Welcome back. This is session one of cracking the creativity code, part one, discovery ideas. We're going to have an initial encounter with our zoom in, zoom out, zoom in method. We'll talk a bit about whether creativity is inherited by our genes, and our genes will learn. And about your deepest passion and about how creativity, and the creativity begins with the question, why and for whom. Not with what can I invent. [COUGH] So, let's take a quick encounter, quick journey into the zoom in, zoom out method, our creativity method. And our book describes an interesting encounter told by my colleague Arie about how he takes the imagination elevator to the 989th floor. And of course, there is no such floor. But there certainly is indeed in our imagination. The zoom in zoom out method for developing and discovering creative ideas, is built on a very important premise. And I'm going to stress this in our course on several occasions. We call this discovering ideas, not creating ideas. There's a reason. These words matter. We believe that for every dilemma, for every human need, there is indeed a solution. If you believe there is such a solution then you're far more motivated to discover it. Then if you begin tackling a hard problem and you say to yourself, probably this problem can't be solved. A little later, I'm going to talk to you about a mathematician who solved a problem that was 350 years old, the Fermat's conjecture problem and who proved Fermat, the mathematician, who proved his conjecture was right. I'd just like to quote Ken Robinson the educator, the British educator. He makes a very important point. For most of us, the problem isn't that we aim too high and fail. It's just the opposite. We aim too low and we succeed. Aim high. Tackle really hard problems. And when you tackle them, absolutely believe the human creativity is so powerful, that you will find a solution. You will find a way to widen our range of choices. And as you do this, you will get much, much better at it as time passes. The more you work on widening the range of choice, the better you get at doing it. It's not fixed by your genes. We point out in our book that there's something called epigenetics. There may be genes that influence our creativity and our imagination, but they're just sitting there. These genes have to be turned on, and they are turned on by stimulation, and by the environment, and by what we do. This is called epigenetics. The genes times the environment that turns on the genes. So, get your genes turned on if they're there. By working on these hard problems. Use your imagination and turn on your creativity genes, and we certainly all have these genes. Sometimes we think that creativity is related to IQ. Somehow, you have to be really, really smart to have these ideas, and my IQ is okay, but maybe not high enough to have really creative ideas. Evidence, research shows this is not true, it's not the case. There's research that shows that if you use Torrance's creativity test and you try to find a connection between the lifetime creative accomplishment of adults and their childhood creativity, as measured by Torrance, the correlation is very high. Much higher than the correlation between the IQ of the child and the lifetime accomplishment of that child as they mature and become adults. Creativity is not IQ. In fact, thinking about it, people with high IQs know a lot. They know a lot about things that are already known. But sometimes that makes them or hampers them in coming up with ideas of their own precisely because they know so much about what is already known by other people. So, is creativity made, is it born? A book by David Shenk shows that the problem isn't our inadequate genetic assets, we all have enough innate creativity, it's just our inability to tap into what we already have and use it, Genetics x Environment. And as William James has brilliantly said, we human beings, we human individuals, we live far within our limits. The key seems to be motivation, passion. So research by John Hayes shows that, if you try to find some variable that correlates with creativity, what can help us distinguish between creative and non-creative people? A lot of these variables have to do with motivation. Simply, whether we want to come up with new ideas, or whether we're uncomfortable with doing that, and are happy to do the same thing day after day. So, creativity starts with passion and motivation. Creativity starts with why. So the first step in creativity for my students is, and again, a deep look inside yourself to ask yourself, what is my deepest passion? These are the so-called da Vinci power questions from a wonderful book called How to Think Like da Vinci, how to create like da Vinci. And I'd like you to ask yourself these questions and think about them during the coming week. When are you most yourself? When are you really you? Nature said become who you are. What does that mean? Become who you are. I am who I am but the truth is I'm really not. So, become who you are. When are you most yourself? What are you doing when you are most yourself? And that's a hint about things that you enjoy doing, and you're passionate about. What can you stop doing in your life that would improve the quality of your life? What degrades the quality of your life? What is your greatest talent? What are you best at? How can you paid for doing what you really, really love doing? So many people do jobs to earn money so they can buy stuff that presumably makes them happy but it doesn't really. And the result is frankly rather tragic and unhappy. Who are my most inspiring role models? Who do you really admire? Who would you like to be like? How can you change the world? You can. You can. All of us can. But we have to want to. And what is your deepest passion? What do you really care about? Because if you really care about something, your motivation is high, and we know that motivation and creative ideas are highly correlated. And finally, and this sounds rather strange to ask people, many of you are very young, what will be your life's legacy? 40, 50, 60 years from now when you look back. What have you done to change the world? You need to think about that now. So that in 60 years, in fact it will indeed have happened. Now, a tool I found very useful, and made use of quite often, is something called Start with Why. And you can find this in a YouTube TED video by Simon Sinek. Who's a motivational speaker who has written a book on this. And he makes a very simple point, and I'd like to stress this point with you and urge you to think about it carefully as we end this second session. How do you begin searching for creative ideas? Where do you start? Well, what question do you start with? It's obvious, right? What thing, gadget, process, what service, what new thing can I invent that changes the world and creates value? Creativity starts with what? No, it doesn't. According to Sinek, and I agree, creativity starts with, why. Why am I doing this? Why am I working on this? And who has the need, and who needs it? And if you truly are passionate about the people that you seek to help, and you understand why you are doing this and why they need it. Then that becomes a powerful motivating factor in your creativity. And after you have a powerful answer to the question why and for whom, because many thousands of people in Africa die of malaria every year. Then you go on to the how. How can we tackle this problem? And then at the end, what will meet this pressing human need? The what is at the end of the process rather than the beginning. The process of developing creative ideas. Discovering creative ideas begins with why, and for whom. [COUGH] Please try to remember that as you work on your creative ideas, strengthen you creative muscles and develop your creative passion. This ends session two of week one and we're going to go on to explore our creativity method in greater depth.
