News SPLASH

For me, cooking is a form of creativity.  I love trying new recipes -- and I don't mind the pressure of serving these new creations to a table of guests.  Some flop but most are a fresh addition to a special meal.  This year, I'm going Mediterranean, inspired by my work with Oldways (and recent Barcelona trip). The Med Diet is thousands of years old and high level studies show countless health benefits but I love it because it espouses eating simple, delicious food in the company of friends and family.  What could be better than that?  I'm raising a virtual glass to you (wine is part of the Med Diet) and wishing you a very happy holiday and unbeatable New Year.

When was the last time you were completely disconnected?  And we mean from every form of communication besides that old fashioned one -- live conversation.  No phone, no cell, no BlackBerry, no Internet.  Thanks to the New England ice storm of '08, that was my situation late last week and over the weekend.  At first, there was a lot of scurrying -- driving an hour for Internet access, scouting the area for cell phone coverage.  But then came focus.  Without email checking and phone calls, my brain relaxed and new ideas started pouring in.  Ideas that could help my clients.  Ideas that could help my business.  Ideas that could help my family.  So take a brain sabbatical.  Retreat to a place where your brain is not cluttered by outside interference.  Take a walk in quiet woods, go to the climbing wall, or simply gaze out the window.  Soon you may have a whole new perspective too.  (Believe me, there are better ways to do this than living with no power for five days...and counting.)

We've all seen it happen -- the video that travels around the world, gathering viewers as it is passed from person to person.  This can happen with an inspiring call to action like Randy Pausch's "The Last Lecture" or a tongue-in-cheek battle cry like Sarah Silverman's "The Great Schlep."  A friend sent me a video yesterday that moved me enough to forward it to five other friends (an action typically banned by this group!) and I started to wonder if others felt the urge to pass it along too.  So I did a little test and here's what I found:  After just 19 hours, viewership of the video on YouTube grew from 4,000 to 16,000.  In less than half an hour this morning, more than 1,000 people viewed the piece.  Here are the stats:

Dec. 9, 2008, 4:15pm - 4,070 viewers on YouTube

Dec. 9, 5:04pm - 6,004 viewers

Dec. 9, 8:54pm - 8,110 viewers

Dec. 10, 7:41am - 14,514 viewers

Dec. 10, 10:31am-15,535 viewers

Dec. 10, 10:57am - 16,692 viewers

So how does this apply to marketers?  It shows once again that you need to create an emotional attachment with your audience and you don't do this by just talking about your product.  In this case, author Kelly Corrigan doesn't mention her book in the video clip but you can bet sales for "The Middle Place" will shoot up.  In your own business, what is the greater connection to your product?  How can you help busy mothers provide nutrition to their kids?  How can you educate consumers about gasoline so that they see it as more than a commodity?  So, talk about more than your product's specs.  Offer information that educates or entertains and you just might have the next viral video.

As we tell our kids, the whole in stronger than one part.  In a recent article, reporter Janet Rae-Dupree reinforces that innovation requires a team of diverse minds.  She quotes Keith Sawyer, a researcher at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, who said:  "Innovation today isn't a sudden break with the past, a brilliant insight that one lone outsider pushes through to save the company," he said. "Just the opposite: Innovation today is a continuous process of small and constant change, and it's built into the culture of successful companies."  One interesting tidbit, according to Ms. Rae-Dupree, is that brainstorming may be not be the most effective way to produce breakthrough ideas.  In fact, research shows that individuals working alone generate more ideas than groups due to fear of failure (worry about criticism of an idea) or because workers want to leverage their best ideas to fit their own interests.  So, how do you get your teams to share knowledge?  Businessman and blogger Drew Boyd suggests that instead of starting with a problem and brainstorming to solve it, break down successful products and processes into separate components, then study those parts to find other potential uses.  This can lead to expanded innovation.  How do you generate ongoing innovation?

"Symphony," says Daniel Pink, business writer and former chief speechwriter for Vice President Al Gore, "is the ability to see the big picture, connect the dots, combine disparate things into something new.  It's a signature ability that is a great predictor of star performance in the workplace."  That is a concept related to creativity that I talk about a lot but have failed to articulate as succinctly as this.  Thank you, Daniel, for saying it so well.  This quote came from his interview with Oprah in the Dec. 2008 issue of "O, The Oprah Magazine."  Pink wrote, A Whole New Mind, which says right-brain thinkers (i.e., creative, artistic, empathetic) now have the advantage over left-brain thinkers (i.e., logical, linear, by-the-numbers) whose talents can easily be outsourced.  I haven't read his book yet but it's now on the list.

Business lessons can come from anywhere - even the football field.  In this interview with Dina Berta of Nation's Restaurant News, Peter Cancro, founder and CEO, Jersey Mike's Subs (a client), talks about the connection between sports and leadership.  According to Peter, some of the most important lessons revolve around the philosophy of acting as a team yet celebrating individual victories, mentoring and coaching, and giving back and supporting each other. 

An article in the October 2008 issue of Body + Soul magazine by Janice O'Leary talks about the importance of boredom.  We especially liked the view that doing nothing can inspire creativity. "Creativity is one of the sweet fruits of boredom," says Richard Winter, M.D., author of Still Bored in a Culture of Entertainment. "If you don't give yourself time to reflect, you don't come up with inspired ideas."  Time and time again we have found that fresh ideas appear when we aren't actively pursuing them.  The best approach:  Load your brain with all the information you need to innovate and let it seep while you focus on other things...or nothing at all.  An idea always seems to come.  As Ms. O'Leary says, "By keeping the mental slate clean, you actually allow your mind to be fresher, more loose."  And that, she says, often allows you to find new solutions to old problems.  Give it a try.

Regardless of how you feel about the election results, one thing is clear:  The power of a grassroots movement is undeniable.

The 2008 Presidential election captured the hearts and minds of people like no other in recent history.  One friend in California traveled for hours to neighboring Nevada with her husband and two young children to canvas for Obama.  A woman I met this weekend drove from Connecticut to Pennsylvania to spread the word.  In Scranton, she was directed to three different locations until she found one that could use her help -- because the area was overloaded with volunteers.

When people feel an emotional attachment to an issue - or a company, or a product - they will go to great lengths to help it succeed.  We can take important lessons from the Obama campaign when it comes to building a grassroots groundswell.

Consistent Message:  In the end, Obama's message of hope and change was consistent and authentic, and strong enough to galvanize a nation.

Bold Strategy:  In an article in Monday's The New York Times, reporter Adam Nagourney wrote that the 2008 race for the White House "has rewritten the rules on how to reach voters, raise money, organize supporters, manage the news media, track and mold public opinion, and wage — and withstand — political attacks, including many carried by blogs that did not exist four years ago."  It's easy to stick with the tried and true but the Obama team rethought campaign tactics from harnessing the Internet to communicate and raise money (a strategy pioneered by Howard Dean) to recruiting volunteers as ambassadors for the campaign.

Discipline:  In any campaign (marketing or presidential), setbacks are part of the process.  The discipline comes from knowing how to react to them.  Do you rewrite your strategy every time you hit a hiccup?  Are you so in love with your direction that you won't stray?  Or do you stay flexible and nimble, recalibrating as needed like the Obama team?   Many say Obama ran a near flawless campaign.  I'd say he ran a disciplined one that looked honestly at what was working and not working along the way, making intelligent adjustments that ultimately led to victory. 

In a recent blog post on the Harvard Business Publishing site, Teresa Amabile asks, "Is Management the Enemy of Creativity?"  This is a followup discussion to her intriguing article in the Harvard Business Review (Oct. 2008) entitled "Creativity and the Role of the Leader" written with Mukti Khaire.  While innovation is needed more than ever, Amabile argues that most management tools and approaches are still geared to exploit established ideas rather than explore new ones.  Time to rethink the model.  One of the most successful ways I've seen to generate creativity is through cross-pollination.  Years ago, I worked with a division of DuPont which shared its incredible mind trust with the food and beverage industry.  The concept was basic but revolutionary:  Take the best of the best technology and ideas from the greatest minds around, regardless of the industry, share them, and make them relevant to new applications.  The innovation was incredible -- and also reinforced that "borrowing" is not a dirty word.  How are you generating more creativity within your organization?

This blog entry falls under the topic of "inspiration."  This weekend, the Splash for the Cure Team participated in the 16th Annual Making Strides Against Breast Cancer walk in Exeter, NH.  This year's event raised more than $200,000, with additional donations coming in on Sunday.  It is truly inspiring to see thousands of people joining together for a single cause.  Many thanks to the entire Splash for the Cure team.  We took important steps forward in the journey to cure this disease.  See you next year!