[event] Creativity World Forum Day 1 : most myths on innovation and creativity are not true

I've been drinking from the fire hose today at the sold out Creativity World Forum. You don't expect a conference on creativity to be same-old same-old, so there were quite some nice tweaks to the conference experience. For example, the conference bag is a flagbag, made from recycled bags. Participants all have different ones, and for some reason mine ended up purple-ish. The name tage is a little conference book with your name printed on and the venue has a central space with art you can smell, real grass, swings, etc. The keynote place is a big circle with 360° screens all around, tweetwall, and a catwalk with grass that cuts the audience in half and where the speakers deliver their presentations from. Some of the speakers are artists such as chicken-man Koen Vanmechelen.

I guess the overall take-away of the first day is "many of our instincts on creativity and innovation are wrong."

• Jimmy Wales -aka Mr Wikipedia- told us the usual story of Wikipedia, how it works, and the numbers to underline its success. Wikipedia is an organisation that has a 'why', they have a mission. But we are so often blinded by the success stories. Jimmy told us about the many failures he scored (Jimmy is good at it) in his previous endeavors. Failure is an integral part of creativity and innovation. So should we fail faster?
• Peter Hinssens gave an excellent talk on 'digital is the new normal', coincidentally the title of his recent book. His point is that we are about half-way in the digital revolution, and that we might now expect a 'flip' as the market goes to the second part of the S-curve of adoption. As an example: the old normal tells us we suffer information overload, but in the new normal that becomes filter failure. He also made the point that our education system is the weak part, slowest to adopt and jeopardizing an entire generation. In the new normal, innovation and creativity are about things that work, that are just good enough (speed beats quality) and that focus on the limits, not the now. 
• Alexander Osterwalder wrote a great book (I have now autographed) on Business Model Generation. Our instincts tell us we need one sound business plans, but he invited us to burn that and to focus on a business model canvas. Quote: "Prototyping is a conversation you have with your ideas". His talk is all about designing and pivoting business models for sustainable organisations. Where the first speaker talked about failing fast, Alex sees pivoting as cheaply learning from failure.
• The big contra-intuitive eyeopener Keith Sawyer (author of Group Genius) gave us is that inventions are never the work of an individual, despite what all legends about the Wright brothers, Edison or any inventor might tell. Ideas emerge over time, originate from many people, and mature in small steps. He gave many examples of how creativity is the outcome of collaboration. In a workshop following his keynote, he focused on enhancing creativity through 5 steps: preparation, incubation, insight, selection, elaboration. It takes hard work. Quote: Inventors have more bad ideas than other persons. They have more volume of ideas in total. And apparently Alessi has a museum of failed designs.
• The day was closed by Mr Tipping Point Malcolm Gladwell debunking another instinct on innovation: why do we want to be first? He gave examples how those who are the first to have an idea are not the ones who bring a successful product to the market. Illustrations include the pioneering work Xerox has done and how subsequently Steve Jobs came along, took the ideas, tweaked them and made them better. The magic number seems to be 3, you want to be the third one, the tweaker who optimizes the invention made of an earlier idea. The very thing that makes us first actually stands in the way of putting it to practical use. 

This day made me doodle this interpretation of 'standing on the shoulder of giants'. 

A twitter quote to summarize the day:

"Failure is not an option. It is a privilege reserved for those who try."

Now to see if tomorrow can top this first day (and if the wifi will work properly)