thank you very much amazing intro and
good morning everyone
I'm a happy guy
I'm normally smiling and my friends say
well I'm probably pretty lucky or I'm
just born that way
which is true because I am a lucky guy
but there's more to it I've been really
interested in the reasons and the source
behind my own happiness for many years
and that's why I'm here today to talk to
you guys about what I've found out I'm
here to talk to you guys about
creativity now I've been a creative my
whole life music and software and
writing and through all of that time
I've seen that there's a pattern a
simple pattern which is this when I
create I'm happy when I stop creating
and I start consuming I'm not happy if
you think about it creating and
consuming that two sides of the of the
same coin but our world today is mostly
about consumption it wasn't always like
that when the world was more local these
things were more in balance you consumed
what someone created around you so if
you wanted to you know eat a great meal
someone had to cook a great meal for you
or if you wanted to listen to great
music someone close to you had to play
great music but things have changed
obviously industrialization and
globalization and digitalization things
are very different now so one person can
create and now we can have millions or
even billions of people can consume
exactly the same creative product so
we're all consumers now and it's of
course a driven by technology whether
it's YouTube or Spotify or well even Ted
videos actually where most of the time
we're consuming
so I was thinking about all of this and
at the same time I was watching my own
kids grow up and it struck me that the
kids are creative naturally creative you
know for its own sake they're always
playing coming up with a project there's
no KPIs for there no business plan
they're just doing it and they're happy
because it's a natural expression for
them a natural expression of who they
are and you know actually in a lot of
ways that it that sort of flow is a
definition of happiness so I was
watching them and I was thinking you
know the kids are alright actually so
what happens to us as we grow up so to
investigate this I did what I do best I
started talking to everyone I know
and I started talking to them about
creativity and I kept getting the same
response back this is the response I got
creativity is great said everyone but I
am NOT creative again and again that's
what I heard and this is a myth this is
a fallacy this is what you might call
the myth of the creative as special the
idea that Steve Jobs is creative and you
are not and nothing could be further
from the truth
the truth is you're not Steve Jobs but
Steve Jobs isn't you either but this
fallacy it's so deeply embedded in our
culture we don't even think about it and
what it's doing is it's blocking our
natural creativity as adults that
creativity that we had as kids so as a
next step I started thinking well how
would you unblock that creativity just
so happened at that time I met a good
friend of mine who's now my collaborator
a guy called Mars Coiro and we started
by doing a lot of reading so we read
everything we could about creativity
cognitive science psychology social
science all this great theoretical work
that's out there but
after reading it all we decided we take
a different approach we wanted to take a
really practical experimental almost
anthropological approach to creativity
so what we did is we looked at our own
lives and all the places we knew around
us and we looked at where does
creativity happen whether it's the lab
or a jam session or it's startups or
businesses universities and we asked
ourselves a question what's the common
factor across all of those environments
and this is what we found two things a
sense of play combined with a sense of
purpose so play meaning the freedom to
just do something for its own sake
without the pressure of work but a sense
of purpose as well some kind of outcome
or link back to reality back to the real
world and back to what's good for other
people when you put these two things
together magic happens
creativity just happens so that was our
hypothesis and what we wanted to do next
was to test this so to test it we
created our own game and it's a
creativity game it's very simple brings
people together to work on a problem and
come up with solutions
there's investing and voting and it's a
bit like a casino meets a hackathon it's
fun to play and anyone can play it and
we started bringing people in to play
the game so one year now we've been
running this game we've had hundreds and
hundreds of people come through and
we've been observing and we've been
interviewing and we've been collecting
the data and the results are actually
amazing
first of all in all of that time in all
of those hundreds of people there has
not been a single failure of creativity
every single human being who comes
through into this environment is capable
of coming up with creative ideas it
doesn't matter what you think about your
creative capability you will surprise
yourself
if the conditions are right you are
creative and secondly every objective
and subjective measure shows that people
are happier at the end of the game
people are smiling and that's what it's
all about
that's why creativity is not optional
it's not a nice-to-have
it's not a luxury that you indulge in
and add on to your life once everything
else has been sorted out it's quite the
opposite it's exactly what you're
supposed to be doing right now and to do
it all you need to do is bring a little
bit of play meets purpose into your life
any small way it could be picking up a
guitar and writing a song it could be
cooking a meal for your family doing a
sketch putting it on the wall writing
computer code whatever it is that turns
you on if you go out and do it and move
that needle a little bit away from
consumption back towards creativity
you're going to be happy keep creating
keep smiling everyone thank you very
much
[Applause]