In 2005, I found myself in a very desirable position. I had started a company from scratch six years before, and I was delighted to see it achieve some real success. ePrize had become the dominant player in the online promotions industry, organizing sweepstakes and loyalty programs for clients like Coca-Cola, Disney, P&G, adidas and Microsoft.

But then something happened confirming my worst, unspoken fears. A new company entered the promotions business, and our market position was threatened. Every time we tried to land a new client, our rival won the business by underpricing us and offering more sophisticated solutions. They seemed to have come up with a secret way of winning at lower cost yet with higher efficiency and more creativity. They stole our clients, as if by magic. My nightmare had come true.

I knew right away that our new rival, Slither Corporation, was out to kill us. Soon, they were bigger than us, they moved faster, and – though I hated to admit it – they seemed smarter. They never had a down quarter. They appeared unbeatable.

It was inevitable – Slither was going to eat our lunch. Unless we upped our game, and out-Slithered Slither.

But here’s the thing. The Slither Corporation doesn’t actually exist. I made them up. Slither is our fictive nemesis, our imaginary bad guys. To defeat comfort and complacency, I decided that our team needed a wake-up call, so I launched our make-believe competitor at the point we felt unstoppable. The goal: to ensure that we stayed at peak performance, remained humble, and pushed our creative boundaries.

Rather than battling a poorly performing company to make us feel good about ourselves, Slither was launched to fictitiously undercut our prices, steal our customers, compete more efficiently than seemed possible, and, all the while, enjoy margins that made us green with envy.

Slither became a key part of our culture. We intercepted internal memos from Slither that gave us insight into their strategy. Our team members were asked questions such as, “What’s the one thing that your counterpart at Slither does better than you?” Slither even invaded our company one day, dressed in costumes that represented the opposite of our cultural values.

In today’s challenging times, you probably have real competitors to worry about. But inventing your own ideal enemy and then thinking deeply about how to conquer them can be a powerful technique to drive change and innovation. It will help you focus on the possibilities and remove internal political cloudiness.

Unleash your own fictitious archenemy, and use it as a platform for reinvention. It will help you challenge yourself to reach new heights, drive urgency, and unlock new ideas. This imaginary battlefield will better equip you to win at the real thing.

Throughout my career, my favorite saying has always been: “Someday, a company is going to come along and put us out of business. It might as well be us.” Creating your own version of Slither will help you do just that. Disrupt or be disrupted.

I recently spent some time laughing hysterically while playing board games with my kids. There’s nothing better than watching a kid unleash an enormous laugh, is there? It got me thinking about the many things we can learn from child’s play that apply directly to our lives today as hard-driving, world-conquering, eat-nails-for-breakfast adults:

1. You Need a Challenge. With nearly every game ending in a tie, the primitive and simple game of tic-tac-toe gets old in about three minutes. That’s because human growth and fulfillment come in the midst of challenge. “A smooth sea never made a skilled mariner”, the English proverb states. We are meant to take on complex challenges, gaining confidence through achievement. If you are feeling stretched, this is a good sign and indicates you are becoming stronger and more powerful. Conversely, if you find yourself punching the clock and mastering your surroundings, it’s time to push yourself to a more challenging game.

2. Listen to Your Instincts. Remember the game “You’re Getting Warmer” where one kid is blindfolded and has to find another. With each step, the other kids chant “you’re getting warmer” or “you’re getting colder.” Try playing this game by yourself. It turns out we have an incredible ability to tap into our own intuition if we simply listen. When you make various choices in life, your instincts tell you if you’re getting warmer or colder. Deep inside, you know if your moves are driving you closer to your life’s vision or if your choices are destructive and luring you away from reaching your potential. Kids listen to their intuition, but we adults often fail to hear.

3. Playing the Game is the Fun Part. Imagine you’re “it” in a game of hide-and-seek, but when you open your eyes everyone is in plain sight. Sure, you “won” the game but it certainly wasn’t enjoyable. As adults, we are often so focused on future outcomes that we fail to savor the moment. In the midst of the game with the rush of uncertainty, we find joy and delight. When the game is over, kids insightfully say, “let’s play again!” It’s time to start enjoying the journey instead of postponing our happiness.

4. It’s Best When It’s Your Turn. Every kid wants to go first because they get to be the active driver of their experience. Knowing this, why do so many of us relinquish our power and allow life to happen “to” us? Studies show that happiness at work is often linked to jobs where individuals have more autonomy. Of course, this same principle goes far beyond our careers. We’re wired to be the architects of our own existence, not the subjects of others. In an era with nearly limitless possibility, there’s no reason you shouldn’t be calling your own shots.

In today’s turbulent times, many of us are in a state of imbalance, stress, or even panic. Yet sometimes the most potent insights are right in front of us. As my 14-year-old son likes to tell me, “get your head in the game, Dad.”

Go ahead. It’s your turn to spin the wheel.

Fact: Creativity has become the most needed skill in business. It’s gone from a nice-to-have to becoming mission-critical.

Fact: Creativity is a learned behavior. All humans have enormous creative potential.

Fact: Most of us don’t feel all that creative. Most of us have radically underdeveloped creativity skills and we hold back our most innovative ideas due to fear and socialization.

Why don’t more of us unleash our true creative potential? Why don’t we let our imagination soar with reckless abandon? Why do we restrict our sense of wonder and possibility? Songwriter Harry Chapin answers these questions far better than I can with the lyrics to his song:

Flowers Are Red, by Harry Chapin

The little boy went first day of school
He got some crayons and started to draw
He put colors all over the paper
For colors was what he saw
And the teacher said.. What you doin’ young man

Flowers are red, green leaves are green
There’s no need to see flowers any other way
Than the way they always have been seen.
—

It happens thousands of times a day, and not just to kids. When will we stop shaming each other into following straight lines? When will we realize it is our responsibly to encourage divergent thinking? When will we teach each other that if you follow the rules, think there’s only one “right” answer, and avoid mistakes at all costs, we’re simply resigning ourselves to mediocrity?

Its time to unshackle our imagination and let our creativity come out to play. What color are your flowers?

The Power of Lego to Inspire

If you didn’t play with Legos as a child you missed out. The good news is that it’s never too late. Lego – and any tactile construction-type child game like it – can help adults jump-start their creativity no matter how old or uninspired. This short moving will get you thinking about Lego and all the ways it can inspire your creative thinking: http://bit.ly/bVQLgr

The 6 Myths of Creativity

Do you need to inspire creative work in your organization? A recent study shows that the ways people usually think about creativity in organizations are not necessarily born out by the facts. Get the real scope on how to make creativity work for you here: http://bit.ly/d3xJVU

Sometimes It’s Just a Picture that Inspires

One sign of a truly creative mind is to take ordinary household items that don’t usually come under the category of inspirational and use them to create wonderful new ideas and mental landscapes. The artist here clearly thinks out of the box, the egg carton, and the bowl: http://bit.ly/cIEEZt

Helping Left-Brainers Become Creative

It’s not just the accountants and the lawyers – there are a lot of left-brain people in the workplace, and they need help becoming more creative. Fortunately, there are lots of ways to ease left-brainers into a more creative working mode. Find ten suggestions here: http://bit.ly/c0wTKS

We’ve all heard people in the business world proclaim that they are “heads down” on a project. Or that they are unable to explore new opportunities since they are “heads down in execution mode.”

Consider, for a moment, the advantages of being “heads up” instead. Let’s compare the two states of being:

Heads Down
Focused on delivery
Tuning out distractions
Avoiding influence from your surroundings
Execution
Getting things done
Right now
What is
Deadlines

Heads Up
Focused on possibilities
Embracing new things
Welcoming outside influence
Curiosity and awareness
Questioning everything
The future
What could be
Imagination

There is a time and place for both approaches. When you are working to ship a new product out the door, you better hope your team is in full “heads down” mode. The problem is that so much of the business world is in the heads-down state of mind, that it becomes difficult for us to shift to heads-up position. It is even more difficult trying to bounce back and forth between the two.

The urgency of heads-down demands usually trump the longer-term importance of being heads-up, so many people rarely visit this vantage point. As you work to expand your creative capacity, make sure to proactively schedule some heads-up time for your team, and hold each other accountable not only for grammatical errors on a memo but, more importantly, for being heads-up and unleashing your imagination and creativity.

Creative Intelligence – sometimes it is life or death

Creative approaches to tough problems show up in unexpected places. When the US Special Forces first parachuted into Afghanistan after 9/11, they found themselves adopting some unusual martial techniques to manage the terrain and gain respect in the eyes of the local people. They succeeded because they had been trained to find creative solutions to novel problems. Read the full story here: http://bit.ly/aT5efn.

There’s more to innovation than good ideas

It’s not enough to come up with a good idea, especially if you’re the CEO. Sometimes, all you get is an “Air Sandwich.” At Autodesk, the CEO came up with six good ideas, and they all failed. Here’s why: http://bit.ly/9cu5Ut.

Seth Godin Says Ideas That Spread, Win

Seth Godin likes to tell the story of the inventor of sliced bread. Apparently, it failed – for 17 years – until someone else figured out how to market it. That someone was Wonder Bread. See the full story here – and make sure you read the first comment for a different perspective: http://bit.ly/aIhUgL

The Improv Encyclopedia

This may be the coolest encyclopedia ever. It’s stuffed with ice-breakers, creativity games, and exercises designed to increase your team’s creativity. Use the on-line version as a resource, or download it and keep it all to yourself: http://bit.ly/axNTuV

Remember the old TV spots: “You got your peanut butter in my chocolate! No, you got your chocolate in my peanut butter! Delicious!” Two great tastes brought together to create something remarkable, as the slogan goes. Combining two distinct concepts in order to form an entirely new one is the root of The Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup technique.

Think about some of the items you use every day, and you’ll likely be able to trace them back to their origins – the combination of two or more distinct items or ideas. The SUV you drive is a combination of a car and a truck. R&B music was a fusion of Rhythm & Blues. The ever-popular Sunggie is a combination of a blanket and a sweater. Your La-Z-Boy recliner – a combination of a bed and a chair. American Idol is a mix of talent show, live concert, and reality TV drama (character development, arguing judges, etc).

The Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup is not only the foundation of thousands of products, concepts, scientific advances, artistic endeavors, and even efficiency gains, but also a powerful brainstorming technique to generate fresh ideas. Creative challenges of all sizes and shapes can use be conquered using this framework.

A good way to put the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup to work for you is to first list as many “ingredients” as possible. If you are working on a better way to deal with customer complaints, list all the current ways you handle the complaints along with all the other examples you can find from your industry and other industries. Maybe an unrelated field such as high-end hospitality does one thing while a fast food burger joint does something very different. Once you have a long list of possible ingredients, try random combinations to see if you can get a better end result by combining two things that were previously unconnected.

To push your thinking even further, include random things or ideas in your list. In the above example, what if you included a touch-screen kiosk? Or a gardening tool? Or a set of paint brushes? Or a Broadway musical? Or Oprah Winfrey? You can go so far as to flip open a dictionary (remember those?) to a random page and grab any word that you stumble upon. It can’t hurt to add them to the list. What you may discover is a completely unorthodox and refreshing approach to your creative challenge, and new ideas that you otherwise never would have imagined.

This week, take this technique out for a spin with your team and let me know what you think. The combination of two distinct ideas into something fresh and original just may turn out….delicious.

There are so many powerful business lessons we can learn from the world of jazz. This fluid, improvisation art form is all about taking risks and trying new things. Going out on limb can be scary, but it is where the magic happens. Extending yourself outside your comfort zone is where the best rewards will be discovered.

Jazz is also about listening. Listening to your fellow musicians, the audience, and your own creative voice. In business, that means listening to your team, your customers, your competitors, your industry, your suppliers, the latest trends and best practice, and of course, your own creativity. Through focused listening comes adaptation. Allowing the environment and your collaborators to influence the outcome as a group. Seeking inspiration and creativity from others, and adapting in real-time to your own Creative Challenge.

The most in-demand jazz musicians are not typically the ones with the most blazing technique or dazzling solo ability. The ones who always find work are those that support the collective output rather than being a diva. What makes jazz performances memorable is not breathtaking speed or technique; it is all about establishing a connection and crafting true, artistic, musical expression. It’s about creating something special that resonates with your audience.

The same is true in the business world. The best leaders and the people who get promoted are not selfish, me-centric show-offs. Instead, the new era of business rewards those that collaborate and work to serve their colleagues and their customers. Individual brilliance is great, but purposeful group engagement is worshiped. Any one person can be strong, but a tightly integrated group becomes unstoppable. As the African proverb states, “When spider webs unite, they tie up a lion.”

Finally, look out for what I call “The Jazz Trap”. This is the situation where musicians get so caught up in a look-what-I-can-do mindset that they lose connection with their audience. These musicians add complexity for the sake of it, and are so busy showing off their technical brilliance that their art suffers (as does anyone who happens to be listening).

Don’t forget that your creativity must always be directed at a specific business challenge. You should be focused on solving problems in the best way, not the most complex way. There have been many ad campaigns that have won awards but failed to sell any products. Let your creativity flow completely unrestricted throughout the creative process, but don’t forget to ultimately select the solution that will create the best results, not the one that is the most dazzling.

Jazz improvisation is like a fluid conversation among friends; you make it up as you go. There’s no script, and the best discussions are never rehearsed. Think of yourself as a jazz musician, taking risks and using these techniques to improvise fresh and original ideas. Imagination will flow. Inspiration will hit. Sparks with ignite. And that blank page will be no match for your unbridled creativity.

Click here to view the entire six-part series, Creative Sparks from the World of Jazz

Earlier this week, I launched a six-part blog series on techniques from the jazz world that can be easily translated to driving business creativity. Jazz music is all about spontaneous creativity and improvisation – skills that are critically important in the business world. We’ve covered a number of powerful concepts already (to read the full series, visit http://CreativityGeneration.com/blog ), and I’ve saved one of my favorites for last: Substitutions.

Substitutions. Great jazz musicians love to substitute one thing for another. Like a chef who decides to swap out one ingredient for another, jazz musicians find fresh ideas by “subbing it out”. The piano player, for example, may substitute one chord for another. A trumpet player may “sub-out” one scale in place of another during her solo. A drummer may swap one rhythmic pattern for another. By leaving other things alone and purposefully substituting one element of their music for something else, creative sparks often begin to ignite for the seasoned jazz musician.

You can also put this technique to use to generate sparks of inspiration. Maybe you are working on new type of packaging for your product. You could decide to keep most of your original idea, but swap out the way the opening of the package from the top to the side. Perhaps your Creative Challenge is to streamline a 12-step assembly line. What if you left 11 steps alone, but swapped out one step for something different? If you are working on a TV commercial, what if you swapped out a male actor for a female one? Or rock music in the background for classical.

Substitutions are easy to use, and can open up fresh perspectives and ideas. Think about your creative challenge (or even the status quo) as several unique and inter-connected parts. Then, simply take one part at a time and try swapping out something fresh. What if we swapped aluminum for plastic? What if we used contract labor instead of full-time employees? What if we sold our product direct instead of through distributors? Let your imagination run wild as you substitute ideas to unlock your creativity.

Jazz musicians will tell you that the worst thing that can happen is not all that bad. If you really hit a clunker in jazz, the wisdom is to play it three more times to make it appear that you did it on purpose the first time. “Wow, that piano player is really avant-garde! How creative!”

What’s the worst thing that will happen if your substitution doesn’t work? Keep trying new combinations and you will discover untapped resources of sparks and imagination.

Look for the final post of the series, Blog 6 of 6, coming next.

Earlier this week, I launched a six-part blog series on techniques from the jazz world that can be easily translated to driving business creativity. Jazz music is all about spontaneous creativity and improvisation – skills that are critically important in the business world. The first post covered a technique called Trading Fours. The second post was on Contrast. Next, I covered a technique called Mixing it Up. Now we are on to the fourth approach, Lean on the Masters.

Lean on the Masters. When learning the art of jazz, students not only learn technique but spend a significant portion of their study learning from the masters. Understanding how Dexter Gordon crafts his solos, or how Sonny Rollins builds excitement, or how Oscar Peterson uses the special technique of playing in unison octaves helps an up-and-coming jazz musician gain both perspective and inspiration.

Studying other musicians helps in three ways: it provides a context and broad understanding of the past which gives you a platform on which to build; it offers a source of inspiration and ideas; and it provides specific concepts that you can use and adapt to your own musical challenges.

You can benefit greatly in the same way jazz musicians do by looking to the masters. How would Edison have approached your product design challenge? If you’re not sure, you can easily find dozens of examples, books, diagrams, whitepapers, and artifacts at your fingertips thanks to Google and Wikipedia. How did Einstein approach his research? What did Henry Ford do when he was stuck on a problem? Where did Picasso go when he needed a fresh perspective? How would Mark Zuckerberg (founder of Facebook) attack your new social media strategy? What would Apolo Ohno (currently the American with the most Olympic gold medals) do when faced with a challenge like yours?

Through free and ubiquitous access to information, you can easily answer these questions and more. In addition to examining what specific approaches various masters would have, you can learn from them just by understanding how they think. I’ve read biographies on business legends ranging from railroad baron Henry Flagler to Andrew Carnegie to Steve Jobs. Besides their amazing stories, you can start to see patterns in their thinking which can be applied to your own situation. Grabbing a book, article, or online story about masters in any field is almost like having the ability to sit down and have a conversation with them.

Jazz musicians often use a favorite musical quote or approach that they learned from a master. I have a few riffs that I learned by studying jazz guitar virtuoso Wes Montgomery, for example. Sometimes when I’m stuck in a solo, I will play these licks to not only regain my footing but also to spark ideas. I also know that McCoy Tyner used something called “quartal harmony”, which was an unusual and creative way of voicing chords. When I am looking for ideas, I sometimes try using this technique to see if it sparks something fresh for me.

To apply the age-old practice of leaning on the masters, try to discover some patterns or approaches that you can use as part of your overall creativity arsenal. Start small by learning one or two approaches or ideas from only one legend in any field (business, art, science, politics, etc) and see if you can apply the same approach to your own creative challenge. As you continue to build your creativity muscles, you can keep adding to your repertoire and before you know it you’ll be creating like the masters.

Finally, when you need a spark, are frustrated with the blank page or stuck on a problem, try stepping away and look to the masters. I have been in situations with my eyes glazed over and completely unable to get moving, only to read a story or article about a legend and become instantly inspired with a fresh approach. As you continue to build your creative career, you may just be a master to someone else in the future as they look to you for ideas and inspiration.

Look for Blog post 5 of 6, entitled Substitutions, coming next.