Tiki Touring

I’ve been back in NZ for about a month now, getting myself connected to the local start-up/innovation community and working through a few ideas I’m trying to validate and learn from. The vision is to see epic Kiwi entrepreneurial ambition fulfilled by and for New Zealanders.

I’m looking to better understand 1) what’s happening now (so that I can differentiate/complement), 2) what’s needed by the innovation community to fulfil and amplify their potential (so that I can create value/demand) and out of that 3) how value is created and exchanged in the current system (so I might construct a sustainable business model).

Will try to keep track of what I hear, right here.

This is an example post

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Do something that matters

From Hugh McLeod at gapingvoid.com via #tedxlbs

IDEO’s Tom Hulme with 13 ways for start-ups to design think

12 Ways To Add Design Thinking Into Your Project – Tom Hulme from HackFwd on Vimeo.

A quote from Margaret Mead

“A small group of thoughtful people could change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”
– Margaret Mead

Thanks JWT

Poking the box

Having just finished 3 days with Hyper Island and their London Masterclass, I’m feeling all inspired again to make a difference. And Seth Godin’s Domino Project and his latest book, Poke the Box, are keeping me moving forward.

Here’s some great stories from SXSW attendees, talking about the moment they took the initiative, and poked the box with an original idea that took them somewhere good.

I love this idea that each of us has the potential to do whatever we want, that any idea, if we let it out, might take us somewhere amazing. That’s what the athousandfires idea was about, so my plan is to poke the box five times this week, start a few fires, and report back on what happens.

The kitchen sink

You’ve got clients, editors, account handlers, agents waiting expectantly for a little dose of creative genius, but the creative well’s run dry. Martha Beck recommends chucking the kitchen sink at it.

In the grip of writer’s block, with the fear setting in, she describes a kitchen sink moment as she “read bits of eight books: four accounts of brain research, one novel about India, one study of bat behavior, one biography of Theodore Roosevelt, and one memoir of motherhood. Next I drove to my favorite Rollerblading location, listening en route to a stand-up comic, a mystery novel, and an Eckhart Tolle lecture. I yanked on my Rollerblades and skated around, squinting slack-jawed into the middle distance. After a while, a tiny lightbulb went on.”

The Kitchen Sink, you see, is one way to activate your brain’s creative right hemisphere. In my experience, the best ideas are built out of unexpected connections between previously unrelated ideas, inspired by a new creative question and letting your sub-conscious pick over the world around you and inside you. That is to say, that without the raw materials or the inspiration to make new connections, you’re not really giving yourself much to twist a creative thought out of.

So walk away from the problem (see a previous post on this here) and chuck the kitchen sink at it instead.

The creative difference

Creativity is what elevates an ordinary series of actions, to become extraordinary; different; a remarkable departure from the well-trodden path. Creativity is what turns limited resources into big, punch-above-your-weight impacts. David Golding from Adam & Eve calls it “concentrated greatness”.

And it’s starting to take hold upstream of the sharp end of brand communications, as innovation and brand consultants at the top table begin to connect business leaders to creativity. Andy Nairn of MCBD starts to explore this breadth of creative influence in a paper for the IPA: “No longer is this the domain of a specific department or related to a particular part of the campaign development process. Instead, creativity is increasingly seen as a mindset which infuses everything we do.”

“The 21st century is to content creators what the Industrial Revolution was to factory workers: In a world where information is superabundant, unique and creative ideas are hot-ticket advantages both personally and professionally.”

- Martha Beck, life coach