creativity is intelligence having fun

I've denied myself the fun for way too long

Hello intersectional thinkers 👋

Greetings from the Houston IAH airport where I’m doing some emails before my next flight. And found this gem:

I had a stupid smile on my face reading this unexpected OOO (out of office) email.

It puts all the OOO emails I sent to shame… The gist of mine was all "YOLO, I'm on vacation, don't bother me. If you're really in a hurry, contact someoneelse@mycompany.com".

But Josh, now that I think about, always puts in a little touch of fun and care into what and how he says something.

The Creative x Analytical Intersection

I met Josh at Stanford.
He's my design thinking coach.
And low key, my time at Stanford changed my life.

It wasn't about the design thinking. Or the world class teaching staff. Or even the fellow peers who ranged from bankers to Navy Seals to musicians. They were all amazing. We vibed so much we're even doing a couple of projects together (including with Josh!).

going to Austria next month for another project with my fellow team mates

No, what gave my soul a rebirth was seeing somewhere on this planet, some lucky bastards creative AND business-minded people are getting paid top dollars to make practical creativity legible to others.

I was like a kid who games at a eSports Championship ... trying to imprint every scene deep into the folds of my brain so I can replay the deep joy I feel knowing this is what I want to do when I go back to the "real world".

The world doesn't have to always be about best practices and risk management at the expense of a better solution. The suppressed creative in the analytical me was liberated. I was having fun. Wheeeee!

Einstein said it first, "Creativity is intelligence having fun."
And I was denying myself the fun for too long.

Because I didn't understand:
Creative and analytical thinking are not opposites.
We need both to solve complex problems.

And I don't mean problems that we “solve” by simply trying to tick the boxes. Let me copy what the competitor is doing so I can say I'm doing industry best practice and blame external factors if it doesn't work. You don't need intelligence or creativity for that. Superficial thinking will do.

No - I mean the real problems. The problems that we actually care about. Where we want to come up with something that actually works.

The pressing, real problem for me is: how do I have fun again?

My preliminary answer was what led me to send that email to Josh. We're collaborating on a creative business problem solving workshop called Ideascience!

Josh and Marcus (also a Stanford design thinking coach) have been dissecting what ideation techniques musicians like Kendrick Lamar and Willie Nelson to come up with creative AND commercially viable ideas.

They've distilled the neuroscience behind the techniques, turned them into business tools, and iterated with companies like Spotify, Eventbrite, and Delta Faucet (who actually created a new shower filtration product as a result)!

We're running the 2 part ideascience workshops for the next 2 Thursdays (May 16 & 23) - Join us if you want to break out of the purely analytical grind and have some fun together doing creative problem solving :)

Don’t forget to have fun!

Vicky