ThoughtSpurs (again-the sequal)

"In Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switerzland they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace, and what did they produce? The cuckoo clock."

Orson Welles in The Third Man

I like this quote. Not only because it's smart and funny but because it get's me thinking about the role of conflict in creativity and innovation.

When I was working with the team at Idealog on prototyping our baby there was an occasion I have sworn never to talk about in detail. So I won't. But it involved conflict with a contributor who felt so passionately about her work that she…well I can't tell you what she did. But, needless to say I will never forget it. I have worked in hotbeds of creativity before but I have never had any body (deleted) me before.

I loved it. Inspite of the shock. Why?… For crying out loud she cared!
(About the wrong thing, I have to say- "That took me an hour,…I did what was asked of me… so you should love it...")

Don't be afraid of conflict.
Don't suppress it.
Don't (supressed, …becasue I said i wouldn't ever reveal it) though.
Enjoy the fact that other people think different to you.
Embrace it.
Otherwise you'll simply live a template,what other people think you should do,…not an authentic life.

Comments

Addict-o-matic

A cool resource for you to try. Aggregates search topics from a number of sources. Thanks to Brand DNA (again) for the heads-up.

Johnny Bunko competiton

The Great Johnny Bunko Challenge from DHP on Vimeo . There's a young chap in Indiana, one Alec Quig , who has written to me about creating a career based on a polymathic degree, from which he has recently graduated. He's an interesting young man and his concerns about going forward in life are the anxieties we all face at crossroads in our lives when we are forced to make choices. Dan Pink's latest book The Adventures of Johnny Bunko: The Last Career Guide You'll Ever Need might help: "From a New York Times, BusinessWeek, and Washington Post bestselling author comes a first-of-its- kind career guide for a new generation of job seekers.There's never been a career guide like it.the fully illustrated story (ingeniously told in Manga form) of a young Everyman just out of college who lands his first job. Johnny Bunko is new to parachute company Boggs Corp., and he stumbles through his early days as a working stiff until a crisis prompts him to find a new job. St

Sexist Advertising and stereotypes

Advertising lives in the short-form world. Because mass media is so expensive the 30 second commercial is conventional and because there is so much clutter simplified signals are essential to 'cut through'. One form of communication short-hand used as a default is the stereotype - "A stereotype can be a conventional and oversimplified conception, opinion, or image, based on the assumption that there are attributes that members of the "other group" have in common. Stereotypes are sometimes formed by a previous illusory correlation, a false association between two variables that are loosely correlated if correlated at all. Though generally viewed as negative perceptions, stereotypes may be either positive or negative in tone." In the 1950's and 60's when men dominated advertising stereotypical impressions of women as inferior or subservient were not only commonplace but usual. It was normal to show women as housekeepers, largely because most wer

ThoughtSpurs

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