Resenhas - Creative Confidence

Moitta 18/07/2016

A very good book, but too focused on beginners, people with very little or no creative confidence, despite the initial claim that it's for both (creatively confidente and not).


“In organizations with millions of customers, or in industries serving the broad public, there is a temptation to stereotype or depersonalize customers. They become numbers, transactions, data points on a bell curve, or parts of a composite character built on market segmentation data.”

“In other words, empathy is a gateway to better and sometimes surprising insights that can help distinguish your idea or approach.”

“Empathy means challenging your preconceived ideas and setting aside your sense of what you think is true in order to learn what actually is true.”

“Extreme users often have exaggerated desires and behaviors that point to nascent needs in the mainstream market, and the unexpected findings from observing them can provide insights and inspiration.”

'No matter how high you rise in your career, no matter how much expertise you gain, you still need to keep your knowledge and your insights refreshed. Otherwise, you may develop a false confidence in what you already “know” that might lead you to the wrong decision. Informed intuition is useful only if it is based on information that’s accurate and up to date.'

“As the American writer Mark Twain said a century ago, “It’s not what you don’t know that gets you into trouble, it’s what you know for sure that ain’t so.”

“Think about how you approach clients or customers. Do you ask deep, probing questions, or are you hearing what you expect? Are you making a connection or just making contact?”

“One way she brings questions to life is by making them playful. Instead of asking “Why do you like this book so much?” she’ll turn it into a game: “Pretend you wanted to convince a friend that they should read this book, what would you tell them?” She reframes the question in a way that sidesteps some of the “business as usual” responses and elicits more meaningful answers.”

“For example, try asking unexpected experts. If you make refrigerators, ask a repair shop which part needs to be fixed most frequently. Ask a blind person how they use a smartphone. Ask a biomimicry expert to tell you what people can learn by watching ants. Ask a science fiction writer to think about the future of packaging.”

“Great leaders are good at reframing the problem.”

“At IDEO’s Munich office, we call the reframed challenge “Question Zero,” since it is a new starting point for seeking creative solutions.”

“John F. Kennedy charged Americans to “Ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country,” encouraging us to rethink our rights and obligations. Changing your point of view often means shifting focus to a different stakeholder: to a parent instead of a child, or to a car buyer instead of the car dealer.”

“Charles Goodyear discovered vulcanization when he inadvertently spilled a mixture of rubber and sulfur on the stove. Even if it happened that way, there’s a lot more than mere luck involved in creating a successful business out of it. Once you’ve spilled rubber on the stove—which anyone in Akron could tell you would smell up the entire house—you have to take a moment to fully understand your discovery, rather than just frantically trying to clean it up before your wife or parents get home. Goodyear both noticed and understood the significance of his breakthrough, which is partly why there is a multibillion-dollar company named after him.”

“The first step toward being creative is often simply to go beyond being a passive observer and to translate thoughts into deeds.”

“Almost every annoyance, every point of friction, hides a design opportunity. Instead of just complaining, ask yourself, “How might I improve this situation?”

“the “knowing-doing gap”: the space between what we know we should do and what we actually do. It can lead to company paralysis when talk becomes a substitute for action.”

“Bernie then reframes the exercise. He says to stop trying and just do it—take it from him. The next person strides forward and successfully wrenches the bottle away. What changed? As Bernie explains it, a subtle excuse lies in the idea of “trying.” It’s as if today is for attempts, and the real action will happen at some vague future moment. To achieve your goal, to topple the barriers that stand in your way, you have to be focused on getting it done now. Or as Yoda, another wise and seasoned change master, put it to Luke Skywalker in Star Wars, “Do or do not. There is no try.”

“if you want to make something great, you need to start making. Striving for perfection can get in the way during the early stages of the creative process. So don’t get stuck at the planning stage. Don’t let your inner perfectionist slow you down. All the overplanning, all the procrastinating, and all the talking are signs that we are afraid, that we just don’t feel ready. You want everything to be “just right” before you commit further or share something with others. That tendency leads us to wait rather than act, to perfect rather than launch.”

“Most of us have two lives,” says Pressfield. “The life we live, and the unlived life within us. Between the two stands Resistance”

“never go to a meeting without a prototype.”

“I used to think that to make something happen in a corporation or in the army, you had to be at the higher ranks, to be a general. But you just need to start a movement.”

“Try recasting your changes as experiments to boost reception and increase creative confidence. Some will fail (that’s why it’s called “trial and error”). But many, protected under the nonthreatening umbrella of experimentation, may raise your chances of success.”

“The “looks good, feels bad” trap is all about avoiding a career that makes you feel unhappy—and finding the right fit in terms of your interests, skills, and values.”

“passion doesn’t preclude effort. In fact, passion demands effort.”

“Each two-hour class is filled with a fast-paced succession of hands-on exercises that hone foundational skills for creativity: seeing, feeling, starting, communicating, building, connecting, navigating, synthesizing, and inspiring."

“The three circles represented three questions you should ask yourself: “What are you good at?” “What will people pay you to do?” and “What were you born to do?” If you focus on just what you’re good at, you can end up in a job you are competent at but that doesn’t fulfill you. As for the second circle, while people say, “Do what you love and the money will follow,” that’s not literally true."

“The audience members that day all seemed to have the same burning question: how do you know what you were born to do? We believe the answer is related to what Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, an expert in the field of positive psychology, calls “flow”—that creative state in which time seems to slip away and you are completely immersed in an activity for its own sake. When you are in a state of flow, the world around you drops away and you are fully engaged.”

“So try identifying the things that bring you happiness and fulfillment. Look for ways to incorporate more of those things in your life, whether it’s helping others, getting more exercise, reading more books, going to a live concert, or taking a cooking class.”

“How can you discover what you’re born to do, or even what you’re good at? One approach is to use your free time to pursue interests or hobbies.”

“While everyone has enormous potential for creativity, our experience suggests that successfully applying creativity in your work and life requires something more: the courage to leap. All that potential energy will just fade away if you don’t work up the nerve to unleash it, again and again. To make that leap from inspiration to action, small successes are key.”

“In our experience, one powerful way to commit to a new path is to just say it out loud to someone else.”

“If you want to transform your life from mere duty to real passion, you have to start by realizing that your current situation is not the only option open to you. You can change how you live and how you work. Look at setbacks as the cost of trying new things. Don’t be afraid to try and fail. The worst thing you can do is to play it safe, stick with the familiarity of the status quo, and not try at all.”

“Change within organizations and institutions is seldom a solo activity. If you want your team to innovate routinely, you’ll need to nurture a creative culture.”

“companies progress through five phases as they gain creative confidence. The first phase, Mauro says, is pure denial: executives and employees say, “We’re not creative.”

“Mauro calls the second phase “hidden rejection.” This is where one executive strongly recommends and sponsors a new innovation methodology, and the other managers pay it lip service but then never actually commit to it.”

“It’s similar to the “talking phase” that Intuit went through. Plenty of times executive support does not translate into real progress.”

“Senior executives telling managers to boost innovation can have a limited effect. The most robust method to boost creative confidence is through guided mastery. Like learning how to drive a golf ball up the middle of the fairway, the most effective way of learning how to innovate routinely is through practice and coaching.”

“Mauro calls the third phase on the way to organizational creative confidence a “leap of faith.” It occurs when someone in a position of power and influence recognizes the value in consumer-driven design thinking and puts his or her resources and support behind making a project happen.”

“Mauro calls the fourth phase the “quest for confidence.” In this stage, an organization buys into innovation and searches for the best ways to leverage creative resources in support of the goals of the enterprise.”

“The fifth phase is what Mauro calls “holistic awareness and integration.” This is where innovation and constant iteration and designing with the customer experience in mind become part of a company’s DNA.”

“KNOW EACH OTHER’S STRENGTHS. Imagine your team as a band of superheroes, each with his or her own special ability and weaknesses (or kryptonite). Divide the work to maximize team effectiveness and draw on each person’s strengths.”

“Each person on your team brings unique life experiences to the table.”

“PUT THE “RELATIONSHIP” BACK IN “WORKING RELATIONSHIP.” When we ask d.school teams what will matter most when they look back five years from now, the answer is usually “my relationship with my teammates,” not just the project outcome. Keep things in perspective.”

“CRAFT YOUR TEAM EXPERIENCE IN ADVANCE. How will you help each other in the days ahead?”

“Rough materials signal “feel free to experiment,” instead of “handle with care.”

“Language is the crystallization of thought. But the words we choose do more than just reflect our thought patterns—they shape them. What we say—and how we say it—can deeply affect a company’s culture. Anyone who has battled racism or sexism knows words matter. To change attitudes and behaviors, it helps to first change the vernacular. The same is true for innovation. When you influence the dialogue around new ideas, you will influence broader patterns of behavior. Negative or defeatist attitudes spawn negative or defeatist words. The opposite is also true.”

“Our version of the alternative to negative speech patterns is the phrase “How might we …,”

“Leaders can’t dictate culture, but they can nurture it. They can generate the right conditions for creativity and innovation. Metaphorically, they can provide the heat and light and moisture and nutrients for a creative culture to blossom and grow. They can focus the best efforts of talented individuals to build innovative, successful groups.”

“Warren characterized the successful collaborations he studied as “dreams with deadlines.”

“TESTIMONIALS—NOT JUST METRICS AND RESULTS–ARE PERSUASIVE.”

“Is there a creative genius doing spreadsheets in your accounting department? Is there a future Fortune 500 CEO in your sales team? Is there an employee just waiting for the right opportunity or partner to unlock billions of dollars of value for your organization? Why not set up a process or system of participation that allows those budding innovators to express their ideas? Why not give people on your team or organization more creative license, more of a chance to reach their full potential?”

“one way to spur more innovation is to nurture the innovators.”

“You may be wondering when a mindmap is better than an ordinary list. Lists are great at keeping track of things we don’t want to forget. But the to-do list assumes we know what to put on it, whereas, at the start of a mindmap, we don’t yet know where it’s going to lead us. Mindmaps are good at facilitating divergent or unconventional thinking; lists are good for capturing the best answers among the thoughts you already have.”

“The moment you wake up—whether it’s the middle of the night or in the morning—you should capture those dreams before they fade away. The same holds true with your waking “dreams,” your partially or fully formed ideas, your glimpses of possible futures. If you want to maximize your creative output, don’t rely on short-term memory.”

“We know from experience that it’s easier to have a great idea if you have many to choose from. But if you have a lot of ideas that are just variations on a theme, you might really have only one idea with twenty-nine other versions.”

“Those need-based points of view can take the form of a sentence like “My customer needs a way to … [user needs] … in a way that makes them feel … [meaning/​emotion] … because … [insight].” For example, “My customer needs a way to keep track of the contents of their wallet in a way that makes them feel secure, because if they lose their wallet, the anxiety of not knowing what has gone missing can be worse than losing the cash inside.”

“In our experience, the best way to gain confidence in your creative ability is through action—taken one step at a time—through experiencing a series of small successes. That’s what psychologist Albert Bandura found in his research on self-efficacy and guided mastery as well.”

“Embrace a bias toward action.”

“Just as you can gain fluency in a foreign language by speaking it every day—badly at first but with steady progress—developing a creative confidence mindset becomes easier when you practice it regularly.”

“Here are some strategies to get started with: SEARCH FOR THE BIG EASY. Tough, daunting challenges tend to deter rather than spark creative action. So start with an easy win, or break down that bigger challenge into more manageable chunks.”

“SURROUND YOURSELF WITH A SUPPORTIVE NETWORK. Culture and environment have a big impact on your creative confidence. So surround yourself with like-minded innovators. Find a group to join, online or in person.”

“Every company needs a lean startup attitude; an innovation lab can help reinforce it.”