Gregg Fraley

I have to admit that I’m a bit jealous of Jeff DeGraff. He’s written an excellent book — so good I have author envy. DeGraff is an impressive innovation expert, consulting and coaching high level executives, but his book is really not targeted to that elite group. As the title suggests, it’s for You. Innovation You: Four Steps to Becoming New and Improved is quite simply a very useful book. Personally useful. Most books with the word Innovation in the title are not terribly exciting, particularly for someone who is not say, a VP or CEO of a major company. Sadly, for average people, or small business owners, most innovation books are quite overwrought with innovation from a large corporation

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Today’s post is a creative thinking tool designed to help shift perspective — it has to do with adopting another person’s persona. Stated as a five year old might, it’s simply Let’s Pretend. Yesterday I wrote about the thinking tool of reversal. Like many thinking tools geared to shift perspective, it requires that you use it now and then in order to  get some facility with it. It’s not always so easy to “flip”; some situations or challenges are not that simple. This tool, Let’s Pretend, (also known as “Creative Hero”) is easier. Here’s how it works. You give your complex challenge a good think, as yourself. You explore in your mind the various things you’ve tried. Examine the ideas

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Shifting perspective on a challenge, the framing of it, can lead to some great insights and ideas. When truly desperate to get out of the box, one creative tool is to turn the challenge upside down, inside out, or “flip it.” A former business partner of mine saved our medical software start-up from disaster using this technique. He said “if we can’t sell software to doctors, why don’t we buy the doctors?” Of course we all thought he’d had some thing to smoke on the way into the office, and we all slammed the idea the instant it came out of his mouth. On further reflection, it was brilliant, and we changed course rather dramatically. His idea, his flip of

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It’s become clear to me lately that we take for granted the idea of….an idea. At a recent idea generation session I was conducting a classic Post-It Note brainstorm. Things were flowing and “ideas” were getting out…sort of. What I noticed on the Post-It’s was that some of the ideas were not even half-baked ideas. Some were one word exclamations, or something. Frankly, it would be hard to call some of the material an idea at all. At best, some of them were nascent ideas. I realize that this kind of chafe is often necessary to get to the wheat. Still, even with coaching to be more specific, lots of what I got was not even a complete thought. In

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Ideas can make you sick. Okay, not sick exactly, but a word many of us would associate with new and different — high quality ideas — is “vomit.” It’s not pretty this new idea business. A Cornell University study was published recently that I feel compelled to share. The study reveals our deep and nearly unconscious reaction to new ideas. The link here is not to the actual study but a summary article written by Mary Catt for Chronicle Online, a Cornell blog (thank you Mary). In People are biased against creative ideas, Catt reveals the studies key results. Essentially the study says: * creative ideas make us feel very uncomfortable (think vomit) * people rule out creative ideas and

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I’ve been in and out of a lot of board rooms in the last few months. I’m in selling mode, but also, in listening mode. Nearly every conversation I’ve had has me more firmly believing that one of the problems with large organization innovation is it simply moves too slow. Now, I realize that’s a fairly obvious thought. Still, why is it that organizations are accepting of the fact that their “cycle” of innovation turns over once or twice a year? I don’t see a lot of urgency around changing this, I see a lot of acceptance. This is an opportunity to improve many are overlooking. Here’s why I think so. I’m focused, as is Kiln (I’m a partner in

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It’s easy to say and hard to do — Deferring Judgement. Alex Osborn the original guru of creativity suggested that during brainstorming, participants should “defer judgement.” Osborn wrote Applied Imagination many years ago, which defined brainstorming. He actually coined the term. It’s a rule from the master —  you don’t critique ideas during brainstorming — it’s challenging. But that’s not what I’m talking about here. I’m talking about Deferring Judgement as a daily habit, as a continuous way of being. I heard Sid Parnes talk at CPSI, and this was his lifestyle “add” to the original Osborn guidance. As a fundamental way of being, it’s a big shift. But wow, what benefits for your creativity! Let’s face it, we are

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You’re about 50% of the population, at least. The modest half — overly modest. Generally, the hard working half. You make modest improvements (sometimes big improvements). You focus on the task at hand, and you don’t stir up trouble.  In fact, you seek to bridge gaps in teams or departments, this while not seeking accolades, just seeking harmony and productivity. You probably don’t work in Marketing, or other glamor areas, instead, maybe in HR, or Sales, Administration, or Operations. And, you are Not Creative. If people ask, you say out loud “I’m not creative,” or maybe “I’m not a creative type.” You really believe this lie. Sorry brothers and sisters, I’m calling you out on this — it’s just not

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I really have to say something about this notion that brainstorming / idea generation / ideation can be made into an efficient process. I’ve read a couple of interesting pieces on this lately, this idea it can be made more efficient, so you only get “good” ideas. If only it were so… I’ll grant you that sometimes the questions posed for an “idea campaign” are too generalized and therefore rake in a lot of useless ideas. I’ll also grant you that converging on a few good ideas when you have thousands to wade through is a challenge. I totally understand why an organization would be seeking a more efficient way to arrive at a nice small batch of really good

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“Creativity is Not a Muse, it’s a Choice.” Gregg Fraley Yes, that’s my quote, and what this post is all about today. I’m writing this piece to co-publish on a cool new blog called Follow the Weasel. Most of the content on FtW is in German, but selected bits, such as mine, are in English. FtW is a potpourri of creativity and innovation topics, a bit of design and invention, and it has a younger readership in Austria and Germany. Thank you to “Alf Red” a young visionary for the invitation to guest post on FtW. My post is directed at younger people, but it might resonate with anyone seeking greater creativity. There is a ton of written material about

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