CREATIVE THINKING AND INNOVATION

‘ASK TOMORROW’S QUESTIONS, SOLVE TOMORROW’S PROBLEMS’

MARTIN CONSTABLE

Saigon, Vietnam Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology

Creative Thinking and Innovation

Martin Constable

August 23, 2017 Contents

Course Description 1

Overview of Lectures 3

1 Task One: Lie to Us 5 1.1 The task ...... 5

2 Lecture One: Three Case Histories 7 2.1 The Palm Pilot ...... 7 2.2 The Blackberry ...... 10 2.3 The iPhone ...... 12 2.4 General lessons ...... 13 2.4.1 You are never alone ...... 13 2.4.2 Keep your eye on the prize ...... 13 2.4.3 That obscure object of desire ...... 13 2.4.4 Live every day as if you are going to die ...... 14 2.5 Lecture one: talking point ...... 16 2.6 Summary of lecture one ...... 17 2.7 Lecture one: further reading ...... 18

3 Task Two: Your Mobile 21 3.1 The task ...... 21 3.2 The assessment criteria ...... 22

4 Lecture Two: Problems and Solutions 23 4.1 A classification of problems ...... 23 4.1.1 Applied and unapplied problems ...... 23 4.1.2 General problems ...... 24 4.1.3 Fuzzy vs clearly-stated problems ...... 25 4.2 A classification of solutions ...... 27 4.2.1 Linear inheritance ...... 27 4.2.2 The appropriation ...... 28 4.2.3 The random mutation ...... 29 4.2.4 The cross-breed ...... 30 4.2.5 The re-purpose ...... 31 4.2.6 The tool box ...... 32 4.3 Lecture two: talking point ...... 36 4.4 Summary of lecture two ...... 37 4.5 Lecture two: further reading ...... 38

5 Task Three: Future Thinking 39 5.1 The task ...... 40 5.2 The assessment criteria ...... 41

6 Lecture Three: The Creative Process 43 6.1 The bumpy ride ...... 43 6.2 The importance of re-combination and play ...... 46 6.3 Creative methodologies ...... 47 6.3.1 The proxy ...... 48 6.3.2 The fresh view ...... 48 6.3.3 Breaking it down ...... 50 6.3.4 The patch and the troubleshoot ...... 50 6.3.5 Start again ...... 51 6.3.6 Dreams and coffee ...... 52 6.4 Lecture three: talking point ...... 56 6.5 Summary of lecture three ...... 57 6.6 Lecture three: further reading ...... 58

7 Lecture Four: The Artist and Their Environment 59 7.1 The creative individual ...... 59 7.1.1 Can anyone be an innovator? ...... 59 7.1.2 Hard work ...... 60 7.1.3 Intelligence, skill and taste ...... 60 7.1.4 The enquiring mind ...... 61 7.1.5 Against the establishment ...... 62 7.1.6 Individual and collective authorship ...... 63 7.2 The creative environment ...... 65 7.2.1 The skunkworks ...... 65 7.2.2 Reinvention ...... 66 7.2.3 Technology as an environment ...... 67 7.2.4 The creative routine ...... 68 7.3 Lecture four: talking point ...... 72 7.4 Summary of lecture four ...... 74 7.5 Lecture four: further reading ...... 75

8 Task Four: Choice of Projects 77 8.1 The task ...... 77 8.1.1 Option one: the insane king’s palace ...... 78 8.1.2 Option two: the alien’s tourist guide ...... 79 8.1.3 Option three: the party ...... 80 8.2 The assessment criteria ...... 81 Course Description

“Don’t dream it, be it!”

Dr. Frank-N-Furter The Rocky Horror Picture Show

If it were not for innovation, we would all be still living in caves and hunting mammoth. To be innovative requires that we ask tomorrow’s questions and solve tomorrow’s problems. This course introduces several key theories, ideas and strategies each of which are designed to develop your creativity and innovation. Key questions are asked: what form does innovation take? What constitutes an interesting problem? Is there anything unique about a creative individual? Practical exercises encourage you to apply what you learn: to develop next-generation thinking, today!

Martin Constable 2016, RMIT, Vietnam

1

Overview of Lectures

Their are four lectures in this course. Each builds upon the preceding. Lecture One: Three Case Histories. Three mobile devices are examined: the Blackberry (RIM), the Pilot (Palm Computing) and the iPhone (Apple). Each were in their time very innovative products. Each initially succeeded, and two ultimately failed, for very particular reasons. General lessons are drawn. Lecture Two: Problems and Solutions. The focus of this lecture is on the creative output. Any innovative act can be divided into two phases: finding an interesting problem and finding an effective solution. This lecture offers a classification of these phases: defining different classes of problems and solutions. Lecture Three: The Creative Process. The focus of this lecture is on the creative act. What goes on in the sanctity of the artist’s studio? This lecture examines the lived process of creativity. Like any process, it has a beginning and an end. Practical creative strategies are examined. Lecture Four: The Artist and Their Environment. The focus of this lecture is on the creative person. Is their anything special about them? How do they become effective innovators? Every creative person functions within an environment. Some are more effective than others.

3

Item 1

Task One: Lie to Us

1.1 The task

The first lecture will address the history of three products. The history of a thing will tell us a lot about its nature: what makes it particular and unique. For this first individual activity, you are to write a short history of yourself (around 50 words). The catch is that everything you tell us must be a fiction. The catch within the catch is that this fiction must also in some way be derived from the truth. As an example, I can tell you something about myself:

“I was born on mars, and fell to earth when I was five. My father was an electric lightbulb and my mother was a swan.”

This fiction is based on the following truth:

“I was born in Canada, and moved to the UK when I was five. My father was a physicist and my mother was an artist.”

Choose a few of your favourite responses and discus them in the Message Board. You should discus the fiction, not the true facts. Hence:

Acceptable response: “...what colour lightbulb was your father?”

Unacceptable response: “...tell us more about your father.”

You will find that the way that people discus your fiction, will conform to the ‘rules’ of the fiction. Answers that you give will be similarly consistent. In this way, your fiction will expand in a detailed and consistent manner. Of course, the larger function of this exercise is to encourage you to get to know each other.

5

Item 2

Lecture One: Three Case Histories

Mobile devices now play an intimate part in our day-to-day lives. The modern smartphone is a multi-function device that doubles as a calendar, camera and entertainment centre. Importantly, through the app store, it can be customised to serve a diverse range of needs. There is a history behind the mobile device that extends back over a hundred years. However, this section details only three devices from the recent past: the Pilot (made by Palm), the Blackberry (by RIM) and Apple’s iPhone. Each of these products were, in their time, revolutionary. The particular merit of each device will be described, and key figures in their development will be introduced. Any notable failings relating to the device will also be discussed. At the end of the lecture, general lessons will be drawn from these histories.

2.1 The Palm Pilot

Figure 2.1: The Palm Pilot (introduced in 1997).

The Palm Pilot (Fig. 2.1) was a low-powered Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) small enough to fit in a shirt pocket. Introduced by Palm Computing

7 in 1997, the novelty of the Pilot was that it was small, simple and it worked. The PDA devices that had preceded it (e.g. the Zoomer and Apple’s Newton), aspired to be pocket PCs: fully-fledged, hand-held mini-computers. Compared to them, the Palm Pilot was extremely underpowered and lacking in features. But what it did, it did very well. The core feature of the Palm Pilot was not the hardware, but its elegant and flawless synchronisation software, which paired with similar software on the user’s desktop. It featured a calendar, an address book, memos and a to-do list. Its own handwriting recognition system, Graffiti, was a huge advance on Apple’s forays into similar technology. Uniquely, it was also small enough to fit comfortably into a shirt pocket, and was extremely cheap. It helped that Palm produced a Software Developer Kit (SDK), using which a developer could make applications that would run on the Pilot. This was enormously popular, and the Pilot became the centre of a lively app community. All these qualities combined to produce a device that people were naturally attracted to. Palm’s product manager Rob Haitani famously described this quality as “...the zen of Palm” [1]. Palm Computing was founded by Jeff Hawkins, an awkward and lanky man with a passion for enquiry that extended across different fields. As well as being an accomplished engineer, he had also studied the workings of the human brain, and it was this knowledge that greatly helped in his development of Graffiti. He had a talent for seeing simple solutions to complex problems. Chris Raff, one of Palm’s engineers, described this quality:

“He had the sort of common sense and logic that just can’t be learned. He would say, ‘What’s important is...’ and it would be clear what decision we should make” [1].

In developing the Palm Pilot he displayed a maniacal focus on simplicity, strongly resisting any attempt to add unnecessary features to the palm. He was also detail-focused and got involved in the most minute details of its design, always offering clear and concise input. For example, he rejected the idea of round edges on the body casing, stating simply that: “Curves never subtract space, they always add space” [1]. Its small size was an integral part of Jeff’s vision, a vision that he expressed succinctly in note-form:

1. Price. The target price was $299: cheap enough to buy on impulse.

2. Size. For Jeff, there was no point to a hand-held device unless it could also fit comfortably in a shirt pocket.

3. Simplicity. It had to be easy to use, and fast to learn. It should not be much more complex than a Filofax, which were all the rage at the time.

4. Synchronisation with the PC. Jeff saw the Palm Pilot not as a small PC (which its antecedents had tried to be) but as a satellite device: tethered to the user’s desktop PC.

Jeff’s strong feelings against unnecessary complexity was perhaps a response to his easier experiences developing software for the ‘Zoomer’, which was a PDA he developed collaboratively with Casio, Tandy Corporation and GeoWorks. Though it had potential as an idea, the final product was over-featured and slow.

8 Moreover, the creative process was governed by a sprawling mess of competing parties: middle-manager, sub-contractors, corporate types, lawyers etc. If Jeff had a failing, it was his humble and shy nature. He had none of Steve Jobs’s arrogance, and did not like asserting himself with his employees. It was for this reason that he passed up the opportunity to become the CEO of the company, instead employing someone else to do the job (Donna Dubinsky). Jeff was incredibly focused on making the Palm Pilot a device centred on ease of use. His prototyping process is legendary in the world of product design, and is described briefly in section 6.3.1 on page 48. When Palm first developed the idea of the Pilot, it was nowhere near rich enough as a company to afford to take it to production on its own. It therefore felt obliged to partner with a large company: U.S. Robotics. This proved to be a mistake, as this parent company did not understand the ‘zen of Palm’, which remained with Jeff and a few key Palm founding members. U.S. Robotics were only one of the many parent companies to be involved in Palm’s history, and Palm was never to find their perfect partner. Their corporate history was wildly complex, with a vast amount of corporate bed-swapping. This is shown in Fig. 2.2. It tells a story of initial inspiration, followed by slow fracture and eventual decline.

Figure 2.2: The wildly complicated history of Palm. It is so complex, that I suggest you Zoom in to see the details. If you are viewing this as a low-rez pdf (less than 1 MB), or as printed matter, then download the file separately from here: http://opticalenquiry.com/files/palm timeline s.png.

9 2.2 The Blackberry

Figure 2.3: The Blackberry (introduced in 1999).

The Blackberry (Fig. 2.3), made by Canadian company Research in Motion (RIM), evolved from simple pager technology, of which RIM was an expert. The Blackberry was not so much a device, as a front-end to a sophisticated messaging network. Using it, users could pick up and send email, via the specialised Blackberry Enterprise Server (BES). The first models were licensed only to large companies, who supported them on their own networks, using BES. Soon the Blackberry became so popular, that RIM made them available to the general public through the phone carriers. In those days the phone networks had little mobile support for the internet, so receiving and sending email on a mobile device seemed magical. The extra value that Blackberry offered was a push service, whereby emails could be received at the same time they were sent (as opposed to manually pressing a ‘receive mail’ button). It meshed perfectly with the Microsoft Exchange Server, which was of standard use in the corporate world. Palm’s software was not beautiful, but it did the job beautifully. Power users could use its many keyboard shortcuts. Speaking of which... the Blackberry had its own physical keyboard, designed for typing with thumbs and which offered predictive text. From a niche product, available only to corporate users, it went on to become a favourite in the consumer market. Its street name was the crackberry for its addictive quality. Of great attraction to the common user was the fact that it offered free messages, something the carriers charged for. RIM was a very odd company. For a start... it was Canadian (hardly the epicentre of technical innovation that California is). Also, its corporate structure was pure crazy: it had two co-CEOs: one for technical functions (Mike Lazaridis) and one for sales and marketing (Jim Balsillie). These guys were also the two Co-Chairmen. Mike Lazaridis was the key developer of the Blackberry. He was an engineering genius with a passion for solving problems. However, there was very little communication between Blackberry’s corporate halves. This disjoin showed in how ugly the Blackberry’s software was, with little attention paid to the finer points of its visual design (n.b. software engineers can’t design elegant user interfaces to save their lives). As the small company grew, their corporate structure became very shabby, with many middle managers working towards their own agenda. As one (anony-

10 mous) former employee put it:

“...RIM went functioning in the same way as ...a 15,000 people company as it did as a 100 people startup. Not as well, but just as chaotic. What is normal in a startup cannot and will not function in a large company. They grew too fast and did not grow right” [3].

From being pretty much the only players in the corporate mobile email market, they were caught out by the success of the iPhone. Blackberry’s customers had always been the corporate world. They were ‘locked-in’ as partners, to the point where Palm did almost no advertising. The street consumer was not on their radar. However, in the corporate world it was this consumer that was the actual user of the device, and it was these users who went directly to their IT departments to ask if they could instead use their iPhones for work instead of the corporate Blackberry. Blackberry had made a virtue out of saving the phone carriers money by making the Blackberry service as light on their networks as possible. It caught them by surprise how effectively Steve Jobs had negotiated new terms with the phone carriers, terms which were not very favourable to those carriers. Apple’s machine featured a fully-fledged web browser, guaranteed to put incredible strain on the networks unless the carriers completely overhauled them... which (amazingly) they agreed to do. The visual appeal of the iPhone was also a culture shock to RIM. David Yach, RIM’s chief technology officer, learned from the iPhone that “...beauty matters” [4]. Their fall from grace was total and is succinctly summarised in Fig. 2.4 which shows Blackberry’s share price over the years 2003 to 2015. The red line marks the point at which the iPhone was introduced. Eeek!

Figure 2.4: Blackberry stock market evaluation from 2003 to 20015. The red line marks the point at which the iPhone was introduced (data from Google Finance).

RIM tried responding: creating new touch phone models with a new OS which even featured an app store. But this change did not please their corporate partners, nor the email-junkies, who were their core fan base. Email on these

11 new machines was a joyless experience compared to the Blackberry of old, with many of the old short-cuts done away with. This infuriated their dwindling user-base, whose loyalty was being sorely tested. RIM as a company was also very slow to change, with many layers of corporate fluff between a decision and its implementation. Again, another anonymous former employee speaks:

“(The management) increasingly resorted to a fear-based style over time... Project managers were more keen on following process than getting things done....RIM’s culture had become extremely risk averse. For a technology company, this is poison” [3].

2.3 The iPhone

Figure 2.5: Apple’s iPhone (introduced in 2007).

Superficially, the iPhone was not new. It bore a heavy resemblance to smart- phones that had proceeded it (e.g. the Compaq Pocket PC) and its OS bore a superficial resemblance to the standard Symbian OS that powered most mobile phones at the time. What set it apart was the sheer power and candy-coloured beauty of its OS. Essentially, it was an extremely stripped-down version of OS X, offering (for example) a browsing experience that was almost identical to its desktop cousin. Microsoft had tried this in their Windows ‘Pocket PC’, but did not have the elegance or focus to pull it off. Indeed, within Microsoft the desktop division was actively engaged in sabotaging the interests of the mobile division. The iPhone also featured a touch screen. Most phones at that time either used a physical device to navigate the screen (e.g. a scroll wheel or a keyboard), or a stylus. Touch screens were not new, and neither were multi-touch gestures (e.g. pinch to zoom etc) but Apple’s implementation of them was slick and attractive. First released in 2007, the iPhone came from a troubled background. In 2005, Apple had partnered with Motorola to produce a phone called the Rokr. It featured a limited version of Apple’s iTunes, and for a while even earned the unofficial moniker of iPhone. However, the relationship between Motorola and Apple was not a positive one, coming in part from a clash of cultures (Motorola was a dull brand, that was completely beholden to the phone carriers). Partly in response to this experience, Steve Jobs decided to partner directly with a phone carrier, Cingular (now AT&T) and to make the phone in-house. The

12 iPhone’s browsing requirements were in excess of what was commonly available on the networks at the time. Phone carries had (and have) a reputation for being very protective of their bandwidth, and they were not naturally inclined to commit to a deal that would require them to upgrade their networks. It was Jobs’s negotiating power, and the lustful appeal of the product, that changed their mind.

2.4 General lessons

The following are some lessons which I would like to draw from the preceding case histories. I have tried to generalise them in such a manner as to make them broadly applicable outside of the mobile device domain.

2.4.1 You are never alone All these devices were part of a larger ecosystem, upon which they were depen- dent. Palm’s failing was that they never gained enough autonomy within this ecosystem to become what they wished to be, being always beholden to partners that did not share their vision. In all three cases, the company’s relationship with mobile phone carriers played an important part in its success and/or downfall. The carriers were used to calling the shots: deciding how expensive a phone should be and even what capabilities it should feature. Apple’s brilliance was in changing this power relationship. Developers were also an important part of this ecosystem. Before Apple’s app store, Palm’s developer community was the largest for a mobile device. This brings little direct income to a company (the Apple App store barely breaks even), but it encourages users to customise their device to suite their own particular needs, and can easily translate into sales.

2.4.2 Keep your eye on the prize All three innovators were incredibly focused on the details of their products, as well as having an eye on the larger picture. They would not let these products become victim to feature-creep, or committee-by-design, and all of them knew which niche market their product would appeal to. All of them also had engineering backgrounds, and could get their hands dirty with the nitty-gritty of the details. Both Steve Jobs and Jeff Hawkins had prior experience working on projects the creative control of which was not exclusively theirs. This experience went a long way towards informing their compulsively focused attitudes.

2.4.3 That obscure object of desire In their time, each of these products was incredibly desirable. They each served their purpose, but did so in a way that people wanted to engage with. An object can only be desired if the user does not posses it, and each of these devices offered something hitherto unavailable: calendar synchronisation, email on the go, music on the go etc. Desire evaporates the moment the user

13 feels that the desired object is comprehensively obtained. This is the moment that the user starts taking the object for granted, and starts looking for the next desirable object. I would also class simplicity as an attribute of a desirable object. Certainly, these three devices are paragons of concision. The Palm and the Blackberry were, in essence, both single-use devices and the iPhone’s interface is so simple that even a child can learn it in minutes.

2.4.4 Live every day as if you are going to die Technology makes and breaks businesses. Think of the typewriter and its demise in the face of the word processor. Here the word processor was functioning as a disruptive technology: one that makes existing technologies redundant. If a company only concerns itself with serving the stated needs of its customers, then it will never develop products or services that serve their future (unstated) needs. Only one out of twenty companies lasts longer than fifty years [2]. A wise company lives every day as if their entire operating model will soon become invalid, and plans accordingly. Blackberry acted as if its dominance in the mobile email market would last forever. They did not realise that their fundamental market model was going to change: that consumers were going to be deciding what mobile email device they would use, as opposed to IT departments. When the winds changed, they responded as fast as they could, which wasn’t fast enough.

14 Bibliography

[1] Butter, A. & Pogue, D., 2002, Piloting Palm: The inside story of Palm, Handspring, and the birth of the billion-dollar handheld industry. John Wiley & Sons. [2] Feser, C. 2011, Serial Innovators: Firms That Change the World, Wiley. [3] Silcoff, S., McNish, J., & Ladurantaye, S., 2013, ‘Inside the fall of BlackBerry: How the smartphone inventor failed to adapt’, The Globe and Mail, Viewed 8 November 2016, http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/the-inside- story-of-why-blackberry-is-failing/article14563602/ [4] McNish, J., & Silcoff, S., 2015, Losing the Signal: The Untold Story Behind the Extraordinary Rise and Spectacular Fall of BlackBerry.

15 2.5 Lecture one: talking point

The following is the talking point for this lecture. It is to be the starting points for the discussion that takes place in the Message Board. Some CEOs are brought in to take charge of a company at a time when it is doing very poorly. Their task is to turn that company around (i.e. reverse its fortune). Such CEOS are called ‘turnaround CEOs’. What do you think are the ideal qualities of a turnaround CEO? Would you marry such a person? How does creativity play a part in their personal qualities? How could such a leader have saved RIM from its near terminal decline?

16 2.6 Summary of lecture one

2 Lecture One: Three Case Histories Three mobile devices are examined...

2.1 The Palm Pilot The Palm Pilot (introduced in 1997) was a very successful personal organiser (a calendar, an address book and to-do list). It synchronised with similar software on the user’s computer.

2.2 The Blackberry For a long time, the Blackberry (introduced in 1999) was the most effective way to pick up email on-the-go.

2.3 The iPhone Well... we all know what an iPhone (introduced in 2007) is, don’t we?

2.4 General lessons What lessons can be learned from these case histories?

2.4.1 You are never alone No product exists in a vacuum. These devices were part of a large ecosystem that included an app store, the phone companies and the users.

2.4.2 Keep your eye on the prize The inventors/developers of these devices were extraordi- narily focused men who were obsessed with the details of their creations

2.4.3 That obscure object of desire All these products were desirable.

2.4.4 Live every day as if you are going to die No company is successful for ever: they are all vulnerable to being made irrelevant by the next desirable product.

17 2.7 Lecture one: further reading

Here are the key references I used when writing this lecture. Some of the best stuff I found in the comments section of online articles.

1. Anonymous (submitted to Geller J. S.). ‘Open letter to BlackBerry bosses: Senior RIM exec tells all as company crumbles around him’ BGR.com, 2011. Viewed 8 November 2016, http://bgr.com/2011/06/30/open-letter-to-blackberry-bosses-senior- rim-exec-tells-all-as-company-crumbles-around-him/ An honest (scathing) account of Blackberry’s corporate culture, from a senior executive. The comments section has some input from employees, users and developers.

2. Butter, A. & Pogue, D., 2002, Piloting Palm: The inside story of Palm, Handspring, and the birth of the billion-dollar handheld industry. John Wiley & Sons. e-book available here: http://rmit.eblib.com.au/patron/FullRecord.aspx?p= 137591 (RMIT Vietnam Library) David Pogue is one of the best technology writers there is. This corporate biography is fascinating, detailed and well-written. How- ever, it stops at around 2001, just before things got really inter- esting for Palm.

3. Dunphy C., 2011, ‘Palm: the Rise and Fall of a Legend’, Techno Buffalo. Viewed 8 November 2016, http://www.technobuffalo.com/2011/03/31/palm-the-rise-and-fall- of-a-legend/ This online article gives a full timeline of Palm’s rise and demise. I referred to it heavily when drawing my own timeline.

4. McNish, J., & Silcoff, S., 2015, Losing the Signal: The Untold Story Behind the Extraordinary Rise and Spectacular Fall of BlackBerry RMIT Vietnam Library has one physical copy of this book. This book goes into extraordinary detail on the founding, success and fall of Blackberry and RIM.

5. Silcoff, S., McNish, J., & Ladurantaye, S., 2013, ‘Inside the fall of Black- Berry: How the smartphone inventor failed to adapt’, The Globe and Mail. Viewed 8 November 2016, http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/the-inside-story- of-why-blackberry-is-failing/article14563602/ This article, based on interviews with key personnel, gives a good overview of Blackberry’s history. However, its content might be seen as being slightly self-serving of those senior personnel who were interviewed. It is in the comments section where the real gems are. Here anonymous former employees give their unvarnished opinions.

18 6. Vogelstien F. ‘And Then Steve Said, “Let There Be an iPhone”, New York Times magazine, 2013. Viewed 8 November 2016, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/06/magazine/and-then-steve-said- let-there-be-an-iphone.html A good article detailing the history of the iPhone. 7. Vogelstien F. ‘The Untold Story: How the iPhone Blew Up the Wireless Industry’, Wired magazine, 2008. Viewed 8 November 2016, http://archive.wired.com/gadgets/wireless/magazine/16-02/ff iphone?currentPage= all Another good iPhone article, this one detailing Apple’s pasionate relationship with the carriers.

N. B. For any book that you cant find online or in the library, you might with to go to www.goodreads.com. Here books are reviewed in great detail by the Goodread comunity.

19

Item 3

Task Two: Your Mobile

3.1 The task

The first lecture addressed the history of three mobile products. This activity will expand upon the topic, using your own phone as a point of reference. Your own mobile device you have doubtlessly tailored to suite your own needs. The apps that you use are suitable to your life and your aspirations. The way that you use the built-in hardware is also in response to your own needs, as is the way that you organises your apps and files. This organisation extends to the accessories that you use: the case, the earphones etc. Few things in your life are as familiar to you as your mobile, and it is this intimate knowledge that this activity will call upon. Using no more that 10 slides (Powerpoint, Keynotes etc), reflect upon ‘the mobile device’ with a particular focus on your own mobile. You should address one or more of the following issues:

• How is a mobile device different to one that is not mobile? • What is the difference between a good and a bad mobile device? • What is the difference between a good and a bad app? • What is the difference between a good and a bad OS?

• How does a mobile device integrate into your life?

Save these slides as a pdf and upload to ‘Submissions’.

21 3.2 The assessment criteria

This activity will be assessed with attention to such things as:

• The level of detail that you have engaged with. • The clarity of your presentation. Your presentation should be formatted in a clear manner, with effective header structure and consistent styling. Marks will be deducted for technical hitches such as incompatible fonts, missing media etc. • The clarity of your argument. You should be able to make a clear case, which is supported by lucid argument.

22 Item 4

Lecture Two: Problems and Solutions

The task of a classification is to sort different aspects of a phenomenon into different ‘classes’, like a scientist would sort dead bugs. A classification is like a map: helping us find our way around that phenomenon. This section offers a light classification of problems and solutions.

4.1 A classification of problems

The creative process has a beginning: which is a problem. Its important to understand that I use the word problem very loosely, to assume that all innovations address problems. Problems can be given to us by other people (e.g. a product designer being given the problem of designing a set of headphones), or they can be vague and nebulous (e.g. a artist with a desire to paint). The advantage of this approach is that creativity in the arts, sciences and commerce can all be subject to the same critical approach. There are differences between these creative environments, but for the purposes of this course I don’t believe them to be very important. Finding good problems can be 90% of the creative task. In interviewing a large number of Nobel laureates, the sociologist Robert Merton found that: “Almost invariably they lay great emphasis on the importance of problem-finding, not only problem-solving” [6].

4.1.1 Applied and unapplied problems An applied problem is one whose end-use application is known from the start. Frequently such problems are rooted in the everyday lives of the designer, inventor, consumer etc. In this context let us not forget that the can opener was invented around 80 years (1855) after the first can (1772) (what took them so long?). If all our innovations addressed applied problems, we would still be looking for new and exciting ways to light fires or hunt mammoths. Next-generation innovations address problems which we have not yet had, for example: ‘how can I

23 make my spaceship go faster?’ (Fig. 4.1). This is where unapplied problems are important, which are problems that start off with no known end-use application.

(a) (b)

Figure 4.1: (a) A mammoth. (b) A spaceship. Questions?

In the academic world, such problems are addressed by something called ‘pure research’. Such research is not always without eventual real-world use. As Bertil Andersson, the President of Nanyang Technological University, frequently says: “There are two types of research: applied, and not-yet-applied.” In 1965, Richard Feynman won a noble prize for the very applicable work he did in visualising problems in quantum electrodynamics. However, this work had a very unapplied (even whimsical) start:

“I was in the cafeteria and some guy, fooling around, throws a plate in the air. As the plate went up in the air I saw it wobble, and I noticed the red medallion of Cornell on the plate going around. It was pretty obvious to me that the medallion went around faster than the wobbling. I had nothing to do, so I start figuring out the motion of the rotating plate. I discovered that when the angle is very slight, the medallion rotates twice as fast as the wobble rate: two to one. It came out of a complicated equation! I went on to work out equations for wobbles. ../.. And before I knew it... the whole business that I got the Nobel prize for came from that piddling around with the wobbling plate” [8].

Feynman’s unapplied enquiry was driven by playful curiosity, which is a key feature of innovation. This will be elaborated upon in Section 6.2 on page 46.

4.1.2 General problems A general problem is one that is of application to an entire domain. Improving the effectiveness of supply and demand is a general problem. Improving the efficiency of a factory devoted to making blue tennis shoes is not a general problem as it is too specific. General problems are more usually a feature of the sciences: physics, engineering, economics etc. Addressing a general problem is a solution that is also general: of broad application throughout the domain. The assembly line (Fig. 4.2), which was perfected by the industrialist Henry Ford (1863–1947), is the classic example, being of general application throughout the manufacturing world. It is a feature of general solutions that they can be stated

24 succinctly as a set of principles, as shown in Henry Ford’s description of his assembly line:

1. Place the tools and the men in the sequence of the operation so that each component part shall travel the least possible distance while in the process of finishing.

2. Use work slides or some other form of carrier so that when a workman completes his operation, he drops the part always in the same place–which place must always be the most convenient place to his hand–and if possible have gravity carry the part to the next workman for his own.

3. Use sliding assembling lines by which the parts to be assembled are delivered at convenient distance [3].

The wonderful thing about principles is that they are portable. That is to say, they can be moved from one location to another and still work. Henry Ford’s assembly line is as applicable to the manufacture of your iPhone as it was to car manufacturing 100 years ago.

Figure 4.2: The production line: a general principle with broad application.

4.1.3 Fuzzy vs clearly-stated problems A fuzzy problem isn’t really a class of problem, rather it is the default state of most problems until the innovator performs their creative magic upon it, and by doing so makes it non-fuzzy (i.e. clear). In this way, defining the problem becomes a key part of the creative process. As an oft-quoted (anonymous) professor of engineering at Yale University said, “If I had only one hour to solve a problem, I would spend up to two-thirds of that hour in attempting to exactly define what the problem is” [2]. Succinctness is a property of exactitude, and a very succinct form of expression is the image. After all, isn’t a picture worth a thousand words? This is precisely the strength of diagrams, sketches and suchlike. During the Crimean War (1853–1856), more soldiers died of illness than in battle(!). For the most part, these illness were entirely preventable: brought on by poor hygiene and dirty conditions. In her desire to communicate clearly

25 this problem to politicians, the nurse and accomplished statistician, Florence Nightingale (1820–1910), famously expressed it in the form of an image: specifi- cally a type of chart known as a polar chart. It was precise, easily understood and concise (see Fig. 4.3).

Figure 4.3: Florence Nightingale’s polar chart, visually expressing the cause of deaths during the Crimean War.

Nightingale was not the only innovator to favour visualisation as a means to state and clarify problems. In talking about Richard Feynman, the mathe- matician, Robert Talbert, remarked that he was “struck by (his) reliance upon visualisation to make his dramatic contributions to quantum theory.” [7]. The Psychologist Jacques Hadamard estimated that around %90 of mathematicians address mathematical problems visually: perceiving them as vague visual no- tions [6]. The particular strength of the visual is that it is ’pre-language’, and can therefore accommodate multiple readings. This allows the creative process to flow without becoming fixed by language. Sometimes a problem requires rephrasing before it is ready for use. Consider the following question asked of an art student: “Why did you paint the flower blue?” This is a very difficult question to answer. It presents the required answer as an intellectual reflection, something that the student might not be equipped to supply. Consider the same question, phrased differently:“What made you paint the flower blue?” Here the same question is presented as a motivation. We can say that this new phrasing addresses the same issue, but from a different position. This ‘re-location’ is a feature of the re-phrased question. Sometimes all that is needed to solve a problem is for it to be verbalised. When the problem is spoken out loud, the solution becomes implicitly stated. In this way, discussing a problem with a friend or colleague is a valuable part of the creative process. I remember talking with a young art student about his paintings, which were very long and narrow landscapes. They were so long that it was impossible to see their entirety unless one stood far back from the paintings. However, this was impossible, as his studio was very small. His problem was that he did not know why he painted these landscapes, having no natural interest in rural or pastoral themes. In an entirely different context, he also mentioned that as the result of a childhood accident he was blind in one eye (something that was not obvious to the casual observer). In a sudden flash of inspiration, he put two and two together: to realise that the reason he made

26 these long landscapes was to provide in his restricted studio space the perceptual experience of binocular vision that the accident had deprived him of. This entire revelation came with only minimal input from me, my function being no more than a ‘sounding board.’

4.2 A classification of solutions

Here I use the term ‘solution’ as loosely as I used the term ‘problem’: to refer to any finished response to the problem. For any given problem, there are multiple solutions, with no single solution being better than another. It is for this reason that there are more classes of solutions than there are classes of problems.

4.2.1 Linear inheritance Most solutions resemble other solutions. Moreover, solutions tend to be im- provements (or at least developments) upon older solutions. This resemblance, may be one of function or form. An example of a linear inheritance defined by resemblance of function is that between a Filofax (designed in 1921, but a favourite for the 1980’s businessman), a Psion organiser (1982), and Microsoft Outlook’s online calendar (2007) (see Fig. 4.4). Note the dis-similarity of their appearance, despite their similarity of function (they are all organisers centred around calendars). An example of a linear inheritance of form is that between Apple’s Newton (1993), the Pocket PC (as exemplified by the iPAQ rx1950) (2006) and Apple’s iPhone (2007) (see Fig. 4.5). These are visually similar, yet the first was a PDA, the second was a Pocket PC (which had no phone functionality) and the third was a smartphone.

(a) (b) (c)

Figure 4.4: (a) A Filofax. (b) A Psion Organizer. (c) Microsoft Outlook’s online calendar. Three devices with a linear inheritance of function.

(a) (b) (c)

Figure 4.5: (a) Apple’s Newton PDA. (b) The iPAQ rx1950 Pocket PC. (c) The iPhone smartphone. Three devices with a linear inheritance of form.

27 For a solution to resemble another does not necessarily denote active reference on the part of its designer. Sometimes such inheritance is inevitable. For example, it would be hard to design a car that does not at least superficially resemble Henry Ford’s original ‘Model T’ (which itself resembled a cart). Linear inheritance is iterative: one thing building upon another. Most of Apple’s products have been iterative developments upon existing products or ideas, not always their own. What makes them special is the attention to detail that they put into their design and also their reliability and interoperability. Not for nothing is their unofficial slogan ‘it just works’.

4.2.2 The appropriation

An appropriation is a solution that overtly references other solutions, the reference being intentional and obvious. An example from the world of animation is the obvious influence of ‘The Jetsons’ (first screened in 1962) on ‘The Powerpuff Girls’ (first screened in 2004) (see Fig. 4.6). The makers of the Powerpuff Girls went so far as to include an ‘easter egg’ appearances of George Jetson (a Jetson character) in one of the Powerpuff Girls episodes. This is a respectful ‘tip of the hat’ to the original (i.e. a homage). An example from the world of architecture is the overt influence of classicism upon the design of the Sony Building (1984, formerly AT&T building, architect Philip Johnson) in New York City (see Fig. 4.7). Taking it one stage further is the M2 Building in Tokyo (see Fig. 4.8). Designed by Kengo Kuma, its huge central column appropriates the classical appropriation of Johnson’s building (!).

Figure 4.6: George Jetson (in white and blue) making an appearance in The Powerpuff Girls.

There is something inherently playful about appropriation... one that requires of the audience a degree of sophistication, a ‘knowingness’. Visual resemblance alone does not qualify as appropriation, it must be declared as such. For example, there is a great deal of visual resemblance between the work of Jonathan Ives (Chief Design Officer of Apple) and that of the 1960’s German designer, Dieter Ram (see Fig. 4.9). However, as the reference was not flagged, it was not an appropriation, but a (ahem) ‘borrow’. Appropriation relies on the fact that an old thing becomes new if it is used with new intent.

28 (a) (b)

Figure 4.7: (a) A Greek pediment. This is appropriated by (b) The AT&T Building in New York, architect Philip Johnson.

Figure 4.8: M2 Building in Tokyo (1991), architect Kengo Kuma. Appropriating Johnson’s appropriation.

4.2.3 The random mutation

The random mutation spontaneously generates with no direct precedents. It is entirely novel in the task it performs, or the way that it performs it. An example of a random mutation is the Sony Walkman (see Fig. 4.10). Certainly, portable tape recorders were not new, but the Walkman’s function as an ‘on the go’ entertainment machine was unique. Neither was there a call from the public for such a device. After all, how could they desire something that they did not know existed? Take that, focus groups! It was designed almost entirely on the whim of Sony’s co-founder Masaru Ibuka, to serve his personal desire to listen to opera on-the-go. This brand-new product, spawned a brand-new industry: home recording. In an act of pure genius, Sony included two headphone jacks on the Walkman, adding a social dimension to the experience of listening to music. Resulting from this was a completely new phenomenon: the ‘mixtape’. The mixtape was a tape recording of selected songs, a forerunner of today’s playlist. What made it different to commercial products was that it was specially made by the user for a loved one or a friend. The Walkman also directly challenged the music industries, making home recording easier than ever. The music industry is still

29 (a) (b)

Figure 4.9: (a) The iPod, designed by Jonathan Ives. (b) A radio, designed by Dieter Rams. I mean... the other way round.

Figure 4.10: The disruptive Sony Walkman, which invented an entire industry, and destroyed another. Two headphone jacks! trying to recover from the fallout of this change. This evidences the power of disruptive technology: a technology that disrupts or destroys established industry practices [1]. Another example is the invention of the camera, which showed us the optical realities of our world, and until then had been mediated by artists. Wars did not look like the heroic battle paintings which hung in art galleries, and kings and queens could look like warty little hogs. Imagine the impact that this had on society!

4.2.4 The cross-breed Normally the precedents of a product are of the same class as that product. Hence, cars are preceded by other cars, or similar four-wheel vehicles. The cross-breed challenges this, with the precedents of a product originating in a different class altogether. When the brilliant French artist and designer Jean Giraud (1938–2012) was designing spacesuits for the film ‘Alien’, instead of referring to the design of existing spacesuits, he looked to Japanese armour for its design influences (see Fig. 4.11). The result was a spacesuit that was unlike anything seen before.

30 (a) (b)

Figure 4.11: (a) Japanese armour. This influenced (b) Moebius’s design for the spacesuits of ‘Alien’.

4.2.5 The re-purpose Over time, most public parks develop ratty-looking foot-beaten paths which link-up the nice paved paths. These are termed ‘desire paths’. The wise land manager does not put up ‘keep off the grass’ signs. Rather he institutes this path, paving it over to make it durable and safe. In this way, the user becomes the innovator. Such a case was the invention of play-doe, which was originally developed as a means to remove stains from wallpaper (a task it is still rather good at). It did not sell well, but its manufacturers noticed that children enjoyed playing with it. Instead of putting labels on it which warned children that this was not a toy, they completely re-purposed the product as a toy. All that was needed was a re-packaging and a slight change to its formula (see Fig. 4.12).

(a) (b)

Figure 4.12: (a) Wallpaper cleaning compound, (b) Play-Doh.

A might-have-been re-purpose was ‘Hypercard’ (Fig. 4.13). This was early Mac software designed to rapidly produce applications and databases. Though it was wildly popular in the Mac community, with a slight re-purpose it could

31 have changed the world. In almost every respect it resembled the internet: the ease with which it could be extended and connected to other applications, its address-based underpinnings (Hypertext), which were very similar to HTML and its natural affinity to sorting and expressing data. The only thing it lacked was network connectivity. Even by its original author (Bill Atkinson) it is now remembered as a missed opportunity: as the internet that could have been.

Figure 4.13: Hypercard: the internet that could have been.

4.2.6 The tool box This perhaps isn’t a class of solution, rather a general observation: that many solutions are portable, having the potential to be transferred from one problem to the next. In order for a solution to be portable, it must be framed as a principle. A principle is a ‘high-level’ generally-stated truth, that can be applied across a range of ‘low-level’ problems. I can offer the following example from my own experience as a painter. When I was learning portraiture as a student, I noticed that faces are best painted with consideration of how their edges meet the background (BG). A typical arrangement is one where one edge of the face is painted light against a dark part of the BG, whilst the other edge is painted dark against a light part of the BG. This we call ‘tone wrap’ for the way that it wraps the head into the BG. The advantage is that it makes the lighting seem more three-dimensional (Fig. 4.14a). I later learned about something called ‘form wrap’, which refers to how one form physically wraps around another, like a shirt collar around a neck. Similar to tone wrap, the advantage is that it makes a form seem more three-dimensional (Fig. 4.14b). Both of these techniques are immensely useful, and there are barely any portrait painters who do not employ them. The neat thing is that they are both variants of the same high-level principle: that wrap encourages a three dimensional reading. One application of this principle refers to form, the other to light.

32 (a) (b)

Figure 4.14: (a) Tone wrap (head: dark-to-light/background: light-to-dark). (b) Form wrap (the shirt collar wrapping around the neck). Both useful to a painter, and different low-level manifestations of the same high-level principle.

An experienced creative will develop a mental library of such principle-based portable solutions. This library will grow over time, becoming larger and more sophisticated. In this way, the creative will be like a workman with a box of tools, reaching for the right tool as the requirements of the job demand.

33

Bibliography

[1] Christensen C. ‘The Innovator’s Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail’, Harvard Business School Press, 2013. [2] Finley, R. E., & Ziobro, H. R., 1966, The Manufacturing Man and His Job, ‘The Manufacturing Manager’s Skills.’ American Management Association, Inc., New York. [3] Ford, H, & Crowther, S., 1922. My Life and Work. Garden City, NY: Garden City Publishing. [4] Hardy, G. H., & Hadamard, J., 1946, An Essay on The Psychology of Invention in the Mathematical Field, Courier Corporation. [5] Leighton, R. & Feynman, R., 1985, Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman! Adventures of a Curious Character. W. W. Norton & Company (USA) [6] Merton, R. K., 1973, The Sociology of Science, Storer, N. W. (ed.). [7] Talbert, R., 2006, ‘Critical Thinking, Visualization, and Physical Intuition’ Casting Out Nines, blog post, October 11, viewed 18 November,

35 4.3 Lecture two: talking point

The following is the talking point for this lecture. It is to be the starting points for the discussion that takes place in the Message Board. What is your favourite product (other than your mobile)? How did it improve your life? Can you imagine it ever being replaced by something else? How did people manage without it, before it was invented?

36 4.4 Summary of lecture two

4 Lecture Two: Problems and Solutions Any innovative act can be divided into two phases: find- ing an interesting problem and finding an effective solu- tion.

4.1 A classification of problems Finding a good problem can be the most important part of creativity. Here are three sorts of problems:

4.1.1 Applied and unapplied problems An applied problem is a problem whose application is known from the start.

4.1.2 General problems A general problem is one that is of application in an en- tire field.

4.1.3 Fuzzy vs clearly-stated problems A fuzzy problem is one that has not been clearly defined. Sometimes defining a problem is 90% of solving it.

4.2 A classification of solutions Here is a classification of solutions:

4.2.1 Linear inheritance A human is a linear developments of a monkey.

4.2.2 The appropriation Some artists steal (bad). Some artists knowingly steal. Good... so long as the stealing is flagged as such.

4.2.3 The random mutation Some ideas come out of the blue. These can be very dis- ruptive to existing ways of doing things.

4.2.4 The cross-breed New things can come from the recombination of old things.

4.2.5 The re-purpose Take an existing product and use it for a completely new purpose!

4.2.6 The tool box If presented as a principle, a solution can be applied to many problems.

37 4.5 Lecture two: further reading

There is not nearly so much literature on problems as there is on solutions, a situation I regard as a failing.

1. Beveridge W. I. B., 1950, The Art of Scientific Investigation, New York. e-book available at Archive Org: https://archive.org/details/artofscientifici00beve A charming and easy-to-read enquiry into how scientists conduct research. 2. Christensen C. ‘The Innovator’s Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail’, Harvard Business School Press, 2013. RMIT Vietnam Library has three physical copies of this book. This excellent book address the thorny issue of disruptive tech- nology: how innovations can make older technology redundant. Unless a company dreams distant futures for itself, it runs the risk that its existing business model becomes victim to such tech- nologies. 3. Johnson. S., 2010, Where Good Ideas Come From, Penguin UK. RMIT Vietnam Library has one physical copy of this book. Packed with lots of good anecdotes, this is a very accessible book.

N. B. For any book that you cant find online or in the library, you might with to go to https://www.goodreads.com Here books are reviewed in great detail by the public. A lot of useful information about its content can be found here.

38 39 Item 5

Task Three: Future Thinking

5.1 The task

Consider the following sentence:

‘Viet Tu Ubered her way to the mall. Whilst there, she Tweeted her status on her iPhone and shared some lols and wtf moments with friends.’

Now imagine your great, great grandfather reading those words 200 years ago. Some of them would be familiar to him, used in a familiar way. Some would be familiar, used in an odd way. Some would be entirely new. Some refer to objects, some to services and some to states of mind. Each can be expanded upon greatly: what is a Tweet? What does it look like? What constitutes a good Tweet? What technologies support it? What is its history? Now consider the following sentence:

‘Kim Cuc wiffled her grif-NUK whilst parlaying with her cohort. Using exceptional Steam, she double-checked a friend, to the delight of all.’

This sentence describes a typical day in a young girl’s life, 200 years in the future. Let us assume that the things it describes are as alien to you as Tweeting and Ubering would have been to your great great grandfather. As a group, your task is to describe what you imagine Kim Cuc was talking about. This will require dreaming up future technologies and social norms. You are to explain each term, and give as much background information as reasonably possible. You may use drawings if it helps. Tip: take the meaning of no word for granted. For example: to the younger generation, the words bad and wicked can mean the opposite of what they are commonly assumed to mean. Your response should be in any form: a poster, an essay, a video, a (filmed) performance, a set of slides. 40 5.2 The assessment criteria

This activity will be assessed with attention to such things as:

• Believability. Believability does not necessarily imply real. Many people believe ‘Star Wars’ to be very believable. Believability is partly dependent upon the level of detail that you engage with, and your use of invention. • The clarity of presentation, Your presentation should be for- matted in a clear manner, with effective header structure and consistent styling. Marks will be deducted for technical hitches such as incompatible fonts, missing media etc.

• The clarity of meaning. You should be able to communicate clearly your ideas.

41

Item 6

Lecture Three: The Creative Process

The preceding lecture offered a classification of problems and solutions. Like any classification, it treated the material as if it were dead and mounted within a glass case in a museum. In contrast, this lecture examines the living creative act, which can start before the problem has been identified, and ends when the solution is road-worthy. Above all this is a process... and a very unpredictable process it is. It is usually treated as a ‘black box’ by creativity literature: something into which others cannot look, being exclusively the domain of the artist. Prepare to peek inside that box.

6.1 The bumpy ride

From your own experience of the creative process, you probably know that its beginning is different to its end. You might start off a project full of faith and hope, then, for no discernible reason, suddenly think it is awful. This is the narrative of the process: as eventful and as fraught with drama as a classic Russian novel. This process is summarised nicely in Fig. 6.1.

This is great!

This is difficult!

This is terrible!

I am terrible!

This might be o.k.!

This is great (thank god its over)!

Figure 6.1: The bumpy ride that is the creative process.

43 Too often I have seen young art students destroy their work, mistaking their creative doubt for a genuine reflection of its worth. This I term the morning after syndrome and have found that it plagues the more intelligent students the most (see Section 7.1.3 on page 60). We can say that the creative process is defined by stages, with each stage of the process being distinct to the other. However, its hard to exactly define these stages. A quick Google of the phrase ‘the creative process’ gives me the following results: ‘the four steps of the creative process’, ‘the five stages of the creative process’ and ‘the ten stages of the creative process’ (Fig. 6.2).

Figure 6.2: The (?) stages of the creative process

Some of this disparity can be accounted for by the fact that creativity in one field is not an exact match for that in another. For example, in design-thinking (the creative methodology that some designers employ) prototyping and testing are of high importance, and are recognised as separate stages, whereas in fine art they are not so important and are, at best, one stage. Nonetheless, fundamentally all these systems are talking about the same thing, but frame it in different ways. I offer below my own (six) stages of the creative process. They have been

44 selected in a manner that I hope is of general relevance to all creative practices:

1. The gathering. This is the problem-identifying stage of the process. Here ideas are gathered and explored. This stage should be playful and without judgment (see Section 6.2 on page 46). The novice’s mistake is not to be exploratory enough. Success or failure at this stage separates the geniuses from the rest of us. 2. The settling. Here the creative solution is arrived at. This might be through hard work, chance, luck or it might be delivered by angels floating down from heaven (just kidding). Whatever the process, the outcome should be a known and stated objective. The novice’s mistake is to be too vague in defining this objective. 3. The preparation. In filmmaking and animation, this stage is called pre- production. Here the work-space is prepared (important in any creative discipline), and relevant research is performed. For example, a writer writing their novel might research the layout of specific locations (like James Joyce (1882–1941) when he wrote ‘Dubliners’) and a painter might research the appearance of specific objects (like the incredible research that Th´eodore G´ericault did when he painted ‘Raft of the Medusa’). Sometimes preparation takes the form of a rehearsal. When the artist John Constable (1776 –1837) painted his huge masterpiece ‘The Haywain’, he made a full- size sketch in oil paint. No mean feat considering the final output was ten feet wide! Effective preparation can make the entire creative journey a lot easier. This is much more directed and task-oriented that which happens during the gathering phase, which is sometimes also called research. The novice mistake is not recognising the importance of this stage, wishing instead to rush into the making stages. Such an approach is more likely to produce a shoddy result. 4. The layout. This is the first of the making stages. During layout, the large features of the project are established. This also is where its structure is defined and its function is expressed. 5. The details. This is the second and last making stage. Of the details, it is often observed that the last 10% of a creative project takes 90% of your energy and time. When James Dyson was designing his bagless vacuum cleaner, the basic principles of the project were established in the course of a few evenings, using no more than pirated parts from a bag vacuum cleaner and a few sheets of cardboard (shown in Fig.6.3). This was the layout phase. The product was not finalised until 5,127 detail-obsessed prototypes later. The novice mistake is starting the details too early. Details come last! 6. The dissemination and review. The creative object is finished when the details are finished. However, the development of the creative individual continues. The creative output will be disseminated in a particular venue (for a painter: a gallery, for a poet: a publisher, for a product manufacturer: a market). The wrong venue could harm an otherwise fine product. Now also is the time when the creative should review their progress: to learn from what they have done, and to strategise appropriately. This requires

45 that they get to know what their limits and strengths are. Together these will delineate their creative identity. Having a unique identity is as important for a company as it is for a painter or poet (see Section 7.1.6 on page 63).

Figure 6.3: The first prototype for the Dyson bagless vacuum cleaner: a master- piece in cardboard!

6.2 The importance of re-combination and play

You may have noticed that each of the classifications of solutions presented in Section 4 involves, in some way or other, the re-combination of existing material. Re-combination is at the heart of the creative process, and is vital in the gathering stage. As Albert Einstein remarked:

“This combinatory or associative play seems to be the essential feature in productive thought” [6].

Should this point need further amplifying, here is a Steve Job’s quote: “Creativity is just connecting things.” Re-combination usually results from play, which may be defined as a form of creativity without pre-determined goals, and play is the life-blood of the creative individual. Preceding his cafeteria revelation, Feynman was at a low point in his life. He had just returned from working on the atom bomb: the epitome of applied research (see Section 4.1.1 on page 23). Following its use in Nagasaki, the larger moral implications of this work had sent him into a deep depression, and he lost interest in the world. His response was to knowingly commit to play: to only tackle problems that excited his curiosity. In his own words:

46 “I’m going to play with physics, whenever I want to, without worrying about any importance whatsoever” [8].

Feyneman termed this attitude ‘active irresponsibility’: knowingly and ac- tively pursing whatever charmed his eye, to the exclusion of his adult respon- sibilities. In his novel ‘Cat’s Cradle’, the American novelist Kurt Vonnegut (1922–2007), described a similar philosophy: “Unexpected invitations to travel are dancing lessons from god” [12]. Some artists, realising the importance of play, deliberately incorporate play- friendly strategies into their creative process...

• The surrealists played a game they called ‘exquisite corpse,’ which was intended to release ideas from their subconscious. It involved a single drawing being collectively authored by three artists, with each artist being unable to see each what the others had done, until the drawing was finished. • When writing lyrics for his songs, the musician David Bowie (1947–2016) would write words on individual sheets of paper which he would throw in the air. The lyrics would evolve from the chance association of words with each other as they landed on the ground. • When searching for creative ideas, Leonardo DaVinci (1452–1519) would look at stains on walls. “By indistinct things the mind is stimulated to new inventions... If you have to invent some scene, you can see their resemblances to a number of landscapes, adorned with mountains, rivers, rocks, trees, great plains, valleys and hills, in various ways” [3].

For artists, the traditional arena of play is the sketchbook. The sketchbook was first employed as a pedagogical device in the French atelier system (an early form of art school). Its function is to encourage students to seek visual ideas directly from life, without judgment or prior expectations. It was the antithesis of the French academic tradition, which placed studio-based formal exactitude above all else. A sketchbook should be a very unguarded thing, in which open enquiry and outright failure is allowed. A contemporary equivalent to a sketchbook might be a computer folder into which are placed photographs, text, links and suchlike. There is a lot of software designed to organise such collections. These range between databases, where material is organised in strict lists, to software like Evernote, which presents images, urls, text and suchlike as a set of online collections. The ‘happy accident’ is an unexpected occurrence that has welcome outcomes. They are a particular class of re-combination. Vulcanised rubber was accidentally invented by Charles Goodyear whilst he was trying to address the directed problem of rubber perishability. However, Teflon was invented by Roy Plunkett whilst he was trying to develop a new kind of refrigerant... nothing to do with Teflon at all! Accidents can’t be timetabled or forced. The best we can do is to be open to them when they come.

6.3 Creative methodologies

To navigate the stormy seas of the creative process, good boatmanship is needed. As every experienced creative will tell you, the process of creativity is open

47 to numerous methodologies and can be examined as a formal process, albeit a somewhat whimsical one. The following material has all been sourced from my experience as an artist and art teacher and also as a mentor in many engineering projects. It all addresses the making stages of creativity (layout and detail).

6.3.1 The proxy In the creative process, a proxy is a stand-in for the final creative output, or element within that output. Proxies are used in the layout phase of creation, to suggest the form and structure without having to dwell on the details.

• In the development of the first Palm Pilot, Jeff Hawkins crudely carved a block of wood into the shape of the Pilot. This he papered over with a mock-up of the user interface (Fig. 6.4), and went so far as to keep it on his person all day, even (impossibly) referring to it when he needed to look up an address.

• In animation and movies-making, an animatic is a low quality ‘sketch’ of the final product. In the making of ‘Star Wars’ George Lucas used footage from the war film ‘Wings’ (1927) as a animatic placeholder for the huge dog fight scene at the end of the movie.

• In the making of his large scale epic war painting, ‘Guernica’, the artist Picasso (1881–1973) stuck newspaper to large areas of the canvas. These stood in for the details that he had not yet got around to painting. To a painter, newspaper is visually less intrusive than bare white canvas. As the painting progressed, so these regions of newspaper disappeared.

• The Beatles used proxy words when writing the lyrics for their songs. Hence, the line ‘Yesterday’ in the eponymous song started off as ‘ham and eggs’. The line ‘The movement you need is on your shoulder’ of ‘Hey Jude’ is the remains of such a proxy. Paul McCartney was going to remove it, but changed his mind at the suggestion of John Lennon, who thought it sounded great.

• The lecture notes for this course were written using the programming language LATEX. Amongst other things, it offers the ability to fill sections of the document with placeholder text. This serves the visual way in which I write long documents.

6.3.2 The fresh view “And would some Power give us the gift, to see ourselves as others see us!” [1]

Here the Scottish poet Robert Burns (1759–1796) was talking about our inability to see our own shortcomings. The creative process requires that the artist/designer/inventor retains a fresh view of the problem at hand. Too easily they can become blinded by familiarity with it, and not be able to see the wood for the trees.

48 Figure 6.4: Jeff Rankins’s wooden prototype of the Palm Pilot. Note the paper interface.

The developer Rafael Dohms describes the working methodology of a colleague of his called Chester: “It was really interesting to see how he worked a problem ... Whenever he got stuck and brain crunching failed to find the solution, he simply stopped and picked up a bucket of lego blocks. He sat there building whatever came to his mind until he came to that Eureka moment and the solution came up” [5]. Chester solved problems by actively giving up on them for a while: simply taking a break. Many artists have knowingly incorporated the taking of a break into their creative process. Going for long walks or runs is a popular strategy, with George Turing (the father of the modern computer), the philosopher Jeremy Bentham, the writer Jonathan Swift and the artist Joan Mir`oamongst its proponents. Taking a break offer us Robert Burns’s new pair of eyes: an outsiders view into our own problems. Other techniques include: • The ‘cold read’ review method, as employed in Goldsmiths’ School of Art. Here students are encouraged to talk about a fellow student’s work as if it were their own. This is intended to be a learning experience for the author of the work: showing to them how others perceive their output. • The painter’s technique of looking at their painting in a mirror (see Fig. 6.5). This method of review is hundreds of years old. An updated version is practiced by digital artists, who can flip a digital image with no more than a keystroke. By simply flipping or flopping (which is flipping on the vertical axis), the artists can see their work with fresh eyes. • The peer review process. Someone else’s pair of eyes is a fresh pair of eyes. So how come taking a break is so effective? Well, a problem can be addressed by many ideas. These ideas are in competition with each other. Some ideas temporarily ‘win’ this competition, and become bound to the problem. By taking a break, this binding is broken, giving other ideas a chance.

49 Figure 6.5: A mirror in Lucian Freud’s studio (photograph by David Dawson) [4].

6.3.3 Breaking it down Most creative projects are compound: composed of smaller sub-projects. These need to be addressed individually, and their inter-relationships carefully managed. The larger the project, the more explicitly it needs to be compartmentalised. Filmmaking is a classic example of a project that requires such an approach. Shown in Fig. 6.6 is a Gantt chart breakdown of a student project. This shows each stage of the entire project, clearly separated from each other.

Figure 6.6: A Gantt chart, showing a student’s production schedule for their filmmaking project [9].

6.3.4 The patch and the troubleshoot The patch and the troubleshoot are two terms familiar to computer engineers. Both are strategies for fixing problems. The first addresses only the symptoms of the problem, the second seeks to identify exactly what caused the problem (a ‘root and branch’ approach). In developing their Windows operating system, Microsoft frequently resorted to patching. The software writer Joel Spolsky describes the effect that an OS update had on the game SimCity:

50 “The testers on the Windows team were going through various popular applications, testing them to make sure they worked OK, but SimCity kept crashing. They reported this to the Windows developers, who disassembled SimCity, stepped through it in a debugger, found the bug, and added special code that checked if SimCity was running, and if it did, ran the memory allocator in a special mode in which you could still use memory after freeing it” [11].

In other words... the makers of SimCity had made their game run faster on the old OS by using a sneaky little ‘cheat’. However, this cheat would not work in the new OS. Instead of asking them to remove it, Microsoft accommodated the cheat by writing their own cheat. This shambolic approach to problem solving worked, but the cost was that a patch would cause further problems, which might require further patching, and on and on. The end result was an patch-heavy OS that was so unstable it threatened the future of the entire platform. By the time Windows ME was released, it was so buggy that its nickname was ‘Windows Mistake Edition’. The patch is a veneer approach: addressing only what lays on the surface. The converse is the troubleshoot. A troubleshoot looks for the reasons of failure, and addresses them directly. The classic troubleshooting approach is an interesting one. First the project is split into two and each half examined to see if the problem persists. The guilty half is split again, and the process repeated until the malfunctioning item is identified. This technique, called half-splitting, is particularly useful in troubleshooting digital files. A common example is the selective deactivation of layers in multi-layer Photoshop files in order to locate troublesome glitches in the rendered result. Other examples of the troubleshooting process are:

• When a digital photographer is printing their work, they need to configure the printer so that its output matches what they see on the computer screen. However, making test prints is very expensive and time-consuming. One trick that is employed is to isolate in the printing process a narrow strip from the photograph that contains a representative sample of the tones and colours of the print. This is called a test strip. When the test strip prints successfully, they can move onto printing the entire photograph. Here the test strip is serving the same function as the half-split: isolating a problem within the creative process so that it may be dealt with more effectively.

• When digital artists are getting to know a particular feature of their software, they frequently input ‘silly’ values: pushing the slider far over to one side, or inputing the highest value the feature will accept. This is a bit like throwing a rock down a well to see how deep it is. Again, the philosophy is one of isolating a problem in order to solve it.

6.3.5 Start again

Starting again might seem like a disastrous thing for a creative to resort to. However, it can also act as an invigorating force in the creative process.

51 In 1985 Steve Jobs was fired from Apple, the company he founded. It was, in his own words, a “devastating” experience. Twenty years later, in a speech to Stanford University graduates, he had this to say of that event:

“I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life” [7].

One of the first things Jobs had to address as new CEO was Apple’s near- terminal decline, caused in part by an OS that was unequal to the needs of its users. He took the huge risk of introducing a completely new operating system: OS X (2001). To replace an OS is fraught with problems. What do you do with users dependent on the old OS? How do you manage the vast complexities inherent to OS development? Many companies have tried, but most failed (Palm and Blackberry included). One reason that Apple succeeded was that they had a large fan base: users that would tolerate the bugginess of the new system. The first version was horrendously buggy and slow, but users were entranced with the novelty of its visual appeal.

6.3.6 Dreams and coffee On the outlying edge of the creative process is the influence that drugs and dreams has on creativity. When Elias Howe was trying to develop the first sewing machine, he faced an impasse: how was he to pass a thread through fabric so that it loops around a thread on the inverse side? The solution came to him in a dream in which he was attacked by men with spears. Each spear had a hole at its tip, just like a sewing machine needle, and their up and down motion emulated the motion the needle makes as it passes through the fabric. In the realm of the arts, the songs ‘Yesterday’ (Paul McCartney and the Beatles) and ‘I Can’t Get No Satisfaction’ (Keith Richards and The Rolling Stones) both derive from dreams. In ‘Where Good Ideas Come From,’ Steve Johnson proposes that it was more than a coincidence that the age of reason happened at the same time as the rise of the popularity of the coffee house. In his book ‘Daily Rituals: How Artists Work’, Mason Currey describes the creative habits of 161 painters, writers, pop stars and creative folk. The word ‘coffee’ is mentioned 78 times, being a significant part of the daily routine of around two thirds of those creatives [2]. The great mathematician Henri Poincare, describes the role that coffee played in solving a particularly troublesome problem. Note that the welcome result is (yet again) a re-combination of ideas (Section 6.2 on page 46).

“For fifteen days I strove to prove that there could not be any functions like those I have since called Fuchsian functions. I was then very ignorant; every day I seated myself at my table, stayed an hour or two, tried a great number of combinations and reached no results. One evening, contrary to my custom, I drank black coffee and could not sleep. Ideas rose in crowds; I felt them collide until pairs interlocked, so to speak, making a stable combination” [10].

52 The rock music industry is known for the role that drugs play in the creative process. The sound of the Sergeant Pepper album by the Beatles was greatly influenced by the drug LSD. Even the scientist Feynman experimented a bit with LSD, and was also, at one stage in his life, a copious drinker. However, it would be foolish to think that creativity lays in a wine glass or a bottle of pills. Drugs alone have no creative value. The aforementioned creative thinkers were creative before they experimented with these things. Moreover, drugs can be a surprisingly uncreative influence upon the developing creative mind. I once was supervising two art students at opposite ends of the UK: London and Bristol. Neither knew the other, but both were bright and talented. After having not seen the London student for some time, he unexpectedly contacted me saying that he had made a dramatic breakthrough in his work, which he was excited to share with me. The work that he showed me was bright, colourful and highly geometric. A few weeks later I was contacted by the Bristol student, who I had also not seen for some time. He was also very excited to share his recent work with me, which he also believed to be a breakthrough. What was remarkable was that the work looked very similar to that of the London student: bright, colourful and highly geometric. This was despite the two not knowing each other. What had clearly happened was that they were taking the same drug, which had a conservative effect upon their work: making it conform to its own norms. The important thing is that Paul McCartney, Keith Richards and Elias Howe all recognised the value of what drugs and dreams sent their way (writing them down in notebooks) and all had the intellectual means to develop it.

53

Bibliography

[1] Burns, R., 1786, To a Louse: On Seeing One On A Lady’s Bonnet, At Church (poem)

[2] Currey, M. 2013, Daily Rituals: How Artists Work, Knopf.

[3] Da Vinci, L., 1977, The literary works of Leonardo da Vinci (Vol. 5). Phaidon Press. Chicago.

[4] Dawson, D., 2012, Pallant House Gallery. David Dawson: Working with Lucian Freud. http://www.pallant.org.uk/about1/press-office/press-releases/ 2012/working-with-freud

[5] Dohms, R. M., 2011, Rafael Dohms, Web Engineer, Problem solving technique #1: Taking a mental break, Viewed 8 November 2016, http://blog.doh.ms/2011/02/04/taking-a-break-to-solve-problems/

[6] Hardy, G. H., & Hadamard, J., 1946, The Psychology of Invention in the Mathematical Field.

[7] Jobs, S., 2005, ‘You’ve got to find what you love’ Jobs says.’ Stanford News. http://news.stanford.edu/2005/06/14/jobs-061505/

[8] Leighton, R. & Feynman, R., 1985, Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman! Adventures of a Curious Character. W. W. Norton & Company (USA)

[9] Leslau, J. K., 2011, A Rabbit Called Babbit, Another Colour Scene Test - Production Schedule, Viewed 8 November 2016, http://arabbitcalledbabbit.blogspot.com/2011/12/another-colour- scene-test-production.html

[10] Poincar´e,H. 2010. The foundations of science. Lulu. com.

[11] Spolsky, J., 2004, Joel on Software, How Microsoft Lost the API War, Viewed 8 November 2016, http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/APIWar.html

[12] Vonnegut, K., 2009, Cat’s Cradle, Dial Press.

55 6.4 Lecture three: talking point

The following is the talking point for this lecture. It is to be the starting points for the discussion that takes place in the Message Board. You have all had the experience of creating things (e.g. writing an essay, organising a birthday party, cooking a special meal etc). Talk about a memorable creative process you have experienced. Remember: you are to talk about the process, not so much the thing that you created. Was the process difficult? If so, then how? How did you feel when you had finished?

56 6.5 Summary of lecture three

6 Lecture Three: The Creative Process What goes on in the sanctity of the artists studio? This lecture examines the lived process of creativity.

6.1 The bumpy ride Creativity is like a long Russian novel: it begins in hope, descends into despair, to resolve happily at the end. Truly a bumpy and exhausting ride!

6.2 The importance of re-combination and play The importance of play to creativity is one of the most useful things you can take away from this course.

6.3 Creative methodologies All artists have little tricks that they use to aid the cre- ative process. These are a few...

6.3.1 The proxy A proxy gives the impression of a thing, when the thing itself is not available.

6.3.2 The fresh view There are times when the artist will profit from looking at their work with a fresh pair of eyes.

6.3.3 Breaking it down Most creative tasks are composed of smaller sub-tasks.

6.3.4 The patch and the troubleshoot Two very different ways of getting out of trouble.

6.3.5 Start again When times are tough, the artist needs to look at their work with a fresh pair of eyes. These can be their own eyes, or they can borrow them from a colleague.

6.3.6 Dreams and coffee The influence of drugs and dreams on the creative pro- cess.

57 6.6 Lecture three: further reading

Two fun yet useful books.

1. Kleon, A. ‘Steal Like an Artist: 10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative’, 2012. e-book available here: http://site.ebrary.com.ezproxy.lib.rmit.edu.au/ lib/rmitau/detail.action?docID=10671736 (RMIT Library). Overtly hip book, but nonetheless very much based on real-world experience. 2. Turner, S. ‘The Beatles: Stories Behind the Songs’, 2010. Great anecdotes... full of nice little surprises.

N. B. For any book that you cant find online or in the library, you might with to go to https://www.goodreads.com Here books are reviewed in great detail by the public. A lot of useful information about its content can be found here.

58 Item 7

Lecture Four: The Artist and Their Environment

The preceding sections offered an examination of innovations. This section address the innovators themselves and the places where they work (their envi- ronments).

7.1 The creative individual

Around 1,000 years ago, a painter was regarded as being no more special than a furniture-maker. The dawn of the renaissance changed this: bestowing upon them special status. This birthed a whole new class of individual: the genius. So... what characterises such an individual? We often hear the term ‘gifted’ to describe these people. This summons an image of angels visiting them as a child, and gifting greatness upon them. I believe (and hope to show) that the truth is a bit more boring.

7.1.1 Can anyone be an innovator? The german artist Joseph Beuys (1921–1986) famously said that ‘anyone can be an artist.’ I believe that this statement is damaging. Perhaps it is true, but so is the statement that anyone can be the president of the USA. A more interesting question is whether anyone can be an exceptional artist. An average artist is more of a failure than an average bus driver, as we require our artists to be be exceptional. For example, the latest prize-winning novel is notable for its newness, not for how much it resembles existing literature. Similarly, we require innovators to be, by definition, exceptional. Certainly it is possible for anyone to benefit from a training in creativity. How much they benefit depends upon how much they are willing to let it hurt them. Despite sounding like one, this is not a romantic statement. An innovator is required to be obsessive, placing the requirments of their job above all else. As Steve Jobs said: “I’m convinced that about half of what separates successful entrepreneurs from the non-successful ones is pure perseverance.” Are creative individuals born that way? 28% of Nobel Prize winning physicists come from families where the father was an academic professional. This number

59 falls to 6% for Nobel Prize winning writers. However, a whopping 30% of these writers lost at least one parent through death, abandonment or desertion. In contrast, the physicists lead fairly normal lives [4]. The significance of material like this needs a book to fully examine (like the one I just cited), but in brief it can be said that formative influences play an important role in the development of innovators, though the precise relationship between the two is not straightforward.

7.1.2 Hard work Though there might be such thing as a genius, it does not help to use the word. It is associated with the idea that to be exceptionally creative is a god-given thing, entirely unaccountable by earthly means. In fact, research shows us that creativity comes mostly from hard work. In reviewing the admissions portfolios of prospective art students, I invariably read in their personal statement words to the effect that ‘all they ever wanted to be was an artist’. However, too frequently this is accompanied by a portfolio that does not evidence this passion: a few lazy scribbles hastily put together. Choosing students for admission is a tough task, but you can’t go far wrong if you aim to select the hardest-working ones, regardless of any other innate quality. Frequently I have seen hard work succeed where natural talent failed. Before moving to Hamberg for two years, the Beatles were a run-of-the-mill Liverpool band, playing second-fiddle to more well-known acts. When they came back they had evolved into the Beatles as we know them today. What happened to change them? The answer was simple: they were playing almost constantly for the entirety of the time they were in Berlin. Four hours a day, seven days a week. The moral is simple: practice makes perfect [9].

7.1.3 Intelligence, skill and taste Intelligence, skill and taste are often discussed as three key qualities of the creative individual [4]. They are all ‘positive’ attributes with a hint of moral judgment about them. It is hard to define exactly what intelligence is. However, I think that most of us can recognise an intelligent person when we meet one. From my experience as an art teacher, I would classify the intelligence of a creative person as a quality of restlessness. Intelligent creatives do not take much for granted, and are always asking questions. It is this self-questioning quality that sometimes causes them problems. The intelligent students I have known have trouble recognising how good they are, and frequently self-destruct. Take it from the philosopher Bertrand Russell (1872–1970), who slightly over-states the case:

“...those who feel certainty are stupid, and those with any imagi- nation and understanding are filled with doubt and indecision” [8].

From my experience, it is intelligence that gives the creative individual ‘staying power’: the ability to develop their themselves through periods of creative drought. Taste can be defined as the ability to distinguish good problems from poor problems and good solutions from poor solutions (see Section 4 on page 23).

60 Good problems and solutions must, above all, be novel. Of the three attributes discussed here, I would say that taste is the most important. It is the master attribute, that governs what path one takes when presented with a fork in the road (Fig. 7.1).

Figure 7.1: Choose wisely.

The skill of a creative relates to their ability to craft within their specific domain. For a painter it is painting, for a physicist it is maths, etc. A great display of skill on its own does not evidence great creativity, though it can sometimes be confused as such (especially by the easily confused). The skill of a creative person is often very specialised. For example, a painter might know everything there is to know about painting with egg tempera on aluminium sheet with an airgun. This is not a skill that even other painters would know anything about, let alone anyone else. In my experience, skill is a quality of eloquence: not just an ability to say things, but to say them beautifully. The skilfully-crafted object is succinct, with no unnecessary elaborations. It is also complex, with layered interdependencies between its various attributes.

7.1.4 The enquiring mind The skilled creative is a specialist, knowing a huge amount about the particu- larities of their craft. However, the best ones also know the value of engaging with subjects outside of their specialisation. When Tim Berners-Lee (inventor of the Internet) developed an early precursor to the Internet, he named it Enquire after a famous Victorian self-help book that he had read as a child, ‘Enquire Within’ Fig. 7.2). For him this embodied a vital quality of creativity: a natural curiosity in the world that they live in. When I meet an art student for the first time, I like to ask what they do in their spare time. A hobby or an interest can be a vital part of an artist’s identity, and frequently I have seen this identity develop from such interests. The Irish artist Mark Francis (b. 1962) has had a life-long fascination with mushrooms and fungi, to the point where he has commissioned high-quality models of his favourites. This interest has had a significant impact on his abstract paintings, which resemble fungi spores seen under the microscope (Fig. 7.3). As a student Steve Jobs took calligraphy classes at which he learned all about fonts and what distinguishes good typography from bad. These classes did not

61 Figure 7.2: Enquire Within Upon Everything! Good advice.

(a) (b)

Figure 7.3: (a) A model of a mushroom, commissioned by the artist Mark Francis. (b) One of his abstract paintings, which resembles mushroom spore. relate directly to his major, he took them purely because he was interested in the subject. Years later, when he was developing the first Mac, the Mac became the first computer to feature multiple typefaces and proportionally spaced fonts! Whilst at Cornell, studying electrical engineering, Jeff Hawkins (the inventor of the Palm Pilot) took an interest in human intelligence, particularly the brain’s pattern recognition ability. Years later this knowldge was to be of direct use in his development of Palm’s handwriting recognition system, ‘Graffiti’. The simple moral is that enquiry is in itself a good thing. We don’t have to know exactly how it will apply anything we discover, if at all.

7.1.5 Against the establishment Whilst supervising students at a startup hub in Singapore’s Nanyang Technologi- cal University (NTU), I saw many proposals that were thinly disguised versions of other people’s ideas. This is ‘me-to’ thinking, which is the opposite of innovation. It is not inconceivable that a me-to-product can be as financially successful as the product it is emulating. For example, the Android phone started as a me-to-response to Apple’s iPhone. However... this course is about innovation. Me-to behaviour is to be expected in undergraduate students, who learn

62 how to be themselves by first pretending to be others. A simple proof of this observation can be had by opening any large book featuring the work of a single famous artist. The first few pages will feature creative work by that artist done whilst they were a student, which invariably emulates that of their teacher or a famous artist of that time. Lack of originality in student work is not necessarily a bad thing. In fact I believe that to expect originality from students too soon is cruel. I will go further and say that copying can be part of a creative curriculum... it is a good way to learn our ABCs. Originality is best given room to develop. a teacher’s job is to spot it in the wild, then develop it in the greenhouse environment of the consultation. In learning to be confident of their own vision, an innovator will find them- selves pitted against established ideas that are contrary to their own. It takes strength of will to keep faith in the face of such opposition. In 1879, the inventor David Edward Hughes (1831–1900) believed that he had developed a means to wireless transmit information over the airwaves. This is what we now would know as wireless radio transmission. In 1880 he presented this technology to the Royal Society, a group of highly esteemed old men. They did not recognise the significance of this discovery, mistaking it for an accidental phenomenon. Accepting their advice, Hughes gave up on the idea. Ten years later Heinrich Hertz (1857–1894) developed the same idea and received all the glory for the invention of wireless transmission. It was Hughes’s mistake to (a) seek the opinion of establishment figures and (b) accept their opinion once it was given. It might be said that by definition new ideas will not find favour with those who have built their reputation upon old ideas. As the science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke observed:

“When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that some- thing is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong” [1].

7.1.6 Individual and collective authorship Authorship is an attribute of a creative individual that is unique to that individual. In the visual arts, authorship is the primary currency... an artist is nothing without stylistic uniqueness. Scientists have something called the scientific method, which is a problem-solving approach that does not allow for much personal interpretation. However, authorship has an impact on what problems they are first attracted to. The great scientist, Hermann von Helmholtz (1821– 1894) had a very diverse research portfolio that covered physics, physiology and acoustics. However, to him they were all different manifestations of a single property: energy. He was a great unifier, seeing connection between apparently different aspects of the natural world. A typical Helmholtz experiment was very cross-media, blending electricity, biological tissue, light etc. Paradoxically, some authorship is done by groups of people as opposed to individuals. Collective authorship is more common in very large projects, such as product development and animation and movie production. In some instances, material authored collectively is unrecognisable as belonging to any one member of the group, yet in itself is unique and appealing. In other words, it is almost as if the group constitutes a collective individual, with its own style. I can personally

63 attest to this, having worked in an artist’s collective for many years. Frequently we produced stuff that none of us would recognise as our own. However, more commonly, a single lead individual is required in order maintain in the group project a single vision. In filmmaking and animation, this person would be the director. Sometimes collective authorship is a good thing, sometimes it isn’t, as is the case of ‘design by committee’. The Rokr (Fig. 7.4) was an iPhone precursor authored collectively by teams within both Apple and Motorola in 2007 (see Section 2.3 on page 12). One of its failings was that it lacked a unique identity, being fairly similar to most other phones of the time. In contrast, an animation like Pixar’s ‘The Incredibles’ (2004) was a great success. Like most animations, it was certainly authored collectively, with different individuals having an impact upon the style of the final result. For example, at the insistence of the film composer Michael Giacchino, the score was recorded live, with all the musicians in a room at the same time. This gave an old-fashioned feel to the result that was entirely suitable for the film and was an integral part of the filmic experience. However, the dramatic theme of the film was governed by the vision of the director Brad Bird. He is a writer with a fascination with the emotional mechanics of families, which is evidenced in his prior work as writer and director of ’The Simpsons’ (Fig. 7.5).

Figure 7.4: The Rokr. As beautiful as a dog wearing your grandmother’s sister’s makeup.

Key to working collectively is the art of brainstorming. Collective brain- storming is what happens when many people sit around a table to collectively formulate and develop an idea. There has been much written on the subject [5, 2], however the most important thing to remember is that brainstorming requires that other people’s ideas are not judged. This is to ensure that ideas are kept flowing freely and re-combine (see Section 6.2 on page 46). This is very similar in form to play (Section 6.2, page 46) with the collective brainstorming session functioning in the same way as an artist’s sketchbook. Some creative groups are informal: not designed for the purpose of authoring common creative output. For example, it is a fact that many of the great artist’s ‘isms’ (Impressionism, Expressionism, etc) were formed as loose associations of like-minded people. Together they had a positive effect on each other. This is a recognised phenomenon called the ‘audience effect’. As an art teacher, I have

64 (a) (b)

Figure 7.5: (a) The Simpsons. (b) The Incredibles. Both creations of Brad Bird, the family man. frequently seen similar things happen... for example: two excellent students pairing up as friends, and competing with and encouraging each other.

7.2 The creative environment

Creative individuals do not operate in a vacuum. Usually, they are part of a network or community, which can play a part in what they produce.

7.2.1 The skunkworks Towards the end of Palm’s corporate life, they very nearly made a successful comeback in the form of WebOS. This was at the very beginning of iOS’s and Android’s dominance of the handheld OS, and there was a chance that they could carve for themselves a decent place as a third option in handheld OSs. WebOS was very impressive, and has a large influence on subsequent OS design, but it was ultimately let down by poor hardware and limp support from the phone carriers. However, the story of its founding was remarkable, and a lesson for any company wish to make for themselves a new future. Palm knew that this was a make-or-break situation: that the future of the company depended upon a new OS being built. A small team of dedicated Palm engineers took over a conference room inside of the company and papered over the windows. By this they physically isolated themselves from the rest of the company. Night and day they worked on the project, and in a very short space of time developed an operating system that was remarkably mature and innovative. In the way that WebOS was developed, the engineers at Palm followed the classic skunkworks model. This term is used to describe a semi-autonomous area within a company which is devoted to dreaming-up and developing future projects. Such an approach is also known as ‘blue sky’ thinking for obvious reasons. The first skunkworks was set up by the aircraft manufacturer Lockheed Martin (its official name was the Advanced Development Programs) and was founded by their chief engineer, Kelly Johnson. He laid down some formative rules [6], which I have edited in order to remove their specificity to the aircraft industry:

65 1. The Skunk Works manager must be delegated practically complete control of his program in all aspects. He should report to a division president or higher. 2. Strong but small project offices must be provided. 3. The number of people having any connection with the project must be restricted in an almost vicious manner. Use a small number of good people.

The skunkworks model constitutes the perfect environment for the creative individual. It supports their creativity and also allows freedom. However, it must be noted that it was designed to serve only the ‘best of the best’ within a company. I doubt that ‘skunkworking’ can be applied to an entire company. The value of a skunkworks can be substantial. Xerox is a company that specialises in selling high-specification printing and duplicating machines to offices. In 1970, they founded a research laboratory in Palo Alto, California. Known as PARC, it followed the norm for the skunkworks model: it was physically distant from it parent company (which was 3,000 miles away in New York) and was given practically unlimited freedom to conduct whatever research they wished. The list of innovations that came from Xerox PARC is dizzying: the laser printer, the graphical user interface (GUI), the computer mouse and the text editor to name but a few. To this day no single laboratory or institution has equaled it. Google employed something similar which it called the 20% rule. As Google’s founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, described it: “We encourage our employees, in addition to their regular projects, to devote 20% of their time working on what they think will most benefit Google. This empowers them to be more creative and innovative. Many of our significant advances have happened in this manner” [7]. (The degree to which 20% rule actually exists anymore is open to question, but the principle remains a good one).

7.2.2 Reinvention As stated, only one out of twenty companies lasts longer than fifty years (Section 2.4.4 page 14). In order to survive, a company must change, which is never easy. Any significant change will be as evident in their culture as in their corporate structure and product line. Every organization has a culture. Culture has been defined as ‘the way that things get done around here’ [3]. It evolves over many years, but can take just as long to change, unless there is a conscious will to change it, or a violent external force acting upon it. This is bad news, as an organization can grow into success, but can not grow out of it, instead failing catastrophically. It is not for no reason that the first thing a ‘turn-around’ CEO does with a failing company is to fire half its staff. I did say that change wasn’t easy, didn’t I? Netflix is an excellent example of a company that re-invented itself frequently. It began life when its founder, Reed Hastings, was obliged to pay $40 in fines after returning a rented video late to a high street video rental store. Frustrated by this, he entered the ‘DVD by mail’ business, which bypassed the physical store, to deliver rented DVDs by mail. In the Netflix model, people could keep their rented DVDs for as long as they liked, and no fines were incurred. However... there was a limit to how many DVDs could be rented at one time, which gave customers a natural incentive to return them. Netflix soon realised the potential

66 of streaming their content, but initially delivered it using the same ‘rent per title’ model that they had employed in their rent by mail business. In 1999 they introduced the ‘all you can eat’ model that offered unlimited access for a flat fee. After all, there was no cost difference to Netflix between these two models, but the latter is more appealing to the customer. The inherent weak point of the movie-renting business is that it is a middle-man between the consumers and the studios. This makes it as vulnerable to the whims of those studios as the phone manufacturing companies are to the telecoms. In response, Netflix started producing their own content, such as the extremely popular ‘Orange is the New Black’. This evolution is visually summarised in Fig. 7.6.

Figure 7.6: Few companies have evolved as radically as Netflix.

All of Netflix’s changes were in response to changes in the environment. The environment is that which a company is ultimately beholden to, and is underestimated at its peril.

7.2.3 Technology as an environment Another form of environment is the specific technology that supports the innova- tion. In this way, the Internet, the railway and television are all environments. New technologies offer wonderful opportunities for innovators. They can be fertile territory for brand new industries to develop, and also herald the death of old technologies (see Section 2.4.4, page 14). All new technologies, no matter how revolutionary, inherit attributes of precursor technologies. Hence the cinema inherited attributes of the carnival sideshow and the photograph inherited attributes of the painting. The inherent

67 problem with new technologies is that these old technologies have an impact upon the expectations that are placed upon them. For example, the first art photographs looked very much like the paintings of their time. See Fig. 7.7 for an example by the photographer Oscar Gustav Rejlander (1813–1875). Arguably it was not until 100 years after its invention that photographers started taking advantage of its inherent strengths (I’m thinking here of the work of Edward Western (1886–1958)). Similarly, the first websites looked and behaved pretty much like books, with a slight added interactive element. It was not until someone had the bright idea of cross-breeding the Internet with the database that the Internet found its real identity, that it underwent its becoming. This gave us such things as Facebook, Amazon, Tumblr etc.

Figure 7.7: The photograph ‘Two Ways of Life’ (1857) by Oscar Gustav Rejlander. Note its similarity to 19th century painting.

Clearly, the task of an innovator is to recognise the inherent strengths of new technologies as they become apparent. No medals for second place!

7.2.4 The creative routine The many creative routines described in Mason Currey’s ‘Daily Rituals: How Artists Work’ (mentioned in Section 6.3.6 on page 52) are each very different to the other. Some artists only work in the morning, some only work at night, some rely on stimulants and some live lives of chemical purity. The interesting thing is the extent to which they have all identified the particular routines at the heart of their creative practice. I can share with you an anecdote illustrating the importance to some artists of routine. I once had a studio in an old factory, where many other artists also had studios. My neighbour was a painter, and when he finished an evening’s work, he would turn his painting to face the wall and leave. The following day, he would enter the studio, make a cup of tea, pull a comfortable chair to face his painting, then walk over to the painting and turn it to face the chair. He would then review the health of his creative progress whilst sitting in his chair, sipping tea. The shock of seeing his painting afresh provided for him a fresh view (see Section 6.3.2 on page 48). One day he left his studio in a hurry and forgot to turn his painting to the wall. He was so reliant on his routine that he phoned me to ask if I could break into his studio, turn the painting round, and break out

68 again without damaging the door. This I dutifully did without even asking why.

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Bibliography

[1] Clark, A. C., 1962, Profiles of the Future: An Enquiry into the Limits of the Possible. Rev. ed. Harper & Row. [2] De Bono, E., 1989. Six Thinking Hats. London: Penguin. [3] Deal, T. E., & Kennedy, A. A. (1983). ‘Culture: A new look through old lenses.’ The journal of applied behavioral science. 19(4), 498-505. [4] Kaufman, J. C., & Sternberg, R. J., (Eds), 2010. The Cambridge Handbook of Creativity. Cambridge University Press. [5] Osborn, A. F., 1953, ‘Applied imagination.’ [6] Wilson, J. 1999, ‘Skunk works magic.’ Popular Mechanics, Popular Mechanics 176, no. 9 (1999): 60-67. [7] Page, L., & Brin. S., 2004, Alphabet, Founders’ IPO Letter. https://abc.xyz/investor/founders-letters/2004/ipo-letter.html [8] Russell, B., 1951 New hopes for a changing world. London: George Allen and Unwin Ltd. [9] Weisberg, R. W., 1993, Creativity: Beyond the Myth of Genius. W. H. Freeman & Company.

71 7.3 Lecture four: talking point

The following is the talking point for this lecture. It is to be the starting points for the discussion that takes place in the Message Board. Discus the needs of an institution vs the needs of its employees. Where is their conflict? Where are they in agreement? If you have ever had a job, you might wish to refer to that experience to illustrate your point.

72 73 7.4 Summary of lecture four

7 Lecture Four: The Artist and Their Environment Is their anything special about a good innovator? This lecture looks at the innovator and the environment in which they work.

7.1 The creative individual Around 1,000 years ago, a painter was a low class of craftsman. What (if anything) constitutes the specialness of the artist?

7.1.2 Hard work The first thing we learn is that to be a good artist re- quires hard work. No surprise there.

7.1.3 Intelligence, skill and taste An innovator requires a balance of intelligence and taste. Taste is the ability to identify interesting problems.

7.1.6 Individual and collective authorship Authorship is what gives the ‘signature’ to a creative work. It can be both collective and individual.

7.1.4 The enquiring mind An innovator is interested in a wide range of subjects, outside of their own specialised domain.

7.1.5 Against the establishment An innovator represents the rebellious position: against the establishment.

7.1.1 Can anyone be an innovator? Can anyone be an innovator? No! Well... maybe.

7.2 The creative environment This section addresses the environment in which an inno- vator works.

7.2.1 The skunkworks The skunkworks: an independent creative space within a larger institution.

7.2.2 Reinvention To perform a self-reinvention is as difficult for a company as it is for an individual.

7.2.3 Technology as an environment Most artists have creative routines.

7.2.4 The creative routine Most artists have creative routines. 74 7.5 Lecture four: further reading

Two sweet little books...

1. Feser, C. 2011, Serial Innovators: Firms That Change the World, Wiley. e-book available here: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com.ezproxy.lib.rmit.edu.au/ book/10.1002/9781119203049 (RMIT Library). Lots of statistics. Best quote: ‘The average life expectancy at birth of a firm is roughly 15 years, and only one out of twenty lives longer than fifty years’. Wow. 2. Currey, M. 2013, Daily Rituals: How Artists Work, Knopf. Blog avaiable here: http://dailyroutines.typepad.com/. RMIT Viet- nam Library has one physical copy of this book. This started off as a blog and developed into a wonderful and useful little book.

N. B. For any book that you cant find online or in the library, you might with to go to https://www.goodreads.com Here books are reviewed in great detail by the public. A lot of useful information about its content can be found there.

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Item 8

Task Four: Choice of Projects

8.1 The task

This is the final activity of the course, and may be regarded as its capstone activity. You have three options, detailed on the following pages. Each is to take the form of a set of slides or a video or a... anything at all!

77 8.1.1 Option one: the insane king’s palace This activity is for those students who favour a visual project. You are to design a palace fit for a mad king. The key words are:

• Insane. Insanity is a special class of behaviour. No matter how extreme, insane behaviour has its roots in day-to-day experience. Hence an insane person who believes that television personalities are controlling their brain, is simply exhibiting a disordered form of everyday causative association (i.e. things causing other things). Insane behaviour exhibits consistency and interior logic, which are good creative attributes. I suggest that this particular insanity is of a cosmological nature, with the king playing a key role in the cosmology. • King. A king is a special class of social position. So special that in any one society, there can be only one king: an apex, an alpha. They traditionally have access to near-unlimited resources and are given a high degree of indulgence by their subjects. In many ways the king is seen as the embodiment of the kingdom they rule, and also understood to be of a semi-divine nature (Google the ’Royal touch’ if you need proof of this). • Palace. A palace is a special class of abode. In many ways they function as mechanisms: within palaces are rooms designated for particular purposes to be used on particular days. Their overall func- tion is to impress visitors with the power of the kingdom/king/deity. I suggest that this palace reflects the particular insanity of the king.

The form of this design can be drawings, 3D models, photo-collage etc. It should be accompanied by notes which detail the significance of each aspect of the design.

78 8.1.2 Option two: the alien’s tourist guide This activity is for those students who favour a project that requires writing. You are to write a handbook for a tourist from another planet. I suggest that this handbook should:

• Warn the alien about conditions and situations that are potentially hazardous to their wellbeing. In the film ‘Alien Nation’, the aliens could not tolerate salt water, which would burn their skin like acid. • Draw attention to any items of local interest. Remember that things an alien might be interested in, might not necessarily be the standard tourist things. In the short story ‘An Non’ by Kilgore Trout, interstellar tourists come to Earth to see birds, which are unique in the Universe. • Teach the alien how to interact with the locals, how to behave without being misunderstood.

When considering the alien, remember to take nothing for granted. Their needs, form, interest, ways of thinking etc might all be very alien. One of the key aspects of this exercise is how it can make our ordinary behaviours and customs seem extraordinary. Take the following quote from ‘The Cyberiad’ by Stanislav Lem (1921–2006). It is spoken by a robot who is pretending to be a human, and is describing typical human behaviour to another robot.

“In the morning they wet themselves in clear water, pour- ing it upon their limbs as well as into their interiors, for this affords them pleasure. ...//... and when anything grieves them, they palpitate, and salty water streams from their eyes, and when anything cheers them, they palpitate and hiccup, but their eyes remain relatively dry. And we call the wet palpitating weeping, and the dry-laughter”

You may wish to use illustrations.

79 8.1.3 Option three: the party This activity is for those students who like organising events. You are to design a launch party for a new, and very powerful, weapon. The final output should detail all aspects of the party: its ‘look and feel’, any key events of the party, its intended audience, its timetable etc. You are to consider such things as:

• The capabilities of this weapon. Is it a weapon of mass destruc- tion, or something less dangerous? How might these attributes find form in the way that you design the party? • The inherent conflict between the notion of ‘party’ and ‘weapon’. How might a weapon be celebrated? Tip: sometimes perverse ideas (e.g. celebrating a weapon) should not be avoided, but tackled head-on.

• Who are the audience of this party? Arms dealers? Ordinary citizens? Who is the host?

80 8.2 The assessment criteria

These activities will be assessed with attention to such things as:

• Research: In order to be effective, all of these project will benefit from some prior research. This will add a layer of depth to the final output.

• Evidence of detail, invention and believability . • The clarity of presentation: Your final output should be clear. Any text should use effective header structure and consistent styling. Marks will be deducted for technical hitches such as incompatible fonts, missing media etc. If you make a movie, the sound should be clear. • The clarity of meaning: You ideas should be effectively expressed. You might wish to test your output on your friends... ask them if they understand it.

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