Need to convince? 6 novel ways to pitch your ideas

 Influence, Innovation, Leadership, Psychology  2 Responses »
Mar 302013
 

Forget the elevator pitch! It’s so 20th century.

Say no to the elevator pitch!

Credit: http://bit.ly/ZKgaNB

Everybody has heard of the elevator pitch. Dale Carnegie advised us to be ever ready with our “elevator speech” in case we encountered the big boss. Thankfully, companies have become much more democratic and you often have more opportunities to present your ideas to the “suits”.

In his new book To Sell Is Human Daniel Pink introduces us to what he calls: the six successors to the elevator pitch. The overall claim of the book is that “selling” is no longer a dirty word or is no longer associated to the repulsive image of a sleazy, shady, slimy used-car salesman. According to Pink, everyone is now in the business of selling or rather living in a world where the skills of convincing or persuading are becoming essential, to everyone.

The book’s chapter called “pitch” is particularly compelling and I would like to share with you what resonated with me.

6 compelling ways to pitch your ideas

1) the one-word pitch. Inspired by the advertizing agency Saatchi & Saatchi’s “one-word equity“, its claim is that in the 21st century, the attention span is so short that we need the “brutal simplicity of thought”. Think “search” for Google, or Obama’s “forward”. If you can find that one (positive!) word and the world starts associating that word with you or your company, you have it made.

2) the question pitch. Asking your audience a question often packs more punch than your typical declarative statement. Example: Reagan didn’t say “your economic situation has deteriorated over the last 48 months”. Instead he asked the famous question: “Are you better off now than you were 4 years ago?”. Asking a question compels to respond and that in turn provokes a deeper, more intensive processing of the message content.

3) the rhyming pitch. This pitch relies on rhymes which boost what linguists and cognitive scientists call processing fluency. Rhymes “taste good” to our minds and make the content of the message more palatable and more memorable. If you were around during the O.J. Simpson’s trail, I’m sure you’ll remember Johnnie Cochran’s (in?)famous pitch about a certain glove: “if it doesn’t fit… you must acquit!”. So if you want your message to stick, use rhymes.

4) the subject-line pitch. When you think about it, every email message is some kind of pitch, with every subject-lines in your mailbox vying for your attention… “click me!”. According to a study conducted at CMU, email readers based their decision whether to open an email on 2 main factors: utility (it affects your work) or  curiosity (curious about what the email is about), where utility taps into extrinsic motivation and curiosity taps into intrinsic motivation. Pink provided 2 examples: the useful “Found the best & cheapest photocopier” and the intriguing “A photocopy breakthrough”.

5) the twitter pitch. Pink uses the example of the investor Stowe Boyd who, while heading to a conference to meet start-up companies, asked the eager entrepreneurs seeking a meeting with him to pitch their idea via Twitter, i.e. in 140 characters or less. Scientists studying the Twitter medium found that the tweets that were the most attention-grabbing asked questions to the followers, proving again the potent nature of the interrogative form (see 2) above) to engage and persuade.

6) the Pixar pitch. No need to introduce the animation studio behind so many animated movies, Pixar. One of the reasons for Pixar’s success is attributed to the way movie ideas are pitched, using the following 6 sequential sentences:

Once upon a time, ____________________________________________________________.

Every day, _________________________________. One day _________________________

____________________________. Because of that, ________________________________.

Because of that, _____________________________________________________________.

Until finally, ________________________________________________________________.

The book then goes on about advice on how to pitch but you will have to buy the book, or ask me to summarize that part in an upcoming post.

I will just leave you with the most important of his advice:  after someone hears your pitch…

  1. what do you want them to know?
  2. what do you want them to feel?
  3. what do you want them to do?

You now have 6 new ways of pitching. How will you pitch your next idea?

Mind pumping: Thinkertoys’ style!

 Creativity, Psychology  No Responses »
Mar 272013
 

Mind Pumping: “Pumping” it’s not for muscle only…

Mind Pumping

Credit: http://bit.ly/ZqC9Wg

I started rereading Michael Michalko’s book: Thinkertoys: A Handbook of Creative-Thinking techniques, as a source of inspiration for a post for this blog. This book is so amazingly rich on ideas and techniques on creative thinking, it’s absolutely dizzying. It seems that any 1/2 page would be enough material for a good LighBulbBite.

But since I had to choose, I’d like to try to summarize chapter two, titled Mind Pumping.

The author’s premise for mind pumping, is that if you want to be creative, it’s not enough to have the intention of being creative, you must act like a creative person by going through the motion of an “idea person“.

9 great Mind Pumping exercises

  1. Idea quota: Set yourself an idea quota for a challenge that you are working on; say 5 ideas, every day for one week. Having a quota forces you to actively generate ideas rather than waiting for ideas to occur to you
  2. Getting tone: Really paying attention to the world around you will help you develop the extraordinary capacity to look at mundane things and see the miraculous
  3. Dukes of habit: Instead of always doing the things the same way, deliberately program changes into your daily life: take a different route to work, listen to a different radio station each day (different newspaper), change your reading habit (fiction vs. nonfiction), switch hobby, etc…
  4. Feeding your head: To quote Gore Vidal, “The Brain that doesn’t feed itself, eats itself”. So, read to feed your mind but:
    • Select carefully: how good an exercise for my creative mind will this provide?
    • Take notes
    • Read biographies: there are a treasure-house of ideas
    • Read how-to books on any subject
    • Read magazines on varied subjects
    • Read nonfiction: when reading nonfiction books, practice thinking up solutions to any problems presented in the book. JFK’s favorite exercise.
    • Think: think as you read and find connections/parallels between what you read and your problems
  5. Content analysis: observe the world around you (popular culture, your job, places where you travel, local/international news, conferences, etc…) and analyze what you see/absorb, look for connections, trends and patterns, and seek new opportunities/ideas out of your analysis.
  6. Brainbanks: collect and store ideas/thoughts like a pack rat: quotes, designs, ideas, questions, pictures, and words that might trigger ideas by associations. (I personally use Evernote for that very purpose).
  7. Travel Junkie: whenever you are feeling stale/bored, go to new store, trade/craft show, exhibition, library, museum, etc… Wander with an open mind and wait for something to catch your attention and connect it to your problems/challenges
  8. Think right: make your thinking more fluent (number of ideas) and more flexible (more creative).
    • Making lists is a powerful way to increase fluency. Example: list all the possible uses of WD40
    • Flexibility in thought means the ability to see beyond the ordinary/conventional. Be more improvisational and intuitive by focusing on processes rather than outcomes.
  9. Idea log: One of CIA’s favorite techniques for recording information in a written form. This enables the agent to instantly focus on all the ideas, comparisons, interrelationships and data relating to a given problem.

This was one chapter out of 39! Get the book for many more techniques/ideas.

Hopefully, this LBB will give you ideas on how to become more creative.  Don’t try all of them at once but do try some and let me how know how they work out for you.

I invite you to share your thoughts, feedback or your favorite Mind Pumping exercises below in the comment area. Looking forward to reading them!

 

Mind mapping: mapping ideas in and out of your brain

 Creativity, Design, Innovation, Psychology, Technology  5 Responses »
Mar 242013
 

A powerful technique to organize and generate ideas

Credits: http://bit.ly/X1LdWg

Credits: http://bit.ly/X1LdWg

According to Wikipedia:

A mind map is a diagram used to visually outline information. A mind map is often created around a single word or text, placed in the center, to which associated ideas, words and concepts are added. Major categories radiate from a central node, and lesser categories are sub-branches of larger branches. Categories can represent words, ideas, tasks, or other items related to a central key word or idea.

And you go, huh?

Mind mapping is one of those techniques which is easy to demonstrate or show but difficult to describe in words.

Check out the following video for a quick primer using a basic example:

Why is this technique superior to your typical lists of bullet points?

It has to do with the way the brain functions. It doesn’t organize its information like sentences in a book, instead it’s stored as a large collection of ideas connected with one another.

Tony Buzan, a influential promoter of mind mapping, likes contrast traditional note taking vs. mind mapping:

  • Traditional note taking: a linear recording of information without connecting the concepts together. Doing without thinking
  • Mind mapping: radial explosion of visually interconnected ideas

The technique has been widely used to promote creativity, problem solving, and synergetic ideation. The main reason why it’s such a powerful tool for those activities is because it forces to create association of ideas in a very visual way which tends to be the brain’s favorite way to recall and create new relationship between ideas.

To get started, all you need is a blank sheet of paper, a few colored pens and you are ready to go using the following guidelines suggested by Tony Buzan himself:

Guidelines on how to create a mind map

  1. Start in the center with an image of the topic, using at least 3 colors.
  2. Use images, symbols, codes, and dimensions throughout your mind map.
  3. Select key words and print using upper or lower case letters.
  4. Each word/image is best alone and sitting on its own line.
  5. The lines should be connected, starting from the central image. The central lines are thicker, organic and thinner as they radiate out from the centre.
  6. Make the lines the same length as the word/image they support.
  7. Use multiple colors throughout the mind map, for visual stimulation and also to encode or group.
  8. Develop your own personal style of mind mapping.
  9. Use emphasis and show associations in your mind map.
  10. Keep the mind map clear by using radial hierarchy, numerical order or outlines to embrace your branches.

Here’s a mind map on how to create a mind map… :-). The same website allows you to create online mind maps for free.

If you want to share your mind maps, or simply prefer to create them digitally, they are dozens of applications for desktop applications, web sites, and iPad/tablet/mobile applications to help you. Checkout Mind Mapping Software Blog for an impressive collection of reviews and recommendations.

Not convinced on where you would use mind mapping? Here are 100 reasons.

So, the next time you need to organize ideas in a new way or want to trigger new ideas, why don’t you give mind mapping a try?

PS: Have you ever used mind mapping? How did you like it? Share your comments below.

Metaphorical thinking

 Creativity, Design, Innovation, Psychology  6 Responses »
Mar 212013
 

Tap into the power of metaphors to boost your creativity

Metaphor: jaws in space

Credits: http://bit.ly/111cR4a

I once heard that Ridley Scott pitched his idea for his movie “Alien” as “Jaws in space” (confirmed here). How brilliant is that?! With that simple 3-word metaphor, the director was able to convey his novel idea for a movie so precisely that it baffles the mind!

A metaphor is a soft thinking technique connecting two different universes of meaning. Examples: Food chain, flow of time, fiscal watchdog. The key to metaphorical thinking is similarity. The human mind tends to look for similarities.

Excessive logical thinking can stifle the creative process, so use metaphors as a way of thinking differently about something. Invent and look for metaphors in your thinking. They are also potent tools as they make you and your audience look at things a different way.

Imaging within another sensory or conceptual frame can help. For example, in the visual images of spring which inspired Vivaldi’s “La Primavera”, one can clearly re-imagine then while listening to that piece of music.

When thinking of a problem and its solution, it helps to expose the mind with many related concepts. The hope is that the juxtaposition of 2 or more of those concepts will create a eureka moment that will lead to a solution. It’s not always a perfect fit but by stretching and examining the parts of the connection, you can start discovering new facets of the imperfect metaphor to lead you to the perfect solution.

Flex your metaphorical thinking muscles

Coming up with metaphors might come naturally for some of us as our brains tend to think metaphorically in the first place.  However, it’s sometime difficult to force their creation. It’s more like “they come to you” and not “you go to them”. That’s where English majors have an edge. That said, you can become good at it with some practice.

Here are some interesting resources on how to create and make use of metaphors.

Do you like metaphors? Share your favorite one(s) in the comments section below this post.

Selling a new idea? You might be 2/3 short on your persuasion mojo…

 Leadership, Psychology  3 Responses »
Mar 192013
 

A great ideas is only one component of the persuasion cocktail

Persuasion: ethos, pathos, logos

Credits: http://bit.ly/11gANVh

So, you have a great idea and you are convinced that everyone will readily recognize it as such. Think again!

As this TED-Ed (What Aristotle and Joshua Bell can teach us about persuasion) brilliantly demonstrates it, persuasion takes more than just idea/argument greatness.
The quick video recounts the story of the famed virtuoso violinist Joshua Bell who, 3 days after a much acclaimed performance at a packed Boston Symphony Hall, decided to play for an audience of… nobody. That performance was taking place in the subway station where barely a handful of people slowed down to listen to his music. People were actually ignoring him.

What happened?

Same music played by the same musician, with the same passion, on the same violin?
Conor Neill (the author of the TED-Ed video) tells us that Aristotle would have been able to explain… more than 2300 years ago!

Aristotle’s time-tested 3-part persuasion recipe

What does it take to convince people? That’s the topic of Aristotle’s Rhetoric and it boils down to the 3 means of persuasion: logos, ethos and pathos.

  1. Logos: does the idea/argument makes sense to the audience,  from the audience’s point of view? Does it follow a certain logic, the same way that good music follows certain good composition rules? Is the idea relevant to the audience?
  2. Ethos: Ethos is all about reputation, credibility, acting professionally, and being trustworthy. Do you care about the audience as much as yourself? Do you convey a sense of authority: a mix of confidence with a concise/clear message
  3. Pathos: Pathos is the emotional connection. Stories are a potent human tool to create an emotional connection. Sometime, the audience is not ready to hear your message/idea. A good speaker creates the right emotional environment for his/her message to connect with the audience.

What happened to Joshua Bell and what often happens to us when we try to sell our ideas is that we may have a great logos, but ethos and pathos are missing.
In the case of Joshua, the subway station didn’t convey the same sense of trustworthiness that a concert hall does (ethos). The emotional bond between the well-light, lone violinist on stage  and his concert hall audience didn’t exist in the hustle and bustle of the busy/noisy subway station (pathos).

So, the next time you try to sell your next great idea, how will  you build credibility and emotional connection?

PS: Have you been in the same predicament as Joshua Bell? Any tips on how to work up an awesome ethos/pathos like nobody’s business? Share it by leaving a comment below.

You like the post? “Like it” on your favorite social network(s) below.

 

Find your muse between two sleeps

 Creativity, Innovation, Psychology  3 Responses »
Mar 172013
 

Use a forgotten sleep pattern to tap into your creativity

Credit: http://bit.ly/ZKIEE4

Credit: http://bit.ly/ZKIEE4

It happened again!
Last night, I went to sleep around 10:30 pm and woke up around 2:30 am with my brain completely fired up and intent on keeping me awake. And so I struggled with my mind to find peace and calm to go back to sleep, to no avail. It probably took 1 to 2 hours to fall asleep again.
What’s wrong with me?

According to this fascinating article The myth of the eight-hour sleep, there’s actually nothing wrong with me and in fact my internal sleeping clock might be more in tune with the way humans are supposed to sleep.

In the early 1990s, psychiatrist Thomas Wehr conducted an experiment in which a group of people were plunged into darkness for 14 hours every day for a month. It took some time for their sleep to regulate but by the fourth week the subjects had settled into a very distinct sleeping pattern. They slept first for four hours, then woke for one or two hours before falling into a second four-hour sleep.

More recently, historian Roger Ekirch of Virginia Tech published a seminal paper, drawn from 16 years of research, revealing a wealth of historical evidence that humans used to sleep in two distinct chunks. From Homer’s Odyssey to an anthropological account of modern tribes in Nigeria, the pattern of “first sleep” + waking period + “second sleep” was the norm for thousands of years.
The waking period was a solitary experience and in fact a doctor’s manual from 16th Century France even advised couples that the best time to conceive was not at the end of a long day’s labor but “after the first sleep”, when “they have more enjoyment” and “do it better”. Oh, the French!

Today’s “8-hour sleep” is indeed a fairly recent concept and came about with the Industrial Revolution and most notably with the advent of street lighting.

Frolic with your muse…

What does this have to do with creativity?
As mentioned in this post, creativity is strongly linked to the presence of alpha-waves in our brain. According to Wikipedia, these waves are mostly present during the relaxed mental state of the wake-sleep cycle, where the subject is at rest with eyes closed, but is not tired or asleep. Ring a bell?
Based on my personal experience, it is often in the middle of the night that I find my best ideas, especially “out of the box” ideas that require to connect completely disjoint bits of ideas.

So the next time you find yourself awake in the middle of the night, between first and second sleep, don’t fight it! Instead see it as an excellent time to frolic with your muse. Keep a notebook (or your smart-phone like I do) to jot down your ideas as they come to you while your mind wanders. When you’ll awake in the morning, you will be amazed by what you and your muse came up with.
Happy frolicking!

PS: Have you experienced this bi-modal sleep pattern? Are you more creative in the middle of the night? Share your thoughts in the comments section below.

Distant space/time/probability to boost your creativity?

 Creativity, Psychology  No Responses »
Mar 112013
 

Psychological Distance:

Brilliantly simple way to boost your creativity

Credit: http://bit.ly/Wj349m

Credit: http://bit.ly/Wj349m

In this fascinating Scientific American article, the authors (Oren Shapira and Nira Liberman) tell us that creativity is not bound by the sole innate characteristics of an individual and can in fact be changed based on situation and context.

Consider this experiment: 2 groups of participants from the Indiana University were asked to list as many different modes of transportation as possible. The first group was told that the task had been developed by Indiana University students studying in Greece and the second group was told instead that the task had been developed by Indiana University students studying in Indiana. The first group was able to generate more numerous and original modes of transportation that the second group.

How can such a minute detail have any significant influence on creativity?!

This phenomenon is referred as “Construal Level Theory (CLT) of Psychological Distance”, i.e. anything that we do not experience as occurring now and here. Attempting to take another person’s perspective or by thinking of a question as if it were unreal and unlikely, also fall in to that category of “psychological distant”.

According to CLT, psychological distance affects how we mentally represent things, where distant things are represented in an abstract way. Once classified as abstract (vs. concrete), it seems that the mind get an extra boost of creativity in solving or manipulating those abstract things.

Studies have also shown that projecting an event into the remote future can enhance creativity. In a series of experiments examining how temporal distance affects performance of insight and creativity tasks, participants were asked to imagine their lives a year later (distant future) or the next day (near future), and then to imagine working on a task on that day in the future. Once again, participants who imagined a distant future were more creative and insightful.

Finally, evidence shows that study participants were more successful at solving problems when they believe that they were unlikely to encounter the full task.

These findings have interesting practical implications. One can take simple steps to increase creativity by:

  • travelling (in person or just thinking about it) to faraway places,
  • envisioning distant future and
  • considering improbable alternatives to reality.

So, next time you are stuck on a problem that requires creativity, just picture yourself in a faraway place, in a far future, dreaming up of unlikely scenarios.

Now, if you do this in a shower, there will be no stopping you!

Questions/Comments? Use the “Enter your comment here…” box below.

Barbie and the Curse of Knowledge

 Creativity, Design, Innovation, Psychology  No Responses »
Mar 042013
 

Innovation doesn’t always come from experts.
Beware of the “curse of knowledge”

Credits://www.barbie.com/It’s the early 1950s.

Ruth Handler watched her daughter Barbara play with paper dolls, and noticed that she often enjoyed giving them adult roles. At the time, most children’s toy dolls were representations of infants. Realizing that there could be a gap in the market, Handler suggested the idea of an adult-bodied doll to her husband Elliot, a co-founder of the Mattel toy company. He was unenthusiastic about the idea, as were Mattel’s directors as they found it silly. Little girls didn’t want to play with grownups! Besides, what did Ruth know about the toy business? She was just an outsider!

During a trip to Europe in 1956 with her children, Ruth Handler noticed a strange-looking doll in the window of a cigarette shop in Germany. The doll was eleven inches tall and had platinum-blond hair, long legs, and an ample bosom. Her name was Bild Lilli. What Ruth didn’t know, because she was an outsider and she didn’t know the language and local culture, is that the doll was actually a “sex symbol”, sold mainly to middle-aged men.

When the family returned home, Handler continued to lobby her husband to build an Americanized version of the Bild Lilli. She eventually succeeded but it took 3 years to convince Mattel’s executives to build it and for the first Barbie to be released.
Before long, the plastic toy became the cultural icon that we know today. Mattel and its reluctant executives have sold over 1 billion Barbies in 150 countries.

The outsider’s point of view

The moral of the story is that Ruth Handler was an outsider. She was an outsider to the German culture which made her fail to grasp the bawdy back-story of Bild Lilli; if she had, she would have certainly not bought it for her daughter.
She was also an outsider to the toy industry which provided her with a fresh pair of eyes. She wasn’t suffering from what’s sometime known as “the curse of knowledge” where being an expert in a field prevents one from coming up with novel/radical ideas.
It’s difficult to escape the “curse of knowledge”. However, there are techniques and approaches that I will describe in future posts that can help.
That said, there is one thing that is easy to do… don’t be afraid to seek outsiders for your problems/projects.

Seek a “fresh pair of eyes”

Like most managers who have been working on a project for awhile, I know mine pretty well but I might know very little about other projects done in my company. We all have a good understanding of the industry in which we are revolving but I still remain an outsider to those other projects. Would I mind, if every so often they invited me to one of their brainstorming sessions to get a fresh perspective on their work? Absolutely not!
I’m sure I’m not the only one who feels that way and other people will jump at the chance to be the “fresh pair of eyes”, no?
Another good source of “fresh pair of eyes” that might be easily discarded by seasoned managers are: interns and new grads. That’s a mistake to me. Give them a chance to absorb enough knowledge so that they understand the subject matter. But also elicit their feedback, ideas, comments and opinions, early and often. Be open-minded and listen to what they have to say.

Who knows, between the two of you, you might come up with the next Barbie…

(The main inspiration for this post came from a story told by Jonah Lehrer in his book: Imagine: How Creativity Works)

[Image credits: http://www.barbie.com]

Are you the creative type?

 Creativity, Influence, Innovation, Leadership, Psychology, Software Development, Technology  4 Responses »
Mar 012013
 
Creative Type

Credits:http://bit.ly/Z8yooH

Let me start with this a true, personal anecdote…

Many years ago, I was at a party chitchatting with a young lady, when the inevitable “what do you do for a living” question came up.

The following ensued (with some embellishments):

  • Her: what do you do for a living?
  • Me: why don’t you guess? (I was so cool, back then)
  • Her: Are you a chef?
  • Me: Non. (keeping it cool but seriously thinking, can you be any more cliché!?)
  • Her: A musician maybe?
  • Me: No. (I had longish hair then)
  • Her: do you work in the clothing industry?
  • Me: no (back to the French theme)
  • Her: The movie industry?! As a director or writer maybe?
  • Me: Nope
  • Her: alright, I give up.
  • Me: Ok, I’m a software engineer.
  • Her (barely masking her disappointment): REALLY!? I thought that you were more of the “creative type”! (She probably did the air-quotes with her fingers)
  • Me (Trying to ignore her disappointment): Why would you think that I can’t be both a software engineer and also creative?!

And this is really what’s at the heart of this post: Can one really be a software engineer and be creative too?

Can one really be a software engineer and be creative too?

Talking on behalf of my software development  brethren, my answer is a resounding, heck yes!

Of course,  for the uninitiated eye (like the person in the dialog above), software engineering/development might look more clerical than intellectual, and more structured than imaginative. But for anyone who’s worked in the field, it should be apparent that our work is more governed by ideas and possibilities than the monotony and tedium of routine tasks.

Surely in recent years, the hundreds of companies and thousands of applications (for iOS/Android) created by software engineers are a very clear and visible testimony that software engineers are a creative bunch.

One might say that the coding, the testing, the debugging are probably not what comes at the top of the list of exciting things to do. But can’t they? Who among us never felt the touch of divine inspiration when coming up with a genius way of coding or testing something? That “aha” moment when the idea that makes all the difference comes to you.

How about “being in the zone” when the code seems to write itself and designs, made of one clever idea after another, comes alive before your very eyes.

To me (and I’m not a musician), it seems very much like what composers must experience when they create music: breathing life out of nothing (bytes vs. notes)

As a software engineer, if you don’t feel that you are creative, maybe you never tried to picture yourself as a creative person and maybe it’s time to come out of the “creative closet”.

On the other hand, if you feel that you are actually very creative and full of ideas but your creativity and ideas haven’t been acknowledged by your peers, by your boss and by your company in general, then you need to wake them up.

I could go on but hopefully you get idea.

So, you the teacher, the QA analyst, the engineer, the equity trader, and you who’s always been labeled as “non creative”, do feel that you are the “creative type”?

Share you thoughts/frustrations/inspirations in the comment section below.

 Newer Entries
%d bloggers like this: