On Friday, I attended CreativeMornings, a monthly breakfast lecture series for creative types. Each event is free of charge, and includes a 20 minute talk, plus coffee! It was the second event in Singapore (I couldn’t attend the first one) and it was really great. Kudos to the organizers for the event – I can’t wait for next month! Here is the summary.
Fredrik Härén is the founder of interesting.org and is quickly becoming an international name in the field of creativity. He has delivered over 1000 inspirational workshops and lectures across 25 different countries, focusing on creativity, idea generation and entrepreneurship.
Fredrik said that all ideas are combination of existing things. Creativity then becomes simpler, more accessible and not reserved to an ‘elite’ of creatives or artists.
There is no such thing as a “brand new” idea – it’s always a combination of old things. For example, if you take the mobile phone, the muppets and Sesame Street, you obtain Angry Birds! Look at the picture below…
Similarly, if you take two existing things (a prison and Michael Jackson), you obtain the most famous prison in the Philippines, with prisoners dancing Michael Jackson. The cool anecdote is that before this “program” was implemented, it used to be a very violent prison but now prisoners come out of the prison proud.
Therefore, if we had to define creativity, we could say it’s the process of combining things in an unusual way that will make the world a better place.
Fredrik also answered the question “How to create a great life?”. According to him, you need to take four things that you’re the most passionate about and you need to combine at least two of them. If you do that, you’ll do what you love and you’ll be successful.
To be creative, you need a minimum level of creative confidence. Every creative person doubts but some doubt more than others – for example, Asians will always compare themselves to the most creative person on Earth and be quite modest about their level of creativity, whereas Americans/Europeans will compare themselves to their friends/family and happily say they’re creative.
What symbolizes creativity is childhood: you run, naked and you don’t care if you fall because you get up and try again. Let’s try to remember this more often and take risks. And remember if you fail, just get on your bike again.
