Creative Confidence – Tom Kelley & David Kelley – Review

Creativity is meant for every professional and can be applied even in domain that are hardbound on rules and regulations. The underlying belief that a person is born with creative talents is a myth that needs to be broken and latent creative expressions can be opened up even with advocates, doctors, accountants and range of professional who are hardwired in analytical traits. The crux of the book drives the above-mentioned point right till the end and I must admit there is a compelling nature to the creative potential that David and Kelly desires to crack open.

Any successful business needs to strike a sweet spot with respect to three critical components and the same can be understood through the given Venn diagram.

 

While there are plenty of financially well off businesses meeting mostly the 2 components of business and technical viability, it’s the third angle of human factor that provides the necessary fillip to raise as an enterprise. A prime example can be invention of MRI scanners, just one look at the machine shown below is enough trigger our claustrophobic traits. 

Let’s build the scenario, a patient is suspected of malfunction in one of their organs, over and above the medicines he / she is expected to take an MRI scan to confirm the claim, at this point itself he or she is anxious to know what’s happening in their body. To add on their pre-existing anxiety, the patient is pushed into a narrow machine which offers little room to move arm or a leg. Compounding to the situation, the patients needs to undergo the scan process within the claustrophobia inducing machine for a period of 20 minutes in isolation. The overall scenario has led to a lot of adults were scared to get inside the machine or in worst case wanted to abandon the MRI scan midway. Now, imagine kids being asked to put up with MRI scan, the whole experience proved to be a nightmare. It’s an outcome of a solution that’s purely been driven only by the two components – Technical and Business viability, the human centric design was missing.

Doug Dietz took upon himself to find a solution and make MRI scanning a consumable experience for kids. It broke him down when he witnessed the terrifying moments exhibited by kids once they are into the scanner. Clearly, it was unreasonable to expect parents or kids to endure the process even though MRI scan provided a leap in medical innovation. Eventually, the MRI scan machine was redesigned to resemble an adventure tube and exciting stories were narrated over headphones. The sweet spot was finally accomplished when one of the kids expressed a desire to get scanned again the next day.

Psychologist Albert Bandura made an interesting discovery when he enabled his ophidiophobia (overwhelming fear of snakes) patients to overcome their phobia through guided mastery. This is basically a step by step method of reaching a stage wherein patients become comfortable of allowing snakes to play around their necks, which is an unnerving situation even for someone without the phobia. However, once the patients crossed the line and dissolved their fear of snakes, it had other unexpected benefits. A lot of them became confident public speakers, many took up horse riding and bunch of them even explored new possibilities in their job. This can be seen as a dramatic shift in mindset once the fear is conquered.

David and Tom used an interesting term, the compelling mathematics of innovation. Be it Wright brother who chose kitty hawk, an isolated place that facilitated multiple iterations of failure before their first successful flight or Ankit / Akshay’s pulse news app which accomplished 20 million downloads that even Steve Jobs showed off Pulse from main stage of apple worldwide developer conference or plenitude of other successful innovators, they acquired the compelling mathematics of innovation that took them the distance.

In another example, let's consider the case of million premature babies perishing each year within 24 hours of their birth. The reason points out to hyperthermia which is a condition suffered by premature babies as they don’t have enough strength to regulate their body temperature in accordance to the external conditions. A normal outside temperature happens to be freezing cold for them and hence comes the need for incubators. For a long time, countless premature babies died due to hyperthermia despite the availability of incubators and only when mother’s behavior pattern was observed, the real issue emerged. Mothers of premature babies wanted to be in constant physical touch with their little ones which led to a situation wherein these babies were sent home in just a few days after their birth. There was no provision at home to keep them warm which eventually led to their death. It’s a striking example of how preconceived ideas can create fault in system design, in this case the incubators were designed just for hospitals when an extended need was at home. The discovery of the issue led to paraffin based pouch which can keep the baby warm upto 4 hours.  

There are countless other examples putforth in the book and each has it's own human element in the success factor. As I finished reading the book, there is no doubt in my mind that the contents and break open creative concepts are remarkable indeed. 

Highly recommended!