes people will say that I must not sleep. But the reality is that I love sleeping and I generally need a lot of it. I’m not someone who can function on 5 or 6 hours. I’m useless with that amount of sleep. One of the best productivity hacks for me is to simply sleep more and work less.

  In terms of when I write, my preference is to write first thing in the morning – even though I don’t consider myself much of a morning person. I like to wake up, make breakfast and a coffee, and then sit down at my desk to both read and write. I like to do this before diving into email, before thinking about all the stuff that I need to do that day, and before going into the office.

  Some days a post might take me 20 minutes and some days it might take me an hour. Where I struggle the most to write every day is when I’m traveling or when I have to be somewhere super early, which then means I’m writing in the evening. I like my routines.

  I’m thinking about this right now not only because I often get asked this question, but because I’m currently making my way through a book by Adam Grant called Originals. 

  Though talent still matters, one the things he argues is that creative people tend to be creative because they are prolific. They produce a lot of whatever it is they do. And while much of it may be crap – he argues that Shakespeare penned a lot of crappy plays – it is through sheer volume that they end up achieving those creative breakthroughs.

  This goes against the traditional notion of the “creative genius”, but I think there’s a lot of truth to it. It’s why good architects will iterate through many different building designs and it’s (partly) why bloggers like myself see value in showing up every day.

  2016.06.23

• Come original

  

  I am thinking about nonconformity and originality this morning because I just ordered a book by Wharton professor Adam Grant called, Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World. I ordered it along with another book that was recommended by a regular reader of this blog. (Thanks Daniel.)

  I find this topic fascinating because there’s clearly a deep appreciation for originality and creativity in our society and yet I think we do a lot to encourage the opposite: conformity. Of course, part of this is that it’s inherently easier to conform. Think about how much pressure we have in our lives to please others and generally just “fit in.”

  This is something that I think about and try to fight in my own life, particularly as I get older. As a teenager, I was a skateboarder with bleach blonde hair who rode around in a t-shirt that said “skateboarding is not a crime.” That’s clearly not me anymore (I prefer my natural hair color), but I continue to believe that a bit of rebelliousness can be valuable.

  For instance, I don’t think it’s a coincidence that San Francisco – the epicenter of counterculture in the 1960s – ended up becoming such a hotbed of entrepreneurship.

  To drive that point home even further, here’s a quote from a recent interview with Adam Grant:

  “It often starts with a slight recalibration in perspective followed by a small, but defiant act. It’s the originals who keep pulling on that thread — they instinctively know that that’s the difference between inspiration and innovation.”

  So there’s also a lesson here for cities. Most cities around the world believe in the value of a thriving startup ecosystem. They want entrepreneurs to start companies and create jobs. But we shouldn’t forget that starting a company is also “an expression of nonconformity.” It is someone deciding to carve out their own path in life.

  If that’s what we’re trying to encourage – and most places are – I believe we should also think about what we’re doing and not doing to encourage the right kind of nonconformity in our cities.

  2016.06.17

• The change order (ruminations on innovation)

  If any of you are in the
  business of creating – whether that’s a mobile app or a building – I’m sure
  you understand that the product or thing you’re working on will naturally
  evolve and change over time – probably in unexpected ways.

  In fact, I usually take this as a positive sign. When I have my
  head in a project and I’m focused on solving problems, ideas will naturally
  start to flow. I start thinking of things that I never would have thought
  about at the outset. That’s why I generally think of creativity as a process,
  rather than as some divine gift.

  But the challenge with all of this is that many of our existing business
  processes are not set up to deal with this kind of ambiguity. If anything we
  try and punish these sorts of deviations. If it wasn’t pre-meditated at the
  beginning of the project, we call it “scope creep” and charge extra for them as
  “change orders.” These two words equal death in construction.

  Now, don’t get me wrong, I completely understand the realities
  of running a business and the importance of managing scope and resources. It’s
  a balancing act. Without some structure, nothing would get done. 

  But the more that iterative
  lean methodologies and “design thinking” can be embedded into our processes,
  the more value creation I believe we will see.

  My thinking is as follows: At
  least part of the reason that innovation comes from startups and new market
  entrants is that the founders aren’t usually sitting around talking about defined
  scope and laying out elaborate business plans. They’re focused on creatively
  solving problems and doing whatever it takes to get there.

  It’s also one of the reasons
  that conventional wisdom dictates that tech startups shouldn’t outsource development.
  It’s too core a competency and you can’t “move
  fast and break things” if you don’t have that in-house and you’re constantly worried
  about eye-popping invoices hitting your desk.

  I have always seen lots of
  parallels between startups and architecture. In both of these worlds, the idea
  you start with is rarely what you end up with (at least that’s the case in
  architecture school). You research, learn, and iterate along the way and that
  leads you in new and unexpected ways.

  And in my view, that’s often what
  the path to innovation looks like. Because if you define the entire path at the
  outset, how can you expect to go anywhere new? And if you’re not going anywhere
  new, how can you expect to outperform the market?

  2016.06.08

• The value of saying no

  

  If you’re somebody who has a lot of ideas, it can be pretty easy to get overwhelmed and/or distracted by all of the possibilities. It’s also worse when you’re an optimist and you believe it can all be done. I am definitely guilty of this. It is one of my weaknesses.

  We all have a finite amount of time to work with and so saying no to the stuff that isn’t core is critical. I believe I am getting better at this, but every now and then I find myself having to do some pruning. And once I do that, boy does it feel great.

  Seth Godin has a fantastic blog post on this topic that I love called, No is essential. Here it is in its entirety (it’s a short post):

  “If you believe that you must keep your promises, overdeliver and treat every commitment as though it’s an opportunity for a transformation, the only way you can do this is to turn down most opportunities.

  No I can’t meet with you, no I can’t sell it to you at this price, no I can’t do this job justice, no I can’t come to your party, no I can’t help you. I’m sorry, but no, I can’t. Not if I want to do the very things that people value my work for.

  No is the foundation that we can build our yes on.”

  To drive the point home even further, let’s shift gears and talk about wine. (For all of you fellow wine drinkers.)

  In viticulture, overall yield – usually measured in hectoliters per hectare of vineyard – is often seen as an important indicator of quality. The idea being that low yields produce better wines because the flavors get concentrated over fewer grapes. 

  Part of what drives this is the leaf to fruit ratio. Too much fruit and not enough leaves, means the grapes won’t ripen properly.

  The parallel to this conversation is that leaves are much like time. There’s only so much of it. And while many of us are constantly trying to maximum yield – I know I am – there are limits to the kind and quality of grapes we can produce when we do that. 

  I know this in principle. And more and more, I know this in practice. I am learning to say no.

  Image from Flickr

  2016.04.13

• Technology x Business x Design

  John Maeda – Design Partner at venture capital firm KPCB – recently
  published the second and 2016 edition of his #DesignInTech
  Report. I shared his first one almost exactly a year ago.

  His core thesis is that we are heading towards a world where technology,
  business, and design become closely integrated – in school, in business, and so
  on. Throughout the report he looks at the increasing impact that design and
  designers are having within the startup ecosystem.

  Here are a few verbatim bullet points:

  – Design isn’t just about beauty; it’s about market relevance and meaningful
  results.

  – 36% of the top 25 funded startups are co-founded by
  designers, up from 20% in 2015.

  – The general word “design” will come to mean less as we
  will start to qualify the specific kind of design we mean.

  – Currently design education lags the technology industry’s
  needs for data-oriented, coding enabled graduates with business acumen.

  – We must consciously invest in education to develop a
  more hybrid perspective on creativity in the 21^st century:
  Technology x Business x Design.

  – President Obama’s signing of ESSA (Every Student
  Succeeds Act) into law in 2015 is a positive sign: by turning STEM into STEAM (adding Art) in K-12 education as a US priority.

  As somebody who studied design (architecture), business,
  and computer science (briefly, before switching to architecture), I probably
  have a bit of a biased view here. But to the extent that I can be objective, I
  really see this as the future. I am a big supporter of the transformation from STEM to STEAM.

  Below is a quote that Maeda uses to end his report, which I will also use to end this post:

  “Engineers are efficient problem solvers. Business people think short term. Designer want things to be elegant and beautiful. All three need to create collaboration and harmony, and honor the value each other brings. There needs to be a new kind of ‘multi-dimensional’ approach to design that is yet to be invented.” –Linda Holliday

  2016.03.21

• The advantages of disadvantages in business and entrepreneurship

  This morning I stumbled upon an interesting book by Claudia Kalb called Andy Warhol Was a Hoarder: Inside the Minds of History’s Great Personalities. 

  I obviously haven’t read it yet, but I like the premise. The book examines 12 famous figures and makes the argument that each of them had some sort of mental health condition that aided them in their success. 

  Here is an excerpt from a recent Harvard Business Review interview with the author:

  “The most common one may be narcissism. Frank Lloyd Wright is a good example. He had classic narcissistic qualities — a sense of grandiosity, superiority, a huge and complete belief in his aesthetic sensibility, and disregard for architecture that did not live up to his standard. Narcissists also have an ability to be charming, and to lure people into their orbit. That’s obviously useful for an entrepreneur. The issue is that while these qualities may make you a good leader, they may not make you a winning boss. Employees often feel that narcissistic bosses are ruthless or lacking in empathy. Also, unlike people with depression or anxiety disorders, narcissists don’t suffer as much personally from their condition — but the way they behave can be much harder on the people around them.”

  Related to this topic is an emergent body of research that, more specifically, looks at the relationship between mental illness and entrepreneurship. And according to work done by professor Michael A. Freeman of UC-San Francisco and professor Sheri Johnson of Berkeley, there’s a significant relationship. 

  Below are two excerpts from a Washington Post article published last year.

  “Forty-nine percent of entrepreneurs surveyed reported at least one mental health condition. Nearly a third reported having two or more mental health issues, such as ADHD, bipolar disorder, depression, anxiety or substance use conditions. And half of the entrepreneurs who reported no mental-health conditions identified themselves as coming from families with a history of mental illness.”

  Why would these conditions be of any benefit to entrepreneurs?

  “For all of its ills, depression also brings empathy and creativity. Martin Luther King Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi attempted suicide as teenagers. Uncommon levels of empathy can allow a businessman to better understand a customer’s need. And a creative mind won’t be satisfied on the corporate ladder, but instead in a fast-moving start-up where he or she can unfurl ideas and dreams.
  

  Individuals with ADHD naturally make decisions faster, are comfortable working independently and are more creative, necessary skills at a start-up. They’re likely to be bored working for someone else.”

  From a city building standpoint, all of this is quite relevant. Because for all of the focus on promoting innovation and entrepreneurship, we don’t seem to be talking about healthcare and mental health systems. And there’s clearly an argument to be made that the two are connected.

  2016.02.23

• Why creativity requires freedom

  

  https://500px.com/embed.js

  In a knowledge and innovation economy, new ideas matter a great deal. But it seems to be a lot easier for existing companies to come up with sustaining, incremental innovations, than it is for them to come up with new, disruptive innovations. 

  New can be hard.

  That’s why I was interested in a recent New York Times article by Wharton professor Adam Grant called, How to Raise a Creative Child. Step One: Back Off.

  The article starts by arguing that many “child prodigies” rarely become adult creators who go on to the change the world:

  The gifted learn to play magnificent Mozart melodies, but rarely compose their own original scores. They focus their energy on consuming existing scientific knowledge, not producing new insights. They conform to codified rules, rather than inventing their own. Research suggests that the most creative children are the least likely to become the teacher’s pet, and in response, many learn to keep their original ideas to themselves. In the language of the critic William Deresiewicz, they become the excellent sheep.

  To become creators Adam argues that children need to be given the freedom and independence to develop their own sense of self:

  When psychologists compared America’s most creative architects with a group of highly skilled but unoriginal peers, there was something unique about the parents of the creative architects: “Emphasis was placed on the development of one’s own ethical code.”

  Yes, parents encouraged their children to pursue excellence and success — but they also encouraged them to find “joy in work.” Their children had freedom to sort out their own values and discover their own interests. And that set them up to flourish as creative adults.

  I firmly believe in this approach. But of course, this doesn’t just apply to children; though that is certainly an important takeaway. I also think that if you want the best work out of people in the workplace, you also need to: back off.

  Creativity needs freedom.

  2016.02.03

• Balancing oil and ideas

  

  https://500px.com/embed.js

  Canada is a resource rich country. And one of the things that commonly happens to countries with a lot of resources is that they begin to myopically focus on the immediate gains from resources at the expense of long term innovation and economic development. 

  This is known as the “resource curse.”

  The Martin Prosperity Institute here in Toronto recently published a report that looks at this exact topic: Canada’s urban competitiveness through the lenses of its resource economy and its knowledge economy. In the end, Richard Florida and Greg Spencer conclude that two can and should work together, but that we need to stop neglecting our cities:

  “The oil and gas industry is not necessarily a constraint on the creative economy, but in the past decade or so it has come to dominate thinking around economic development policy-making. It is time to use the resources from the energy economy to build a more secure future as an urban knowledge economy. We can also use
  talent and technology to deepen and expand the resource economy.”

  And one of their key recommendation is something I have argued for many times here on Architect This City:

  “A New Federalism for Cities: It is time to give cities the taxing and spending powers they require. Cities must be given more control over their own destinies if they are to prosper
  in the 21st century.”

  Now, here are a few interesting charts from the report.

  This first one looks at the relationship between a city’s population and its creativity levels. The two are positively correlated, which means that, in this context, bigger is better.

  

  This second one splits Canada in half – east and west – and then looks at how average income levels are affected by creativity levels (the knowledge economy). Here we see that in eastern cities, income levels are positively correlated with creativity levels. But in western cities, changing creativity levels have almost no impact on income levels. 

  

  Finally, this third chart compares the relationship between oil and gas employment (LQ = location quotient) and average income levels. What it finds is that income levels and oil and gas employment are positively correlated in the west, but there’s almost no relationship in eastern cities. 

  The way to read this chart is to think of the LQ as the employment multiple relative to the national average. So for example, a LQ = 10 means that the oil and gas employment levels are 10 times the national average. As you probably guessed, the pink dot way out on the right is Fort McMurray.

  

  If you’d like to read the entire report, you can do that here. I hope that our new Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, will read reports like this and spend more of his efforts investing in our knowledge economy – which means investing in our cities.

  2015.11.08

• Why we should fight the divided city

  

  https://500px.com/embed.js

  There has been and continues to be many divided cities around the world.

  Berlin had the Berlin Wall. 

  Northern Ireland (mostly Belfast) has its Peace Walls that still separate Protestant loyalists and Catholic republicans from each other. 

  Beirut had the Green Line, which separated the predominately Muslim side in the west from the predominantly Christian side in the east during the Lebanese Civil War. And I understand this is still the case today.

  Detroit has 8 Mile Road, which is a psychological barrier rather than a physical one, but one that still sharply separates whites (blue dots, below) and blacks (green dots, below). The image below is from Wired Magazine.

  

  And even here in Toronto you could say that we’ve become a divided city, albeit without the civil wars or race riots that have plagued the other cities listed above. Our voting patterns suggest a real urban-suburban divide and the many ethnic groups in this city continue to concentrate themselves in specific areas.

  I’ve been thinking about this phenomenon in the context of a recent article I read talking about closed vs. open social networks. The article was talking about career success, but I think the lessons are also transferrable to cities.

  The argument made in the article is that people who are able to position themselves in open networks – that is, become the connector between diverse kinds of social groups – are more likely to succeed than people who position themselves in closed networks where they are only surrounded by people they already know and by people who are similar to themselves.

  And the reason for this is because people in open networks end up getting exposed to a broader set of viewpoints and ideas. They get a more accurate view of the world and they are able to problem solve better than those who may be coming at it from a more myopic or singular perspective.

  But the challenge with open networks, is that there seems to be an innate human tendency towards closed networks. We love what is familiar. We love what is comfortable to us. In other words, we are attracted to people that are similar to ourselves. This is known as homophily.

  So it’s not surprising that we tend to cluster ourselves in cities. Yes, there are economic benefits to doing so (known as agglomeration economies), but there’s also a certain feeling of solidarity that comes from being around other people with the same view of the world. There’s no tension because everyone has the same beliefs, whether that be religion or politics or sports or what to eat.

  But just like there’s an argument to be made that successful people should try and resist the pull towards closed networks, I think there’s also an argument to be made that successful cities should try and resist the pull towards closed and divided cities.

  That’s why some people believe that tolerance is a critical ingredient to fostering creativity in cities.

  2015.10.03

• 3 architects operating as developers

  

  A reader recently shared with me an interesting article from Crain’s New York (2013) profiling three “architects as developers.” The three firms are DDG Partners (which I’ve mentioned before here on ATC), FLAnk, and Alloy.

  I’ve written a lot about these emerging business models and I continue to think that we’re going to see more of them in the coming years.  As evidence for that claim, I thought it was really interesting to read in the article that Vishaan Chakrabarti – who is director of the real estate program at Columbia University – made specific mention that there’s growing interest among his students to wear multiple hats. In other words, they don’t want to be just an architect or just a developer. They want do it all.

  In a lot of cases, these firms are made up of partners who have those diverse skill sets. There’s only so much that one person can do. But that doesn’t negate the fact that vertically integrated companies are being formed that handle everything from design and construction to property management and development.

  And if an increasing number of students today are interested and thinking about those models, then I think it’s a pretty safe bet that many of them will get out into the workforce and eventually create those companies in the future.

  Ultimately, I think that’s a great thing for cities. Developers tend to have a bad reputation for thinking only about money. But when you bring design and other disciplines in-house, you create tensions in the process. And tension can be a great thing for innovation and creativity.

  Image: 385 West 12th by Flank

  2015.03.11