Distance breeds creativity?
Who is it easier to buy an innovative present for; your partner, a friend you see monthly or some distant cousin you see once a year? I’m guessing it will be the distant cousin. Studies show the more remote the recipient the more innovative you’ll be.
The same study showed that we are faster and more creative when solving a problem on someone else’s behalf. We are good at giving advice on other people’s lives after all!
When we think of situations that are distant we think of them in the abstract. They don’t have all the baggage and the emotional ties. When we think in the abstract we are at our most creative. Distance breeds creativity.
The objectivity gained from consultants, due to our distance to your problem, leads to creative solutions for you as a client. We can line up your issues with clarity and address them, unencumbered with the day-to-day blur of work.
We certainly won’t take your watch and tell you what time it is. We’ll even give you some techniques here and now to help you achieve some distance:
- Get a peer group going. Share some good coffee and share some problems.
- Create problem-exchange partners at your work. Email your problem to them and let them do the same. Emailing the problem is good because you won’t want to type too much so you’ll boil it down to what they must know about the problem.
- Work on your own? Go for a walk, run or ride. Physical distance works just as well.
How do you create creativity?
Read more about the study here by Polman and Emich (2011). Decisions for Others Are More Creative Than Decisions for the Self.
Tags: consultant (1), creative (18), design (23), research links (2), ride (1)
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