Stanford’s Crash Course on Creativity – Week One – Reprise

Posted on Oct 22, 2012 in Blog | 2 comments

Tina Seelig’s TedxStandford talk is worth the watch.

Points from the presentation that I like include:

  • Challenge your assumptions to come up with new ideas. Where is there value in things you don’t value? Trash can contents, for example, what gems or potentials might you find there?
  • To gain knowledge, pay attention to the world around you.
  • Need to have the drive or motivation to go beyond the first right answer for your creativity to emerge
  • Entrepreneurs are quilt makers, not puzzle makers. They don’t try to get all the pieces to make things complete, ensuring they all fit. Instead they gather what they have and make something from it.
  • Habitats – rules, rewards, constraints, physical space – are important for creativity to occur. The space we are in tells a story. If we sit in rows and
    columns in schools, with chairs bolted to the floor, and then enter a workplace with the same seating arrangement, what kind of creativity might you begin to expect?
  • Resources in the environment are important for creativity; natural resources, cultures, processes put in place
  • Our habitats shape our imagination; the habitats we imagine are the ones we build
  • The more knowledge we have, the more resources we can unlock; the more resources we have, the greater our knowledge capacity.
  • Culture is made of the collective attitudes of our community; our attitude has an influence on the culture around us.
  • Culture is like the background music of every organization.  If you could change your company’s soundtrack, what might you shift it to?

Curious path I’ve chosen to travel and unravel.  More as it happens…

Marci Segal

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