This is our last session, session ten in the second week of our course, Cracking the Creativity Code, part one discovering ideas. In this session, I mostly want to tell you, some of what I think are rather good stories. I think we learn about creativity by listening and reading stories. Listening to him reading stories about people who have used extreme creativity to change the lives for the better, a very large numbers of people. Here's a good example about thinking in the box. I'd like to say a brief word about thinking in the box before we talk about NASA and going to Mars. [COUGH] We often hear the expression, thinking out of the box. And the meaning is simple. We have boxes that we make for ourselves by these assumptions. Break the assumptions and get out of the box that we're creating for ourself. But actually creativity is more about thinking in the box. By that I mean that, when we try to solve a problem, and good creativity is focused on solving real problems. When we try to solve a problem there are always constraints, things that constrain us. There are always boxes. The trick is to know, which part of the box is real and unavoidable and inescapable, and which part of the box can we erase and totally ignore. So, the people at NASA, the engineers at NASA, developed a Mars Explorer package or vehicle. Carry the nose cone of a rocket. And then it turned out that the rocket engine was actually weaker than expected. The nose cone, that the Explorer, was developed when the rocket was being designed. The design ended up with many pounds of thrust, too few in order to really get this heavy Mars Explorer to Mars, and it looked like the whole project would be cancelled, and these engineers had worked for years in vain, developing a Mars Explorer that was too heavy, because we didn't have a vehicle to get it there. And then one engineer thought in the box. The box was, how do we get this heavy Mars explorer in this rocket that's too weak to propel it to Mars? How do we make this happen? How do we think in the box? And the answer was, we send it to Venus. Run that by me again, we want to go that way to Mars and we're going to go to Venus? Yeah, well, here's the deal. Venus is closer than Mars. The rocket had enough power to get the Mars Explorer to Venus. We want to explore Mars, not Venus. Venus is kind of dull and uninteresting. It's like a gassy planet. Mars is actually solid, you can land on it. Why go to Venus? Well, if you send a rocket to Venus and then put it in orbit around Venus, Venus will act kind of as a slingshot, using the gravitational force of the planet Venus and as the rocket goes around Venus, comes out the other side. Venus kind of throws it like a slingshot, giving it added energy. Enough to get it to Mars. So think in the box. Go to Mars, by going to Venus first in the wrong direction. A creative engineer that made this project, actually happen, breaking the assumptions thinking in the box. And this is really one of my favorite stories. It's recounted in our book, Cracking the Creativity Code, on page 40. And it's called the Lifeline Express, or in India it's called Jeevan Rekha Express. And here's the need, here's the problem that people wanted to solve. There are many Indian villages, maybe a million villages in India and they're mostly inaccessible, they're really hard to get to, the roads are poor, infrastructure is poor. People are at need and deserve medical care. How do you get medical care to millions and millions of people living in remote villages, in India? So, here is the solution developed by Indian railways, and the Indian health ministry. India has a the world's biggest railroad system. It has a 1.4 million employees. They transport over 20 million passengers every day, many of them commuters. And they have a route that covers over 40,000 miles. What does that got to do with medical care? Well, the assumption is that medical care is provided in cities mostly, or in towns in clinics or in hospitals, but what if you don't have such a clinic and no way to get such a clinic to these millions of Indian villages? What about putting a hospital and operating rooms, and doctors and nurses, onto a train? What if you can't bring the people in the villages, to the medical care? And you can't bring the medical care to them in a fixed installation. What about if you put the medical care onto a train? And then you ran the train from village to village, and you announced in advance, that you were bringing medical care to the village at a certain time, and that the villagers should be ready and waiting. This is called Lifeline Express. It's run to more than 7,000 stations. The project is supported by a British charity called Impact UK. Some Indian businesses and individuals and villagers have received orthopedic care, surgical intervention, ophthalmology for their eyes, cataract operations, radiometry for restoring hearing, Cleft pallet, operations, and some other countries, like China, have begun to explore and imitate, the Indian innovation of Lifeline Express. And I sometimes wonder if the United States, which is a wealthy country, couldn't possibly imitate this to bring medical care to many of those who don't even have medical insurance. Baby Einstein, the last story that we'll tell before we sum up our week's course, Baby Einstein illustrates the following principle. To be creative, you need to solve a real need in a novel fashion. How do you identify those needs? You get out into the world, as I described earlier. You observe people, see how they live. But one of the best ways to be truly creative in a practical sense, is to find something that you yourself really want and really need. And then you find a way to make it happen, and chances are if you need it, because other people are like us. We're not unique, we are unique in some ways, but in other ways, we're like other people. Other people also will enjoy the solution that you've created, and you've done this for yourself. And you know that the need is real, because it's you. And you've explored that need, and you found a way to resolve it. This is the story of Baby Einstein. Baby Einstein is a line of multimedia products and toys that specialize for preschool children, age four and younger. It was invented by a so-called stay-at-home mom, former teacher. Her name is Julie Aigner-Clark and she lived in Alpharetta, Georgia. And she set up a company called I think I can productions. So she and her husband Bill Clark, look for videos, VHS, and other things for their small child and couldn't find it. They decided they would produce one. They invested $18,000 of their money. And they created an original video board book and they called it Baby Einstein. Incidentally, they paid royalties because Einstein is a trademark. And one of the major trademarks one of the top five earning, most highly earning trademarks of dead celebrities according to Forbes. And they created a line of multimedia products for very small children, called Baby Einstein. They grew their revenue from $1 million dollars in 1998 to $10 million in 2000 and then the company was sold to Disney in February 2000. Part of it was sold to another company, part of it sold to Disney. But the point here is creativity find a need, look into yourself, what would you like to have and it doesn't exist? Video for your two year old? Doesn't exist? Make it happen, scrape together some money, bootstrap it. Create a prototype, go around and pedal the product, you may have to do this by yourself, it's very hard to do that, not easy. But, if you find a good solution to your own need, it may resonate with a lot of other people and you may actually create value and create a highly valuable company that has $10 million in revenue and totally surprise yourself, possibly. This ends session ten. This ends week two of our course, Cracking the Creativity Code. I'd like to give you a brief preview, hoping that you'll stay with us for week three. In week three, we're going to continue to work on the method, the zoom in, zoom out method. We'll talk about the role of accidental discovery, mistakes and serendipity. Making mistakes, stumbling on things and then finding that this really is a great creative idea that has potential. We'll try to see how to sharpen your skill, your vision at observation, at seeing things. The role of empathy, feeling empathetic with other people. The role of failure. Creativity involves failure as much as success. How to collect data, how to work in teams. And we'll see how ideal the world's greatest design company works in teams, and we'll try to learn some of their ideas. We'll talk about the zoom in part where you tame wild ideas from the 989th floor, the imagination elevator. How you sell your ideas. How to be creative in a big bureaucratic organization. How to be an entrepreneur. And finally how to create your own legend. Your own story and build yourself your own powerful narrative. So this concludes week two. I hope you've enjoyed week two. Please come back and join us for week three. We'll continue to explore part one, discovering ideas. How do you come up with these great, world changing ideas? I'll see you then.
