210: How to Generate Many Creative Ideas with Tina Seelig

Pete Mockaitis
Tina, thanks so much for joining us here on the How to be Awesome at Your Job podcast.

Tina Seelig
Thank you so much for having me.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, so we’re going to be talking about an upcoming book of yours, and you’ve done writing of books both for children and for grownups. And your children’s books outnumbered the grownups books. What’s the story behind kid’s books?

Tina Seelig
Well, it’s actually a little bit misleading because I do have 13 kid’s books but 12 of them are part of a series, a series of games called Games for Your Brain, and they’re published by Chronicle Books and they’re so fun. And I started writing them when my kid was seven and I realized that, boy, he loved playing card games and manipulatives. And I thought, “Wouldn’t it be great if there games where he actually learned something a little bit more meaningful than the name of Pokemon characters?”

So I designed, I just literally mocked them up initially on index cards, and he and his friends loved playing with them. So I then hired someone, I mocked them up in a much higher resolution and that worked really well, and then I contacted publishers, and Chronicle Books picked them up. So, yeah, I did them over this course of many years, so there’s like two decks coming out every couple of years and there are a dozen decks. So topics like space, and ocean, and weather, and bugs, and the world, and finally, at the end, I was doing things like extreme sports. So, as my kid got older and was interested in cars and extreme sports, those became the topics I finished with.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I think extreme sports is an important part of the common core curriculum, isn’t it?

Tina Seelig
Absolutely, especially extreme ironing are two really funny sports. Extreme ironing, have you ever heard of that? It’s hysterical.

Pete Mockaitis
I thought this was an elaborate ploy to coerce your children into doing chores but this is an actual sport.

Tina Seelig
Yeah, but it’s actually, you know, maybe it is, “Can you please iron this shirt off on top of a mountain?” So it’s really funny. Anyway, the fact that I had a great fun doing all of those, and I’m very proud of that series, but that’s why I have so many kid’s books. Another reason is that the first book I wrote is actually in the chemistry of cooking and it was published by Scientific American, it was called The Epicurean Laboratory, and they liked it so much they asked me to do a kid’s version. And so that’s my other kid’s book, it’s a book called Incredible Edible Science which is a book about the chemistry of cooking for kids.

And you might wonder what inspired me to do those books. Well, I’m a neuroscientist training and I realized when I was in grad school I understood in great depth what was in my lab but in my kitchen, and this was long before the days where the Chemistry of Cooking was popular, and I couldn’t find the answers to the questions I had. And so I said, “Well, I got to write a book about this.” So when I was in grad school I started outlining my first book which is on the Chemistry of Cooking.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, intriguing. You know, that subject, it’s fascinating how there is just so much going on there. I remember, I self-published a book and the book manufacturer sent me sample books to see what they could do for materials. And one of the sample books was Bubbles in Food 2, and this was a huge book all about bubbles in food and apparently was the sequel. So I thought, “Wow, there is a lot to say about this topic.”

Tina Seelig
That is so fascinating, yeah. What did you take away from that book on bubbles in food?

Pete Mockaitis
I took away that it was well-constructed and that this was a suitable manufacturer for me to work with.

Tina Seelig
Honestly, that’s a wonderful thing. There’s a long tale. I’m sure there are a few people who that’s the topic that keeps them up at night.

Pete Mockaitis
Totally. And so I want to hear, then, you have a lot of creative output yourself, and we’re going to talk about some of those principles from your course and then your book. But when you’re, personally, trying to put forward and make something in the world creatively, what do you do to keep those juices flowing?

Tina Seelig
Yeah, I think you really do have to keep exercising those muscles. One of the things that often comes up is that people ask me all the time, “Can you really teach creativity?” And I’m just a huge believer, and of course you can just as you can teach math and science and sports and music. And then a lot of people use it as an excuse, “Oh, you can’t teach this,” it’s an excuse why they don’t do it. But really every single day you can be doing things that stretch those muscles that work them and strengthen them.

One of the things I’ve been doing recently is I make collages. And you might think, “What is that about?” It started as a project I was doing, a project called 60 Weeks to 60. So in the 60 weeks leading up to my 60th birthday I kept giving myself different challenges to stretch me in different ways. And one day I have a huge stack of New Yorkers by my bed, and I just took them and I pulled the covers off and cut them all up in strips and made these collages with sort of interlocking covers from The New Yorker and, honestly, it was really cool. And I thought, “That is so fun.”

Now, one things that’s interesting about The New Yorker covers is they tend to use the same color palette in interesting ways across their covers. And so when you put them together you get these really interesting things that happen, and so I have been playing around doing all sorts of really fun things with New Yorker covers so now lots of people send me New Yorker covers. And so that’s something.

And you might think, well, why have that really caught on for me? Well, it’s a way of looking at old things in new ways and connecting, combining ideas, right? So I don’t have to start with a blank canvass, I just start with these covers and I look at what I might want to do to connect and combine them in interesting ways, and I also then have to look at them in a new way. I look at them from the lens of color or composition or shape and, as I said, really interesting things happen.

Pete Mockaitis
Interesting indeed. Well, so then, that’s how you’re living it right now. And can you give us the story on your course at Stanford that you have turned into a book coming up here – Creativity Rules? What’s the backstory and the goal of the course?

Tina Seelig
Yeah, so I’ve been teaching classes on creativity and innovation for a long time now. Now, it’s interesting you mentioned before we start recording that you had interviewed Bob Sutton, my colleague.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s right.

Tina Seelig
And too funny because it all starts there. I got to Stanford about 18 years ago and Bob was teaching a course on creativity and innovation. And he said, “You know what, I think I don’t want to teach this class anymore,” and I said, “Pick me, pick me, pick me.” I was a very unlikely person to pick to go teach his class but there was a huge need for someone to teach this class. It was sort of an anchor course in our department. And my colleagues looked at me, it’s like, “Okay, we’ll give you a try.”

So I started teaching this class, and the course has evolved over the years. When you start teaching a class, sort of the lowest common denominator thing you can do is start bringing in guest speakers, right? So I started that way, and then I started developing all my own creativity exercises and projects. And the course has really taken on a life of its own over this 18 years.

And a few years ago I realized that although the course is called Creativity and Innovation, I would really be hard-pressed to clearly define the difference between them. And I started doing some deep thinking and realized, “This is more than just a little problem. This is a huge problem.” Because if we don’t actually have clear definitions of the terms related to the creative process we’re talking past each other. In fact, if you asked all of your listeners to write in their definition of creativity, you’re going to get that many different answers.

Pete Mockaitis
Right.

Tina Seelig
I’m a scientist by training. In the world of science and engineering, that would be a total non-starter to not have a shared vocabulary and clear definitions. And so I decided to put a stake in the ground, and I decided to put a framework together looking at the clear definitions for imagination, creativity, innovation and entrepreneurship, and also look at how they’re related. And, just to finish this up, I then was able to go back and look at what actually had to happen to enhance each of these four things.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yes. So I’m right with you. So that’s great whenever you break it down. So we got four key components there. So can you share with us what do you mean by imagination and creativity and innovation and entrepreneurship? And what are some ways that you can do each step optimally?

Tina Seelig
Great. This is something I am now totally passionate about and, in fact, it has transformed all of my teaching. So let’s start at the beginning, right? So creativity is essentially envisioning things that don’t exists. It’s something that we all do. It’s something we’re born doing. It’s something that is very natural, right? Every kid, you say, “Oh, imagine a butterfly,” or, “Imagine a horse,” or, “Imagine a car zipping by,” we all can do that.

Creativity is, then, applying your imagination to solve a problem or address a challenge or an opportunity. So, for example, let’s say you’re hungry, and you open the refrigerator, you can use your imagination or your ability to envision things that don’t exists to envision a peanut butter sandwich, right? So that’s your sort of creative problem-solving, “Oh, I’m hungry. What do I have here? Oh, I can envision a peanut butter sandwich.”

Now the thing that’s important about creativity is the idea it doesn’t have to be new to the world, it doesn’t even actually have to be new to you, but it might have to be new to you at this moment, okay? Innovation, then, is applying the creativity to come up with a unique solution. So you’re essentially… the difference between creativity and innovation is that creative ideas are new to you or new to the moment, and innovative ideas are new to the world. And there are many times in which a creative solution will suffice but there are many times in which you really need an innovative solution. You really need something that’s a breakthrough, okay?

Pete Mockaitis
All right.

Tina Seelig
And then entrepreneurship is applying the innovation to scale the idea and bring it to the world. So it’s a hierarchy going from imagination to creativity to innovation to entrepreneurship. And it’s a cycle, just one more thing, because the end leads back to the beginning. Entrepreneurship requires of inspiring other people’s imagination.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, so maybe to cement these all the more with the four steps here, with the peanut butter imagination, could you maybe walk us through, so from the conception of peanut butter, like, “Ooh, I’d like that,” to then applying like what does that look like in the creativity, in the innovation and in the entrepreneurship phase just to cement it all the more?

Tina Seelig
Great. Okay. So let’s do that example, let’s see how it works. Okay. So I can imagine, right? I can imagine the sandwich, but then I’m hungry. Now I open the refrigerator and now I use my creativity to put together the sandwich. But let’s say I go, “You know what, I want something no one has ever done before.” So now I want to be innovative, I go, “Okay, I’m going to put anchovies on this sandwich. I’m going to put cayenne pepper on this sandwich. I’m going to take peanut butter and jelly and whatever else, there’s something else, mustard I’m going to put no. No else has ever done that before. Okay? Now I have an innovative sandwich.”

Then I go, “You know what, this sandwich is so great, I’m going to sell this sandwich. I’m going to start a sandwich shop. I’m going to basically create franchises of this sandwich all over the world,” that’s when I become entrepreneurial. But, of course, unless I inspire other people to join my team to help me make sandwiches, to help market sandwiches, to help raise money for sandwiches, to send out tweets around the world about these cool sandwiches, I’m not going to be successful. So I have to inspire other people’s imagination and then their creativity, their innovation and their entrepreneurial spirit.

And so the reason this is so powerful is that this engine, I call this the innovation, actually the invention cycle, this cycle is so powerful, is that it leads to wave upon wave upon wave of more imagination and creativity and innovation and entrepreneurship.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Exciting indeed, yes, and it’s transformative over the years and decades and centuries in terms of things getting invented. That’s cool.

Tina Seelig
Exactly. Well, if you think about it, I just want to point out something. So here I am at Stanford University, I certainly didn’t found this university, okay? It’s been around for 125 years. So someone had to inspire me to come here, right? And then once I’m here, I’m not in the center of this cycle, I’m way out in these waves, but someone had to inspire me to come here. But then I’m in a position where I can now inspire my students, and they can inspire other people. And this is how we all can become incredible change agents in the world by harnessing this.

Pete Mockaitis
Excellent. Okay. So now, I’m wondering then, with each of these steps do you have some perspectives on how we can do them all the better?

Tina Seelig
Yeah, you bet.

Pete Mockaitis
Like you can imagine at a ho-hum level or you can imagine like a champion.

Tina Seelig
Yes, absolutely. In fact, that’s what I spend my time doing, right? The framework is just there to sort of set the stage. Now you go deep into what you actually have to do to unlock this for each person, and each team, and each organization.

So here’s the thing. I started out with a long laundry list of what you had to do for each one, and I thought, “That’s way too much.” So I squeezed it and squeezed it and squeezed it until I came down to one representative action and one representative attitude for each one.

Pete Mockaitis
All right.

Tina Seelig
Now why do you think I needed an action and an attitude? Like why did attitude even matter?

Pete Mockaitis
Well, my hunch is that when you’re in the right kind of mental state or zone or attitude, things just sort of flow all the more easily.

Tina Seelig
Yeah. And, in fact, you’re absolutely right. And if you don’t have the right mindset for each of these, you’re not going to do it. This is actually hard work. It might seem you can spell these words, it sounds easy, but this is actually really hard and it gets harder the further you go through the cycle, right? Creativity is harder than imagination, innovation is harder than creativity, and entrepreneurship is harder than innovation.

So the attitude they get much more challenging just as the action. So let’s start at the beginning. Imagination requires two things: engaging in the world and envisioning what might be different. Now there’s a surprising piece to this because most people think of it the other way around. Most people think that you envision what you want to do and then you engage in making it happen, but actually it’s the other way around. Everything starts with engagements. Engagement is the master key that opens the door.

And so that’s why a lot of people sit around, going, “Oh, my God, what am I going to do with my life? What am I going to do? I don’t know.” Well, it doesn’t matter. Start somewhere. Try something. Experiment. You go out. Let’s say all you care about is – I don’t know – what’s your hobby? What do you like?

Tina Seelig
What do you do? Oh, you just moved into a new house.

Pete Mockaitis
I did, yeah.

Tina Seelig
Okay. So maybe you’re excited about decorating. Maybe you go, “Oh, my gosh, like I just moved into the house and like there aren’t enough tools. Like, wow, this is a real problem, figuring out how things are going to fit in my new house. Here I’m getting all this furniture, it shows up and I don’t know if it’s going to fit or clash. Wow, this is a real problem.”

Well, you might decide that that’s something you, “You know what, I’m solve this problem.” No, maybe you don’t, maybe you go, “Well, that’s interesting,” you go on to the next problem because – guess what – our life is full of problems. Every single day if you made a bug list of everything that you experience that’s sort of frustrating there are always some interesting things in there that you could go into further, right?

So, let’s say, you got excited about, “You know what, gosh, you never would have known that decorating was an interesting challenge until you moved in this house and had to do it.” Or you travel somewhere and you see some group of people you’ve never met before and they have a problem, and you go, “Wow, I can help them.” Or you open a restaurant and you realize that, “Wow, people keep asking for gluten-free food. That seems to be an interesting problem. Maybe I should open a gluten-free restaurant.” Does that make sense?

Pete Mockaitis
Absolutely.

Tina Seelig
So you engage with the world and then you see the problems and then you envision what might be different. So that’s imagination. Creativity takes to the next stage. This is where you are motivated to solve a problem and you start doing experiments. And here’s the trick here, the trick is you just need a little bit of motivation. A little bit of motivation leads to little experiments. And the result of that experiment leads to more motivation, right?

And you then do a bigger experiment. And this is a problem other people have all the time, they don’t know where to start. The point is it doesn’t matter. Start with a little experiment. So let’s say, I don’t know, I’m just going to make this up on the spot, you’re decorating, you’re thinking, “I think people could use help with decorating and I’ve got some new tools.” You know what? Put it out on Google, put a Facebook ad, put up a flyer somewhere, see if people call you and ask for the service. Whatever it is you’re going to do, okay?

And if no one calls, it’s like, “Okay, fine. I put up a flyer, no one called. I guess they wanted this and that.” But maybe your phone is ringing off the hook, and you go, “Well, that’s interesting. There’s clearly demand for this.”

Pete Mockaitis
Absolutely. You know, this reminds me of, with this podcast, I did some validation along those lines in terms of putting a survey out. It’s so cool, the tools you can have from Google Consumer Surveys, to Survey Monkey custom audiences, to VoicePolls.com. You can, in a hurry, get a whole bunch of people to tell you what they think.

Tina Seelig
Absolutely. Isn’t that great?

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah.

Tina Seelig
So there’s a concept that I discuss in my book, and in my classes, that I think is very powerful. It’s the concept of pretotyping. Now I didn’t make this up, this is my colleague Alberto Savoia coined this term, and it’s about these tiny little experiments, these pretotypes, before you do a prototype you do a pretotype.

So the classic example here is let’s imagine you have a restaurant and you want to try a new item on your menu. Well, instead of even developing it, you could literally put it on the menu and not even make it and just see if people order it, and you say, “I’m really sorry, we’re out of stock today.” But you’ll get a sense of like actually, “Do people want lobster thermidor? Like should I go and buy lobster and come up with a menu, a recipe for it? Or maybe not?” Like maybe you put it there and, “No one is actually going to buy this let’s not try it.” You didn’t waste any money.

So there’s lots of ways you can do this and lots of fun examples. One of my favorite examples is a Jeff Hawkins who founded Palm Pilot. He knew he could build a Palm Pilot, he knew that he had the technology to do it, he just didn’t know if it was the right thing to build. So the first thing he did was he made a little mockup out of wood, a little wooden block that he put a paper sheet over with sort of the mockup of what it would look like, and he just carried it around with him.

And he saw, over the course of a few weeks, would he use this thing. Because if the form factor was the right limiting factor, like, “I’m not going to carry this with me,” then what’s the point of building it?

Pete Mockaitis
Right.

Tina Seelig
Like this is why the Apple Newton died, right? It might’ve had the same functionality but nobody was going to carry it. And so there’s lots of ways to do these little experiments. So a little motivation, you do a little experiment, you get more motivation, etcetera, etcetera, so that’s the creativity stage. Then you move to the innovation stage which requires focus and reframing.

Now focus is the idea that at this point you’re now basically saying, “All right. I’m now motivated enough and I’m making this a priority, and I’m going to use that focus to allow me to actually look at things from a very different perspective.” And this reframing is essentially the key to coming up with some new way of looking at a problem.

My favorite example here is, you know, people usually look at the world as, “What’s the sum of 5 + 5? What’s the sum of 5 + 5?” It’s 10.

Pete Mockaitis
It’s ten.

Tina Seelig
Right. And there’s one right answer. Yeah, you nailed it. You are good. You are good. Okay. But really most problems of the world are not that kind of problem. They are, “What two numbers add up to 10?” How many answers are there to that?

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, well, especially if they don’t have to be whole numbers, that’d be infinite.

Tina Seelig
That’s the point. So there are an infinite number of solutions. And so by reframing and looking at that problem from a different perspective you now unlock an infinite number of solutions. And that framing and reframing is one of the things I am passionate about. If you change one word in the prompt of a question you can unlock a lot more solutions because the answer is always baked into the question.

For example…

Pete Mockaitis
Please, yes.

Tina Seelig
Okay? When is your birthday?

Pete Mockaitis
September 20th.

Tina Seelig
Okay. Great. Your birthday is coming up. We can ask all of the listeners to brainstorm about the best birthday party for you. Sound like a good idea?

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that sounds very convenient. Sure.

Tina Seelig
Okay. Good. So we can go do that. Okay. But if we change one word in the prompt, we could say, “What’s the best way to celebrate your birthday?” That’s really different than a party, right? There’s lots of ways, like we don’t have to have a party to celebrate your birthday, right? Or what’s the best thing we could do to surprise you on your birthday? Or what’s the best present on your birthday? Or what is a birthday ritual we should start? Each of these questions opens the door to a vastly different set of solutions, and that’s where the interesting things happen is when you question the questions you’re asking.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, that’s so good. Right now, in my mind’s eye, I don’t know if this is creativity or what it is, I’m imagining Apple, Jony Ive just putting a beret on just for good measure, say, “How can we craft a birthday experience?”

Tina Seelig
Yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
And it’s like it really does kind of move me in different directions, so that’s very powerful.

Tina Seelig
It is.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, just keep rephrasing and changing a key word or two in how I ask the question. Any other master keys for reframing?

Tina Seelig
Well, it’s interesting because, I mean, that sounds really fun. Okay, it’s a birthday party, but let’s look at something really serious. A company can get started, and say, “We’re going to cure cancer.” Well, that sounds like a really great idea. But what if they asked a different question, “How do we prevent cancer?”

Pete Mockaitis
How do we save lives of people with cancer?

Tina Seelig
Exactly. How do we save a life? Or, “How do we detect cancer earlier?” or, “How do we allow people who have cancer to live better lives?” or, “How do we reduce the symptoms?” or, “How do we help people of different age groups?” Each of these questions is critical to unlocking different set of solutions. And so that’s where you come up with really innovative ideas. And then what you have to do is you start generating solutions, and you start generating solutions in each of these different solution spaces.

And one of my favorite things to do is, of course, having people coming up with the craziest ideas and the stupidest ideas. And why do you want to do that? Why would you want to come up with stupid ideas? Well, guess what, when you want to come up with good ideas, and I can show you this in one second, if we said, “Let’s brainstorm about the best family vacation,” “We’re going to take everyone to Hawaii, or we’re going to go to Disneyland.” Like it’s all going to be expected, okay?

But if I say, “Let’s come up with the worst family vacation.” “Oh, you’re going to say let’s end up stranded on a boat in the middle of the ocean.” And you go, “That’s interesting. What would unlock there? What kind of experience would you have? And how might that – maybe that’s a really interesting thing. Or being stranded on a desert island, or in the middle of a war zone.” You could turn that around and turn it into a really interesting type of experience inspired by that crazy idea.

Pete Mockaitis
You know, I’m thinking about how this is just fun for me and I enjoy imagining those different thing, and particularly doing it with people. I’d love to get your take on group ideation or brainstorming amid this context. Is that effective or ineffective or how can we make the most of it?

Tina Seelig
Okay. So I spent a lot of time teaching people how to brainstorm and I just think it’s really quite fascinating but there are so many people who love to bash on brainstorming. And their reason is brainstorming is like chess, okay? Do you know how to setup a chessboard? Can you setup a chessboard?

Pete Mockaitis
I do. I do.

Tina Seelig
Okay. Good. So do you know how the pieces move on the chessboard?

Pete Mockaitis
Right.

Tina Seelig
Do you know how to play?

Pete Mockaitis
Yes.

Tina Seelig
Okay. And are you a master chess player?

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, no. I mean, I would be slaughtered by a real grandmaster.

Tina Seelig
Okay. And that’s the point is that it’s a skill that you have to learn and practice and master, and you’re going to get better. I mean, at some point you didn’t know how to play chess or even how to setup the board. The problem with brainstorming is that the rules look really simple, right? Defer judgment, lots of ideas, build on ideas. The rules look simple just like the rules of chess look simple. But actually the strategies to implement them are quite complicated and you have to actually practice them and there’s a lot of nuance to really get the best out of the experience. And so I am a fan of brainstorming and I think that, done well by people who are committed to really mastering the art, some really amazing things happen.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So you’re saying that it could well… I guess, we had Drew Boyd earlier on the show, if you’re familiar with his work in creativity stuff. And in so doing he was sort of down on brainstorming with regard to sharing some of the studies and sort of individual ideation as opposed to group ideation, and I was just sort of bummed because I love brainstorming and he seemed to say that studies say you get more or better results with the individual ideation.

Tina Seelig
Okay, it’s just so ridiculous. Honestly, it’s just so ridiculous. I’ve had this conversation with my colleagues who worked at IBM, they are known for their incredible bold thinking and all the innovative products. But the point is if you take a bunch of people, if you just scoop a bunch of people off the street and have them play baseball, they’re not going to be able to hit a grand slam, and you don’t say baseball doesn’t work. I mean, it’s just ridiculous, right?

I mean, you don’t say chess doesn’t work because you take a bunch of kids and put them in front of a chessboard or adults and they don’t know how to play, I mean, even if you gave some of rules. There’s a very big difference between knowledge and skills. And so, yes, you’re right, brainstorming doesn’t always work. But, often, it doesn’t always work because people are like, you can’t give anyone a violin and tell them to go play a concerto. They have to practice, it takes years of practice to master these skills.

And, honestly, when you’re with people who are also skilled, it’s like playing a chess game, they stretch you, right? You’re not going to play chess against yourself very well. But someone who’s on the other side of the table that’s going to really push you to start thinking in different ways, it’s like, “Wow, that was a really interesting move. Where can I go from there?”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, so Tina, I love this. And so it sounds like the fundamental point of variation comes from you’re saying, “Well, of course, if you just grab random folks together and say, ‘Do this,’ it’s not going to turn out so great because it’s a masterful skill which might look easy on the surface but there’s a whole lot of depth underneath it.” So other than just doing a lot of brainstorming, what are your pro tips for improving our skills within this art?

Tina Seelig
Yeah, so lots of things. I mean, first of all, you have to practice it and really practice stretching the way you think of things. It’s one of the reasons, you asked me at the beginning, why I do art. Because it stretches me. Every single day I’m looking at old things in new ways. I have to pay attention. Observation takes a lot of focus. It takes a lot of time to look at the world and take blinders off.

So I think that, just like everything else, it requires a commitment to practice to get better. And you could do this all the time. Scoop up your friends every day and say, “Hey, let’s brainstorm about that birthday party,” or maybe it’s a birthday celebration, or maybe it’s a birthday present, or it’s maybe all the things you were just talking about. It’s easy to practice, right? What shall we have for dinner? Well, we’re going to have a dinner party. Well, maybe it’s not a dinner party. Maybe it’s a dinner barbeque. Anyway, I don’t want to belabor the point. The fact is this is a wonderful set of skills that can be practiced in every setting frequently.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Thank you. Set the record straight.

Tina Seelig
Set the record straight. And I’m happy to have a big debate. I mean, there are lots of other things that I feel strongly about and this is one of them, is that people make the mistake of thinking brainstorming doesn’t work because they think the rules are simple.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Thank you. Well, so now, I’d love to get your take when it comes to coming up with creative thoughts and really having them go somewhere. A lot of times the hang up is fear, trepidation, self-consciousness, that kind of stuff. What are your perspectives for how we push past that sort of internal emotional resistance in order to really come up with some great stuff?

Tina Seelig
Right. So one of the things I have my students do is keep failure resumes, these are resumes of all their biggest screw-ups – personal, professional and academic. And you might go, “Well, that doesn’t sound like a lot of fun,” but it’s actually really fun because what happens is it’s a place for you to put all the things that really stretch and things didn’t turn out the way you hoped, and then think about deeply about what you learned from it. And it ends up becoming a very meaningful lectures for us because what happens is you are much less likely to repeat the same mistakes if you actually view them in data, okay?

And so if you go, “Wow, I did this when I was in a meeting with my department chair, and that didn’t work out really well. Well, interesting. What am I going to do? Like let me write it down, let me write down what I learned. What am I going to do differently next time?” Right? Or something else. I mean, it could be anything in your life, “Wow, I waited until the last minute to study for that exam, and that didn’t work out so well. I drank all this coffee in the morning because I stayed up all night, and I’m all jittering and I couldn’t focus, and I failed. Well, okay, what did I learn? Okay, I’m not going to do that again.”

And so it reminds you that when you’re doing complicated things for the first time, yeah, it’s risky but that’s the only way we learn. Let me ask you, did you walk the first time you tried? Do you have kids?

Pete Mockaitis
We don’t have kids.

Tina Seelig
Not yet. Okay. But let me tell you something, they probably, when you have them, if you have them, will not walk the first time they try, or ride a bicycle. I mean, why do we expect adults to do things that are complicated and hard and maybe no one has done before without having some surprises? So having the opportunity to capture that really becomes a powerful exercise.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, perfect. Thank you. Well, so I really loved the tip you shared about reframing and asking the question differently, and that really sparks a whole lot of additional ideas just about instantly. I’d love it if you have any other kind of favorite tips or prompts or questions that you find really do the trick in a similar fashion to just spark a bunch of extra ideas right away.

Tina Seelig
Sure. One of my other favorite tools, it has to do with challenging assumptions. And we go through life every single day doing a lot of things that become routine. But if you actually unpack the assumptions around each of these, I mean, it could be as simple as stopping and getting and picking up a cup of coffee on the way to work. What are all the assumptions around that?

Like how far do I go to get coffee? How long do I wait in line? What is the assumption of how hot it is or what container it comes in, or how I interact with people? Or the assumptions about what I put in the coffee. Or whatever it is. You could pick anything. The assumptions around breakfast. The assumptions around lunch or dinner. Or the assumptions around when you do your homework.

And if turn them upside down and start looking at it from a different perspective you start unlocking some really interesting other opportunities. So this is a little bit like the bad idea/good idea but this is about like actually taking the time to unpack your assumptions. And it is a powerful tool for starting to see what things you might want to consider doing differently.

Pete Mockaitis
So you just get really explicit in naming each of the embedded assumptions associated with that question, or your defaults, and then you just sort of have some fun, “Well, let’s just say that’s gone.”

Tina Seelig
What does that look like if it was the opposite?

Pete Mockaitis
Or the opposite.

Tina Seelig
This exercise I extrapolated from a case study that is a pretty well-known case study from Harvard which talks about Cirque du Soleil. Now, Cirque du Soleil is thriving. Well, guess what? When they started in the ‘80s, the circus industry was dying. I mean, look at Ringling Brothers just went out of business. That was a very slow death. But in the ‘80s you could see it coming and like, “Why would you invest in a new circus?”

So Cirque du Soleil essentially unpacked all the assumptions around what a circus would be, turned those upside down and came up with something that was still a circus, right? They didn’t change everything, but they said, “Okay, what if we don’t have animals? What if we’re not competing with things like baseball games and movies? What if we’re competing with the opera or theater? What if the tickets are expensive? What if things actually a whole storyline for each show? What if there is like different types of music or lighting or maybe it’s not for kids and families? Maybe it’s for adults.” Right? And they ended up inventing a brand new circus. Now, it’s still the old circus, right? But they reinvented it.

So you can do that with anything whether it’s the car industry or health clubs or marriage. I did an exercise like this when I was in India, and asked, “What institutions are ripe for innovation?” and they suggested marriage. And it was fascinating to see all the assumptions that have been along with marriage in India, and how what would happen if you did it differently.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, intriguing. Thank you. Well, so tell me, Tina, is there anything else you really want to make sure to mention before we shift gears and hear about some of your favorite things?

Tina Seelig
So I just want to talk for just a minute about the entrepreneurship stage of the innovation invention cycle, because the entrepreneurship stage is important because it requires persistence and inspiring other people. Now persistence is essentially great, right? It’s all the hard work of building your teams and your organizations, and your strategy, and your marketing, and your finances, all that stuff.

But inspiration is one of the most important pieces because you need to really think about how to inspire other people to be as excited about the idea as you are. And my favorite tool here is effective storytelling. And there are some storytelling tools and tips and frameworks that end up becoming incredibly powerful.

My favorite is the Story Spine. And the Story Spine is super simple. It goes like this, it’ll sound familiar, okay? “Once upon a time” and “every day,” okay? So you now set the stage for what the world looks like right now, okay? Until one day, and that’s your intervention. You’re going to do “Once upon a time, Joey got up and every day he had peanut butter sandwich for lunch, okay? Until one day, he tried mixing peanut butter and mustard,” or whatever. Okay.

And then the next part of the story is, “And because of that… and because of that… and because of that… and because of that,” and you can have as many “because of that” as you want until finally, “And ever since then,” right? So you set the stage about the way the world is now, your intervention, all the consequences, and then that the world looks different at the end.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that just sounds like that would unleash a whole lot of excitement really fast.

Tina Seelig
Exactly. Well, in fact, this is what you need to do when you’re pitching your Ph.D. defense, when you’re pitching to an investor, when you’re talking to potential customers. You’re painting a picture of the challenge that you or they or someone else is facing and then you paint a picture of what the future might look like if that problem was solved.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Thank you. Now, could you share with us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Tina Seelig
Well, okay. So can I quote myself?

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, take it.

Tina Seelig
Okay. I have many quotes I like. But I’ll just quote myself from my book What I Wish I Knew When I Was 20, and the reason that I’ll quote it is because I get emails from people still daily who quote this quote back to me because it was so meaningful to them. And it is, “Never miss an opportunity to be fabulous.” And the idea is that so often in our life we say, “It’s suffice,” we do just enough to get the job done. But the really successful people, really the people who really have an impact in the world don’t do that. They look at every situation as an opportunity to really knock the ball out of the park and to never miss an opportunity to be fabulous.

And the fact that this resonates with so many people, it’s a reminder to me that people are waiting for this instruction. They’re waiting to be in a situation where people don’t tell them, “Okay, this is what you need to do to get an A.” That’s sort of a metaphor for, “Okay, this is the minimum amount.” But are saying, “I’m not going to tell you what the minimum is because I expect great things.” That’s one.

And the second quote that’s one of my favorites, is that, “Not all things that count can be counted, and not all things that can be counted count.” Teaching creativity is a very difficult thing to measure people’s creativity, and you have to keep in mind that the fact that it’s difficult to measure doesn’t mean it’s not important. How do you measure love or ethics? Creativity is just as important as those and we need to teach these skills even though it might be difficult to measure. The impact pays back many, many dividends for years and decades to come.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, excellent. Thank you. And how about a favorite book?

Tina Seelig
I’ll pick one that was a huge influence on me a long time ago when I just started in this field. It’s a book called Conceptual Blockbusting by Jim Adams, and he’s sort of my inspirational grandfather.

My first job after graduating was working for him, and he was the original person who started this course on creativity and innovation at Stanford. And his book Conceptual Blockbusting was one of the earliest books on how to think creatively and how you look at things from a brand new perspective. So I think that’s a real classic that people might not… you hadn’t expected but it’s something definitely worth taking a look at.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, yeah, it’s a great title and one I had heard of before, so thank you.

Tina Seelig
Yeah, please take a look.

Pete Mockaitis
And how about a favorite habit, a personal practice of yours?

Tina Seelig
A personal habit. So one of the things I really, I have so many things that I like to do, I’ve recently started picking up the habit of trying to do some meditation every day, and it really has been very meaningful. We live our lives at such a fast, fast pace, and especially as I get older I realize that very actually taking the time to do some, have some quiet time and deep reflection has been really, really helpful.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, thank you. And if folks want to learn more about you or the book or your work, or getting in touch, where would you point them?

Tina Seelig
Super. Easy. So, first of all, you can to TinaSeelig.com, so that’s just T-I-N-A S-E-E-L-I-G.com. Also you can follow me on Twitter @tseelig.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And do you have a final challenge or call to action      for those seeking to be awesome at their jobs?

Tina Seelig
Yeah, I would say look around and find the places where there’s a problem, and look at it from a fresh perspective and figure out how you can really make a difference. That reframing of looking at the problems around as opportunities is one of the hallmarks of being innovative and being entrepreneurial.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, Tina, thank you so much for this. I had a whole lot of fun and I’m excited to use some of these tools, and I’m glad that you’ve resurrected brainstorming for me and I can feel good about using it with the right collaborative crew. So I wish you tons of luck with the book and your course and all your adventures.

Tina Seelig
Thank you so much. It was really a pleasure.