Creative Think

Does It Feel Like the 1970s to You?

Mark Twain once said: "History doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes."

I'm now getting old enough to recognize certain things in this decade — the 2000s — that "rhyme" with things from another decade, the 1970s. See if you agree.

      

• Both the 1970s and the 2000s have an unpopular but twice-elected Republican president (Nixon in the 70s; George Bush in the 00s).

• Both decades have an unpopular war (Vietnam in the 70s; Iraq in the 00s).

• Both decades have significant rise in petroleum prices (the 70s had the "oil shocks" of 1973-74 which raised prices from $2.50/barrel to $10/barrel; the 00s have spot oil prices approaching $150/barrel).

• Both decades witnessed a rise in environmental consciousness (the 70s had the birth of the "environmental" movement; the 00s has its own apocalyptic religious vision of "global warming").

      

• Both decades had the democratic party nominate a previously obscure liberal as its candidate for president (Jimmy Carter in the 70s; Barack H. Obama in the 00s).

• Both decades saw the rise of a transformative media technology (the 70s saw the beginning of cable television which began the fragmentation of media centralization away from the "Big Three" networks; 00s have widespread WIFI that allows bloggers and Twitterers a final assault on our attention span).

• The mid-to-late 1970s saw a significant growth in inflation rates; inflation growth is just beginning at the latter part of the decade.

Of course, we should be grateful we don't have "big hair," "bell bottoms," or "swingers" to the same degree that were present in the 1970s.

Question: What other similarities do see between the current decade and the 1970s?

Another Odd British Government Logo

Question: have you looked at your logo from a number of different viewpoints lately? Maybe you should.

Last week I reported on seeing the London 2012 Olympics logo while I was there. It's a bit controversial: among other things, some say it looks likes the Lisa Simpson performing a sexual act. Anyway, I hope the Brits have fun with it.

Today, my sources have sent me another odd British logo (hat-tip to Alex), shown below.

This one, done at a cost of £14,000, was done for the U.K. Office of Government Commerce.

What does the OCG do? According to the Times (of London), they are "responsible for improving value for money by driving up standards and capability in procurement."

So, what do you think of the design? Certainly looks modern and clean. Although it's kerned a little too tightly for my tastes.

Logos are seen from a bunch of different angles, especially when they're on mouse pads, pens, and the like. What happens when you rotate this 90 degrees like so?

My goodness, the logo takes on a whole new life! It's practically an icon to Onanism.

Despite many titters and much laughter from the public, the OCG is using it anyway. A spokesman for the OGC said this:

"We concluded that the effect was generic to the particular combination of letters 'OGC' and is not inappropriate to the an organization that's looking to have a firm grip on government spending. The logo presents a very clean, uncluttered and modern identity."

Firm grip, indeed!

 

The Future of Air Travel?

Creative Challenge Question: "What do you think will happen in commercial air travel in the next three years (by 2011)? What are the ramifications for other industries such as tourism, etc.?

With petroleum at record highs of near $140/ barrel, the airline industry is among the hardest hit.

• United Airlines just announced that it is laying off 950 pilots.
• Aviation experts predict that air capacity will shrink by 20% beginning this fall.
• Airlines are un-bundling services such as checked luggage and are now charging for them.
• Boeing and Airbus face having up to one-third of their new orders canceled.

It certainly seems like the end of an era. So, how do you think this will all shake out in the next three years?

In your opinion, what things will change dramatically? Who loses, and who benefits?

Crowne Plaza Innovator Series

Some of you have asked me what I was doing for Crowne Plaza in London.

I was chosen as a "Crowne Plaza Innovator for 2008." That essentially means I was a paid spokesman for their brand. This is part of Crowne Plaza's ongoing "Innovator" series (for the 82 European Crowne Plaza properties).

I ended up doing 22 radio, magazine, and newspaper interviews, and also two seminars for several of their clients.

Here's a link to one of my favorite interviews that came out of this: from the Times (of London).

My main message is that when you plan a meeting, in addition to the space, Audio-visual and catering requirements, you should also be thinking about how engaged your meeting participants are. To help you, Crowne Plaza has created the "Think Box" which has a set of tools (including the Creative Whack Pack  and Ball of Whacks) to stimulate creativity for meetings.

It was fun talking about creativity and innovation!

[Photo by Ash Knotek]

Virtual Book Tour

Many thanks to Paul Williams at Idea Sandbox who put together a "Virtual Tour" for the new 25th Edition of A Whack on the Side of the Head this past week.

Paul enlisted the following four creativity bloggers who each did a review and/or a Q&A with me: Katie Konrath Get Fresh Minds, Jeff Brainard at Catch Your Limit, John Chandler at Creativityist, and Joyce Wycoff at ThinkSmart

Here's one of the questions Katie Konrath asked me in our interview (her entire post can be found here).

Katie: What's an example of where failure has led you in a different direction?

Roger: My third book, "Expect the Unexpected or You Won't Find It" was published several days before September 11, 2001. (This book is about the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus whom I consider to be the world's first "creativity teacher.")

The book came out and it was an exciting time. Things were going well and the book got up to #69 on the Amazon list on September 10.

Then 9/11 happened. As a result, most of the media and promotional stuff for the book got washed away. The few interviews I did do had questions such as: "How does your book relate to Al Qaeda?" and "What should we be doing about anthrax terrorist attacks?"

Post 9/11 was a very strange time. And of course, the world didn't feel like hearing about 2,500 year old creativity ideas. I learned that you can have the greatest idea in the world, but if the timing's not right, there's very little you can do.

So, I picked up the pieces in 2002. I found a new publisher for a soft cover version of the book. In 2003, I created a new card deck with some of Heraclitus' basic ideas (this became the "Innovative Whack Pack").

And I was able to incorporate some of my favorite Heraclitus' ideas and stories in the new 25th Anniversary Edition of "Whack." Things worked out okay, just not the way I had expected. Which is fitting considering the title of the book ("Expect the Unexpected").

The Logo I'd Forgotten About

With the Beijing Olympics fast approaching, I had completely forgotten that it was just a little over a year ago that the London Olympic Organizing Committee publicly unveiled their logo for the 2012 Games.

However, my memory was refreshed this afternoon when I saw a taxi drive by bearing the London logo on one of its door panels (I'm in London).

Seeing the logo made me smile. That's because when it was publicly announced, public criticism was almost universal, with such comments as:

• "It looks like a broken swastika."
• "Origami meets high explosives."
• "Surveillance video of Hugh Grant and Divine Brown."
• "Naughty Lisa Simpson logo."
• "Man bent over with back pain."
• "Car skidding out of control."

But if the logo is appearing on public transportation, I guess they're keeping it. (They paid $800,000 for it.)

I still think it's ugly. I liked these renderings better:

Doing Media in London

I'm in London this week as the guest of the European division of the Crowne Plaza hotel chain. Crowne Plaza is positioning itself as the place where savvy business travelers have their meetings. They've created something called the "Think Box" which contains several of my products including the Creative Whack Pack and the Ball of Whacks. Meeting participants can use these to energize their thinking. It's quite a nice package. Check it out here.

[At left, in the studio.] I did a number of interviews (17) today to promote the Crowne Plaza meeting concept including several with the BBC, The Times, and WebChats.TV. Today was a fun day, and I got to to meet some interesting people.

Good Intentions

Sometimes good intentions can lead to unintended consequences.

Creative challenge: What does this cartoon remind you of?

Air Travel's Unintended Consequences

To help offset rising jet-fuel prices, American Airlines recently added a $15 per bag fee for passengers checking more than one bag on their flights.

So, how is this working out? How does human behavior factor in? Here's one story.

Last night, I flew on an American flight from St. Louis back to San Francisco. The in-bound connecting flight from Miami was two hours late. Thus, all 152 passengers were ready and eager when it finally came to board the flight (the plane was a single-aisle 757).

It took 40 minutes to get all of the passengers on. Why so long? Since passengers didn't want to check their luggage, they brought larger than usual bags on the flight. Since there's only so much overhead storage space, it took passengers longer to rearrange the bags in the over-head space so they could get their bags to fit. And, of course, they did this while they were standing in the aisle so that no one could pass them.

Here's the juicy unintended consequence: since we pulled out so late, the pilot came on and said, "We'll try to speed things up for you, and fly a little faster to make up up some of the time we lost getting out of the gate."

So, in effect, American's new checked bag policy ended up costing them money in extra jet-fuel use. Wow!

QUESTION: What unintended consequences have you noticed lately?

Getting to Know You!

Here's something fun! This is a photo of a piece of outdoor sculpture I took last year in Berlin (when I was at the Berlin Film Festival). I think it's quite evocative.

Creative challenge: think up a fun caption for this photo!