Click here

Click here

Click here

Click here

Click here

Click here

Click here

Click here

Earlier this year I watched the finale of Game of Thrones. In one of the most important scenes, the character of Tyrion Lannister decides that the new king should be Brann Stark, because he believes Brann has a story that can unite people. Tyrion says «What unites people? […] Stories.» Now, I didn’t particularly like the ending of the series, or that scene, I think the finale overall was quite -checks notes- bad. But as bad as I think that dialogue under the context in which it was presented, I agree with the statement being made.

When we watch a piece of media it affects us, if we are entertained by it, bored by it, or if it makes us think and reflect on our lives or if we disagree with a certain message being transmitted; every singe piece of media leaves and impression of us that we interpret in some way. Marketing constantly takes advantage of this, and that’s how they make people be interested in their products. If you are a company that sells babywipes, nobody will find a commercial interesting if it only talkes about how well your wipes clean the skin. However, if that very same commercial comes accompanied by a short story about how a young family is struggling with managing time between work and chores and taking care of the baby, and then the new wipes come into play and make their daily routine better, now that’s a story that can resonate with people.

A good story is more important that the story itself. It’s about the people it reaches, and how it affects them.

Hello web surfers, today I would like to give a second take on the activity I described on my last entry. You may already know how said activity worked and if you don’t I would urge you to read the past entry to get a better understanding of what I’m about to discuss here.

Basically, I was left extremely sure that cretivity is a key component of the process of innovation, but after having a talk with some of my partners I’ve gained a new insight. Some of them pointed out that the response of some teams to having their drawings selected was to try to replicate those very same drawings. This would have worked if the points given to the drawings were given with the same ruleset each round, but this was not the case. One round the points would be given based in originality other cases it would be given based on how many customers bought their drawings, etc. By removing lateral thinking from their thought process, they removed the key component that landed them the points in the first placed. They turned their innovative idea into a systematic process with no creativity.

However, this still worked, they still got some points; not as many as they would have gotten if they would have kept innovating with creativity, but still a very decent amount of points. I now conclude that, creativity and innovation are two entities that can work independently, but are at their best when they are used together in a problem solving situation.