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TEDx Talks
Title: Creative thinking - how to get out of the box and generate ideas: Giovanni Corazza at TEDxRoma
Published: 2014-03-11
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bEusrD8g-dM
sometimes easy meets difficult have you ever been assigned an easy task which for you is actually very difficult to perform and maybe for anybody else and that is when you experience frustration I have experience that when I started taking singing lessons and my teacher told me to breathe when my diaphragm that's easy to her natural breath but actually very difficult to do and it's a secret
all the great singers and it's similar to what happens when the boss comes into a meeting and tells you to think out of the box come on give me your creative ideas think out of the box I wanna hear that I need innovation easy simple but actually very hard to do you need to practice you need to know how to get out of the box where
to go and now to could come back inside the box because that's where we live we actually live inside are boxes so I want to ask these questions I asked those questions to myself and this present issues a little journey through my answers I hope that some of these will resonate with yours so the first thing is to ask why why should you really go out
of the box because inside the box we feel safe we yeah I agree with everybody else and when we go out we risk our reputation we worked so hard for a lifetime to build it up why should we risk it is this something which is a luxury that only a few people can do or is it really in a sense it but why think of our
lives today we are really part of the network we our nose in a network share information in real time and we in the end all possess the same information that's the end of it and that is a scary thought if we all possess the same information what makes the difference between ourselves where does our dignity as human beings lie you really depends on what we generate
with that Coleman share information so to think creatively to go out of the box is not a luxury it's in the sense that the for us and for our dignity as human beings so which box are we talking about we must have a clear definition so that we are really talking about something specific it's not our mind we cannot think out of our minds voluntary within
our minds the boundary between what we know and what we have and still or yet thought about what is our mind what is our knowledge structure is an emergent phenomenon out of the complex mechanism which is the brain we start with initial conditions our genetic heritage we have boundary conditions the environment we have indirect experience years and years spent in school and university to learn what
other people have thought what other people have discovered what other people have created and then we have our own direct experience our successes or failures that really make what we are all of this builds the ant hill with you in which we live and we live very well mean that and whatever we think inside that until that box I feel safe whatever is outside it's invisible
to us we don't know what is outside that is why it's so risky because not nobody else knows and so we are faced with something which is necessary to our dignity but actually it's very difficult to do how do we go out of the box how do we do that what are the mechanisms do we need to wait for an apple to fall right now on
our heads or are there some specific techniques well realities out there for us to perceive it beautiful see this flowers and we have a lot of ideas which is our home very urgent information the dominant ideas whenever we need to think about and Marriott focus area we have ideas on how things should be we have requirements we have specifications we know how things are because that
that's the way they always have been but if we want to go out of the box me to add something more a little spice something which goes beyond the convergent information something wrong something absurd something which apparently is not relevant something which takes us far this is what we call day very urgent information we need a little bit of that diverge in information cross the borders
within our minds from what we know to what we haven't yet thought about so this is the essential mechanism that is necessary and it takes us to a place where we don't really know where to go we are suspended it's like the middle game in chess where do you go once you're out of the box you have no pre set direction so it's really a potential
situation that %HESITATION brings us to the feeling that we should do immediately go back this doesn't make any sense let's go back to a safe place let's go back inside the box that's a temptation that we need to resist we need to follow you longer thinking normally we talk about but really I'm thinking fast thinking deep thinking but here we're talking about something different long thinking
what does that mean some thought that takes us far it's as if you were reading poetry or listening to music you don't judge the single notes you don't judge the single words the ensemble that gives you a feeling and takes you far we must do the same thing we're our with our concepts we need to go far and so we can use association of ideas combination
of ideas structure no principles and application of those principles to areas where they were never applied before we need to be open minded we need to be fluent look for alternatives and not for the correct answer because when you think creatively there's no single correct answer there are many possible alternatives and I suppose now that we are lucky we land up opponent new idea in our
travel in the duration out of the box what is the value of that how do we assess the value of a new idea it's very difficult if it's a really new because you've never seen that before nobody else as the as seen that before it's as if we landed on a new planet totally undiscovered territory and it's difficult to understand the value of something you first
of all because we don't feel entitled to be inventors who in mind to be the generator of that new idea and probably this is being thought about before if if this is correct somebody else would have done it before me these are all natural mechanisms with which we kill our own ideas we have to resist that we have to look for the match between the new
idea and our initial drive our initial focus or evaluate the idea per se for some value and maybe see that that's something that solves another problem which was not yours serendipity happens all the time we just need to have the eyes see that to notice the difference okay but that we are social animals will live in an environment so to think out of the box bring
in new ideas is gonna challenge that environment when is it a good idea to challenge everybody around you in your working environment you're the boss you don't really want to upset him or her when is it a good idea to think out of the box well first of all if we mean varmint punishes mistakes you will never be really tempted to go out of the box
you will remain safely inner known environment so if you want to stimulate an environment which is creative you need to allow the day very to the existence of the verge of information you need to allow irrelevant information to come meet you have to mix and match different disciplines you have to use metaphors in the organization only in that pays you will allow the environment to %HESITATION
be really prone to the generation of new ideas so I want to hand my my talk with a little experiment we wanted to do this interactivity with you but the the tiniest cars so I have for indeed prepared a little thing but %HESITATION if you believe me and to be honest these has been generated in the space of a few minutes the generation of ideas this
travel outside of the box is something which happens very fast so where should we experiment to okay let's say that we want to generate new ideas about Ted decks conferences we are here so that serves the focus there which is very clear to all of us now let's start from the calm very urgent information about Ted X. conferences what is needed to make an excellent good
FedEx conference well you need the brilliant speakers that will come up %HESITATION you need to have an excellent seem you need fast speaker to speaker transitions you need ground settings okay the list can go on and all I'm saying is things that you already know this is all converge of information safe I'm not generating anything new I'm inside the box now want to go out so
I apply it to a virgin modifier to any of these convergent elements start from the last one for example the grants I think so the defendant modifier for example is to exaggerate bring it to the limit so instead of thinking no with the decks conference in the theater think of it though that's a conference in a stadium does this make any sense in this stadium very
difficult to organize even more difficult than in the theater and how do you feel the place how do you feel the stadium too difficult doesn't make any sense I'm tempted to reject that idea but then I move and I say okay maybe the stadium is already filled with people so from that you can get the idea of having a ten X. conference at halftime of football
matches and that sort of speeches which happens at have time of football matches good idea bad idea I leave is for you to assess think another element good speakers brilliant speakers that's the most fundamental element but the next conference let's take that away we eliminate the good brilliant speakers there's this make any sense no we are out of the box does this leads to anything useful
well I could say that okay I don't need the speakers but I need the speeches the talks the scripts from this comes the idea all one speaker delivering the speech of somebody else we exchange speakers so it's cooperative ten X. conference maybe we have duets on stage instead of a single element hopefully ever or we have people that speak about on somebody else's topic and in
that way we have one advantage at least we take away the element of the ego there's no ego anymore if you're speaking %HESITATION with somebody else's script so these are just examples just examples to show you that it's a possible and not to art actually to think out of the box I hope this journey in a way was interesting for you and now you want to
