Praise for Creative Superpowers
‘A book that made my brain fizz – makes idea creation seem achievable for all of us.’
Bruce Daisley, VP EMEA, Twitter
‘We tend to think of creativity as an innate trait, a quality imbued by nature, beyond our control. In reality, creativity is a learned skill – a set of processes and habits we can cultivate, rehearse and improve at. Think of it like language: our brains are hardwired for it, but it takes years of practice and immersion before it flows seamlessly through us. This book is your primer for that language, a workbook full of lessons in creativity. And whether you’ve been speaking it your whole life or you’re just wading in, the lessons are invaluable.’
Damian Kulash, Jr., OK Go
‘A must – a rare gem that sparks ideas long after you have finished the final chapter. A book we all need.’
Helen Calcraft, Founding Partner, Lucky Generals
‘We’re living in a crazy world. The best way to survive is to try some crazy things. This book is the best framework I have read to do that.’
James Cooper, Head of Creative, betaworks
‘An inspiring mix of stories from myriad beautiful minds and places. The charmingly simple construct and super practical guides will get you ready for the future in no time. The robots won’t know what’s hit them.’
James Sowden,
Managing Partner & Head of Strategy, BBH Singapore
‘Inspiring … everyone who wants to get ahead in the Age of Creativity should read this book.’
Jamie Coomber, Marketing Director, Sonos
‘Eminently readable and realistically optimistic … it spills over with useful insights, tools and examples to help change mindsets at all levels. It provokes and enlightens in equal measure – a great personal roadmap to use for any metaphorical journey of learning.’
Jonny Hewlett, CEO, Diesel Europe
‘There is much to like about this book. Much to make of it. Much to learn from it. Much to steal from it. Ultimately, it’s magic.’
Patrick Collister, Founder, Creative Matters
‘Takes the scariness out of creativity and explains in a simple and clear way the fundamentals of creativity, better tools and new ways to get there. A fun read.’
Susan Hoffman, Co Chief Creative Officer, Wieden+Kennedy
‘This book illustrates the critical importance of creativity and the value it brings to humanity both locally and globally … creativity lies in everything, it’s all about the perspective and being open to learning – and just by reading this book, we learn there is no such word as can’t.’
Juliette Larthe, Partner & Executive Producer, PRETTYBIRD
‘A must-read. This wonderful book gives you access to and makes you feel part of a world of powerful creativity and leaves you fizzing with ideas and thoughts.’
Lisa Thomas, Chief Brand
Officer, Virgin Enterprises
‘Creativity is what has made us the dominant species on this planet. For those already working creatively, this books is a support system; for those yet to understand the importance of creativity, it’s a wake-up call.’
Fernanda Romano, Founder Strategy
and Creative Partner, Malagueta Group
‘This book enlightens everyone on the superpowers they may not know they have, and lets them know how great they can be when they unlock them.’
Shannie Mears, Chief Talent Officer, The Elephant Room
‘Guaranteed to fire your imagination … succinct, direct and extremely engaging. If you want to be relevant in the future, you can’t afford not to read this.’
Timothy Walker, Chief Executive and Artistic Director,
London Philharmonic Orchestra
‘A delightful compendium of wonderful, useful and progressive thoughts and ideas … An easily digestible, compelling and fresh take on how to approach change and achieve it.’
Tom Goodwin, EVP, Head of Innovation, Zenith USA
‘You need to read this book. It’s seriously smart. A roadmap into the wonderful unknown; a bible for the enlightened; a cheat sheet for those of us who frequently get stuck. Go for a walk. Sit down. Run. Learn, unlearn and relearn. Make Hack. Steal. Teach will become your mantras. You will not fear the future or that blank sheet of paper. You will laugh more, sleep better and dream big. This book has powers all of its own.’
Vicky Maguire & Caroline Pay, Co – CCOs, Grey London
‘A wonderful assortment of views from around the world on the power of creativity and its ability to fuel our future. This thought-provoking collection of essays provides an essential handbook for leaders, creators and dreamers alike.’
Nishma Robb, Ads Marketing Director, Google UK
To Dan, Lisa, Sair and Tina.
And to Jon Daniel, our creative Supa Hero. Rest in peace.
Dear Reader,
The book you are holding came about in a rather different way to most others. It was funded directly by readers through a new website: Unbound. Unbound is the creation of three writers. We started the company because we believed there had to be a better deal for both writers and readers. On the Unbound website, authors share the ideas for the books they want to write directly with readers. If enough of you support the book by pledging for it in advance, we produce a beautifully bound special subscribers’ edition and distribute a regular edition and ebook wherever books are sold, in shops and online.
This new way of publishing is actually a very old idea (Samuel Johnson funded his dictionary this way). We’re just using the internet to build each writer a network of patrons. At the back of this book, you’ll find the names of all the people who made it happen.
Publishing in this way means readers are no longer just passive consumers of the books they buy, and authors are free to write the books they really want. They get a much fairer return too – half the profits their books generate, rather than a tiny percentage of the cover price.
If you’re not yet a subscriber, we hope that you’ll want to join our publishing revolution and have your name listed in one of our books in the future. To get you started, here is a £5 discount on your first pledge. Just visit unbound.com, make your pledge and type super5 in the promo code box when you check out.
Thank you for your support,
Dan, Justin and John
Founders, Unbound
Introduction by Daniele Fiandaca,
Co-founder of Utopia & Creative Social
MAKER
INTRODUCTION BY LAURA JORDAN BAMBACH, CREATIVE PARTNER, MR PRESIDENT
What Makes for Great Making? by Morihiro Harano
Maker Culture in South Africa, by Kerry Friend
Shared Noises, by Lucas Abela
How Making Maketh the Creative, by Lizi Hamer
HACKER
INTRODUCTION BY DANIELE FIANDACA, CO-FOUNDER OF UTOPIA & CREATIVE SOCIAL
Using Hacking to Build Better Business, by Annicken R. Day
Have You Had Your Brain Hacked Recently? by Hugh Garry
How Hacking Helped Build One of the World’s Largest Economies by Ravi Deshpande
TEACHER
INTRODUCTION BY SCOTT MORRISON, FOUNDER OF THE BOOM!
Doing-by-Learning, by David Erixon
Street Wisdom: Answers Are Everywhere, by David Pearl
Learning in Reverse, by Nadya Powell
THIEF
INTRODUCTION BY MARK EARLS, FOUNDER OF HERD CONSULTING
Copy Good, Copy Bad, Copy Smarter? Are Architects Finally Learning to Copy Intelligently After 2,000 Years of Practice? by Alistair Barr
Hats and Happiness. Mark Earls interviews Justin Smith Esq
Same Same But Different: How Abstraction Is the Key to Creativity, by Faris Yakob with Rosie Yakob
Exercises
Individual Exercises
Thanks
Author biographies
Biogs
Supporters
Copyright
Sometimes it feels like every week there’s a new emerging technology. It’s hard to keep up. Are you feeling a little overwhelmed by all these changes? Is your business agile enough to compete against the new start-ups entering your industry every day? Are you finding it increasingly difficult to connect to your audiences, who constantly stampede from platform to platform? Are you finding it harder to recruit talent who are no longer interested in your business, but instead are magnetised towards businesses with a clear purpose? Are you constantly trying to work out what’s next?
These might be some of the things that keep you awake at night. Or the big one: are you worried you might go to work one day to find you’ve become irrelevant?
You’ve been replaced. By a robot.
If you’ve picked up this book, then chances are at least a few of these things are on your mind (unless, of course, you are Elon Musk, in which case you’re too busy saving the planet to open this book). As technology continues to open up the world to even more possibilities, it is increasingly hard to keep up.
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The good news? Our brains are wired to rewire – they can be moulded based on conditioning and behaviour. It’s why the hippocampus, the part of the brain that controls conversion from short-term to long-term memory and spatial navigation, is bigger for a London taxi driver than a London bus driver.1 While a bus driver drives the same route day after day, a taxi driver has to pull new routes from his or her long-term memory every day. It is this process of reconnecting that stroke victims go through during recovery.
This means that while we feel like we’re being left behind, we can also find ways to adapt. Old dogs can learn new tricks, which is amazing, given that we have never had access to such incredible technology. The creative canvas – from 3D printing to virtual reality (VR) to circuit boards and coding devices – has never been so rich. The BBC Microbit, which is making it easy for children to code and unleash their creativity, is a standout example of this.
Technology has also provided brand new routes to market, with the likes of Kickstarter and Indiegogo providing an alternative to the arduous route of venture capitalists, while makers can easily sell their goods on platforms like Etsy. And there is no better example than this book, which has only been published thanks to the support of more than three hundred and fifty people on Unbound (thank you).
If we look at the emergence of artificial intelligence (AI), it’s routine jobs that are going to be replaced. Machines are already replacing checkout tellers (and Amazon’s foray into retail is only going to accelerate that), Uber are trialling autonomous cars, media buyers are being replaced by programmatic buying and a friend who is a metal trader recently told me how hard it’s becoming to compete with the robots. However, AI also has the ability to help us rid our existing jobs of some of the routine, which will free up time for us to be more strategic and creative.
Because ultimately creativity is what truly differentiates us from robots. And so, rather than seeing AI as a threat, perhaps we need to look at it from a different perspective, as IA (intelligence augmented). Intelligence augmented is about understanding what computers can do to help unleash our creativity, not just by getting rid of routine, but by giving us information, inspiration and ultimately new connections leading to better ideas. While machines have remarkable capabilities, it is the combination of machine + humans that truly creates magic. This notion of augmented reality is certainly not a new one. Indeed, it was an understanding of intelligence augmented way back in the 1960s that led to the invention of the Mac. Andy Sandoz, CCO at Deloitte Digital, put it nicely at the most recent Kinsale Sharks Awards when he said, ‘I’m not worried about technology replacing me, I am waiting for it to release me.’
Thanks to technology, then, we are certain that we are about to enter a new Age of Creativity that will require a new set of creative superheroes to help the world thrive.
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This book is aimed at making you one of those creative superheroes by helping you unlock and unleash your nascent creative superpowers.
But before we do, we need to find a way for you to remember what it was like to be a child. So go and find a Lego set and start building off-plan. Remember what it was like to be naturally creative (in the absence of a Lego set, go to YouTube and watch the closing scene of The Lego Movie http://ht.ly/nDrw30288z5).
How do you feel? Did it remind you of a time when life did not get in the way and everything was possible? A time when your imagination could run wild and it was easy to picture yourself as a superhero? What was your superpower? Flying at the speed of light, X-ray vision, invisibility, the ability to turn your Brussels sprouts into ice cream?
This book is about unlocking many of the key traits lost since childhood (namely adaptability, curiosity, empathy and fearlessness) as well as unlocking new powers to help you solve your biggest business problems.
We’ll uncover the four biggest superpowers that will equip you to thrive in the Age of Creativity:
MAKING – how making opens up new parts of the brain.
HACKING – how becoming a hacker helps you tackle problems in different ways.
TEACHING – how teaching yourself and others consolidates experience in a fast-paced world.
COPYING – how looking to what already exists helps you solve your problems.
To help bring these four areas to life, we have scoured the globe to bring you stories from some of the creative superheroes who are already solving problems in new and interesting ways. You will hear stories from an architect, a hat maker and a free-noise artist. You will learn how to hack your brain, how to use the street to solve your problems; how to learn from younger generations and how to finish what you started. You will be inspired by how India used hacking to become one of the largest economies in the world, as well as what we can learn from the maker communities of sub-Saharan Africa. And you will be given seven steps for how to make a tool kit for copying from others and some brilliant ideas for building culture in a modern business.
But that’s not all.
As David Erixon explains later in the book, the best way to learn is by doing. So we conclude this book with a set of workshops to allow you to hone your new superpowers.
We set out with the aim of writing the most relevant book in the world right now for creative problem solvers across all industries. We cover a wide range of topics across the art and business of creativity. At one end of the spectrum we have Lucas Abela, who details his process as an artist, while, at the other, Annicken R. Day talks about how to build a creative culture in a business. And while at first some chapters might not seem super-relevant to what you are doing right now, you may be surprised by what you can learn from how people in other industries and places are exercising their creative superpowers.
It was also important to us to provide a global view by pulling in authors from India, Japan, Norway, Singapore, South Africa, Sweden, the UK and the USA. And while there is no doubt that many of the authors come from a position of privilege and power, we firmly believe that anyone in the world, in any role or industry, can use some aspects of these creative superpowers to great effect.
As you go through the book, it should also become clear that the creative superpowers are in no way mutually exclusive – you will find notions of hacking, teaching and thieving in Kerry Friend’s chapter in the Maker section alone. You will also see some themes evolving which cut across the chapters. These include:
– The importance of the unconscious in the act of creation – that is, the need to allow the brain to make leaps and random associations.
– The need for us to give our brains time to quietly reflect or not think at all.
– The idea of doing and experimenting, rather than passively receiving knowledge.
– The idea of iteration, creativity building on itself.
– The importance of being inspired by those people who are around you.
– The need for you to take responsibility for your own development and learning.
– The importance of being creatively brave and staying true to the butterflies in your tummy.
Finally, it is worth noting that the views of the authors are very much their own, and you will undoubtedly find some things in this book that you disagree with. And that’s cool. The important thing for us is that our authors make you think.
So – that’s what this book is all about. And we hope that you, too, will become part of a new group of creative superheroes who are going to help build better ideas, better businesses, better societies and a richer, more creative, world. As Construction Guy says to Lord Business in The Lego Movie: ‘You are the most talented, most interesting and the most extraordinary person in the Universe. And you are capable of amazing things. Because you are the special.’
So, creative superheroes – go make, hack, teach and copy. Let’s make everything awesome.
Daniele Fiandaca
Co-founder of Utopia & Creative Social
Note
1 Source: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17024677
From recording a seminal eighties track, to painting a watercolour, to finishing writing this chapter, the creative process that is making can be plagued with errors, dead ends and moments of seemingly insurmountable stuckness.
But by making, committing notes to tape or pen to paper, you begin a process of creative alchemy that can also spark invention and end in great feats of creative genius. Making is both the creative process and the method by which significant leaps across culture are made. It’s both the means and the end. Without making, ideas stay just that, progress grinds to a halt and we all resign ourselves to the rise of the robots as we sit about and cogitate. It’s enough to give you a serious case of the Morlocks.2
Making is the magic and the flow, the grind and the grease to the wheel. It can be laser-focused on a goal or more exploratory, feeling and probing for the right answer. There’s no right way to make other than to just get started. To start anywhere, and eventually, to finish. To learn from the successes and failures, and to start again. Because everything needs to be made in order to be made real, and the making process defines every articulation of every creative vision.
The very errors, dead ends and stuckness that rub against us and frustrate our delivery of great work are in fact the creative opportunities that lift us above the robots and define the peak of human creativity. The yin to the ‘Eureka!’ moment’s yang. Machines can indeed do the work, but progression and innovation depends on the imperfections of the human creative process, on making.
In some way, everyone thinks of themselves as a maker (everyone creates something, right?), but making is more than just seeing an idea through to completion. To make (rather than just ‘do’) is the process of exploring new concepts and ideas through tangible experimentation. The testing out of ideas through the process of actually making it, rather than going from start to finish in a staid, linear fashion with no room for changes.
So, what is it to really embrace the practice of making? And why is it so important, beyond the fact that you, well, get stuff … made? Why is it one of our four key creative superpowers?
Because, despite what we’ve become accustomed to seeing as ‘real’, nothing happens without making; everything else is just conjecture.
As the old economists’ joke goes: ‘it works in practice, but what about in theory?’
In this section we hear from four of the most talented and passionate makers in their fields from around the world, in order to understand their personal theories of making, and how to apply those theories to your own work and life.
What you get out of it will very much depend on what you make of the wisdom of their experiences. In the next four sections, I’ll introduce our makers and the key theories they uncover.
Alice laughed: ‘There’s no use trying,’ she said; ‘one can’t believe impossible things.’
‘I daresay you haven’t had much practice,’ said the Queen. ‘When I was younger, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.’
– Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland
Let’s take a moment to look under the hood of the creative process, which looks more or less the same whether you’re writing a hit single, a book or a line of code.
There’s little magic to it; it’s a well-documented series of steps to help you hit your creative peak. Trust in the process (and fill your creative bank enough upfront) and ideas will flow. Here’s how it usually goes:
1. Feed your brain with as many divergent ideas as possible. Reach far and wide for inspiration. Be interested, and interesting.
2. Discuss and explore these ideas in new ways, on your own and with others. Collaborate, share thoughts.
3. Give your subconscious enough time to process and connect the dots. Dream, take a bath, distract yourself.
4. Eureka! The spark of an idea is born.
5. Find your ‘flow’ and get busy making your idea come to life.
6. Repeat.
This simple approach to solving a creative problem works, but there’s another way to apply your creativity to a problem – one where ideas are discovered through the process of making itself, and it’s not just your subconscious but your hands that are connecting the dots.
The standard, mechanical process for getting to an idea can be likened to architecture, where a form is built from the ground up, organised and planned every step of the way, with a clear goal established. But the more explorative creative process is more like sculpture, where small pieces of stone are chiselled away to reveal the image underneath, the form changing and adapting to the materials and the environment in real time. There’s a vision of where it’s headed, but not necessarily a fixed goal or a reliable plan. And there are some incredible creative folk who embrace this different way of working.
Morihiro Harano is one of the world’s most respected and award-winning creative minds, as well as one of its most humble and generous voices. Responsible for consistently incredible work, both exquisitely crafted and strategically sound, his Tokyo studio, Mori Inc., is small, nimble and formidably talented. He’s worked for everyone from Honda and NTTDocomo to OK Go, the band famous globally for their synchronised music videos.
In fact, it’s Mori’s work with OK Go that really drives home the power of making. His music video for the song ‘I Won’t Let You Down’ is one long take – over five minutes of incredible synchronisation on a scale difficult to comprehend, and with a cast of hundreds. Yet, rather than planning and storyboarding the video in its entirety before filming, then hiring an expensive studio where mistakes are discouraged, Mori and the band cheaply hired an unoccupied shopping mall and allowed the playful process of making to unfold in order to ‘discover’ the details of the piece together.
In this case, director and artists work as one, stepping on each other’s toes and playing in the ‘sandpit’ of the task at hand. Over a number of weeks, ideas for the video unfolded and were refined through doing. Think of it as a kind of creative prototyping, using the evolutionary power of making to get to a wonderful final output through experimentation. By working through concepts as they went, the ‘dance’ that Mori captured in his final shot was born, astonishingly perfect.
Mori’s chapter, ‘What Makes for Great Making?’, is a window into the world of one of the best contemporary makers. The process he shares can be applied to any creative task to improve the quality of your work, and the enjoyment you take from it.
We are the music-makers,
And we are the dreamers of dreams,
Wandering by lone sea-breakers,
And sitting by desolate streams.
World-losers and world-forsakers,
Upon whom the pale moon gleams;
Yet we are the movers and shakers,
Of the world for ever, it seems.
– Arthur O’Shaughnessy, excerpt from Ode
‘We are the music-makers’. One of the most sampled poems of all time, appearing everywhere from Gene Wilder’s Willy Wonka to the electronic music of The Aphex Twin and 808 State. But why has this poem resonated so powerfully with creative folk, long after Arthur O’Shaughnessy himself has faded into relative obscurity?
When he penned those words in 1873, O’Shaughnessy was describing creators themselves, those of us with the ability to set the vision of the world for others to follow. The makers – artists, musicians and philosophers on whose creations new things are built, and progress is made. Those makers whose dangerous and radically new creations move the world forward.
We are all free to have these dangerous ideas, to explore and conduct our own thought experiments. Our minds are wondrous, and part of the creative process is to challenge yourself to think the unthinkable. But when you set to making something, to form one of these dangerous ideas into something tangible, it takes on a power it didn’t possess as thought alone.
There is a certain energy born out of making something new which is powerful enough to fire the imaginations and bend the ears of a large group of people. That’s some potent stuff, and a big responsibility. So creativity has long been associated with doing incredible good. Of making a conscious choice to ‘be the change we want to see in the world’ (thanks, Gandhi).
Kerry Friend is deeply involved in the maker communities of sub-Saharan Africa. A digital advertising and design superstar in her native South Africa, she’s famous for tackling a brief with incredible creativity, and has a passion for solving problems and driving change. In fact, her whole maker network is built around doing the most good through creativity. From new tools to recycle and extrude plastics as base materials for projects, to the emphasis on education and supporting poorer communities, every part of the maker network is committed to not only making, but making the world better, too.
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In her essay Kerry tours many of these maker spaces to speak with the incredible entrepreneurs behind them, and finds many irons in the fire, many projects, many spaces, but one goal – a better Africa built in part by creative work.
Everything one does in one’s life forms the building blocks for the next big thing to explore. As a maker, everything you have done influences everything you do in the future – mistakes made and corrected, skills learned, themes refined, new threads of opportunity discovered. The next idea is a natural evolution from the last thing you’ve made.
In technology this ‘agile’ approach is mainstream. As the Facebook mantra goes: ‘fail fast’, and we come across MVP in the start-up world continually. Agile is just another word for iterative making, so why is it so popular in these fields? Because you can be first to market with an idea, because you can be more nimble and responsive and because you put the people most responsible for the success of the project front and centre: your audience. There’s a lot to be learned from agile methodology which can be applied to any creative journey.
But what technology has renamed ‘test-and-learn strategy’ has been a mainstay of the creative process since day dot. Evolution and progression of one’s ideas, and skill set, happen through the process of making something.
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Lucas Abela is an Australian free-noise artist, whose phenomenal story lays bare his creative process and constant development, from the moment a freak accident (and subsequent wiring mistakes) created the musical inspiration that altered the course of his creative career.
Over the course of twenty-five years, his performances have evolved into an ever more complex spectacle, with every evolution being more epic and inviting more audience participation. His piece is a journey from experimentation and apparent chaos to complex and highly evocative work through the constant evolution of projects and a passion and curiosity for making.
William Burroughs, Brion Gysin, Björk, David Bowie, Kathy Acker … they have all fuelled their creativity through the process of making. In fact, whether it’s using cut-up techniques to inspire new ideas or repeating the same imagery or process over and over again to get to a heightened creative state, there’s a lot that can be learned by applying these techniques to other creative problem solving.
And the more diverse the starting points the more interesting the output, as concepts are mashed together in the making.
Lizi Hamer is a creative director based in Singapore who is passionate about where ideas come from in the first place, and how having a making practice can help to develop ideas in new and interesting ways.
These techniques can unblock your creative impasse. They can inspire fresh thinking and help you to unlearn old solutions that are no longer useful. They can encourage you to see the right idea among the wrong ones, and help you find your creative flow.
In her piece, Lizi looks at how the prolific process of making can achieve all this, and the importance of a spare parts pile of ideas and inspiration to draw upon.
Across the four pieces in this chapter, you’ll discover the importance of making as the core creative driver for innovation and creative excellence, allowing you to step into the bodies of four of the most prolific and interesting contemporary makers from around the world. With our expert makers from noise art, to experiences, films and creative technology – there are four incredible minds presented here with which to meld. We encourage you all to be lateral tinkers, not just lateral thinkers, in order to make the most of your creativity.
Note
2 In H. G. Wells’s novel The Time Machine, humans of the future are divided into two distinct species: the Eloi – beautiful, fragile creatures who have lost the ability to create anything for themselves and have to be provided for completely; and the Morlocks – the clever, inventive and thoroughly disgusting race that controls them from their underground lair.
People often say my work is unique, and are curious about my methods and making process. Although I try to answer their questions as best as I can, creativity is something that is difficult to subject to logical, linear analysis. So, I would like to take a less formal approach, and pretend for a few minutes that we are sitting around a table, talking and sharing a bottle of Japanese sake. Let me share my thoughts with you on how to create the right conditions for making the extraordinary.