Exploring Your Creative Genius: Episode 76
In last week’s show I channeled a handful of guests and shared some of the key creative and entrepreneurial messages they shared with us over the past few months.
One that a couple of guests touched on from their unique perspectives was the creative value of open-endedness. We heard time and again how our brains are much more naturally engaged participating, contributing, to a business challenge when they have the chance to define the work they’ll do. Or in their appreciation of an idea or an image, when they are offered the opportunity to participate in it’s completion.
John Lowe, a very early Apple employee, spoke of how he was shown his new office on his first day and it had a desk and a chair and a phone. He sat there, checked and found the drawers were empty, and returned to his boss to ask what he wanted John to do. The boss said we hired you to figure that out and immediately and from then on John knew that’s what brings the best out of him, creating his path, not following.
I spoke of my time at FGI, the marketing company here in Chapel Hill, where I was a partner back in the late 80’s and early 90’s, which is to say in the pre-digital days. When the Art Department was working on the layout of a new ad the image would be a loose pencil sketch of what the final image would be. I was struck how I always preferred the raw rendering of the image to the final artwork; the Art team was very talented and the final image was a winner, but the fact that my imagination was called upon to complete the rough image engaged me in it, made my viewing much richer.
Leave room for others and you’ll find time and again they fill it with their best and, in my experience, their best is better than mine.
“Exploring Your Creative Genius” takes an expansive view on what it means to be creative and entrepreneurial in an ongoing conversation led by Carl Nordgren — entrepreneur, novelist, and lifelong student with decades of experience growing his own creative capacity and assisting others to do the same in exciting new ways!
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