Open up your mind and say, ahh...

Not too long ago, as I was putting the final touches on a client presentation, I stumbled across a surprising observation. The best insights in my report didn’t emerge in my office, during conference calls, or at meetings. They somehow appeared in the bathroom.

Research on the nature of creativity suggests my experience isn’t all that unique. Often, the most effective way of solving a difficult problem is simply walking away. The moment we allow ourselves to disengage from the individual pieces of a puzzle is the moment a solution appears. It’s why Albert Einstein regularly went sailing and why Charles Darwin planned his day around a countryside stroll. Thomas Edison simply napped.

In many ways, problem solvers are like artists. Taking a few steps back provides painters with a fresh perspective on their subject, lending them a new angle for approaching their work. Problem solving follows a similar recipe, but it’s not always the physical distance that we need. It’s psychological distance; mental space for new insights to bloom.

In a world where finding solutions makes up the crux of a typical workday, we are all artists. Cognitive artists. And to deliver our best work, we need revitalizing breaks. Distancing ourselves from our work grants us a broader view, activating a global perspective that precedes breakthrough.

So, why the bathroom?

If you’re like most office employees, access to sailboats, the countryside and a relaxing couch is in short supply. A walk to the bathroom is one of the few opportunities you have for disengaging, letting go of trivial details and refocusing on the bigger picture–even Steve Jobs recognized the bathroom’s potential, insisting that Pixar only build two in its studios, to provide employees with maximum enforced mixing. Neurologically, it is during these moments away from your desk the right hemisphere of your brain comes to life, making you more appreciative of the forest and less sensitive to the trees.

While most of us give little thought to our workplace bathroom, there’s good reason to believe it can have an impact on the quality of the work we produce — especially in organizations that rely on creativity and problem solving to stand out. Over the past decade, studies have shown that both our thoughts and behaviors are heavily influenced by our surroundings, in ways we often fail to recognize.

A few examples:

• The sound of classical music makes consumers spend more money
• The smell of cookies makes shoppers more likely to help a stranger
• The sight of red hurts intellectual performance but improves physical performance

Psychological findings like these are now commonplace, pointing to one irrefutable fact: Our environment shapes our thinking in powerful ways.

Which brings up some intriguing questions: How can we make the most of our time away from our desks? Is there a way of designing bathrooms to make them more inspiring? And what can organizations do to maximize the insights its employees get out of each bathroom visit?

Recent research on the science of creativity provides some helpful suggestions.

Rethink Muzak

One of the ways we become more creative is by exposing our minds to a broad variety of stimuli. The wider the selection of information you mentally digest–whether it be foreign movies, experimental novels or exotic travel–the more remote associations you’ll have in your arsenal. Or, in laymen’s terms, the more creative you’ll be.

Hearing unusual music primes us to think different–inspiring ideas, emotions and experiences that increase the associations active in our brain.

Surprise The Senses

 Another creativity nugget: We tend to find more insightful solutions to a problem when we’re in a good mood. One method experimentally proven for improving people’s moods is enjoyable scents. Positive scents don’t just make us feel better–they lead us to set higher goals for ourselves and experience a greater sense of self-efficacy.

Now, if you’re like most people, the restroom isn’t the first place that comes to mind when you think of positive scents, and partly that’s because of how hard custodians work to mask negative smells, leaving most bathrooms feeling like an assault on the senses. But in our case, that’s a good thing. It means the bar for surprising people with positive scents is that much more accessible. A few opportunities for enhancing the scent of a workplace bathroom: unusual soaps, exotic candles, and the hallway outside a bathroom, boosting people’s mood before and after a visit.

Encourage Mental Stimulation

Part of what makes bathroom visits a boon to creativity is that they represent one of the few times during the workday when our physiological attention is directed inward, mimicking the psychological experience of insight. But it’s not just inward attention that’s needed–it’s inward attention in the context of fresh ideas.

Think about the last time you saw graffiti in the bathroom. Chances are, not only did you read it, you probably thought about the person who wrote it, perhaps wondering what (the hell) was going through their mind. We can’t help but think about the things we see, but we can choose what we look at. Providing a diet of mentally stimulating material in workplace bathrooms can be done in a number of ways: posting unusual artwork, leaving out thought provoking magazines or using digital picture frames to keep the imagery fresh. The key is for the material to be stimulating and indirectly related to work you do.

Once upon a time, going to the bathroom was a distraction. Something that kept us from work; an unfortunate bodily shortcoming that compromised efficiency. But that world doesn’t exist anymore. Today, our economy is powered by an engine of insight. Creativity in the workplace isn’t a “nice to have”—it’s what keeps companies in business. Which is why it’s ironic that most office bathrooms offer a bleak and unwelcoming environment. One that discourages insight and implicitly chides us to get back to our desks.

There’s just one problem. Creativity doesn’t work that way.

And if the science has taught us anything about the creative process it’s this: Finding unexpected solutions often requires an unexpected approach. Why not start in the bathroom?

Image: Flickr user Christophe Verdier

Job number one as an entrepreneur is landing the first 10 or so core employees. You need to have a clear idea of the kind of talent you want to attract, because this core group sets up your employee brand and your startup’s DNA. As a startup, you’re unproven. You need to have a clear sense of the different types of people you need in the company and how to unify them under a common culture with its own customs, beliefs, and procedures. You also need to be a leader who’s easy to follow, with a clear mission and a strong sense of the results you want to achieve. Your employee brand is the kind of people who represent your company’s values, work style, and personality.

Thinking in terms of employer brand and employee brand can be a powerful strategy for creating a culture that champions its people and helps them flourish. Having a strong internal brand can help grow your business, because you’re more likely to attract the best talent and everyone will feel challenged.

Creating A Growth Culture

You’re not trying to run a social club. Your goal is to win in the market. But to do that you need to create a special culture.

Make sure that you hire people who have skills, resources, and knowledge that you don’t have. Even the most well-rounded entrepreneur isn’t good at everything. You’ve got to figure out your shortcomings and fill the gaps with team members who have those aptitudes. Otherwise, it is unlikely that you’ll be around after the start-up phase. Make sure that you have people who can help you land business and bring in revenue–critical tasks in the start-up phase.

You need to create a workplace with the right amount of challenge and expectations, the right amount of freedom and control. You want everyone to be a growth agent empowered to do her job and help grow the business.

Studies show that the worst work environments are those in which people have little say over their day and always have to follow someone else’s orders. They feel like a cog in a slow-moving corporate machine and consequently don’t do as well as those who work in companies where people have more freedom to decide how to handle projects and assignments. According to these studies, money isn’t the key driver for most people. It’s working in an environment where people have the ability to grow and develop their potential.

Radical Creativity

How do you create a dynamic, innovative culture where it’s everyone’s job to come up with ideas and grow the business?

First, create a culture where it’s OK to fail. The most innovative people are the ones with the most ideas. Most of them are bad ideas that fail. Some companies are even rewarding risk-taking that fails with employee-recognition bonuses and trophies, or setting aside time in the week for new idea generation.

Second, set up the offices and common areas so that there is lots of mingling in the workplace. Contrary to the image most people have of the solitary inventor or entrepreneur, it turns out that most breakout ideas don’t come from loners. Innovative ideas aren’t solitary things. Most successful ideas come from people interacting with each other in environments where ideas are discussed and shared.

That’s why there is a long history of simultaneous inventions. Transformational ideas like the electric battery, the telephone, and the radio were all made by several people who came up with the same idea at practically the same time. Most of them didn’t even know each other, but they were plugged into what was happening in their industry and influenced by similar ideas, what some researchers call the hive mind. That’s the kind of culture you want to create for your business, with all your people, not just the senior people, reaching for innovative ideas.

You want to create a company where people are dying to work because it’s not just work–it’s fun and things are happening. To win the war on talent, many Silicon Valley companies offer elevated perks like free gourmet lunches and on-site haircuts and dry cleaning. You can take your pet to work at some companies; game-maker Zynga will even pay for pet insurance. (The company is named after the CEO’s dog, after all.)

Resist the Copycat Syndrome

Groupthink is when everyone in a group starts thinking alike, and it’s alive and well in the business world. Most entrepreneurs generally resist group-think and the copycat syndrome, but they can creep in as your company expands. People in the same company share so many of the same influences and belong to so many of the same clubs and organizations that they can even start to dress alike.

Don’t try to copy the competition’s culture no matter how successful they are. You want to stay on top of what your competitors are doing to be competitive, but you need to create your own company customs and ways of staying in the lead. The best way to be a leadership brand is to harness the creativity and business thinking of every member of your diverse organization. That can only happen when you encourage and reward out-of-the-box thinking and new ideas for making the business more competitive.

The business world is dynamic, so you have to be strong with your external customers and with your internal customers–your employees. Don’t leave an opening for a new entrepreneur to gallop on the scene with something new and steal away your best talent. You want your company to be the one everyone is clamoring to join. To do that, you need to:

· Make everyone a corporate entrepreneur who is a growth agent for the company.

· Encourage innovation and ideas at every level, especially the frontlines.

· Create a culture with customs and rituals that are special to your company.

· Make sure all employees know their objectives and key results

· Be easy to follow as a leader.

Image: Flickr user dvidshub

The story of Kris Kristofferson, Johnny Cash, a helicopter, and how thinking a little bit bigger about networking will get you a lot further.

Landing a helicopter on Johnny Cash’s lawn unannounced in the late ‘60s is the kind of thing that could put you on the wrong end of a shotgun. But for country legend Kris Kristofferson, it’s the stunt that finally made Cash take notice of the songwriter.

Kristofferson had tired of the handing off demo tapes to Cash and his associates to no avail. It wasn’t getting him anywhere because Cash wasn’t even listening to them. (Cash later told Kristofferson he threw the tapes in the lake.)

Instead of giving up, Kristofferson decided to go guerrilla. By thinking big, thinking creatively, and using the resources at hand, the former Army pilot was able to cut through the noise of ho-hum networking and stand out from the crowd of Nashville songwriters hoping the Man in Black would record their songs.

It was a high risk, high reward approach–and one that’s become near-apocryphal in the details–but that’s what guerrilla networking is about. And as long as the risks are measured, payoff can be big. “I think there’s a big risk in any type of networking or marketing endeavor,” says Monroe Mann, author of Guerrilla Networking: A Proven Battle Plan to Attract the Very People You Want to Meet. “But if you’re trying to play it safe, you’re probably not going to get noticed.”

To break the tedium of traditional networking, Mann advocates that people stop trying to meet as many people as they can. Instead, he says, seriously consider what kind of person other people in your field want to meet–and then be that person. “Networking isn’t about just banging on doors over and over. If you have nothing to offer to other people, it doesn’t matter how persistent you are. Johnny Cash probably said ‘If this guy has the creativity to do this, maybe his music is just as creative.’”

As an actor and filmmaker, (with a film out that showed at the Cannes Film Festival recently) Mann has had success using guerrilla networking tactics to navigate a very competitive industry. Here are some tips from his playbook.

Consider Your Audience

Thinking only of what you want to get out of a networking contact is not only self-centered, but anti-productive. You’ll be viewed as a parasite–you want to be viewed as an asset. If you can sit down and figure out what your target wants and needs, you’re more likely to be welcomed in.

The good news is that everybody needs something. “If you want to meet Steven Spielberg, think about who he wants to meet,” says Mann. “He wants to meet a guy with an amazing script. He wants to meet somebody that can introduce him to 20 million bucks.”

Produce Your Own Projects

As a struggling actor, Mann was blue in the face begging for acting parts. It seemed a waste of energy, so he put his efforts into producing his own films. Soon, his inbox was filling up. “All of a sudden I wasn’t just a stupid actor. Now I was a filmmaker. I was a producer. I had hundreds of people people sending me head shots, I had cast directors saying ‘we can help you.’”

Having a product to show people pulled a lot more weight than trying to convince others he was a good actor. “A world opened up because I had become the kind of person that all these people wanted to meet.”

Don’t Rush It

People tend to approach networking as a numbers game, thinking the more at bats, the more likely they are to get a hit. But Mann suggests people take more time to create a solid strategy before spending time implementing it. “People do traditional networking by just pushing their way in and giving out business cards thinking that’s what’s going to make progress.”

Guerrilla networking takes more time and effort but ultimately the results are often superior. “It takes longer because you’ve got to think creatively like Kristofferson did, and it may take resources to put that into play–a helicopter, finding where to land, clearing it with FAA or whatever it may be. That’s a lot more than just trying to put it in the mail.”

Be Memorable

Several years ago, Mann employed a small but very creative tactic in order to get the attention of agents in Canada: He sent agents checks for a million dollars, writing “void” on the back, but also indicating that that could be their payday if they worked with him. “It was enough for them to remember the name ‘Monroe Mann,’” says Mann, who got ten or fifteen calls back and couple agents representing him.

Don’t Fear Rejection

Basically, you have to be willing to fail when it comes to guerrilla networking. But there are some calculations that can be made when determining whether an idea is worth the risk. “Whenever I make these decisions,” says Mann, “I’ll often brainstorm what’s the worst that can happen if I do this and then write down all the different possible scenarios. You don’t want to cross over the line from persistent to a pest–or god forbid you get a restraining order against you.”

Image: Flickr user Steven Martin

We launch our first annual Innovation By Design awards, Scrabble gets a lovely makeover, and Jonah Lehrer makes it okay to daydream about unicorns. It’s our top stories of the week.

Fast Company Is Launching A Design And Innovation Competition. We Want YOU! C’mon now, don’t be shy.

6 Keys For Turning Your Company Into A Design Powerhouse. “While getting the best talent is an important goal, creating an environment where design can thrive should be the greater focus.”–Jeneanne Rae, CEO of Motiv Strategies.

Pair: A Social Networking App Just For Couples. Yes, but can it passive-aggressively do the dishes?

4 Problems Google Glasses Have To Solve Before Becoming A Hit. Dear Google: Be more like Apple. Love, us.

How Facebook Finds The Best Design Talent, And Keeps Them Happy. “Both Nicholas Felton and Mike Matas got personal invitations from the main man himself, CEO Mark Zuckerberg.”

3-D Printing Is So Last Year: MIT’s “Self-Assembling Sand” Builds Objects Instantly. Behold, wonder goop!

Watch These Scientists Grow Bones Using Lego Robots. “Industrial equipment is expensive, and Lego does the job for a fraction of the price.”–Researcher Michelle Oyen. Imagine the deal they’d get on Mega Bloks!

The New Strategic Edge: Tapping Your Customers’ Personal Passions. “Social impact is fast becoming a widespread, rigorous business metric.”

The World’s Sweetest Scrabble Set Is Now A Reality. At $199, it’s expensive, but boy, what a beaut.

3 Critical Insights Into Creativity From Jonah Lehrer’s “Imagine.” Spend more time daydreaming? Done. Rainbows, unicorns, kitties. Rainbows, unicorns, kitties …

Suzanne LaBarre

Suzanne is a senior editor at Co.Design. You may email her at suzannelabarre@gmail.com Continued

Designers spend a lot of time giving advice to each other. There has been a litany of books by designers for designers. There have been a few by business people on how design can benefit business. But there have not been many about the process of design and creativity at the most fundamental level of all–the human brain. Jonah Lehrer’s Imagine is that book. Released a few weeks ago, it’s the most important book to hit design in many years, because it goes to the heart of how the mind works and offers surprising and immediately useful ideas on the neurological origins of creative insight.

Through a series of stories about some of history’s greatest creative breakthroughs, Lehrer takes the reader into how those ‘aha’ moments happen. By starting at the level of the individual and scaling up to communities, corporations, and even cities, Lehrer presents a measured and invigorating view of how our brains imagine new things. The book contains an endless array of helpful ways to think about creativity, but here are a few that struck me as most relevant to designers.

The Key to a Breakthrough: Daydreaming

We often feel guilty daydreaming. The time spent in an extra long shower or staring out the window feels wasted. But daydreaming is a critical component on the path to a creative breakthrough. The activity that takes place inside of our brains while we believe we’re daydreaming is unique and activates a part of our brain associated with insight. Lehrer describes the ‘3M attention policy’ that has been credited with several innovations over the course of that company’s history. The policy was based on an intuitive understanding of creativity that has since been validated by modern brain research:

The science of insight supports the 3M attention policy. Joydeep Bhattacharya, a psychologist at Goldsmiths, University of London, has used EEG to help explain why interrupting one’s focus–perhaps with a walk outside or a game of Ping-Pong–can be so helpful. Interestingly, Bhattacharya has found that it’s possible to predict that a person will solve an insight puzzle up to eight seconds before the insight actually arrives. …What is the predictive brain signal? The essential element is a steady rhythm of alpha waves emanating from the right hemisphere. While the precise function of alpha waves remains mysterious, they’re closely associated with relaxing activities, such as taking a warm shower. In fact, the waves are so crucial for insight that, according to Bhattacharya, subjects with insufficient alpha-wave activity are unable to utilize hints provided by the researchers.

Successful Teams Are Never Too Familiar With Each Other

We live in an increasingly complex world with increasingly complex problems that require teams of people working together. But sometimes what seems like a great team fails. Why? How do we best work together? How do we build creative teams with a greater likelihood of success?

To answer this question, Lehrer describes the work of Brian Uzzi, a sociologist at Northwestern University who sought to identify a model for successful group creativity. He analyzed what can often be a complex creative group endeavor: the Broadway musical.

He found that the success of musicals like West Side Story, one of the most critically and financially successful Broadway plays of the 20th century, can be understood by the nature of the social relationships of the creative team involved. Uzzi invented a designation called Q. Groups with high levels of Q are closely knit teams. Groups with lower levels of Q are essentially strangers. It’s the teams with the right mix of unfamiliarity and intimacy that are the best performers. West Side Story had the right mix of Broadway stars and virtual unknowns. And there is a clear pattern, Lehrer writes

Uzzi’s data clearly demonstrates that the best Broadway shows were produced with intermediate levels of social intimacy. A musical produced at the ideal level of Q was two and a half times more likely to be a commercial success than a musical produced with a low Q or high Q.

Lehrer speaking at PopTech on the power of outside intelligence.

Bring in an Outside Perspective

We have a saying at Bruce Mau Design: “Amateurs going in, experts going out.” For a long time, we struggled to articulate the benefit of being a “nonexpert” in a field. We often talk about “fresh eyes” in design. When you’re working too long with anything, by definition, you can’t “see” it anymore. It helps to get a person unfamiliar with the work to give a fresh perspective. Well, it turns out that this is a fundamental pillar of innovation: Our habits form what’s called a ventral route. It’s like a rut in a road. It gets so deep that you simply can’t get out without outside help. Using a story about InnoCentive as a starting point, Lehrer describes the paradox of expertise in that it can sometimes become an obstacle to creative problem solving:

There is something deeply counterintuitive about the success of InnoCentive. We assume that technical problems can be solved by people with technical expertise; the researcher most likely to find the answer is the one most familiar with the terms of the question. But that assumption is wrong. The people deep inside a domain–the chemists trying to solve a chemistry problem–often suffer from a kind of intellectual handicap. As a result, the impossible problem stays possible. It’s not until the challenge is shared with motivated outsiders that the solution can be found.

Those few stories are really just the beginning. The book also talks about the reason why Shakespeare was so prolific (your social scene has a whole lot to do with your chances of a creative breakthrough), how an autistic surfer has revolutionized surfing because he is predisposed to obsessive even debilitating attention to his craft (something all good designers are familiar with), and how the human friction we experience in cities is the key to their constant flourishing.

Lehrer’s book works well because it tells deeply human stories to illustrate the underlying science that drives the creativity of the subjects he describes. It’s for that reason that this book is so important for designers. It helps us understand what’s driving our creative impulses and thought processes at the most fundamental level. Lehrer, the science writer, may have been an amateur going in, but he’s an expert now. And we’re all the beneficiaries.

Buy Jonah Lehrer’s Imagine for $15 here.

Image: Sylverarts/Shutterstock

Paddy Harrington

Paddy Harrington is executive creative director for Bruce Mau Design (BMD), a member of the MDC Partners network. Since joining the Studio in 2003, Mr. … Continued