Creative Innovation Exercises

Music helps to understand the mind and the brain. Throughout the history of science, metaphors have shaped how we understand complex phenomena. The brain-as-computer metaphor has guided decades of theories and research. We propose music as a scientific metaphor for understanding the mind and brain via triplicate interfaces (listener, performer, composer) and a compound set of predictions. Multiple domains of music can be mapped onto different neural, cognitive and intersubjective processes such as network coordination, prediction, emotion and meaning. Neurocognition is not static but a dynamic, embodied, and time-sensitive system, much like a self-organized orchestra in which multiple processes interact simultaneously. Drawing on synergetics, predictive processing, and embodied cognition, we outline musical principles illuminating cognitive and action integration across time, offering new conceptual frameworks and testable predictions for future research. I enjoyed writing this piece with these stellar authors: Nick Roth, Aaron Colverson, Christopher Bailey, Bruce Miller, Dafne Estefania Durón Reyes, Nicholas Johnson, Olga Castaner Nino, Pierluigi Sacco, Eoin Cotter PhD and Lucia Melloni. Science, like music, advances through new ways of listening to complex systems: ➡https://lnkd.in/dMNTBrFd

If you’re tired of team exercises that feel forced, try the Start / Stop / Continue ritual that actually builds team bonding. Here’s how to do it: Step 1: Pick a topic Choose one specific area you want to improve. You can do this as a team (like marketing strategy, branding, or workflow) or even as a couple or family (like health habits or household routines). When my team did this for our marketing strategy, we asked: “What’s working? What’s not? What should we try next?” Step 2: Sticky it up Give everyone a stack of sticky notes. Each person writes down every task they do related to that topic (one per note). Then, color-code: • Different colors for different people (for transparency) • Or all one color if you want to keep feedback anonymous This part alone often surprises people. We realize how many invisible tasks we’re doing, and how much effort goes unnoticed. Step 3: Place the tasks Draw three columns on the board: 🟢 Start – New ideas or things worth trying 🔴 Stop – Tasks that drain time or add no real value 🟡 Continue – What’s working and worth doubling down on Then, together, sort each sticky. When we did this at Science of People, we learned: • We wanted to start experimenting with Medium and LinkedIn posts • We needed to stop wasting time on low-return platforms (sorry, X) • And we should continue doing more of what was driving real results (YouTube, email newsletters, and blog writing) If you disagree on something (like we did about Medium), place it in between columns as a trial. Set a test period. For example, “Let’s try this for 2 months and then review.” Step 4: Create a safe space This is a critical step. Start / Stop / Continue only works when feedback feels safe. You’re talking about the task, not the person. We even use different colored stickies to separate ideas from ownership. That way, no one feels attacked. When people feel psychologically safe, they share the truth, and that’s when real improvement happens. Step 5: Assign and act Insight without action is just decoration. So before you finish, assign ownership: • Who’s starting the new tasks? • Who’s stopping or phasing out the old ones? And for the “Continue” column, ask: “Can we make this even better?” A bonus: It works outside of work, too I even do this exercise with my husband once a year, for our health and habits. We’ve listed things like: • Start: Morning protein shakes, evening routines • Stop: Buying soda, eating out too often •Continue: Yoga and weekend soccer We walk away feeling more connected and intentional. The takeaway: When you pause to ask, “What should we start, stop, and continue?” you give yourself (and your team) permission to refocus energy where it truly matters.

Constraint is the mother of innovation! It’s easy to assume innovation comes from abundance. From deep pockets. From having it all. Big companies with big R&D budgets. Major brands with their elite creative agencies. That's would make sense, right? Ironically, it's actually the opposite. True innovation thrives in constraints. It's born in the corners where resources are tight. When you can't match your competitor's wallet, you better outmatch their creativity. Limited resources force clever solutions.  They demand ingenious workarounds. They spark unconventional thinking. Look at Google's early days. Memory constraints forced them to build a search engine that ran on less than 8MB. Why? Because they needed to work on 90% of computers back then. That constraint? It pushed them to create something that would change how we access information forever. Or take Airbnb during the 2008 crash. No funding? No problem. The founders got creative - selling presidential candidate themed cereal boxes. That scrappy move kept them alive and caught media attention. IKEA's iconic identity was born from a constraint. Shipping costs were killing them. Their solution? Flat-pack furniture. A limitation transformed into an innovation that changed an industry. When you can't match your competitor's wallet, you'd better outmatch their ingenuity. Can't outspend? You navigate uncharted waters. You take calculated risks. You write new rulebooks. I've worked with hundreds of companies. The well-funded ones? Often the least innovative. At cocreatd, we encourage our founders to embrace constraints. Having less means creating more!

Sometimes, finding a compelling problem instantly inspires possibilities. Other times, crickets. Rather than waiting around for lightning to strike, we recommend that teams take a more proactive approach, and deliberately provoke their own imaginations. One of the most effective, powerful, and fun tools we have created for such self-provocation missions is what we call “Analogous Exploration.” Building upon the extensive research demonstrating the power of unexpected new combinations, we encourage folks to seek radically unexpected sources of inspiration to provoke their thinking. This means not only leaving the room, and not only leaving the building, but also leaving the industry and the conventional definition of “competitor set” behind. Analogous Exploration is not benchmarking. One early application of this radical tool was with a struggling Semiconductor Company whose sales organization had been refined over time to cater predominantly to its largest customers (who ordered hundreds of millions of units annually). The company’s senior leaders felt they needed to “reinvent the customer experience for smaller customers,” and asked for our help. (Story too long for LinkedIn tldr: they instituted a radical new information-sharing agreement with their largest distribution partner, which they believe is one of the largest supply chain innovations in their industry in the last 50 years.) The COO of the company jokingly confided later that they had been watching the competition closely… but the competition didn’t know how to solve their problems either! By deliberately seeking out unexpected sources of inspiration, the organization was able to jump-start revolutionary innovations that serve the smaller businesses every bit as well as they already did the large customers. Getting out of the box like this will not feel efficient. But it is effective. We have since seen Australian financial services organizations glean insights for how to establish trust with new customers from a barber shops & tattoo parlor (those are fascinating stories), Israeli tech companies learn from farmers’ markets, New Zealand fisheries take notes from prominent tea purveyors and bespoke coffee shops, and Japanese conglomerates attracting top-tier millennial talent based on insights from a rock climbing studio and a belly dancing instructor. Despite their differences, one critical commonality among each of these environments is that the teams positioned to solve the newly-defined problem lacked the requisite inputs to trigger fresh ideas. Imagination is fueled by fresh input, and yet all too often, teams are stuck in a conference room, post-it pads in hand, banging their heads against an all-too-ironically spotless whiteboard. Analogous Exploration is a tool to help folks get out of their context on purpose, with intention, to come back with the inspiration they need to fuel fresh thinking.

My team has stopped asking questions. They now wait for instructions. A leader shared this observation at last Thursday’s Melbourne Business School - Retail & Consumer Goods panel. It perfectly captured the curiosity crisis facing our industry in an uncertain operating environment. In a brilliant conversation with Adam Murphy 🌻 , moderated by Lenny Chudri, GAICD, we explored how to reignite innovation when uncertainty is our new normal. Here is what resonated most: 1. The 5-Question Rule That Changed Everything At a global FMCG giant, we were stuck. Innovation had become theatre, all talk, no breakthrough. So we tried something radical: “Curiosity Time”. Rule: For one hour every Friday, you could ONLY ask questions. No answers. No solutions. Just questions. The first session was painful. By week six? We had identified three breakthrough opportunities worth $5M. 🎯Try this tomorrow: Start your next meeting with 5 minutes of questions only. No answers allowed. 2. When Budget Cuts Forced Our Best Innovation Leading innovation at a major CPG company, I faced a 30% budget cut. Instead of scaling back, we asked: “What would we do if we had 10% of the budget?” That constraint forced us to partner with suppliers in ways we never imagined. We reduced a 12-18month innovation cycles to 3 months. The result? Our most successful launches that decade. Key insight: Every constraint hides an opportunity. 🎯 List your top 3 constraints right now. Pick one. Ask “How might this force us to be brilliant?” 3. The $8M Mistake That Taught Me Everything Years ago, I led a “perfect” innovation project. Great consumer research. Flawless execution. It failed spectacularly. Why? We had curiosity at the top but killed it everywhere else. Only 24% of employees feel curious at work, yet curiosity increases creativity by 34%. That gap is your innovation problem. At my next role: We measured “learning velocity” alongside EBIT. We celebrated fast failures publicly. We made questioning as important as delivering. 🎯 Your move: Ask your teams: “What are we pretending not to know?” Then actually listen. After commercialising 1,200+ innovations globally, from establishing industry-first research hubs, I know this: Curiosity is not a nice to have. It is your sustainable competitive advantage. Sharing this handy question. ❓If your biggest competitor had your constraints but twice your curiosity, what would they do differently? Some 📸 from an inspiring evening of #learning and #unlearning. Lenny Chudri, GAICD Adam Murphy 🌻 Innovation Gamechangers University of Melbourne Melbourne Business School #curiosity #innovation

Operational bottlenecks are often mistaken for minor distractions. In textiles, challenges such as machine downtime, dye-house delays, working capital spikes, or capacity mismatches between spinning and weaving are not just inconveniences. They are critical leverage points for value creation and significant professional impact. Many leaders focus on optimising every area. However, sustainable throughput comes from identifying and rigorously managing the single constraint that governs the entire system. We apply the Theory of Constraints (TOC) at RSWM to convert operational friction into performance gains. TOC shows that local efficiency can be misleading. Keeping every department busy often creates excess work-in-progress, disrupting flow, increasing costs, and delaying deliveries. Instead, we follow a disciplined process: -First, identify what sets the pace of the value chain. This may include machinery misaligned with current market needs or process challenges like low Right First Time (RFT) rates in the dye house that reduce effective capacity. -Second, exploit the constraint by precise scheduling, strengthening discipline, and improving efficiency to extract more output without immediate capital deployment. -Third, align the rest of the organisation to the bottleneck’s pace to ensure smooth material flow across departments. Fourth, elevate the constraint through capital investment or process redesign, addressing capacity mismatches or refining product lines. -Finally, repeat the cycle, since the constraint shifts as performance improves. This approach has delivered tangible results at RSWM. Addressing dye-house bottlenecks increased throughput, reduced working capital requirements, and improved EBITDA. However, constraints change over time. Market shifts, such as China’s shift from a major yarn importer to an exporter, or recent U.S. tariffs affecting demand, can pose new challenges. In response, we adapt by exploring alternative markets, leveraging domestic opportunities, or innovating products to sustain growth. Our goal is to eliminate internal friction so operational excellence drives expansion. When the market is the only constraint, the organisation is positioned to thrive. #TheoryOfConstraints #OperationalExcellence #Textiles #Leadership #RSWM

There’s something almost magical about watching an idea come alive on a big board or wall. I first experienced this in a workshop many years ago, when instead of PowerPoint slides and endless talking, a facilitator picked up a pen and began sketching what we were saying. Within minutes, the noise in the room turned into clarity. Arguments softened. Ideas grew. Patterns emerged. Suddenly, we weren’t just talking at each other, we were thinking together. That’s the power of graphical facilitation. I've found that visuals create shared understanding. When people see their ideas drawn out, it feels tangible, real, and owned. Visuals cut through complexity. A messy conversation can be captured into a simple diagram that shows how the pieces fit together. Visuals open space for creativity. They invite people to build, adapt, and challenge without getting lost in jargon. It’s not about art. Stick figures and simple shapes are enough. It’s about capturing meaning, making the invisible visible. Here’s where leadership comes in. Graphical facilitation is really powerful when you combine it with the right questions. imagine a leader asking: “What does success look like for us?” and the group sketch the answers into a shared picture. “Where are the bottlenecks in our system?” and mapping them visually with the team. “If this project were a journey, where are we on the map?” and drawing a road with milestones. "What do our customers really experience?" and mapping out the end to end customer journey. This simple combination does something slides never can: it invites people in. It shows them their voice matters, that leadership is not about having the answer but creating the conditions for the best answers to emerge. Try this to get started...: 1. Grab a flipchart or whiteboard. The bigger, the better. 2. Frame a powerful question. Something open, generative, and focused on possibilities. 3. Draw as you listen. Use arrows, boxes, circles, stick people nothing fancy. Capture the flow of ideas. 4. Step back together. Ask: “What do we notice?” or “What stands out?” This is where new insights often spark. 5. Co-create the next step. The group’s picture becomes the group’s plan. In times of complexity, speed, and change, leaders can no longer rely on being the person with the answer. The role has shifted: leaders must become facilitators of thinking, collaboration, and creativity. Graphical facilitation is a leadership skill for the future. It's a way to make ideas visible, align people quickly, and engage teams in solving problems together. And here’s the truth: once people have seen their ideas come to life on the wall, they rarely forget it. It creates ownership, energy, and momentum that words alone can’t achieve. If you want better collaboration, don’t just talk at your team. Draw with them. Ask the right questions. Sketch the answers. Make the invisible visible. You’ll be surprised at what emerges when the pens are in play!

How to find winning ads Using calculus: → Each hill is a creative concept that works → Climbing uphill = iterating toward the local maximum → Jumping across = testing new concepts to find taller hills When I ran marketing at Carpe, this is exactly how I thought about creative testing. Your ad account sits on an invisible landscape. Your job is finding the tallest peaks. → Find a concept that works?  → Iterate to climb the hill (different hooks, creators, offers, etc) → Each test helps you map the landscape  → Hopefully, your iterations bring you closer to the best version of that concept. But what if the hill you're on is capped at a low ROAS?  → Take a big swing  → Try a totally new concept, format and angle → Jump from the hill you're on to a completely different point → Sometimes you land in a valley - that's a dead creative → Sometimes you find a winning ad. This is your 10-25% hit rate. Then I heard Connor Rolain (Head of Growth, HexClad Cookware) describe creative testing almost identically on the Operators podcast. He called it "finding a local max on some imaginary gradient." → Concept testing = exploring different areas of the map. → Iteration testing = climbing toward the peak. Couple important points → Creative fatigue shifts the whole landscape underneath you → Andromeda rewards you for sitting on multiple hills. More winners = more surface area How do you think about creative testing? 

Why Metaphors Matter in Instructional Design We often think of metaphors as literary flourishes. But in instructional design, they’re cognitive bridges. Whether it’s an online course, an offline manual, or a quick informational guide… Metaphors quietly translate complexity into clarity. A metaphor connects what learners don’t know yet to what they already understand. It turns abstract ideas into familiar experiences. Example, Explaining data security as “locking a digital door.” Teaching teamwork as “orchestrating a symphony.” Guiding learners through a process as “navigating a map.” When used thoughtfully, metaphors, Spark emotional connection Improve recall Anchor abstract concepts in real-world meaning In short, they make learning feel human. Because every good course tells a story and every great story starts with a bridge. They quietly connect what learners don’t know yet to what they already understand. They turn abstract concepts into something familiar and memorable. When I was designing an online course, I realized how a well-placed metaphor could turn passive viewing into active thinking. Something as simple as comparing a learner’s journey to a “map with milestones” helped make the course flow intuitive learners instantly knew where they were and why it mattered. Later, while working on an offline procedure manual for a healthcare device, I noticed the same power in action. Explaining each step as “assembling a puzzle” made complex sequences easier to recall and follow. And in an informational booklet, using metaphors like “the heart as a pump” simplified how non-medical users understood the device’s purpose. Those moments taught me this Metaphors aren’t just creative flourishes, they’re design tools that humanize learning. What’s a metaphor you’ve used (or seen) that made learning instantly click? #InstructionalDesign #LearningDesign #StorytellingInLearning #metaphors

Metaphors are everywhere in scientific and social discourse. These are messengers of meaning that enable us to trace and understand changes in ideas across disciplines. Sociologists Sabine Maasen and Peter Weingart describe three examples: -      Darwin’s “struggle for existence” moved from biology into popular discourse and was later co-opted in contexts like nationalism and militarism. -      Thomas Kuhn’s “paradigm shift” was reinterpreted in the social sciences and humanities. There, it helped pave the way for postmodernist thought and became a go-to term for describing intellectual change. -      The metaphor of “chaos” originated in physics and mathematics, but soon migrated into management theory, social sciences, and everyday language. Ironically, it helped create some order in discourse by capturing complexity, unpredictability, and transformation in systems.   Metaphors are evolutionary units like memes, vehicles for variation, selection, and retention in knowledge systems. Metaphors migrate across discourses, gain or lose meaning.   In 2018, Frank Guldenmund described four metaphors used to conceptualize and assess “safety culture”: - Convenient truth; a way to simplify or deflect complexity, often after incidents, depending on the speaker’s position (management, workers, auditors). - Grading system; a metaphor for measurement and benchmarking, typically via “maturity models”, though often scientifically shaky and reductive. - Liaison; an attempt to operationalize abstract culture into measurable components like perceptions or attitudes, useful, but often decontextualized. - Mirror; a reflective process that encourages introspection through qualitative, participatory methods, offering the most nuanced insight.   These metaphors illuminate the methodological and conceptual tensions in understanding and managing safety culture. But how these metaphors are used is also shaped by broader social and institutional forces.   Jean-Christophe Le Coze (2019) expands this analysis by placing safety culture within the context of management fashions and consulting-driven trends. He distinguishes a second wave of safety culture research(post-2005) that ranges from outright rejection of the term (Hopkins), to neutral analytical interest, to conditional endorsement, and finally to uncritical promotion. He critiques how safety culture has become a marketable product: a managerial buzzword, deployed to demonstrate control or regulatory compliance rather than to address underlying complexity.   Le Coze argues that the widespread appeal of safety culture, especially in maturity models, is less about its scientific validity and more about its symbolic utility. It offers comforting simplicity, a sense of managerial control, and visual tools (like ladders) that appeal to executives. But in doing so, it risks marginalizing ethnographic, critical, and systems-level approaches that grapple with power, conflict, and organizational diversity.