Creative Confidence Series {2} What is Curiosity and Inspiration? ft. David Kelley, IDEO
Creative Confidence Series {2}
What is Curiosity and Inspiration?
David Kelley, IDEO
Founder and Chairman of IDEO;
Founder of Stanford d.school
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What is curiosity?
"Curiosity is just a strategy for learning. I think we're inherently set up to learn stuff, and people who have curiosity just want to learn. And I think it's the highest level of anything you can do -- is have that mindset of "I want to learn more."
What makes you curious?
"What makes me curious is I've just learned in my life that turning over rocks, and looking under them and taking things apart leads to the most fun that you ever have. As a kid, I would take apart the piano or take apart the radio in the car. And sometimes I'd put it back together, but you just learn so much from looking in new directions."
What inspires you?
"What really inspires me is my students mostly in that they have all this energy and they have all this curiosity, but they have no framework to put it in. And so it's great being the old guy. I can build the framework and then watch how amazing the things are that they come up with -- it's just like, "I would never go that way!" I have a friend who says the eggs teach the chickens, which I always thought is a great way to think of it."
Can anyone be creative?
"I think creativity is something that everybody has. Look at kindergartners. They all have this ability to come up with things that are new to the world because they're not blocked in any way. And so I think that ability to leap to new places is what I would call creativity.
Creativity in our culture seems to be in trouble in that everybody thinks it -- you have the gene or you don't have the gene. And I think this is really wrong. I think everybody is creative. And we have this problem that we block creativity. Kids, when they're young, it's something opt out of being creative. It's just easier. It's the same with "I'm not athletic."
A kid says, "I'm not athletic" and then they don't get evaluated anymore on how good a basketball player they are. So some large percentage of kids opt out of being creative by saying "I'm not creative." And that's a way -- a strategy -- so that the teacher doesn't say, "Oh, that's a poor drawing of a horse, Johnny." They don't get critiqued if they say, "I'm not creative." And I think this is a really big problem that they've gone down that path. And so later, by the time they get to me in the university, they've already locked in that they're an analytical person; they're not a creative person, and we spend the time to try to unlock that.
How can we unlock creativity?
The way you get someone to be confident in their creative ability is to -- you give them an experience that surprises them on how creative they really are. So I probably can't talk you into thinking you're creative. I can't talk you into playing the piano well, but I can teach you. And the way that people buy into owning their creative confidence is that we sit them down, we put them in a situation and we help them. We give them the right water and fertilizer and soil and sunlight. And then we get them to see that they are capable of making these leaps.
And once they've surprised themselves, then they get excited about it. I think a lot of people have walked around thinking of themselves as analytical people for a long time and that they're not creative, but once they actually have experienced that, it's a rush. "Oh, I can come up with these wildly creative ideas." That really leads them to be confident, and they do it more. And they use it in all the decisions in their lives -- not just with respect to their work.
After earning his master’s in 1978 he started his own design firm, vowing to only work on cool projects with people he liked. The company he founded became IDEO, a worldwide leader in the user-centered design of products, services and environments. IDEO is recognized as much for its process and culture as for its work. In May 2004 a Business Week cover article, “The Power of Design,” profiled IDEO and its work helping companies change the way they innovate.
David also began teaching design at Stanford in 1978, and became a tenured professor in 1991. David now heads Stanford’s d.school, and he is on a mission to add “design thinking” to Stanford’s existing competence of teaching analytical thinking. This will result in students who create delightful design experiences and embrace and promote a culture of innovation.
In Stanford’s 100-year retrospective on the people who most epitomized its tradition of academic excellence, David was recognized for encouraging “the melding of can-do spirit with limitless imagination.” In 2000, he was honored with the annual Chrysler Design Award and elected to the National Academy of Engineering, which recognized him for “affecting the practice of design.” In 2001 the Smithsonian Institute presented David and IDEO with a National Design Award. In 2002, he was named the Donald W. Whittier Professor in Mechanical Engineering. Most recently, David received the 2005 Sir Misha Black Medal for his “distinguished services to design education.”
Original Resource: http://curiosity.discovery.com/
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♥ The Creative Confidant Series™ ~ via Margo Renay Sullivan
This is a Series of Inspirational Activities about Creative Consciousness and Creative Confidence. What is Creativity in Our World? Does it still exist in this now moment? This series will feature viewpoints perspectives from the active visual artists and musicians, engineers, designers, educators, architects and food designers and chefs and so many other reflections in this world of Sensual Creative Endeavors.
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