Creativity Technique: Edward de Bono's Six Thinking Hats

Edward de Bono is the creativity guru. If you can get past his arrogance, you'll discover he has some great things to offer. However, it takes a strong stomach to get past the opening line to his book, Six Thinking Hats:

The Six Thinking Hats method may well be the most important change in human thinking for the past twenty-three hundred years.

Essentially, Six Thinking Hats is a useful method for groups to coordinate and focus their thinking in one direction at a time. Useful, yes. Earth-shattering revelation, no.

In short--

White Hat: give Information or Facts.

Red Hat: give your Emotion or Feeling on the matter.

Yellow Hat: point out the positives. Think Optimism

Black Hat: point out the negatives. Think Pessimism.

Green Hat: Creativity! Brainstorm!

Blue Hat: guides the meeting. Chairperson.

Concept: The chairperson (Blue Hat) guides the meeting firmly. And participants focus their thinking strictly according to the Hat they should be (figuratively) wearing. Ie. The chairperson tells the participants: "Put on your White Hat. Give me all the information on our problem." He/She writes that down.

The most important aspect of this method is that it stops the negativism from creeping in. Everyone's seen it. Someone gives an idea. Good or bad. Immediately, someone will jump in to say why it's not good. The idea is killed without exploring its potential. Secondly, it seriously speeds up meetings. People don't comment on ideas until they are asked to wear the Yellow, Black, White or Red Hats.

According to de Bono, IBM saw meeting times reduce to 25% of previous. ABB cut their multinational project meetings from 30 days to 2.

Stay inspired!

Cheers,
Maurice
Voice One Oy
www.voiceone.fi

Creativity and Comedy: Jim Gaffigan

As I mentioned last week, I will be posting stand-up comedy every week. This week is one of my favorites -- Jim Gaffigan. Here he is doing his bit about Hot Pockets.

 

In case, you've never had one. They are a highly processed snack food. I think initially the idea was to create a small calzone-type snackfood for kids. The product caught on and comes in many different flavours.

Stay inspired!

Cheers,

Maurice Forget

www.voiceone.fi

Halloween tribute: Let's Paint on Public Access TV

Now I'm sure you're aware that one of the foundations of creativity is the ability to take something old and recombine it, rework it, reimagine it into something new. If you know any artists, you probably know that they excel at this. In honor of the best holiday of the year -- Halloween, I've found a clip of a professional artist John Kilduff on his Los Angeles Public Access TV program Let's Paint that illustrates that you can take something ordinary like carving a pumpkin and turn it into something extraordinary.




Stay inspired!

Cheers,
Maurice
www.voiceone.fi

The Fun Theory by Volkswagen

I've always liked Volkswagen from their advertising to their car design. How can you not love the old school Beetle and hippie camper van? Once again they are leading by creative thinking. They've come up with this cool new initiative called The Fun Theory. You can find it here: http://www.rolighetsteorin.se/en/

People will take the right action if you make it fun. If you watch the videos below, you have to agree they have a point.
 





Stay inspired!

Cheers,
Maurice
www.voiceone.fi

Our New Creativity Blog

Welcome to our New Creativity Blog!

We will be discussing everything related to creativity, innovation, brainstorming, problem-solving and more.

If it makes us pause and think, you'll see it here.

Creativity is a big part of our business and our clients. We do copywriting (big and small), creativity seminars, creativity software and highly innovative language classes. We thought we'd share things we've seen, heard about and done. It may inspire you, but it has already inspired us.

Stay inspired!

Cheers,

Maurice
www.voiceone.fi