The one sentence summary

Creativity is all around us and creative vision exists wherever people are.

 

WHAT THE BOOK SAYS

• You can cure creative blindness by problem solving, clarity of thought, seeing what others do not see, and removing complexity to make things as simple as you can.
• A series of over 70 real life anecdotes dramatise how to spot creativity in unusual places and then get practical with it. The thoughts include:
• Corkscrew thinkers: from the Churchill era when the UK had fewer resources than the Germans – people who think differently.
• Turning the problem into an opportunity.
• Moving the problem up the list, so creating greater urgency.
• Two minuses can make a plus: when a dog rescue charity in the USA was looking for people to clean and train dogs for free before rehoming them, they used prisoners, who then benefitted themselves from newfound pride and discipline.
• History can be invented: just like the ploughman’s lunch in 1960, by the Milk Marketing Board, to encourage cheese consumption in pubs
• Technology may change, but people don’t: Steve Jobs launched the ipod as “a thousand songs in your pocket” – an emotional claim, not a scientific one.
• Common sense beats brains every time.
• Show, don’t tell. Don’t believe me: look for yourself. Demonstrate product benefits visually and dramatically. Done properly, reason is emotion.
• Real disruption is uncomfortable – you can’t do it easily and politely.
• Simple is harder than complicated.
• Put communications resource where it will make a difference. Don’t waste it where it can’t. This is simple triage – another name for creativity.
• Strategy is sacrifice.
• A good idea isn’t one until it exists – start solving problems to bring something to life.
• If you can’t win the game you’re in, change it to one where you can win. You can’t change things without changing them.
• People don’t buy the object, they buy the story, so dress it up, build a story around it, and let the story do the work.
• Being creative involves doing something no one else would even think of doing. It takes guts, and it always involves fear.
• You can be right, dull and invisible. Or you can be wrong, funny and interesting. People will pay a lot for the latter and nothing for the former.
• Communications people live in an echo chamber. Instead of surrounding themselves with people who “think like us”, they have to be able to change the answers they currently have.
• £18 billion is spent each year in the UK on all forms of advertising and marketing. 4% is remembered positively. 7% is remembered negatively.  89% isn’t noticed or remembered.