Translator: Long Châu Reviewer: Denise RQ
My talk is on creative potential
and creative intelligence.
Have a look at this guy.
He doesn't look very intelligent, does he?
But actually that's me, ten years ago.
Yes, I do look a bit stupid.
Actually, a couple of weeks after this picture was taken,
I did an IQ test.
A normal result in an IQ test is the score of around 100.
My score was an IQ of 32.
Thirty-two - that might be the average IQ of a dog.
Rather a small and stupid dog, actually.
That test told me that I was stupid.
I'll get back to those test results later in this talk.
In a few minutes,
we are going to measure
your creative intelligence here today.
But first, let's have a look
at how the concept of intelligence has changed over time.
A hundred years ago, when the first IQ test was invented,
intelligence was the ability to give the right answer quickly.
One question, one answer, quickly.
For a long time, that ability made you into the perfect employee.
You knew what to do, and you did it quickly.
But today, most of us have jobs that require us to think.
Jobs that doesn't settle for knowing what to do,
but they also want us
to think of better ways to do it.
For the last 15 years,
I have traveled the world talking to business people
learning how they see this shift
from being intelligent if you know what to do
to being intelligent if you know what to do
and keep on thinking of better ways to do it.
The most common question I get is this one:
my job requires me to be more creative, but how do I become more creative?
So it seems like most people seem to think they have a creative potential.
I agree.
I would say we all have a creative potential.
But to be able to understand creative potential,
to be able to talk about creative intelligence,
we need to understand how creative thoughts are born.
It's a dance.
It's a dance between two totally different forces.
On one side we have input,
on the other, we have no input.
Input - that's your knowledge, that's new impressions,
that's new information.
No input is time to think,
time to reflect,
time to create.
Creative thoughts are fueled by this dance between input and no input,
new impressions and no impressions.
I think you all recognize this
when you go to a conference like this one
and you meet new people, you learn new things,
you tend to get a lot of new ideas.
But I also think all of you recognize
sometimes, those ideas might not come when you are at that conference,
when you are meeting those new people,
when you are learning new things,
but rather, the ideas pop up two weeks later,
as an Eureka! moment,
when you are having a bath, when you are all alone;
when you have no impressions
but time to think.
This is where we need to be very humble
because some of us need more input to become more creative,
and some of us need more time.
This is important.
We can control both these forces,
both the input and the time.
What do you think you need to become more creative?
What do you think that you need to become more intelligent?
More input or more time?
Talking about creative potential and creative intelligence,
we are going to measure your creative IQ,
your creative intelligence.
I'm going to show you a few pictures just to show you what we are going to do.
I'm going to ask you few questions.
I would like you to answer the questions, obviously.
Also to raise your hand when you are done with each question.
But let me first show you an example so that you know what to do.
This is just an example,
but you get the point.
On the top row you see some kind of logic.
It says: two, four, six, what?
Then below, you have some options
that could complete the series on the top row.
OK, fine, this is just an example.
Let's do the creative IQ test
to measure your creative intelligence.
I'm going to ask you a few questions;
and just remember, you answer them for yourselves,
then you raise your hand when you are done.
OK, let's do this.
First question, will start off easy.
One, two, three, what? Raise your hand when you are done.
(Laughter)
OK, thank you.
Actually, now we're done.
That was only one question, but I think that's enough.
Let's have a look at the results, shall we?
This wasn't really a test.
This was an experiment.
For the last six years,
I've done this experiment with more than 50,000 people
in ten countries;
the results are amazing.
I would like to share some of the results from this experiment with you here today,
just some of them, but some of the results.
Because the results tell us a lot about how we live our lives,
but also it tells us a lot about our creative potential
even though this test is described as a creative IQ test
to measure your creative intelligence.
When you ask an audience, a creative and intelligent audience,
just like this one,
to answer the question,
more than half of the audience only thinks for three seconds,
before they raise their hand and say, "I'm done."
Naturally, if you only think about the problem for three seconds,
you will not come up with very many different creative answers.
Actually, after doing this with so many people
I've learned that almost all people who raised their hands after three seconds
and said, "I'm done," only have one answer.
Almost all of them have the answer, "Four."
Let me be perfectly clear here.
Four is the right answer.
But here's the point:
It's not the only logical answer possible,
it might be, to be honest, the least creative answer possible.
There are so many other options available,
but if you stop thinking after three seconds and say you're done,
naturally, you will not find them.
This is such a good example on how we live our lives,
how we go through life, have a question and answer it quickly
with the right answer, and then say that we are done.
The worst thing you can do to your creative brain
is obviously to tell it, "I'm done."
The best thing you can do is to give yourself some input
and then give yourself some time;
some time to think, some time to reflect,
some time to create.
The best thing with doing this experiment is that I've learned
that if you do this a second time with the same audience
the result will be much more creative;
it will be totally different, actually.
So that's what we're going to do:
we are going to re-do the experiment,
but this time, please, be creative.
We're going to do this experiment again.
This time, feel free to talk to someone sitting next to you
so that you get some impressions, new information.
Please, feel free to think about this problem for, let's say, a minute.
Be creative, come up with different solutions.
Maybe "five" could be a right, logical answer.
Maybe "eight" could be the logical answer you're looking for.
Maybe "six" is the right answer.
That's not even on the board, but that would be very creative:
to add something that's not even a suggestion.
Maybe you find "four," but for another reason;
not only because the numbers increase by one.
So let's do this again.
Talk to someone, get some inspiration, think for a minute, be creative,
have fun, and good luck.
One, two, three, what? Why?
We'll measure your creative intelligence.
Good luck. Have fun. Let's go.
(Laughter)
OK.
Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you so much.
I hate to interrupt this, but thank you so much.
That was less than a minute, but I don't know...
Did you notice a difference in the energy
between the first time we asked this question and the second time?
The first time people were like, "I know this one. It's four. It's easy."
The second time, I see people laughing, pointing, working together,
trying to find another one, and another one, and another one.
That's creative potential.
I'll be honest, I'm so curious to see, or understand and learn
what answers you came up with the second time.
Could you imagine a community like the TED community
that thought for this problem for a minute or two?
Those answers would be so creative.
So honestly, if you came up with the answer that's different from four,
please, send it to me by email.
Obviously, when you have done this with 50,000 people,
I have already gotten a few answers
that are different, but are also correct.
They are just creative.
I thought I'll share some of them with you, right now.
The first one is: one, two, three, five.
And the logic here of course is
that these are numbers that can only be divided by one and by themselves,
just like prime numbers.
Then we have this one which is my personal favorite:
one, two, three, eight.
But the eight turned 90 degrees so it forms the infinity sign.
The girl who came up with this answer was just 16 years old,
and her answer is that the numbers get increasingly higher
but not necessarily by one;
and in the last box, therefore,
could be any number over three.
Totally logical, very interesting and intelligent from a 16-year-old.
Then, of course, we have this one:
it's one, two, three, four and five.
The girl who came up with this answer was just five years old.
(Laughter)
Of course, this girl knew one, two, three, four,
but she didn't tell her brain to stop,
Instead, she kept on thinking and after just a minute or so,
she told me this one, "One, two, three, four and five."
The answer comes from input from kindergarten,
and I think you'll recognize it if I put this slide on the screen.
(Laughter)
The fun part is that this way of thinking could be used on any problem,
so let me end with a personal story.
I love my wife very much.
Of course, to show my wife I love her, I buy flowers, occasionally;
I'm the first one to admit buying flowers is not a very creative idea,
but my brain goes, "Show love," and the answer comes quickly, "Buy roses."
But then, one beautiful autumn day, I stopped.
I stopped and thought,
"Isn't there another way I could show my wife how much I love her?"
So I just thought for a minute,
then I went outside.
After a minute, I called my wife
and asked her to look out from the kitchen window,
and this is what she saw
I have to tell you
for two weeks straight, she gave me breakfast in bed.
(Laughter)
After two weeks, the effect wore off
so I thought to myself I have to do something else.
I went outside;
the ice had settled on the lake for the first time of the winter,
and I realized I had to take my kayak up from the lake.
So I sat down on the porch, and I thought for a minute.
Before I took up the kayak,
I did one last tour with the kayak, and I did it this way.
I can't even tell you what she gave me every morning for two weeks.
(Laughter)
She gave me breakfast in bed and homemade cookies.
(Laughter)
Later today, why don't you sit down for a minute,
and think of some one you truly love?
Take a minute,
think if you can do something for this person that you love so much,
that's different from buying roses;
a creative way to show this person that you love them.
if you do this, please take a picture of what you do,
and send me an email.
I would love to see what the TED community comes up with
if they spend a minute
to think how to show love to people they truly love.
I know now why I got such a low score on that intelligence test
I told you about earlier.
The reason is they wanted me to answer quickly,
they wanted me to answer, "Four."
But I thought for a minute on every question,
and on the 'one, two, three, four' question
or "one, two, three," - actually - question,
I answered, "One, two, three, five."
The logic I had seen after a minute was
1 plus 2 is 3, 2 plus 3 is 5, 3 plus 5 is 8, and so on,
that's the Fibonacci series; I thought that was intelligent.
They thought I was stupid.
There are so many problems left to solve in the world.
Let's not settle for 4.
Let's not settle for the easy, quick answer.
Let's reach for our creative potential
by giving ourselves the right input and the right time to think.
imagine a world where people came to work, knew what to do,
but understood that intelligence was not only knowing what to do
but also thinking of a better way to do their job.
Imagine children that come up with another correct solution
than they were expected to
and who don't need to hear that they are stupid
but instead, get to hear that they are smart.
Imagine that world.
Thank you so much.
( Applause)