I have always wanted to be in a rockband. But it didn’t turn out that way. When I was 16 my biggest wish was to give a concert on the orange stage at Roskilde Festival. These days I know it’s probably not gonna happen. Firstly I don’t really play my bass guitar anymore ( I haven’t ever really done that actually - but it’s still the coolest thing in my house).

I am 28 and I still want to be in a rock band. I want to be either the frontsinger or the guitarist with mystique, or the cool keyboard player.

Last night before I went to bed I was thinking; Toothless Tiger is my baby, it’s more a playground for me than a business. Heck it could even be a rock band.

Toothless Tiger came from rock’n'roll. My daughter is named after a groupie in the film “almost famous”. Thomas and I hooked up at a Sleater-Kinney concert. The first thing Thomas and I did together was to go to Leeds Music Festival in 2003.

And now I have decided to run Toothless Tiger as a rock band. It might sound crazy - but it totally makes sense to me.

Business for me is not about making business, it’s about making something more than business. it’s about letting go and trust the people you work with making them each into representative Toothless Tiger satellites of their own coolness and person. It’s about being yourself and acting as yourself and doing what you please - and keeping the rest of the band in mind when you act.

is this doable and becoming a more of a close community than a business ? Can you run a business as a rock band ?

The essense of a rock band is to be true to yourself as a person and embracing the rest of the band as a family - keeping in mind that everyone in the band has their own coolness factor and their own unique personality. Everyone involved in Toothless Tiger is an independent satellite anyway - it’s not that we have big ego’s (well maybe some of us do =) but we are all extremely independent, working in different directions, balancing the borders of technology, social and humanism.

A rock band is based on trust and working closely together, it’s based on everyone deciding how to prioritize their involvement in the band and finding out for themselves what projects to work on. it’s based on the individuals not the company. It’s the personal brand of “me” that people work with - not exactly the rest of the company.

So… Toothless Tiger isn’t exactly a part of the rock’n'roll industry. But every company could in essense, be managed as a rock band.

Im gonna give it a try - and if it doesn’t work out then it’s OK - cause im with the band =)

Tags: business, change, creativity, innovation, leadership, rockband, toothless tiger

I have used a part of my summerholiday to write this essay on action – to research what it takes to get from a-z in action or as I have called it “from Z(ero) to A(ction) in ACTION!”.
This means defining some of my main steps necessary to generate ideas and putting them to work.

For a very long time I have been thinking about working my way through the process of idea creation to creativity and finally to action. In my world it’s a petty when a good idea goes to waste without getting to test a part of the actual idea out.

Now for a definition of action – as my good friend J.C. Fischer and I came up with for a 6 word story ” babysteps will get you there too”.

In this case it means that small actions inside yourself will lead to larger actions externally, if the larger actions feels right. So the scalability of actions are really important.
If we take the word ”act” it means that you are ”doing something” about a given idea. That something could be anything from reflection on an idea to bringing the idea to life by making it happen in real life.

This essay is used as mapping out a structure for a ”possible” book on the subject – so if you have any good input about what is missing – please let me know =)

So how do you generate ideas ?

Ideas has a touch of magic and dreams.

An idea to me is a magical feeling that you get when you think about something new. A good idea to a person, is an idea that you decide, you would like to act upon - because you think it’s a good idea. Still most of the good ideas stays at the good idea stage (and never makes it to action). So how do you spur your idea into action ?

Creativity

Creativity is a constant ”stepstone” in the action process – not just a tool to spur ideas into action. You need creativity to generate ideas. In the words of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi: ”creativity is interaction”.

Most important to me is the interactions between the people you see, the culture you live in and your own creative vibe.

How can you create a better creative vibe within yourself ?

I have made a creativity 100 list a while back – which was a 100 point list to get more creative.

My favorites from that list are :

- Creativity means creative choices of inclusion and exclusion (Robert Mckee)
- Creative action speaks louder than creative words
- Be a firestarter a twisted firestarter
- Eliminate the word ”against” in your mind. Don’t be against smoking or against war – be FOR health and FOR peace.

Let’s say you’ve got the idea now, and you’ve got that creative vibe going – what’s next ?

You still have quite a way to go to get to action. All steps of ”z-a” is small actions themselves but the place we want to get at, is where people can see you are ”making” something – instead of ”just talking” about the idea.

Talk and listen… ( trust me you need your community =)

So when you have the idea and you are ”flowing” it – start talking and introducing it to various people to get feedback. Don’t think about action just yet - just listen to what people are telling you.

Listening is just as important as talking in action-hunting.

When people are saying the same over and over again and marking out the same assets and faults of your idea – it’s time to springle the idea with a little action.

an Idea description

Change the thing about the idea that people say ( and you feel) is broken, and use the assets to make an idea description – you’re probably going to change the idea description a thousand times during the idea stage but that’s quite okay.
Things I normal put into my idea descriptions are :
- what’s the point of this idea?
- Why is it going to save a tiny part of the world
- How can I make people like it ?
- Who will like it the most (aka. Who is the primary target group)
- What is stopping you from going into action ?
- What are the next steps to be taken.

Review and rewrite the description everytime you idea ”get stuck” and is more likely to go down the drain then to action =)

Remarkability ( be different)…

For this to work – you don’t have to think in ways that other people hasn’t done before. But you have to be damn good at creative puzzles. Creative puzzles is the way you mix and match tendencies, functioning ideas, money-earning ideas into your own. Take your inspiration from places you had no intention of going.

So when you think of being remarkable – you don’t really have to go all the way and reinvent the deep dish again – you can settle for a creative puzzle – which is just as unique. Remarkability can also be a unique way of putting together puzzles.

Turn everything …

Ask questions upside down, inside out.

How would a teapot see your living room ? – what would a cat do in this and this situation.

Find the coolest people as muses and ask yourself questions like ”how would Elvis Presley write this book” – or ” how would the queen of Saba sing ” anarchy in the U.K) – quite amusing and a grand way to put yourself in new shoes.

This essay is not ending.

I will continously add to it. But this is all I’ve got for now, from my balcony in surburbia Denmark =)

creative sources for this post:

Hugh macleod : “how to be creative”

James Wood Young: ” technique for getting ideas”

crossposted on tensoriana.org and henrietteweber.com

Tags: creativity, innovation

Since Lift07 I have been wanting to do a creativity 100 - a practical creativity manifesto that can create some twisting and turning in your minds. Since reboot 9 I have been dying to finish it.

1. Your knowledge of “what’s out there” makes you base your choices on your knowledge of what works and what doesn’t work

2. Creativity means creative choices of inclusion and exclusion (Robert Mckee)

3. What doesn’t work in one context - might work in another. Test your options

4. Creativity is interaction. Most of the time with real people

5. The biggest goal for your ideas is casualization. turning your idea into a trend that partly turns “mainstream” or “normal”

6. When an idea is casualized - work on a new idea. Be ahead of the market

7. Look at the past to predict the future. Patterns mostly form themselves and repeat themselves

8. Being the first is more important to creativity than to be the best. when somebody becomes the best - the first are being first in something else

9. Taking a creative project from a-z is a piece of art in itself. Sometimes the creative person can’t manage herself- he’s busy creating other ideas

10. Creative action speaks louder than creative words

11. You don’t really need to be tomorrow where you are today

12. you don’t need to have creative past to get a creative future

13. be a firestarter, a twisted firestarter

14. dare to be different, it will really get you further in the long run

15. Creative people are often disliked by other people. It’s often real hard for the creative person to accept that

16. See your body mind and spirit as a whole, get inspiration with new ways of eating, living, thinking etc

17. Make personal goals and keep them. Do you really want to write that book right now ? - how high priority does it have on a scale from 1- 10 ( 1 is the lowest)

18. Make all your thoughts positive instead of negative, don’t nag - think about what a negative situation gives you - in a positive way

19. Eliminate the word “against” in your mind. Don’t be against smoking or against war - be FOR health and FOR peace

20. Eliminate “forever” and “never” in your mind. This will contribute to reducing you reluctance to change and in the end make your person more in sync

21. Don’t go where no man has gone before - go where YOU haven’t gone before - if you don’t like it, see it as an experience, if you do - use it to grow further

22. what do you really want ? get a friend to ask you that question again and again for 5 mins - and write it down ( if you don’t have any friends, IM me and I can ask you)

23. put beauty in everything - live beautifully and clean up your mess

24. Smile, try meditation and yoga

25. Don’t react negatively to anything, tell people to their face what you think of the way they are behaving

26. Is the processes you have in your life right now draining your energy or giving you energy ? - if it’s draining your energy, get yourself out of there…

27. how do you feel when you have eaten ? tired or energized ? if you fell tired the likelyhood of a food intolerance is big

28. Dress up everyday

29. Be green - this will change your world ( and it will give you the energy to save the world)

30. Tell friends how much you appreciate them - do they know ?

31. Make your marks in the sand, claim what is yours before somebody else does

32. What do you want to do right now ?

33. Do it

34: l.i.v.e i.n. t.h.e n.o.w!

35: stay philosophical - something like ” is that dress really pink - or is it just my perception of it that’s pink?”

36: don’t just eat everything you put in your mouth, taste it… and taste it again - ask yourself what it tastes of

37: have a happy approach

38: don’t let people who let’s you down, get you down. use the experience to show them what you’re made of

39: be passionate about yourself and your life, if there’s not a tiny spark of passion in what you do, I believe you wouldn’t be doing it

40: try to take yourself where you want to go, not based on where you have been, but based on where you are now

41: see art

42: make art

43: give “it” away - now… it doesn’t matter what “it” is - just give it away

44: be direct, tell people if you don’t agree, but in a positive way - your opinion will be valued and not evaluated if you’re positive about it

45: give people the answers they are looking for, if you can give it to them.. ( and give it to the ASAP - I simply hate hanging on a leash)

46: if you’re in flow, you’re in flow - stop all arrangements and stay there - tell your family that if you say you simply “need” to do something - it’s because you’re in flow.

47: don’t put other people’s priorities first, put your own priorities first.

48: entrepreneurs: get paid for the work you do - if they don’t want to pay you, then they don’t deserve you ( or don’t value you enough) - but hold your head high - it’s hard to live under water

49: listen to music and podcasts - entertain and be entertained

50: have another glass of wine

51: party like there’s no tomorrow… examine the world as if you were born today

52: make yourself an “I am good” book. write down 3 points where you start with “I am good at…”. Then write down 3 points where you start with “Thank you for”. At last write down 3 points where you start with “help me with”… put everything out there - don’t care who you thank or who you ask for help.. just do it everynight before you go to bed… It will get you somewhere…

53: watch movies

54: stop watching TV

55: picture what will be written on your tombstone - picture you’re a hundred and look back at your life, what do you want to be remembered for?

56: take a ceramics course, when you’ve had enough take a guitar course, when you play the guitar to perfection - study litterature at the university… keep evolving yourself..

57: Creativity is not a crime - keep pushin’ the ideas out there.

58: try to see patterns and see if you can estimate where the future is heading

60: have the exces energy to cook every night - make it a daily family event

61: have dinner parties for your favorite people.

62: listen, and then talk…

63: when people ask you how you’re doing - you should say “great”

64: buy a book today about a subject you don’t think you’re interested in

65: sign up for a new blog today

66: comment

67: try to design it yourself - no matter what you want to do…

68: ask the questions you are scared about first

69: remember your own youth revolution - are you still a part of it and fighting the same things ?

70: don’t fear the unknown

71: tell people if you disagree, when you disagree, not 3 days later

72: be involved in communities

73: use only your weak hand for one day

74: switch to left-handed

75: draw a familiar object, upside down

76: become a designer, in your mind and in your ways of acting

77: DIY - who knows what you might find ( or ruin)

78: draw 20 circles. Try to make each one into something in under 7 minutes (ie: pie, bicycle wheel, sewer grate, etc). repeat daily.

79: write “what if?” scenarios

80: try to do things you didn’t think was possible. fx. if you’re a parent you know how little sleep you actually need to function.

81: act

82: praise yourself

82: be quiet

83: make noise

84: imagine your problem was a contestant in the iron chef, but iron chef for X industry/context. how would they win?

85: Imagine other contexts for things. Macguyver everything

86: always keep asking, why?

87: never settle down

88: don’t become to satisfied, be proud, but enhancing

89: if you never ask questions then you’re probably not getting the right answers

90: always keep asking. create questions around whatever you’re trying to do.

91: be polite, always

92: revolt

93: be selfconcious

94: take the bike

95: bring a notebook on you and a kick-ass pen

96: love

97: do art

98: join a reclaim the streets

99: picture yourself doing things you never thought you’d do.

100: record yourself singing a song on camera

thanks to John Griffiths, Michele Perras and Will Pate from the wonderful torcamp swarm for the last 20

crossposted on Henriette Weber and Tensoriana

Tags: creativity, innovation, lift07, reboot, reboot9