Charles Duhigg wrote the book Smarter Faster Better, in which he discusses the eight secrets of being productive in life and business. One of the eight principles is leveraging the creative process to drive innovation.
In this post we’ll apply the ideas of creativity and innovation to several examples, including Disney’s Frozen. But first, where does creativity come from?
Creativity Boils Down to Idea Transfer
So what do we mean by Idea Transfer?
When you think about it, most creative things are not completely new and unique. Usually, creativity comes down to a mix of two or more existing ideas. We can be creative by taking proven conventional ideas from different settings and combining them in new ways.
Behavioural economics applied psychology theory to economics. By combining these two separate fields of study, behavioural economics gives us a new lens to anticipate human behaviour.
The largest social networking sites, like Facebook and Twitter, grew by borrowing public health models that show how viruses spread. These models helped increase their growth trajectory. In effect, they went viral.
Thomas Edison and his associates revolutionised the era’s technology with their knowledge of electromagnetic power. Ideas borrowed from the telegraph industry helped innovate lighting, telephones, phonographs, railways and minings.
Modern bike helmets exist because a designer wanted to make a hat out of a boat’s hull. This material can withstand nearly any collision, which makes it well-suited as protective headgear.
The simple act of combining ideas from different disciplines is the secret that has sparked countless creative successes.
Idea & Innovation Brokers
When we think of the most creative people, we might use words like genius and ahead of their time. But oftentimes, these people simply made a new connection between two existing ideas.
In this sense, most creative people are just intellectual middlemen. These middlemen, known as idea or innovation brokers, transfer ideas between industries and groups of people.
People connected with various groups are more familiar with different ways of thinking. They’re more flexible in how they approach problems. And they’re aware of more solutions that have been used for different problems.
Steve Jobs regularly brought up the example of taking a calligraphy class at university. This resulted in the original Apple Macintosh having beautiful typography. Most computers before the Macintosh had a uniform font. But Jobs’s calligraphy experience helped him innovate the personal computer.
Compared to other workers, idea brokers are more likely to share ideas and less likely to be dismissed by their peers. The reason is that innovation brokers tend to have more valuable ideas.
The secret is noticing the various ideas that have solved different problems in different fields in the past.
These ideas are valuable fodder for creativity and innovation.
Use Our Own Experience As Inspiration
What often stunts our innovation is forgetting to use our own experiences.
A key part of learning to broker insights from one setting to another is paying attention to how things make us feel. That’s how we separate the real from the clichéd and trivial. We can draw on our own lives for creative fodder.
If we look at some of the greatest innovations in history, we find clearly personal inspiration.
For example, a chemical engineer created Post-it Notes because he was frustrated with the bookmark that kept falling out of his church hymn book. He found that an index card with weak adhesive stayed in place and could be easily moved when needed.
Infant formula was invented by an exhausted father who wanted to feed his crying child in the middle of the night. Justus Von Liebig’s original Soup for Infants consisted of cow’s milk, wheat and malt flour, and potassium bicarbonate. It was considered the perfect infant food at the time. And it could be made at any time.
Using our own emotions and experience is a great source of creative inspiration. That’s how we solve the problems that truly matter.
Inspiration for Let It Go
Kristen Anderson-Lopez was a song writer for Disney’s Frozen, and she wanted to apply her own experiences. In particular, she wanted to express her feelings of being judged as a parent.
Lopez would often let her kids eat ice cream instead of a healthy snack and watch iPad films, so she could enjoy some peace and quiet at a restaurant. And she could sense the judgment from other parents.
She hated the feeling but didn’t think she had to apologise for not being perfect. And she didn’t think Elsa had to either. It’s more important to be proud of who you are and ignore what other people think.
Lopez and Elsa both just had to learn to let it go. That’s the inspiration for the award-winning song.
The Disney method forces us to find what matters and shine a light on it.
Stay Creative Throughout the Process
Sometimes we solve our greatest creative problem and everything seems like smooth sailing from there. When everyone agrees on the main creative hurdle, it’s easy to feel like the hard work is over. The main creative job is done.
This was the case for Frozen, and we’ll dive into it in our case study.
When effective teams solve a big creative problem, they may stop seeing it from different perspectives. But we need tension between different people to keep all the options in mind. When we become too attached to our existing ideas, our innovation suffers.
That’s why stress and panic are actually healthy elements of the creative process. These negative feelings give us flexibility to try new creative solutions.
If you can’t let go of what you’ve worked to achieve, it ends up trapping you. This path of least resistance is the enemy of creative innovation.
To enhance creativity, we need a method of shaking things up occasionally.
The Intermediate Disturbance Hypothesis
In the 1950’s the biologist, Joseph Connell, began studying Australian nature. He tried to understand why some parts of the world house such biological diversity. At the same time, other parts of the world seem so ecologically bland.
Connell found that a change in the environment usually cause areas to have great diversity. For example, a large tree falling or a fire spreading in an area would create space in the environment.
These empty spaces created enough light to allow new species to spring up. In comparison, regions without fires or fallen trees didn’t allow any new species to compete for sunlight.
This is the intermediate disturbance hypothesis. Every habitat is colonised by a few species, but occasional disturbances can cause the number of species to bloom.
The occasional limited disturbance allows new species to spring up. But if we go too far in the other directions, we see fires wipe out entire forests. There’s less life in environments with such massive disturbances.
We can take a lesson from the intermediate disturbance hypothesis in our study of creativity.
Sometimes the best way to spark innovation is disturbing things just enough to let some light in.
The Creative Process
If we’ve learned anything about creativity, it’s that it can’t be reduced to a formula. It needs novelty, surprise and other elements that can’t be pre-planned.
The creative process, on the other hand, is different. We can optimise our processes for creativity. The defining factor is mixing old ideas in new ways. That’s where we take the inspiration that can cause a little disturbance and jolt us out of a rut.
We can boil down the creative process to three steps.
- First, be sensitive to your own experiences. Notice how things make you feel. Figure out what problems are important and worth solving. That’s where we should direct our creative energy.
- Recognise that panic and stress isn’t a sign that everything is falling apart. Instead, it’s a sign that a creative break-through might be underway. Panic and stress is a condition that helps us be flexible and try something new.
- The relief from solving a creative breakthrough can blind us to seeing alternatives. One idea can quickly crowd out competitors. We should regain creative distance with occasional disturbances to make better choices.
Innovation becomes simpler with some guidance. We can follow the three steps above and mix old ideas in new ways to optimise our creative process.
That’s what the team behind Disney’s Frozen did.
Case Study – Disney’s Frozen
In 2012, Disney had their first internal screening of the film, Frozen. Usually at this event people would cry and give standing ovations. But this time no one cried. No one applauded. People hardly reacted before leaving the theatre room.
John Lasseter, Chief Creative Officer of Disney at the time, met with the creative team after the screening. First, he pointed out the things he liked about the production. In particular, he liked the animation and witty dialogue.
Lasseter also brought up what he didn’t like. He felt the film was missing emotion and connection with the characters. Every movie sucks at first but this one was on a tight schedule. They had just 18 months until the movie’s release.
Frozen had a lot of great elements, but it wasn’t one story. They had four different narratives, one for each of the main characters. The team knew these stories had to converge into one story.
The Role of Stress, Intermediate Disturbances & Experience
After a lot of stress and panic, the team finally agreed with each other on the core narrative. At this point, the Frozen creatives were so grateful for their creation that they couldn’t see any other creative paths anymore. But many of the plot points, including the ending, were still not clear.
That’s when the team needed an intermediate disturbance. Ed Catmull, the president of Disney, made Jennifer Lee the new co-director of the film. This was a disturbance because she wrote the screenplay but had never directed anything before.
Lee noticed an instant shift in her role. As a writer, you know the film intimately and have great creative insight. But you’re just one voice. A director, on the other hand, is in charge. She now had to listen even more to other people’s ideas.
But she also needed to apply her own experience to the narrative. From her experience, she knew what the ending had to be.
LOVE is a greater power than FEAR. Go with love.
That was the final change Frozen needed to become awarded the best animated feature film of 2014.
The story behind Frozen teaches us how we can spur innovation on a deadline and create a streamlined creative process.
Creativity & Innovation in a Nutshell
Innovation becomes simpler when we mix old ideas in new ways. After all, creativity really just boils down to idea transfer. And we can leverage increased creativity by becoming idea brokers. All we need is to increase our access to different groups of people.
It also helps to use our own experience for inspiration. At the end of the day, we know what really matters. And that’s where we need to direct our creative energy.
It’s easy to feel relieved after creative breakthroughs. But too much comfort is bad for innovation. Creativity requires constant tension to consider all the possible options. When we settle on an idea before the process is finished, it traps us. We need flexibility to make great creative choices.
That’s why it’s also good to remember that stress can be a good sign in the creative process. Stress is tension that opens us up to creative flexibility. And that’s how we make great creative choices.
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