The art of "creative ideas"

One of my favorite business books of all time is a Whole New Mind -  by Daniel Pink.  His premise is that right brain thinking will rule the future. It's an incredible book and if you haven't read it. . .read it now.

Some quick background infomation on right brain thinking:

The right brain functions in a non-verbal manner and excels in visual, spatial, perceptual, and intuitive information. The right brain, processing happens very quickly and the style of processing is nonlinear and non sequential. The right brain looks at the whole picture and quickly seeks to determine the spatial relationships of all the parts as they relate to the whole. This component of the brain is not concerned with things falling into patterns because of prescribed rules. On the contrary, the right brain seems to flourish dealing with complexity, ambiguity and paradox. At times, right brain thinking is difficult to put into words because of its complexity, its ability to process information quickly and its non-verbal nature. The right brain has been associated with the realm of creativity.

Now about a week ago my good friend Jeremy Epstein, who's client is Dan Pink, organized a very cool "field trip" for some close colleagues of his (in which I attended) to the National Gallery of Arts here in DC. 

The morning trip was broken up into three parts:

1. Spend 45 minutes investigating a piece of art and use the guidelines of the Harvard Artful Thinking Palette (an awesome tool for the trip suggested by Jeremy's friend, Liz Diament, Museum Educator at NGA).
2. Reconvene with the rest of the group to share your photos of the work you selected and what you learned/observed.
3. Get some lunch and have a free flowing discussion about fostering and driving innovation with Venkatesh, who leads one of the Innovation groups at Xerox.

A very cool trip indeed. You can read Jeremy's post on it here.

The lesson for the day: The paradigm of staying in your office the whole day is a remnant of the left-brain, industrial age. You MUST get to places that will change your perspective, engage your right brain, and challenge you to think creatively (well said Jeremy!).

So in the spirit of creative art to stimulate your thinking I present to you. . .

Parks on Fire

Comments

[jeremy]

Great summary. That video is mega-trippy!