What can we do to be more creative? What exercises will help us to achieve that? What can we learn with children? That's the questions I try to answer through out this presentation.

1. “HELLO IDEAS”
Hugo Fernandes
imhugo.com / @imhugo
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2. HUGO
FERNANDES
Freelancer
Interactive Designer
Creative Technologist
imhugo.com
hello@imhuhgo.com
@imhugo
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3. START YOUR ENGINES
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Draw your neighbor in the audience in 1 minute.

4. START!
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5. STOP!
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Lesson learned:
. great warm up exercise before a creative meeting
. you don’t need to know how to draw to express an idea
. let it flow

6. “Ideas are the real currency in our
business.
Without a good idea, all the mystic
proficiency in the world is just window
dressing.”
by Mike Dietz, Slappy Pictures
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But how can we generate ideas?
In one simple word...

7. CREATIVITY
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Question to the audience:
“Who of you doesn't see yourself as a creative person?”

8. well,
YOU’RE WRONG
Everyone has the ability to be creative,
but not in the same way.
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Artistic Creativity vs Technical Creativity
You cannot compare to an artist. That’s not your job, neither your type of creativity. More
about this later.

9. WHY?
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Why do I say that everyone has the ability to be creative?

10. The
“Schwarzenegger
effect”
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That’s the key for all of it.

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How do you think he became like that?

12. WORKING OUT
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Deduction: “What do you mean? Creativity is not a muscle that can get bigger if we work it
out...”

13. WORK OUT
Creativity needs to be worked out,
like an exercise.
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Mental processes.
You need to exercise creativity.

14. Why some people
think they’re not
creative?
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15. © Christian Faur
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In kindergarten they gave us crayons. And we were not afraid to using them.
My daughter draws a sun with arms. And she’s not afraid of doing it.

16. © Girls’ Generation
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But with adolescence you start to evaluate things. Most of the teenagers stop the creative
process when they think another person is better than them. And that constrains our brain.

17. THE
SURVIVERS
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18. MEET EMILY
© cutsandguts.tumblr.com
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As a "survival" creative teenager, you grow up different and you don't worry about constrains
when you don't have the urge to please anyone else but you.

19. HOW TO DEFINE
CREATIVITY?
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Like we talked before, there are different types of creativity.

20. ARTISTIC CREATIVITY
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Is more born of skill, technique and self-expression. It can not be taught.
You don’t need to be a painter.

21. TECHNICAL CREATIVITY
http://www.stefanleijon.com/
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Where people create new theories, technologies or ideas. This is the type of creativity we will
discuss here.
There are two main strands to technical creativity

22. TECHNICAL CREATIVITY
1. Programmed Thinking
2. Lateral Thinking
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Lateral Thinking is what we will target.

23. TECHNICAL CREATIVITY
1. Programmed Thinking
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24. TECHNICAL CREATIVITY
1. Programmed Thinking
Relies on logical or structured ways
of creating a new product or service.
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25. TECHNICAL CREATIVITY
1. Programmed Thinking
Morphological Analysis
Reframing Matrix
...
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Some Creative techniques:
- Morphological Analysis: Analysis to generate new products and services
- Reframing Matrix: The 4 Ps Approach: Product perspective, Planning perspective, Potential
perspective, People perspective.

26. TECHNICAL CREATIVITY
2. Lateral Thinking
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Unfortunately, we get stuck in our patterns.
We tend to think within them.

27. TECHNICAL CREATIVITY
2. Lateral Thinking
Solutions we develop are based on
previous solutions to similar
problems.
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Usually it does not occur to us to use solutions belonging to other problems.

28. TECHNICAL CREATIVITY
2. Lateral Thinking
Breaks the patterned way of thinking.
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We use lateral thinking techniques to break out of this patterned way of thinking.

29. TECHNICAL CREATIVITY
2. Lateral Thinking
Recognizes that our brains are
pattern recognition systems, and that
they do not function like computers.
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It takes years of training before we learn to do simple arithmetic. On the other hand, we can
instantly recognize patterns such as faces, language, and handwriting.

30. TECHNICAL CREATIVITY
2. Lateral Thinking
Brainstorming
Random Input
Provocation
...
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Some Creative techniques
- Random Input: When you’re stuck it. Once you have chosen the word, list its attributions or
associations with the word. Then apply each of the items on your list and see how it applies
to the problem at hand.
- Provocation: Make stupid statements

31. CREATIVE PROCESSES
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When using Lateral Thinking.
There are a lot.
My favorite is...

32. CREATIVE PROCESSES
DO IT
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DO IT stands for...

33. Define problem
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During this stage you apply a number of techniques to ensure that you are asking the right
question.

34. Open mind and apply
creative techniques
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Here you apply creativity techniques to generate as many answers as possible to the question
you are asking. At this stage you are not evaluating the answers. This is were happens the
real brainstorming. After this, make a pause. Take a breath.

35. Identify best solution
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Only at this stage do you select the best solutions from the ones you came up with in step 2.
Where you are having difficulty in selecting ideas, use formal techniques to help.

36. Transform
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The final stage is to make an Action Plan for the implementation of the solution, and to carry
it out. Without implementation, your creativity is sterile.

37. WE ALL DO IT
WITH 1 LITTLE “SECRET”
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38. ORGANIZATION
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Talk about organization in a creative process. It’s fundamental.
A pianist has to know the notes before he starts to play in a crazy and creative mood.

39. FIRST STEP
after a meeting
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This will help you to stay organized.

40. ?
What are your thoughts about the meeting?
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41. What was discussed?
?
What are your thoughts about the meeting?
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42. What was discussed?
What did I learned?
?
What are your thoughts about the meeting?
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43. What did I learned?
How can I implement it?
?
What are your thoughts about the meeting?
What was discussed?
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44. ?
What are your thoughts about the meeting?
What was discussed?
What did I learned?
How can I implement it?
What are the next steps?
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45. ?
What are your thoughts about the meeting?
What was discussed?
What did I learned?
How can I implement it?
What are the next steps?
Did I hear or saw anything inspiring?
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46. ?
What are your thoughts about the meeting?
What was discussed?
What did I learned?
How can I implement it?
What are the next steps?
Did I hear or saw anything inspiring?
Was it a waste of time?
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47. ?
What are your thoughts about the meeting?
What was discussed?
What did I learned?
How can I implement it?
What are the next steps?
Did I hear or saw anything inspiring?
Was it a waste of time?
What can I have done to make it better?
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48. ?
What are your thoughts about the meeting?
What was discussed?
What did I learned?
How can I implement it?
What are the next steps?
Did I hear or saw anything inspiring?
Was it a waste of time?
What can I have done to make it better?
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When you go through this process, things happen. You have revelations. You make decisions
about where to go next. When you don’t do it… you respond to emails and go to Facebook.
You can add your own questions here.

49. CREATIVE TECHNIQUES
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How to work out after that?

50. CREATIVE TECHNIQUES
Starbursting
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Draw a star and in each point write Who, What, Why, Where, When and How

51. CREATIVE TECHNIQUES
Brainwriting
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Great for teams where there’s a leader that smashes all ideas.
Each team member has 5 minutes do write down their own ideas. In the end everyone will
read them.

52. CREATIVE TECHNIQUES
Brainstorming
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Popular tool that helps you generate creative solutions to a problem.

53. CREATIVE TECHNIQUES
Reversal Technique
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A different approach to brainstorming.
The reversal technique challenges you to list your assumptions about a particular subject
area and then to simply reverse those assumptions to try and make them work.
Use the "What If" compass. How to turn it bad.

54. ENOUGH TALK!
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55. LETS EXERCISE
:)
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Exercise: the circles

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You have 30 seconds to draw whatever you want.
Some hints: smilies, clocks, ...

57. START!
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Use a loud chaotic music.

58. STOP!
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Learned:
- When you don’t have to much time and the surround is chaotic, you use your mental
patterns to solve similar problems.
- A lot of people will draw the hints I gave
- A lot of people will draw only inside the circles, even if I have told to draw whatever they
want.

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Now you have 1 minute to draw whatever you want.
Show next hint.

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61. START...
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Use a calm music...

62. STOP
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Leassons learned:
- A lot of people will not draw only inside the circles.
- Why not a blank page? Why using the pencil?
- The music influences creativity.
- When you have to much time and a calm music, your brain will start to fade away from what
you should be thinking. A lot of people will be start ti think in other stuff. Find a balance
between time and atmosphere in a creative meeting.

63. FINAL THOUGHTS
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About generating ideas

64. Don’t make it a “I have the
biggest penis in the room”
contest
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In the initial phase of the creative meeting, you CAN NOT judge ideas. Just throw them to the
table.

65. Don’t be afraid
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As we saw before, fear creates constrains. We do not want that in a brainstorming session.

66. Do not judge.
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A stupid idea can generates a great one.

67. Don’t kill ideas in first
stages.
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If you tend to think too technically, this will probably happen.

68. Have fun!
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The most important thing. Without fun, it will be hard to have good ideas.

69. Have kids!
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You will learn a lot with your kids...
They’re not afraid to be fool, to have stupid ideas, and to do whatever they think it’s right.

70. THANK YOU!
imhugo.com / @imhugo
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