The secret sauce of creativity | Stephen Hall | TEDxRegina

This talk was given at a local TEDx event, produced independently of the TED Conferences.

Stephen has spent his entire life being creative. It’s not just personality that makes him creative, it’s deliberate practice, process and often straight-up discipline. Come inside the mind of a Creative Director and find how you can be more creative in your life and where the world needs your ideas.

I like exploring the subject
of creativity

and in particular, I like
using creativity to solve problems,

that's what I'm going to talk about today.

I've been lucky to spend the last 30 years
of my life in creative industries.

Initially, as an exhibit designer,
and then as a television director,

and lately as a creative director
for an ad agency.

A famous ad guy, George Lois, said,

"Creativity can solve
almost any problem.

The creative act, the defeat of habit
by originality overcomes everything."

But I love this quote,
I absolutely love this quote.

And in fact, I could almost
just stop it right here,

because, in a way,

It captures everything I believe

about the power of creativity
to solve problems.

But I'm going to unpack it a little bit,

and share just five things I have learnt

about using creativity to solve problems.

The first thing is to define
the constraints of the problem.

And this is very important.
It's something that is overlooked.

It seems mundane, but before you start
engaging in solving a problem,

you need to define
the parameters of that problem,

to figure out what you have
to solve the problem.

What's available? What resources
are available? What time is available?

It's a little hard to see,
but that's Apollo 13.

45 years ago,

they faced the problem that was caused
by an unexpected explosion.

They were on their way to the Moon;

on the way there, an explosion happened,
and it created a lot of problems.

The biggest one was that the CO2 level
inside the capsule began to increase.

It was making the air they were breathing
more and more poisonous.

They needed to figure that problem out.

In order to figure it out,
they really had to think inside the box.

They had to define
what they had inside that capsule

that was available to help them
solve the problem.

The guys in NASA ground control
were scrambling around

trying to figure out
what did they have up there,

"What can we put together?

What can we create
to help solve this problem?"

They needed to know
because there was no use

thinking of something that was
outside the capsule, outside the box.

That wasn't going to help them at all.
They had to think inside the box.

First thing that is really important
is to find the constraints.

I would say that trying to solve
a problem without defining the constraints

is like playing squash
in a court with no walls.

It just doesn't work.

The second thing I have learnt
is that ideas don't just happen.

They need to be provoked.
You need to make them happen.

You need to overcome the force of habit
in order to make those ideas happen.

I want to talk about forces today.

I am a bit of a science nerd
so I don't mind talking about this stuff.

I'm going to talk about
Newton's First Law, my favorite.

Newton's First Law is
that "a body at rest will remain at rest

unless acted upon
by an external unbalanced force."

What does that mean?

That means that this chair here,

which has been sitting here
since the beginning of my talk,

will stay there doing nothing

until acted upon
by an external unbalanced force.

Simple enough.
There are forces at play here.

There are forces at play right now.

There's the force of gravity down,
the force of the floor going up.

It's a balanced force.

It's a body at rest.
It's not going anywhere.

You could say
it's the habitual state of the chair.

It's its habit state.

And then an unbalanced force
comes along and moves it.

So I'm going to mash up
Newton and George Lois here,

and come up with what I am calling
the First Law of Creativity:

a habit will remain a habit
unless defeated by originality.

That's what we're going
to talk about today: unbalanced forces.

An unbalanced force is an original idea.

This guy, Edward de Bono,
gave those unbalanced forces a name.

It's kind of a weird name.

By the way, Edward de Bono
is a brilliant guy,

the father of lateral thinking,
a kind of creativity guru.

He came up with a name
to these unbalanced forces:

Po.

'Po' is an extraction

from words like hypothesis,

suppose,

possible

and poetry.

These words give you a clue
as to the nature of the word "Po".

It is also an acronym

and that's the one I like:
provocation operation.

It suggests that there's
an activity required,

that creativity requires some action
in order for it to happen.

A Po is an idea,

but more than that

a Po is a crazy, radical,
nonsensical idea.

That's the power of Po.

So how does it work? Let's do
a quick brainstorming session.

We've all been in those
meeting rooms with a white board.

And today we'll brainstorm ideas
for a new restaurant.

On the board we might have listed
the restaurants that exist in Regina.

There's lot of Italian places,
pizza places, Greek places.

We'll stay away from those.
We want new ideas.

We start. People are throwing out ideas.

What about authentic Mexican?

What about Russian? Nepalese?
A family-friendly fondue place?

What about a high-end burger place?
A low-end sushi place?

That doesn't sound too good.

Then someone shouts out
from the back of the room,

"How about a restaurant
that doesn't serve food?"

Boom.

That's a Po.

A crazy idea that on the surface
of it makes no sense whatsoever.

OK. So what do we do now?

The third thing I've learnt
is that you give absurd ideas respect.

You don't toss them out immediately.

In order for that Po to be powerful,
you need to let it breathe.

You need to let it live.

You need to consider the possibilities.

What would happen
if that actually did exist?

A Po is like a manufactured crisis.
It didn't have to happen.

A restaurant that doesn't serve food.
That doesn't make any sense.

It's easy to dismiss it,
but let's not. Let's let it live.

And the way to treat it is,

"Well, that happened, it's a crisis,
it's a restaurant that doesn't sell food.

What are we going to do?
How are we gonna make that work?

In Apollo 13, they didn't need another Po
because the crisis was the Po.

The crisis was the thing that set up
the set of circumstances

that provoke them to have to be creative,

"How are we going to do this?
This thing happened.

What are we going to do?

How are we going to solve the problem?"

I know! What about we use
the cover from the manual.

We'll cut some hoses from the suits.

We'll use socks.
We have some duct tape.

Let's use that.
We have some other stuff.

Let's put all the stuff together
and make an air filter.

No one would have thought of doing this
in any other circumstance.

The crisis, the Po,
created the situation

that allowed us to consider
those things in a new way,

to consider the creative potential

and bring it up together
to solve a particular problem.

They were up against time, as well.
They had a deadline.

They had a deadline
that involved actual death.

Deadlines are another great kind of Po.

My favorite deadline,
by far, is this one:

December 31, 1969.

That's the deadline that was implied
when JFK said in his famous speech

that they were going to put
a man on the Moon

before the end of the 1960s.

He liked that person
at the back of the room that said

"How about a restaurant without food?",

except he said "What about we put a man
on the Moon before the end of the decade?"

He didn't manufacture
a fake problem or fake crisis,

he manufactured a real one.

He put the US reputation on the line.

And he did it with optimism.
And that's important.

That leads us
to the forth thing I've learnt.

You need to be optimistically objective.

You need to look at how a problem
might work, not how it might not work.

You have to be hopeful and optimistic

that that crazy idea
you're going to give consideration

that's going to provoke new ideas,
new thoughts could actually work.

So let's go back to our restaurant
that doesn't serve food.

How could that work?

The Po is powerful
if we give it legitimacy.

We say, "OK, let's make it work.
Let's figure out what does that look like.

A restaurant that doesn't serve food.
What does that look like?"

It doesn't serve food
so were the food come from?

If you go in there, you want to eat.
You're not going to get served.

You have to bring the food in yourself.

People go to parks, they bring food
with them to the park and have a picnic.

It's kind of like an indoor picnic.
That's cool. It's kind of interesting.

What will we do? We'll provide
a place for them to have their food.

We'll provide nice tables and chairs,
and cutlery and maybe serve drinks.

That's the way we can differentiate.

They bring the food,
we provide the drinks.

We give a great variety, great selection.

Maybe we could have a sharing table.

Lots of people bring their own thing.

We have a sharing table over here,
and so we can help them with that.

We can heat up the food and provide
all those services to make that work.

Maybe we can provide some entertainment.

Maybe the waiters could sing.
Actually, maybe people could sing.

Maybe they could bring the food
and the entertainment.

We'd provide a little stage.

A little space for them to get together,
to connect and to share.

And after a while you start to see
the potential of these crazy ideas.

We wouldn't have thought
of any of these things,

if hadn't let that crazy idea exist.

And actually treated it
with some optimism and some hope

that there might be a solution in there.

And some of the things
we discover through that process

could actually be useful when it comes
to a restaurant that does serve food.

So in terms of a brainstorming exercise,

in terms of being able to be open
to those kinds of possibilities,

it is really,really useful.

This is a little mock-up of what
the engineers at NASA built on the ground.

They built it quickly
and tried to test it.

They ran off at the beginning
when this crisis happen,

"What do these guys have up there?

Let's figure it out and built this thing."

They brought it all together,
and here's what they came up with.

And they did it with optimism.

They didn't think,
"This is probably not going to work."

No. They were hoping and praying.

They were believing it would work.

It's going to work! We can use
the cover from the manual.

We can use socks,
we can use this plastic thing,

this hose, we'll cut it off
the astronaut suit.

It could work.

There's no creative value
in being cynical.

There's no creative value in looking
for the reasons something won't work.

It's far more productive,
far more powerful

to look at the reasons
something will work.

I can tell you as a creative person
I think my crazy ideas are going to work.

I really do. All the time.

And there's power in that.

A lot of creative people
in the audience feel the same way.

There's a force in that
and it's good to tap into that force.

Last thing I've learnt is to celebrate
great ideas regardless of who had them.

A lot of the work I do now
is a collaborative work.

I rarely work alone. I rarely have
to solve problems by myself.

I work with a team.
A lot of them are here today.

One of the things
I believe about collaboration

is that it isn't great to collaborate with
a bunch of people that are just like me.

People that think the same ways as me,
that act the same ways as me,

that believe the same ways as me.

It's really great to have a mixed bag,

a whole lot of different kinds of people
bringing different kinds of perspectives.

There's value
in those different perspectives.

It's a greater potential
for that crazy idea,

or the different idea
that comes out in those discussions.

Someone with a different
experience than me says something

that is put on the board
and you have to deal with it.

Now we have to unpack that
and try to make it work.

In that process we want to treat
other people's ideas with respect.

This is something I've learnt
from my wife actually,

and like many husbands,
I didn't have a choice in the matter.

I love my wife and we are very similar.
She's here in the audience by the way.

We're very similar in lots of ways.

And that's one of the things
that gives strength to our relationship,

we share the same values.

But we do think about things
in different ways.

We have different ideas sometimes.

Sometimes she'd say things
that I think there are kind of nuts.

And then, after a little bit, I realize
that's actually a brilliant idea.

This happened a couple
of years ago to us.

We have two young children.

We were having a disagreement
about a parenting issue,

about how we resolve something.

During the course of the discussion,
Laurie made this crazy suggestion.

and I was like, "Well, no.
How would that work?"

We talked it through.

Then finally, I got to the point
were I said, "You know, you're right."

And then a funny thing happened.

She got mad at me because she thought

that I was just agreeing with her
to end the argument.

Then I got mad at her
because it wasn't what I was doing.

It was a great idea and I was trying
to explain this to her, and I said this.

"It's not important for me to be right.
But it is important for us to be right."

Because at the end of the day,
what I cared about

what really counted,
was what was right for my kids.

Not whether I was right.

This is a picture of the final air filter
the Apollo 13 crew built

that saved their lives.

I don't think anyone cared whose idea was
to use the cover of the flight plan,

or to use plastic bags
or to use the socks.

I don't think anyone cared.
It was the idea that counted.

That was what was important.
It's the ideas that matter.

Best idea wins. Not who has it.

Just to quickly conclude:
the five things I've learnt.

Number one, define the constraints.

Know the parameters you're working within.
Don't pretend they are not there.

They're helpful, can actually help you,
guide you toward a creative solution.

Number two, provoke ideas.
Don't wait for them to happen.

Force them happen, push them.
Make outlandish suggestions.

Number three, give absurd ideas respect.

Give them the respect
of being plausible, of being possible.

Say, "Well, this happen.
We're going to let this happen."

We're going to talk it through.
See the ideas that can come out of that.

When you do that, be optimistic.
Be optimistically objective.

Look at the possibilities
with a notion that it might work.

Not, "Eh... It's probably
not going to work, but we'll try it."

Again, there's no creative value
in being cynical.

And lastly, celebrate great ideas,
regardless of who had them.

And if there is
a secret sauce in creativity,

especially collaborative creativity,
that's it, that's it right there.

We've got a lot of problems in the world,
and they need our attention.

We talked about a few of them today.

I'm going to leave you with a big problem.

We should have a giant brainstorming
session, almost like a global one.

It involves a space craft.

It has humans on it.

And the CO2 level is raising.

And the level of CO2
is increasing so dramatically

that we're running out of time.

We need to solve the problem.

Everything we need to solve
the problem is right there.

We just have to overcome
our force of habit.

We need to be creative and have new ideas.

Best idea wins.

Thank you.

(Applause)