Whether you’re a brand new startup or an established company, cultivating an environment of creativity can be a challenge. How do you inspire a free flow of ideas? How do you guarantee your team feels comfortable enough to share these ideas? How do you ensure that you yourself are being creative?
These are questions that Joel Hilchey and Brandon Love came to address at our January 26th Lunch ‘n Learn session on “How to Become Fearlessly Creative and Have Better Ideas More Often.” Both motivational speakers, their goal was to empower our audience to not only feel creative, but to then also translate that into the ability to make a creative work environment.
Brandon and Joel began the session by introducing their term “brainsprouting” as cultivating the optimal conditions for creativity. To get the crowd engaged and immersed in the act of being creative, Joel and Brandon had attendees spend a few minutes thinking up all the different uses they could think of for a paperback book. Coaster? Frisbee? Surfboard for mice? Any and all ideas were valid, and that was the point – reframing brainstorming into quantity of ideas instead of quality.
Joel and Brandon identified the problem with brainstorming being the assumption that you must come up with as many good ideas as possible. This creates an environment where ideas are judged, people feel self-conscious about sharing thoughts, and consequently, the number of ideas coming to the table is minimal.
To instead brainsprout properly, the duo outlined four simple rules for an optimal creative environment: quantity over quality, no judging, silly is good, and piggybacking leads to better ideas. Basically, focus on generating as many ideas as possible – even if they’re silly – because great ideas are often born from other ideas.
Brandon and Joel left the crowd with three important takeaways: believe that you’re creative, focus on making great conditions for creativity, and – of course – practice!
You can view photos from the event here and see their cheat sheet for a creative workplace here!
At each month’s Lunch ‘n Learn we also feature an interesting iF client to share a 5-minute highlight of their business. This month’s Factory 5 was Doug Murphy of BuckitLife, an online marketplace that connects adventurers with local adventures.
Thanks to Brandon, Joel and Doug for sharing your stories with us!
Our Lunch ‘n Learn events are a great way to get out and network while enjoying a free lunch and learning something new! Make sure to keep checking our events calendar for upcoming Lunch ‘n Learns and other events in the ecosystem.
