Recently, I played with my 3-year-old niece with a toy that I even had growing up, and it’s as great as it’s ever been. I remember when I started playing with the toy when I was closer to 8 or 10 years old. So to watch my niece play with it at such a young age was fascinating. This toy has been around for ages. It’s got a strong following with collectors, movie goers, theme park visitors, and more. That toy? Legos.
I want to take a moment and appreciate Legos. The company, The Lego Group, started manufacturing the plastic toys back in 1949. The company and its original form as wooden toys started in 1932 by Ole Kirk Christiansen. Per Brand Finance, Legos is the most powerful brand in the world today.
These simple interconnecting blocks and mini-figurines captivated my niece. I, in turn, was captivated watching her play with them. Here’s what I noticed:
  • Builds observant and analytical skills. My niece studied a flash card of a model dog to assemble. Perhaps I’m not giving her or young kids enough credit. But yet, it was amazing to watch her study the picture and search for the right pieces. She observed the shape, color, how they fit together, etc.
  • Cultivates creativity. My niece also assembled several ice cream cones stacked with various “flavors” and toppings. She was experimenting with different color schemes while role-playing an ice cream vendor. It was fun.
  • Motivated persistence. I wasn’t sure how my niece would react when the pieces didn’t quite fit together the first time. In fact, I was ready to jump in when they didn’t fit together immediately. I didn’t. Instead, she would pull the pieces away, observe the alignment, then try again. She would fidget with the pieces till they lined up perfectly and fit together.
  • Encourages bigger, more fascinating dreams. Lego pieces are, for the most part, simple and small. My niece knows she can assemble these small pieces and build something fascinating.

Few brands come to mind with such a powerful, meaningful effect on people from an early age. It’s amazing to see how Legos continue to evolve. They not only stay relevant, but they stay at the top of today’s culture.

That’s the dream, right? To build something so great and so influencing that impacts so many for so long…
“Always be curious, and take closer looks at things you think you know.” Image of Curious George from: http://socialtextjournal.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/thecurios.jpg

I get a lot of laughs when people see how I use Microsoft Office program in non-traditional ways such as PowerPoint for photo-editing and Excel for messaging (vs. Word).

Over the last several years, I’ve appreciated how to utilize my resources as best I can. When running full-time in a boot-strapped startup, spending money is for necessities. However, the market doesn’t care if you don’t have the money for things like Photoshop — they want results. So I’ve learned to make-do with what tools at my disposal. It’s forced me to be creative and incredibly curious.
For example, PowerPoint is actually quite good at doing light photo editing. I always used PowerPoint before for presentations and slide decks, but can be used easily for formatting pictures and creating black and white images, graphics with emphasis, tutorials and getting started guides, etc.
Excel has become a fascinating messaging tool for me, not Microsoft Word. With Excel, I create different iterations of value props, email copy, etc. Then, I use formulas to count words, characters, and more. This helps me reduce my word count, create simpler messages while tracking the efficacy of the iterations.
Meager resources and focus on priorities have forced me to be more creative with my resources. This also represents a lot of my philosophy in startups and, perhaps, in life.
  • Limited resources can empower greater creativity and curiosity to solve problems
  • Always be curious, and take closer looks at things you think you know. There’s a good chance there are layers you did not know about (applies to people, too)

What are some unconventional tools you use and how? How has limitations empowered you to be more creative, more curious to get things done?

Note: my early days in corporate settings gave me a strong foundation with Microsoft tools, hence using these specific tools.
I’m surprised by how many people believe creativity is reserved to the arts or perhaps marketing. In reality, there’s so much more creativity happening in the everyday whether that be in writing, in coding, or in sales.
When I do code, I love how there are so many ways to accomplish a task. It’s up to me how I implement that code and find a solution. Some ways are more elegant than others. Sometimes, it’s about creatively hacking a solution so you can survive the week. So yes, developers/ engineers are a creative bunch.
Sales is one of those areas where I love to see creativity, too. I remember hearing a story of how a sales professional finally got in front of a VP he’d been chasing for a while by literally sending the VP his shoe. The message was about walking in “his shoes”. Or a story how to get someone to read a cold email by bidding on a pair of shoes and an apartment.
There’s a lot of creativity happening around us. Creativity is just finding a solution to a problem in some unconventional way. It happens all the time and all around us. It’s not just reserved to pretty plates of food or catchy songs on the radio. It happens when we’re left to our own devices… and stepping out from our own seeming “limitations”.
This is art… I don’t know what it is, but it’s art, right? Kind of like when someone non-technical looks at code… beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Photo from the Atlanta Beltline.
To be fair, too, creativity doesn’t mean it’s never been done before. Sometimes, creativity happens when we’ve just never done it this way. We have our vision, and we make that approach in our way. If someone else did it similarly, that’s okay. What counts is that we did something different, and the more we do that, the more creative we become.
Just a brainstorming session with Don Pottinger (pictured) and Darren Pottinger on a Saturday morning. Typical.
Yes, when I want to get in a good “innovating” and brainstorming mood/ session, I need to isolate myself from the rest of the world. I like to disconnect, in a sense, and lock myself in an environment where I can let it all out.
Okay, so the reference to a padded room is actually more or less the sound-absorbing padding of room 201 at my former business school. I continue to go there even on the weekends to get away from my house where I’d otherwise develop cabin fever and the local Starbucks where standing up, pacing, and toting a giant whiteboard would be cumbersome.
Brainstorming to me is one of the most fun processes that helps me not only keep my thoughts at bay (to help me sleep at night), but a way for me to continue to brainstorm and innovate ways to improve life. People have all sorts of ways to brainstorm, but this is my blog, so I’ll share how I typically work. And it’s through these sessions where some of my greatest work is done, and where I hope I find my next nugget of entrepreneurial magic.
  • Isolation Mode. Siddhārtha Gautama and Ralph Waldo Emerson saw fit to disappear from the world to find enlightenment. Me? I like to go to spaces with large rooms where I can lay down, pace back and forth, dance (yes, I said, “dance”), and just get away from the world. For me, classrooms tend to be phenomenally suitable places to get away and lock out the world (and lock me in).
  • Let the Tunes Play. I love music. I love how music has a way of changing your mood and even invigorate/ amplify whatever mood you’re in. I listen to Spotify or my personal workout KILLIN’ IT mix in the classroom or via my new Mini Jambox. It’s great. I’ll listen to music with high tempo and some hip hop-ish undertones (overtones, too) because it gets me pumped up and confident. When brainstorming, confidence is high.
  • Whiteboards.If you know me at a personal level, you would know my affinity for whiteboards. I have three in my house, and one day, would love to have my office painted with that whiteboard paint. In the classroom at Emory, I get to take advantage of mammoth whiteboards… three of them that slide up and down. I say Entrepreneurship is like an art, and with whiteboards, I find my empty canvas.
  • Bubbles, Outlines, Comics. When I’m throwing ideas, I’m putting them into whatever format I feel like. Sometimes, I’ll “organize” my thoughts in outlines like this past Saturday, or I’ll do bubble diagrams where I put some central question or theme in the middle, and address it with bubbles connected all around the central idea.
  • Discard Nothing, Capture Everything. I put just about every one of my thoughts about an idea on the board. (It’s why I love big canvases.) Any idea that pops up in my head can be a valuable piece that can bring about some odd way I haven’t thought about before. Sometimes, you have to consider “bad ideas” because innovation requires thinking exactly why bad ideas are bad. Is that just because “it’s always been done that way?” Why wouldn’t a business model from another industry work here? At the end of my brainstorm session or when I need more room, I’ll take pictures of everything and look back upon them for ideas later or for implementation.
  • Start With Something or Nothing. Okay, that probably sounds silly, but really, you don’t have to have an idea to which you want to explore for a brainstorming session. Just enter the room fresh, keep some water and snacks handy, and just be ready to throw anything on the board that pops in your head. With a little list of ideas like “What do I do everyday that I hate?” or “What are the trending hashtags or Tweets where people use the phrase ‘worst ever’, ‘can never do’, ‘this sucks’?” The idea here is to search for areas where people are sharing common pain points, and are passionate enough to share it on social media.
  • Brainstorm with One or Two Others. I tend to brainstorm with just one other person, if at all. It’s good to get another’s perspective. It’s like when you need to talk to vent… you just want someone to hear you. However, in this situation, that other person could play devil’s advocate to your ideas.
  • Plan For Nothing and Something Will Come. When you start a brainstorm session, yeah, you can put some plan or hopes that you walk out with a deliverable or plan of attack. For me, I don’t necessarily always do brainstorm sessions for a goal to come out other than to stretch my mind from a creative standpoint. This past weekend, I got to brainstorm with two buds and co-founders of Body Boss for the next Great Thing. We didn’t go in thinking we’d exit with a killer idea or a strategy. However, we stumbled on a potentially great idea that we’re now exploring. If you stumble on an idea in your session, embrace it, and take the steps to make it happen – whatever it is.
  • Have Fun!Like I said just above, brainstorming and innovation should be fun. It’s probably a nerdy thing, but for me, I gladly do this on a Saturday morning like I just did. To me, this is an interestingly fun way to hang out with friends while not spinning our wheels doing something that would require us to spend money for an expensive dinner, or just sitting around watching some TV/ game. (Though, we watch the World Cup game later.) Brainstorming and thinking of new ways of approaching things like paying for things at a grocery store, communicating with team members in soccer, whatever… it’s about plugging into your creative power plant that could be barely running due to otherwise a non-creative, mind-numbing job you do 40+ hours a week in a cramped cubicle. But hey, I’m not judging if that’s your thing…

Dang, I should really try to start trimming my writing. However, this is a passion of mine, so it’s natural I write more. I’m a big proponent of following your passions and exercising the Creative Muscle that’s probably largely dormant with our normal day-to-day. Take a moment and think about something you don’t like (that’s easier than what you do like), and just step back, and think of all the different ways it could be improved. Maybe you’ll be as fascinated about your creativity as I have been by others.
What are your thoughts about brainstorm sessions? How do you exercise and flex your creative muscles?