Ever since I‘ve been asked in my application for the Service Design Thinking Program at KIT, I‘ve been wondering about how creative I actually am. During the application I was asked, if I had done any creative work in the past. While this might be a topic of thought for many people out there, I‘ve never really thought about my relationship with creativity.

The Design Thinking Program has been challenging this creative side of me for the past few months. While I‘m not yet certain if I can consider myself a creative person, I sure do work a lot of creative work. And yet it is hard to grasp for me, what being creative actually means. Our instructor in the program recommended us to watch this video by John Cleese on creativity (Transcript). Not only does he state that creativity can‘t be explained (which really eased my mind), it really helped my understanding of the topic and how to get yourself in a creative state.

Learnings from John Cleese‘s famous talk on creativity

  • creativity is not a talent it is a way of operating (not even correlates with IQ)
  • creativity is more like a mood/state of mind, which is very similar to playing like a child, but with ideas
  • humans function in an open mode and a closed mode
    • closed mode is active, slightly anxious and we work directly towards a goal, where steps are clear
    • open mode is relaxed, sometimes even humor but most importantly: playful
  • in order to be creative, we need to get ourselves in the open mode
  • five things to get into open mode
    • 🧘🏼 Space: from daily tasks, stress, disturbances
    • ⏲️ Time: set duration, apart from every day life, about 90 minutes
    • 🏃‍♂️ Time (endurance): be prepared to stick with a problem longer, not relying on the first solutions to come to mind
    • 🤩 Confidence: don‘t set limits on yourself and your ideas
    • 🤣 Humor: essential part of spontaneity, essential part of playfulness, essential for creativity
  • open mode is no guarantee for results

I for my part try to implement these things into the creative part of the Service Design Thinking Program and beyond.