The Theory of Creativity: Duncan Wardle (Transcript)

Here is the full transcript of Duncan Wardle’s talk titled “The Theory of Creativity” at TEDxAUK conference.

Listen to the audio version here:

TRANSCRIPT:

Who here was a child once? Right, all of us. I bought my nephew a bicycle for Christmas about six years ago. It was the Lightning McQueen bike from “Cars.” It was metallic; it was like Lightning McQueen. It had uncle status, clearly.

And you remember when you were a kid, it’s all about who’s got the biggest Christmas present in the box. So, it was a huge box. He brought it out, unwrapped it, tore open the top of the box, took the bicycle out. What did he spend the rest of the day playing with? Why? It could be anything he wanted it to be.

The Box: More Than Just Cardboard

It was anything you wanted it to be. It was a fort, it was a castle, it was a rocket ship, it was a Barbie’s house. At what point in your life could you now only see a box? From the age of six to the age of whatever you are today, at some point in your life, somebody’s pointed a finger at you and told you, “You’re not creative.” And at some point in our life, we actually believe we’re not creative.

So, one of the creative behaviors I want to cover for a moment is children are very curious, and they think expansively. Over time, we begin to think reductively because education teaches us to look for one right answer, and corporations are fear of failure. So, playfulness is a behavior I’d like to talk about.

The Importance of Playfulness

I don’t expect people to be playful every minute of every day, but I do expect people to be playful when they’re looking for big ideas.

So, if I could invite you just to close your eyes for a moment. I’m going to ask you a question. I don’t want you to think about it. I just want you to shout out the first word that comes into your head. Where are you, and what are you doing usually when you get your best ideas? Shower. Walking the dog. Bike ride, commuting. What else? In bed. On a mountain. Running.

So, here’s what we haven’t heard, and it’s consistent with the 5,000 people I’ve trained across the world. Nobody said the following two words: At work. Ooh. Um. Close your eyes again. I’d like you to be as honest with yourself as you choose to be. The good news is you don’t have to share it with anybody. I’d like you to picture the last verbal argument you were in with somebody. When you can see the argument, I’ll ask you to open your eyes. And for those of you more empathetic people, you can open your eyes as well.

Post-Argument Revelations

So, the argument’s over. And you hate Fred. “Fred, I can’t believe you blind copied my boss on that email. I’ll never, ever, ever work with you again.” And I storm out of the office. I slam the door. I go over to my local coffee shop. I drive. I get there. I get a cappuccino. I sit down. Five or ten minutes after the argument’s over, I’m more relaxed. What just popped into my head? What popped into your head? Yeah, the killer one-liner you wished you’d used during the argument. “Oh, if I’d have said that. Oh, I should have said that. Oh, that was the perfect line.”

Has it ever come to you during the argument? Always five minutes afterward. Really annoying. It’s the perfect line. You’ve got nowhere to go. Why?

Brain States and Creativity

Because being in an argument is the same as being at work. And you hear yourself say, and when you’re doing emails, you’re scheduling presentations, you’re in a presentation, you’re talking to somebody, you’re scheduling a meeting, and you hear yourself say, “I don’t have time to think.”

And when you don’t have time to think, you can’t come up with that killer one-liner during the argument, and you can’t come up with that big idea. Why? Because your brain, believe it or not, has four brain states. The one we live in most of the day is what I call busy beta. That’s 13% of your brain that you use to make quick decisions, good decisions, informed decisions, get to work the right way. But the door between your conscious and subconscious brain is firmly closed.

And you can’t access 87% of your brain, which is subconscious. Every bicycle ride you’ve ever been on, every meal you’ve ever eaten, every texture you’ve ever felt, every person you’ve ever kissed, even the ones you choose to forget that keep popping up on Facebook every now and then, they’re all back there as unrelated stimulus that could create unforced connections to build new ideas.

But when the door between your conscious and subconscious brain is firmly closed, when you hear yourself say, “I don’t have time to think,” you can’t have that big idea. And that’s why I did an energizer when you came in. All I was listening for was laughter. The moment I got laughter, I know metaphorically you were back in the shower, and I could start the ideation session. Then there’s amazing alpha, apart from amazing alpha, there’s thoughtful theta. Has anybody heard of the expression “when the penny drops”?

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Eureka Moments and Innovation

That eureka moment, “I’ve got the big idea.” It was practiced by Thomas Edison. He used to sit in an armchair at night, put a penny between his knees, a tin tray on the floor, and he would fall asleep, his muscles would relax, the penny would drop, hit the tin, wake him up, and he would write down whatever he was thinking. He has more inventions and patents in the United States than any other inventor.

Salvador Dali would fall asleep against his easel. When he fell asleep, he’d fall over, and he would wake up and sketch whatever he was dreaming. Of course, I want to know what he was smoking before he went to bed, but not an unsuccessful artist by any stretch of the imagination. If you’re one of those people that gets their best ideas when you’re about to fall asleep or about to wake up, keep a notepad by the bed.

Then there’s dreamy delta. It’s 2:37 in the morning, and you can solve world peace, but you can’t remember it in the morning. So, the best brain state for creativity at work is amazing alpha, and how do you get there? By running an energizer. You’re just trying to get people metaphorically back in the shower.

Edward de Bono said that your brain was like a mountain, and within each new raindrop that falls on your head is one of life’s experiences, and over time, streams of recognition appear. You learn to read and write, learn how to count, learn how to sing. And over time, that turns into a river, a torrent.

Expertise as a Barrier to Innovation

If you’re me, you went to Edinburgh University, you started with Disney 30 years ago, you worked with Disney around the world 30 years, most of it in public relations. 25 years, Disney, public relations. How wide, how far-flowing, and how deep do you think my river of thinking is on Disney? Very. Same as yours and your expertise.

It’s what enables you to make quick and informed decisions. It’s also the single biggest barrier to innovation is your own expertise. Have you ever tried to cross a very fast, very wide, very deep river without a boat or a rope? It’s very hard. I was doing some work for Ford just before the holidays. Ford’s biggest challenge is they know how to make a motor car. They’ve got 150 years’ worth of experience.

They know where the steering wheel goes. Google and Apple have just moved in. They’ve never made a car before. That’s their advantage. They know they don’t need a steering wheel. Our river of experience, our river of thinking, is a massive barrier to innovation and creativity. One of the things that I would encourage you to think about are naive experts and bringing them into every session that you run.

I was asked to run a session for… They won’t solve your challenge for you, but they will ask the embarrassing question that you’re too proud to ask. Throw out the audacious idea that you’re too proud to throw out. In your gift bags, you’ve got a pen and paper, but I’m not sure we’ve got time for it now. But if I gave you seven seconds right now to draw a house, I already know what you’re going to draw.

Challenging Conventional Thinking

I asked the architects. I invited on all the architects to design a new retail, dining, and entertainment complex, but I also invited in the executive chef of Hong Kong Disneyland as my naive expert. I asked all the architects to draw a house. Seven seconds later, I got my house. The same one that you would draw. It has a door.

Why is the door always at the front and the middle? Why do the windows always have crosses over them? Why is the roof always a triangle? Because our river of experience tells us that’s what a house should look like. The chef, however, unlike the imagineers, he had drawn dim sum architecture, which none of us had ever seen before. It’s a dim sum dish with a steam ball and a prawn ball, and everybody laughed because they realized they’d stayed in their river of thinking of what a house should look like.

The Power of Audacious Architecture

The chef gave them permission to get out of their river of thinking and consider audacious architecture. If any company in the world can consider audacious architecture, it would be the Walt Disney Company. On the way out the door, somebody slapped a post-it note over the picture. It said, “Distinctly Disney, authentically Chinese.”

Seven years later, the strategic brand positioning for the Shanghai Disney Resort became distinctly Disney, authentically Chinese. So when you’re trying to solve a challenge, I would invite you, the role of the naive expert is you bring them in because they don’t know what you’re working on. And again, they won’t solve the challenge for you, or rarely will they, but they will say something that will get you out of your river of thinking and thinking differently. The other role is to play the role of the outlier.

Walt Disney’s Creative Vision

Walt was the genius at the outlier. When Walt Disney in 1940… Has anybody seen “Fantasia,” the film? So, “Fantasia” was never a box office hit. And Walt was… 1940, the guy was so creative. He wanted it to mist in the theatre during “Drip, Drip, Drip Little April Showers.” He wanted heat pumped into the theatre during “Night on Bald Mountain.” And the theatre owner said, “No, Walt, that’s too expensive. And your movie’s only in the movie theatre for six months.” Those were the days. So, this is what Walt did.

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He listed the rules of showing his movie in a movie theatre. It’s dark. It’s dirty. I have to go at a set time. I have to sit in a seat. I have to watch the previews. I can’t control the environment. He listed all the rules as quickly as he could and then he said, “What if?” What if I could control the environment? That was a very radical “what if.” In 1940, Walt didn’t own any of the movie theatres. Well, imagine a world where I might. Well, I don’t own movie theatres. So, what if I took my movies out of the theatre?

Disneyland’s Conceptualization

Well, if I take them out of the theatre, they can’t be two-dimensional anymore. They’ll have to be three-dimensional. What if they’re three-dimensional? Well, they’ll need somewhere to live. Well, if they have somewhere to live, we’ll need walk-around characters. Well, if we have walk-around characters, the princesses can’t live next to the pirates because people wouldn’t be immersed in the story. Oh, I’ll need different lands. Fantasyland, Adventureland. Oh, I know. I’ll call it Disneyland. The biggest creative solution of the 20th century.

Fast forward about ten years ago. The two biggest barriers to coming to Disney on vacation were “I can’t afford it” and “I want to wait until my children are the right age.” A new barrier emerged out of nowhere in 2008 was a little online bookseller out of Seattle called Amazon. Oh, how could they possibly threaten Disney?

A new barrier emerged. “I don’t want to stand in line anymore. Amazon’s told me I don’t have to.” They give it to me immediately when I want. So, we listed all the rules of going to a Disney theme park. You have to buy a ticket. You have to stand in line.

Disney’s Magic Band: A Game Changer

You have to see a character. You have to go on a ride. You have to book a hotel. You have to stay in a car rental. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And we took one rule. You have to stand in line. If we started with “how might we make more money,” we would have iterated, not innovated. But because we switched the challenge and turned it to what was the most important barrier for the consumer, what if the most audacious question in 2008 was “what if there were no lines?” I thought the operations team would have come over the table and hit me. And so we asked, well, what if there was no lines for front desk?

What if there was no front line, a line to get into the park or to meet your favorite character or your ride or to buy merchandise or to buy food? Fast forward to 2015. We piloted Disney’s Magic Band. It’s a little plastic band. It sits on your wrist. It has an RFID chip inside it. Six months before you arrive, you can book your favorite attractions. It is your door key. It is your theme park ticket. It’s your reservations to your favorite rides and character meet and greets. You touch an item of merchandise once, it goes to your hotel room. You touch it twice, it goes to your house. I save my food on my fast phone.

I walk into the restaurant, restaurant knows I’m here. I touch table 47, food comes fresh to me. As a result, the average guest has two hours free time a day. What do people do with their free time? What do you do with your free time? You spend money. Beware of the retirement. It’s a permanent weekend. Not only that, but real-time data. The guests are telling us every second of every day what they like and what they don’t like. I know if Mr. Smith is in line for Space Mountain and he’s got an hour-long wait, but his daughter’s favorite character is Cinderella and she hasn’t met her yet, but Cinderella is 60 yards away. I can text Mr. Smith.

Data-Driven Decisions and Revenue Generation

But then long-term decision-making. I know if I put Buzz Lightyear at 5 feet, I sell 50 units an hour. If I put him at 2 feet, I sell 2,000 units an hour. So again, by giving something of real value to the consumer, in return, the single biggest revenue generator of any idea we’ve had in the last 20 years with no capital investment required. Simply by playing the role of the outlier.

Storytelling. Walt was the master storyteller. He used words like nobody else. If I were to ask you… Actually, I will. If I was going to build a car wash in Q8, what would I need to put in it? Water. What else? Brushes. What else? Soap. What else? Dryer. Yeah, I need a dryer. What else? Vacuum. Yeah. People and cars. That’s a good list. Okay.

Well, what if I didn’t open the car wash? What if I opened an auto spa? What could I put in a spa? What could you put in a spa? Yes. Masseuse. Wax. Oh, good one. Barista. Music. Suddenly, in less than 60 seconds, you’ve gone from your river of thinking of what should be in a car wash, and you consider what could be in an auto spa.

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Walt Disney’s Legacy of Innovation

All I did was reframe the challenge, as Walt Disney did on July 17, 1955. Instead of creating employees, Walt created cast members, cast for a role in the show. They wear a costume, not a uniform. They work on stage or backstage. He created the best single guest service there is in the world, and it still exists today. All he did was re-express their challenge.

About six months ago, I was in New York in an office, and I was waiting downstairs in reception, and I was chatting to the young lady behind the desk for about 15 minutes while I waited for my appointment. And I got upstairs, and I said to the gentleman, “I said, boy, your receptionist is the most friendly, empathetic, lovely. I’m going to steal her and take her back to Disney.” And he said, “Oh, that’s funny.” I said, “Why?” He said, “We don’t have a receptionist.” I said, “Oh, God, who the hell was I talking to for the last 15 minutes?”

I said, “Well, I think her name was Sarah. She had a cream blouse and a floral skirt.” He goes, “Oh, Sarah, he said.” “She’s our director of first impressions.” All he had done was re-expressed her challenge, and she was empowered to own the space. Probably the most important behavior of all, bravery. We’re not encouraged to be brave at work, but I will tell you, with artificial intelligence coming into the marketplace, if we’re not brave, and if we’re not curious, and if we’re not playful, I actually believe when it comes to the next decade, creativity and intuition could be some of the, they’ll be our survival skills.

The Future of Creativity and Bravery

They will rise to the front to compete. How do you compete against, I met Sophia in India a couple of weeks ago. She’s the most, world’s most artificial, intelligent artificial robot. I believe it is our core human truth. We are all creative, and it will be that creativity that comes to the fore and allows us to survive in a world that will be ever more competitive.

But in order to do that, you will have to be incredibly brave, and so to demonstrate bravery for the last 30 seconds, I just need a volunteer to come up. We’re going to sing “Don’t Go Breaking My Heart” by Elton John and Kiki Dee. You can choose if you’re going to be Elton or Kiki. So all I need is a volunteer. Didn’t think I was going to get one. So you may not look until, you may not look until the count of three. On the count of three, you may look.

Before you came in this afternoon, and you may not look until the count of three, we put a post-it note underneath one of your chairs, and it simply just is a large one. It just says, “It’s you.” And so, on the count of three, if it is you, I just want you to come up and sing. We’ve got the lyrics for you. So, one, two, three. Okay, people, relax. I would not do that to you to start the session this afternoon.

Who is the bravest animal in the jungle? Not so. The humble butterfly. The 10-foot butterfly that was just flying around inside your stomach about 20 seconds ago. When was the last time you felt like that at work? If you haven’t felt like that for a while, you will be unemployed in less than five years. There’s too much disruption coming to the marketplace. You have to innovate. You have to be brave.

And I will finish with my favorite quote, which is, “The opposite of bravery is not cowardice, it’s conformity.” Thank you very much.

SUMMARY OF THIS TALK:

Duncan Wardle’s talk, “The Theory of Creativity,” delves into the innate creative potential that resides within everyone, challenging the misconception that creativity is a talent exclusive to a select few. He underscores the importance of curiosity, playfulness, and bravery as key components of creative behavior, illustrating these through engaging anecdotes and personal experiences from his illustrious career at Disney.

Wardle emphasizes the transformative power of asking “What if?” to break free from conventional thinking and foster innovation. Highlighting the role of “naive experts,” he advocates for diverse perspectives in brainstorming sessions to unlock novel solutions. The introduction of Disney’s MagicBand serves as a case study for reimagining customer experiences by removing barriers, such as waiting lines, demonstrating how creativity can drive significant business outcomes.

Through his narrative, Wardle inspires individuals and organizations to cultivate a culture of creativity by rethinking challenges and embracing risk. His talk is a compelling call to action for harnessing creativity as a critical tool for navigating the complexities of the modern world.