Reflecting on "Creativity, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship"

Using the Learning Assessment Tool as a jumping off point, I wanted my final blog post to be a reflection on the different techniques, ideas, and books we examined and discussed during the last couple of months, many of which found their way in some form or another in earlier blog posts.

10 Creativity Techniques

In My Own Words and How I Used Them

1. The Job To Be Done. I think the aim of this creativity technique is to be able to clearly and efficiently explain the need that our rubber band group would be meeting from the perspective of the consumer. This technique was definitely important to my group because it was working through this one that allowed us to settle on our #BandTogether idea (more on that on Sunday!)

2. Brainstorming.This technique is sort of the "classic" understanding of brainstorming--getting a group of people together and scribbling out ideas on a large surface, allowing other people to be inspired and (literally) draw from each other's ideas to build up their own or others. I did this activity with a slightly different group of people than I did my rubber band project with, but I still thought that this was a good way for the class to "get our feet wet" when it comes to practicing creativity techniques.

3. Brainwriting. To me, this technique is a riff on brainstorming, in that the work is done silently and more personally; only a complete thought or idea is shared with the group, and then the members build upon it. I felt that my group was eager to discuss some of the ideas that were being passed back and forth, so it was hard to work through until the end of the exercise since we were itching to jump to the next step.

4. Random Stimulus. This was a technique I tried again by myself, and although the results weren't as successful the second time around, this is a good technique in that it gets your brain to think about the problem differently by introducing random and miscellaneous words and images into the process to startle yourself out of the path you had previously been working on. I think our group (and probably most of the groups) got a kick out of the random assortment of toys, celebrities, places, and foods that we were shown to get us thinking differently. I suspect that even that unexpected moment of laughter or joy also helped propel us in different directions and get to creative places we hadn't initially thought possible.

5. Creative Pause. This creativity technique is one that aims to let you step back for a moment or two to reset before diving back in to the brainstorming activity. This one was difficult for me personally since any break in work merits a Facebook or e-mail check, so simply stepping back, quieting my mind and reflecting for a couple of quiet minutes isn't something I'm used to.

6. Mindfulness Training. This technique is kind of like an expanded version of the technique above; it requires you to take a longer break to clear your mind before returning to the task at hand, but with your mind relaxed and hopefully even fresher. I think this is a wonderful technique in life (particularly during a harried or stressful work day) but due to the limited time of the class, I wasn't as enthusiastic about this technique within the context of the class, particularly given our condensed schedule. I am a huge fan of yoga in general, and would highly recommend the Sweat and Soul yoga studio for anyone who either loves yoga, or wants to try it out in a safe and friendly environment.

7. Thinking Hats. As an organizational and idea evaluation technique, the "Thinking Hats" definitely got our group off and running on our #BandTogether idea, because it forced us to focus on one component of the idea at a time, allowing us to efficiently and effectively work through the concept. Having a group member act as the guiding hand or "Blue Hat" also made this a particularly effective creativity technique for my rubber band group.

8. HIT Matrix. This creativity technique is another one that aims to shakeup the thinking or brainstorming process by forcing you to compare two (seemingly) completely different products/services/experiences in order to develop something new from one or more of the overlaps. This was a technique that my group practice offline and out of the classroom, which I think made it not quite as useful to us as some of the other techniques.

9. Provocation and Movement. This technique has you think the exact opposite way from what you had been doing previously; instead of trying to solve a problem, you think about ways you might exacerbate it. My group definitely utilized this one to it's extreme, which is how we probably came up with #BandTogether as a hashtag, and moved away from the actual rubber band as a physical object made out of a specific kind of material that we could work with and base our idea off of.

10. The Innovation Matrix. this technique is quite similar to the HIT Matrix, but instead of comparing products/services/experience with other products/services/experiences, compare them with markets. This serves to shift the focus of your idea from the creativity and innovation stage to the innovation and entrepreneurship stage.

Reflecting on the Experience of Pitch Training

"The Pitch" was something that intrigued me so much I wrote an earlier blog post analyzing how effective they were on the reality competition series Shark Tank. For me, working on the pitch in the smaller groups was what made it worthwhile to practice. I got to know the people in my pitch group better than other members of the class (excluding my rubber band group) and therefore felt much safer and more comfortable practicing my pitch in front of them. Similarly, I was able to really take to heart the feedback I received from them. I think this was for two reasons: 

1) Like I said above, that I felt so comfortable with them that I was able to understand that the feedback wasn't personal, but rather, was talking specifically about how I had delivered my pitch

2) The format of the feedback ("I really liked the way that you X, but wish that you had Y...") also removed the person and just focused solely on the pitch, which also helped me accept and see the feedback as helpful

The other wonderful thing about the pitch training was not just hearing all the cool and different ideas, but seeing what people were passionate about. I felt that the pitches not only revealed windows into people's hobbies and interests, but also tackled real-world problems and sometimes even aimed to start nonprofits and other service organizations that sought to help others, rather than just turn a profit (even if they were fictional.) I know I will try to incorporate much of what I learned about crafting and delivering the pitch as I begin to interview for and apply to different doctoral programs, and hopefully be able to pitch "myself" into an acceptance letter or two!

My Major Takeaways of the 3 Books

For The Creative Habit, I definitely took away the idea of the box, and being free to stick any bit of ephemera or inspirational object, along with files, checklists, post-its, and research materials as a way to both record and save every component that went into a creative project. I'm normally super organized and am all about tabs, files, color-coding, and organization when it comes to dealing with projects (normally because they're usually in very structured formats, such as papers or as other concrete deliverables), but the idea that I can just throw everything in a box and that not only will it be safe, but that I will be okay was something incredibly important that I took away from this book, and has stuck with me since May.

For The Art of Innovation, the idea that the physical spaces we create and the physical objects that we surround ourselves with are just important to our creativity and our work output was an important takeaway for me. Ever since I began working in the "9-5 world" after graduating from college I have been very intrigued by the different kinds of work spaces certain professional environments offer. I've worked in a giant room with no dividers; I've worked in a ceiling-less office. I wrote the vast majority of my GCS capstone at a Starbucks in Brookline, but banged out a 10 page paper (that I'm incredibly proud of) for my Feminist Media Studies course from the same position on my couch. I've read articles about novel desks in classrooms that allow students who tend to fidget to stand up and even move around while they do their work, instead of being confined to a chair. I think all of this relates to the kinds of spaces Kelley was talking about in his book, and I think that is why that part stuck out to me the most.

Finally, with The $100 Startup, I really liked the way he encouraged the readers to just "jump right in" when it comes to starting their projects. I can get really panicked and even stall sending out important (and even not-so-important) e-mails because the wording isn't perfect, or I can't get my signature to look just so. Obviously there are times when you need to have all of your ducks in a row (I wouldn't suggest a plane to taxi down the runway without enough fuel) but in the instance of a microbusiness or startup (or even job application) sometimes the key is to just jump right it and figure out some of the details later. 

Watching "Silicon Valley" for Creativity Techniques

After I had watched some pitching in action with my Shark Tank experiment, I starting think about the other components of our class--namely, the 10 Creativity Techniques--and whether or not I might find any of those represented in popular culture. It wasn't long before I realized that a brand new show had aired this spring that was all about creativity, innovation, and entrepreneurship, and was one that I had briefly wrote about in a previous blog post: namely, HBO's comedy series Silicon Valley. 

I didn't know much about the show, other than that it was a comedy, it was set in the world of tech startups, and it starred a bunch of quite funny comedians. For those unfamiliar, here is the trailer:

My plan was to watch the first 2 episodes (30 minutes each) and take note of which of the 10 creativity techniques the characters implemented and write about them for a blog post. The first part went off without a hitch...but when it came to write about the creativity techniques I was stumped, simply because in a show set in Silicon Valley about a number of companies (both startups and Google-esque tech giants), there was absolutely zero brainstorming shown onscreen in the first two episodes.

I had initially thought that a show like Silicon Valley, which takes place entirely in the so-called "innovation industry," would be chock-full of fictionalized brainstorming, or scenes in which the characters engage in activities that would at least be tangentially related to any number of the creativity techniques we experimented with in class. That said, I'm still happy that I watched the show and thought it was useful to watch and think about in the context of studying and thinking about creativity, innovation, and entrepreneurship for this class.

One area of research that I have pursued during my time in the Simmons GCS program, and one that I hope to continue to work in as a doctoral student, is television and popular culture. I think that it is important to examine how our culture reacts to, records, and reinterprets social movements and cultural epochs, with television shows being a prime example of a living text that does just that. Silicon Valley is a show that appears to be reflecting, satirizing, and even challenging this current moment in which innovation is seen as something that happens when socially hapless "nerds" singularly devote their time and energy to developing websites and apps in order to cash in and attempt to claim the title of the world's youngest billionaire.

As we read about in The Art of Innovation, not only is this decidedly not how innovation happens, that is also not even why people are creative and/or innovative. Although I have only watched 2 episodes, Silicon Valley also seems to be suggesting that innovation, creativity, and even entrepreneurship is not just about the bottom line and using buzzwords. The one character that seems to embody these stereotypes has been set up as the series antagonist: Gavin Belson (played by Matt Ross) is the CEO of Hooli, and in the pilot offers series protagonist Richard (Thomas Middlemarch) $10 million for his startup, Pied Piper. Richard ultimately rejects the offer in favor of building up Pied Piper himself with the help of Silicon Valley guru and investor Peter Gregory (Christopher Evan Welch), demonstrating that although the show doesn't quite show (at least not in its first hour) the process of brainstorming as we've come to understand it in class, it at least exhibits the same ethos about how and why we innovate.

Analyzing the Pitch with "Shark Tank"

After our June weekend discussing and practicing "The Pitch" I decided to watch some pitches in action. In my small group on Sunday, the show Shark Tank came up as a kind of pop culture touchstone for the pitch that many people were familiar with. Thinking about the steps we incorporated into a successful pitch, I wondered a) whether or not the participants in Shark Tank always incorporated these steps into their pitches and b) if incorporating these steps had any impact on their success (agreeing to a deal with a "Shark"). I was also curious about the length of the pitches, although cognizant of the fact that this was a television program, and that portions may have been edited out, thus affecting the length of the pitch I saw.

With all of these questions in mind, I watched 10 pitches from various episodes of the show and kept track of the length of the pitch, which steps of a successful pitch they incorporated into their pitch, and whether or not they reached a deal with one of the Sharks. Although I am by no means a statistician, and realize that a sample size of 10 is incredibly small, I still found some useful quantitative and qualitative results that I thought would make for an interesting blog post.

The 10 pitches I watched were randomly selected across three episodes that had originally aired on 1/24/14, 2/28/14, and 3/7/14, and I watched them online. I used the following checklist to keep track of the info for each pitch as I watched:

Of the 10 pitches I watched, it was a 50/50 split of participants getting deals versus not getting deals, as illustrated by this chart:

5 participants received deals; 4 did not receive deals; and 1 was offered a deal but declined

I then looked at the successful pitches to see whether or not they had incorporated all 4 steps (including the 4 sub-steps of Step #2) into the pitches. I weighted each step and sub-step evenly, meaning that every time a pitch incorporated one of the steps it received a point, and came up with the following data:

None of the pitches achieved a "perfect 7" of incorporating each component of the 4 steps into their pitch. For instance, only the first two were able to be truly memorable in terms of the "Your Pitch, The Itch" step to really get the audience (both the Sharks and myself as the viewing audience) engaged. Additionally, only Pitch #5 was able to incorporate all 4 sub-steps of Step #2 (The Problem --> The Opportunity <-- The Solution), but it also didn't successfully include Steps #1 and #4 into the pitch. And while all 5 pitches included "The Ask" step, this was always in the presumably mandated portion of the show when the participants tell the Sharks--as potential investors--exactly how much equity of their business they would be willing to give up in exchange for the amount of money they are requesting. This was my biggest qualitative observation, and in fact, for a couple of pitches (Swimzip and Freshly Picked, to be specific) would not have received their point for the Ask had they not appeared on the program, since I didn't remember it happening during the pitch, but know that it occurred because of the show's format.

Finally, I thought about the length of the pitch, and whether or not the pitches formally "ended" before the Sharks jumped in with their questions (another aspect of the pitch that is really enforced by the set up of the show, and not necessarily because of the strength of the pitch or the Sharks desiring to know more save for the process of filming the show.) From timing each successful pitch, I made the following chart:

The length of the pitch only consisted of the participants going through the steps of the pitch; I stopped timing once the Sharks really started asking questions and grilling the sharks. Again, although much of the interactions between the Sharks and the participants was likely edited out, an average pitch length of ~2:00 minutes seemed reasonable considering the nature of what the participants were pitching and asking of the Sharks. 

What was most interesting to me about doing this exercise was how much the pitches on the show really adhered to what we learned and practiced about pitching in class, even taking into consideration all of the potential constraints of doing a pitch on a show like Shark Tank, not to mention the editing and condensing of the interactions that is happening to make the show ready to air on TV.