Transcriber: Bob Prottas Reviewer: Tatjana Jevdjic
Starting from an early age,
creativity has always been an important part of my life.
I was an imagineer at Disney.
And 25 years ago I started a company
that does custom design and fabrication of almost anything,
built up of a band of artists and crafts people
from all sorts of disciplines.
Creativity is not some sort of a rare magic.
It's actually an infinite resource.
And it's kind of like a virus.
And so I've decided to share it with you today.
Don't worry. It's not literally a virus.
(Laughter)
But why is it important?
Actually let's talk about that for a second. Why is it important?
Creativity is important because we should be teaching
our children creativity.
Say what you want about Whitney Houston, but she was right.
This is our future.
(Laughter)
A hundred years ago in schools they taught trades.
Because a 100 years ago that's what the jobs were,
they were trade jobs.
But these days, with the world changing the way it is,
we need to teach our children to be creative.
These days 30% of our work force are knowledge workers.
These are people that think creatively.
And that's growing.
The knowledge worker base is growing.
And so we need to teach the kids creativity these days,
because that's where the future is.
So I'm here to talk to you about Thinking Inside the Box!
I'm going to go against common belief right now
and say that we need to think inside the box, not outside the box.
Imagine if we assembled the most brilliant minds into one room.
OK, great. Here you are. Perfect. Thank you for coming.
Now I'm going to tell you all —
Everybody to think of something really, really creative.
[Think!]
OK. And that exactly is why you never would show up
to a meeting that they would start by saying,
"OK, we're all going to think of something."
You need the box. You need the box to think inside of.
In my company, people come to us with all sorts of boxes.
They have no idea of what they want but they have a very specific budget,
or they may have a very specific idea of what they want
and still they have a specific budget, of course. (Laughter)
So somebody comes to us and says, "Build me a really big rocket."
We can do that.
But if somebody comes to me and says, "Build me something really cool."
Well, we still have them covered, (Laughter) but we need that box.
We need something that we can think inside of.
I'm going to give you an example now
that you may be a little more familiar with and why people do need a box.
Let's take rocket scientists.
We assemble a room full of rocket scientists.
It seems like NASA actually did this, but they need a goal.
They need something to shoot for, because if you just say
to a bunch of brilliant people, "Think of something brilliant."
Where's it going to go? OK, well we have a goal.
(Laughter) This is where we're going to go.
But if it were this easy everybody would be doing it.
There must be some inherent problems along the way.
So - Oh, I knew it. Yep, there's a problem.
OK. So we have 3 astronauts and they're out in space
and their carbon dioxide
prestrato portifier-do-hiki-thingy is broken
and they're going to die if they don't get it fixed.
They're stuck out in space. So what do they do?
Well, rocket scientists can come up with all sorts of ideas. Millions of ideas.
But that isn't what they needed. They needed one good idea that would work.
So being the brilliant rocket scientist they are,
they gave themselves a box to think inside of.
They came up with an idea of how to fix the problem in space
using only materials that were available within the spacecraft.
That was pretty smart. They were rocket scientists.
They knew there was no Home Depot in space
to get the materials they needed.
Not yet anyway.
And so they thought inside that box and we all know how it turned out.
And so, to these guys, creativity was pretty important.
Their lives depended on it.
I'm also here to tell you that —
OK, you say — they're rocket scientists so they're brilliant.
There's been studies done that there really is,
after a certain baseline,
no correlation between creativity and intelligence.
Just because you have a high IQ doesn't mean you're any more creative.
[How to be creative]
So I'm going to tell you how to be creative.
A good idea is nothing more than two or more unique ideas
combined together to make something creative.
But in order to do that you need to fill your bucket with ideas.
So how do you do that? How do you fill your bucket with ideas?
These guys filled their bucket with decades of study as a rocket scientist.
They were also pretty creative, I guess.
But they had years of experience in rocket science.
But the way I like to do it, is I like to consider it wandering.
Let's wander to fill up our bucket. And how do we do that?
Well, I'd like you to repeat with me. This is very important to do.
Say it with me: [Honey, we never know
when this amazing new experience will come in handy,
so we just have to do it. Just in case.]
So, you know, go to see a Cirque du Soleil show.
Do something that you normally wouldn't do.
Maybe go to a Monster Truck Rally.
Bike to work.
Bike down a volcano.
If you like scary movies, go to a concert or symphony.
Or, vice versa.
Or go to a grocery store you normally don't go to.
Or go to a trade show to something you know nothing about.
We have no excuses.
These days, because of the Internet, we have all of these experiences
available on our desktops, on our laptops, in our phones,
in your pocket right now.
You have the ability to do all these things.
There is no excuse to not experience those things.
Take this for instance.
This is amazing. Those are some massive puppets.
And I love puppets. It's a thing with me, I love puppets.
But this is a spectacle that I did not have the privilege
of seeing in person when it occurred.
And that would have been awesome.
But the Internet caught it for me. And so I can now experience that.
I have no excuse. I can see that and I can put it into my bucket.
So we're wandering and that's great.
We're wandering around and filling our buckets. But then what?
Wonder. Ask questions.
Start asking all sorts of questions.
Lots and lots of questions.
Like how do we fix the carbon dioxide
prestrato portifier-do-hiki-thingy on the spaceship?
Well, there's the answer.
Ask questions like,
I wonder what I could do for my wife that would be really nice?
(Laughter)
I wonder if these notes would sound good together?
I wonder if I could go fast?
I wonder if I could go really fast?
I wonder what happens to stuff when it goes really, really fast?
OK, this one's a little over my head.
We have to wonder all the time at work as well.
You know, I'm wondering, can I have my cake and eat in it too?
(Laughter) Perfect.
So these are some large cupcake booths
that if you take your kid to have a birthday party there,
you can say, "Hey kids, we're going to have your birthday party
and we're going to eat in a cupcake." Imagine their surprise.
Hmm, I wonder if kids would like to play in cartoons?
We built a 6,000 square foot play area
that was based on Cartoon Network cartoons.
I wonder what a home theater would be like on the Death Star?
(Laughter)
This is somebody's home theater. (Laughter)
They're big Star Wars fans, of course. (Laughter)
I wonder if we could build a sculpture of 600 jellies?
And there they are.
This is another cool thing about my job,
because every project we do is different.
We learn something new with every project.
These are not jellyfish, because they're not fish.
They're jellies. So now you know.
So how do we go from, "I wonder..." to "The Idea"?
Well...
It's a process of going from wide to narrow, wide to narrow,
and the idea is in the box.
The idea is always in the box.
Well I'm here to tell you that —
I'll have to put these on for sure.
(Laughter)
You ready?
(Slam) (Laughter)
Well, here's the deal.
(Laughter)
What happened just then is the secret to creativity.
It's not what is inside the box.
It's what happened in your brain just before that occurred.
It's the curiosity that you had of what was in the box.
You should encourage curiosity in your students,
in coworkers, with your friends.
Because that's the root of creativity – is that curiosity
to go out and learn and find things that are new.
Fill your bucket with ideas
and ultimately use that curiosity to enrich others.
There you go.
(Laughter) (Applause)