I'd like to hear about how you "unlock cool."
I'm stealing the phrase "unlock cool" (with cool being something unique and cutting edge) from Jeremy Gutsche, MBA, CFA, chief trend hunter at trendhunter.com. He gave the closing keynote at CUES Experience last month. (In the photo he's talking to CUES member Jack Ken
nelly, VP/marketing, $316 million City & County CU, Maplewood, Minn. A side story, Jeremy saw attendees drinking bottles of root beer and thought it was beer. Maybe beer would have been cooler!)
Jeremy told conference attendees that taking a "methodical approach to innovation can help you generate ideas, stimulate creativity and ultimately unlock cool."
Whoa! "Methodical" innovation can lead to cool?
Twyla Tharp would agree. One of America's greatest choreographers, Tharp suggests in her book The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It for Life" that making creativity part of your life means making it a habit.
Tharp has clearly succeeded with her methodology, having created more than 130 dances for some of the world's best dance companies, winning two Emmy awards for television's Baryshnikov by Tharp, and a Tony award for the Broadway musical Movin' Out. (Set to the music of Billy Joel, Movin' Out is awesome! I went, I know!)
To support all this creative work, Tharp (she's in her 60s--that's her, at right) gets up every day at 5:30 a.m. and takes a cab to the gym, where she works out for two hours. She uses cardboard boxes to contain the things that inspire her for each project she works on. She reads every evening, scratching for ideas. She works with the best people she can, to inspire the best in herself. She uses exercises and games to keep her mind fresh, help her get started, and to get over blocks and worries.
With preparation and effort, she'd say, "creativity"--and I'd say "unlocking cool"--are within everyone's reach.
So how do we commoners "unlock cool"? I'll go first: My personal habits to push creativity are to do writing early in my work day, swimming even earlier in the morning two days a week, having some friends who are more "artists" than me--including a poet, a dancer and a painter/biologist--to provide out-of-the-box ideas, and making sure I get enough time for my brain to be quiet.
Your turn. What do you do?
