Speaking of Wealth #67 – Crash Course in Creativity

Join Jason Hartman for an insightful conversation on creativity with author and Executive Director for Stanford Technology Ventures Program, Tina Seelig. Tina points out that many people incorrectly believe they lack creativity and that it cannot be learned. She views this as a huge problem in that it is a matter of attitude. “If you think about it, every single sentence that you utter is a creative act,” Tina explained. “From the moment you’re born, you’re creating your life.” Listen at: www.SpeakingOfWealth.com. Creativity is not exclusive to artists or musicians. Problem-solving at all levels requires creativity, whether it’s fixing a meal or designing machinery or coming up with an efficient technique. It is incredibly important to every aspect of life. Tina gives examples of how to encourage and expand creativity, as well as examples of how it is often stifled. Some of the tools for bringing out creativity are reframing, connecting and combining ideas, and challenging assumptions. Tina explains our “innovation engine,” a tool we all possess. There are three things people need to possess as an individual and three things that are critical in the outside world. As an individual, we need basic knowledge, imagination and motivation. We are affected by our environment by resources, habitat and culture.

Dr. Tina Seelig is the Executive Director for the Stanford Technology Ventures Program (STVP), the entrepreneurship center at Stanford University’s School of Engineering. STVP is dedicated to accelerating high-technology entrepreneurship education and creating scholarly research on technology-based firms. STVP provides students from all majors with the entrepreneurial skills needed to use innovations to solve major world problems. She teaches courses on creativity, innovation, and entrepreneurship in the department of Management Science and Engineering, and within the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford. Dr. Seelig is also the Director of the National Center for Engineering Pathways to Innovation (Epicenter), which is dedicated infusing entrepreneurship and innovation skills into undergraduate engineering in the United States. Funded by the National Science Foundation and directed by STVP, the Epicenter is an education, research and outreach hub for the creation and sharing of entrepreneurship and innovation resources among U.S. engineering schools.

Dr. Seelig has also written 16 popular science books and educational games. Her books include The Epicurean Laboratory and Incredible Edible Science, published by Scientific American; and a series of twelve games called Games for Your Brain, published by Chronicle Books. Her newest books, published by HarperCollins are What I Wish I Knew When I Was 20: A Crash Course on Making Your Place in the World (2009), and inGenius: Unleashing Creative Potential, which will be released in April 2012.
She has a Ph.D. in Neuroscience from Stanford and is the Executive Director of the Stanford Technology Ventures Program, which is the entrepreneurship center at Stanford University School of Engineering. Seelig also teaches a course in the Department of Management Science & Engineering on Creativity and Innovation. In 2009, Seelig was awarded the highly prestigious Gordon Prize for her innovative work in technology, engineering, and education.
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Jason Hartman: My pleasure to welcome Tina Seelig to the show. She is the author of inGENIUS, a crash course on creativity. She is known for her work in creativity, innovation and entrepreneurship and it’s just a pleasure to have Dr. Tina Seelig here with us today. Welcome Tina, how are you?

Tina: Thank you so much I am delighted.

Jason Hartman: Good my pleasure to have you so. What is your affiliation with Stanford University?

Tina: Great. I am the executive director of the Stanford Technology Ventures Program that is the entrepreneurship center in Stanford School of Engineering. And I teach classes on creativity, in innovation and entrepreneurship those in the School of Engineering, but also in the design institute also known as the D school.

Jason Hartman: Fantastic so you are probably coming to us from Silicon Valley then today and so.

Tina: I am. I am looking at over right now.

Jason Hartman: Fantastic. Well, Tina what are some of the biggest roadblocks to creativity that people have?

Tina: It’s a really good question. Most people see themselves as either being creative or not creative. And this is a huge problem because most people are creative. They just don’t see that they have that creative spark waiting to be unleashed and so one of the biggest problems that people have or just are added to if you aren’t still see yourself as a creative person then you don’t actually end up unlocking the creative potential that you already have.

Jason Hartman: Yeah I think everybody even if there are not considered creative by themselves or others we all have moments of creativity don’t we?

Tina: Exactly you know what if you think about it every single sentence that you utter is a creative act. Nobody give you a creative script for the day right?

Jason Hartman: Right constructing that language here.

Tina: So when you are born, you are creating your life, and so if you don’t knew it that way, if you sort of view the world as being laid out in front of you, and you are following some script then you are not realizing that every single minute it will be an opportunity to essentially create the future.

Jason Hartman: When it comes to creativity Tina, I think a lot of people look at it though as its something its kind of bashed in a artist, song writers, people in the world of design, or decoration, or architecture, ad agencies, PR firms, tings like that, but creativity is really such a part of everybody’s life, and I think one of the big testimony is to how important creativity really is, is what is going on in the geo political environment, in the global economy nowadays, and I like to liken it to the U.S. and China. And I think in the United States of America creativity is just it’s so embedded in our culture. I think it stems out of that sort of rugged individualism philosophy that’s a pretty uniquely American ideal and when you look it the amount of wealth created through creativity and you know I love to use the example of Apple because I like you have many Apple products and every time I look on the box it says designed in California or on Cupertino and Made in China and where’s the real wealth generated? Is it generated from making the widget or creating the widget? And it’s creating not making and when I say making I mean manufacturing and that’s really I think right there a huge testimonial to the power and wealth building potential of creativity certainly something that’s not you know some minor thing out there for just reserved for a few people in all of those industries that I mentioned earlier.

Tina: So let me sort of drilled down on a couple of things you said. First of all I completely agree with you. The creativity is way, goes way beyond those people who are artists. Now, of course artists are wonderfully creative, but if you are a scientist, if you are a mathematician, if you are a politician, you have to be incredibly creative. Creativity is about creative problem solving and everything from making breakfast in the morning to solving global warming requires creativity. But you pointed out something that I actually disagree that. you said the creativity is happening in just the design of the product not in the manufacturing, manufacturing processes they have changed dramatically over the years and there is tremendous creativity that happens at every single stage of the process and in fact you also embedded in what you said is the assumption that yes sir the creative people in a company and then no the people who are the implementers, but creativity [unintelligible 0:06:18] an entire organization. If I am in accounting department, if I am in the I don’t know maintenance of the building there are lots of creative ways that I can think about gee, let’s say I am cleaning the building. Is there more creative ways for me to do this? Is there something more efficient? Is there something that’s going to get the job done better and so creativity is something that is infused in every single part of our life and with the appropriate mindset you end up seeing the opportunities that other people don’t.

Jason Hartman: No question about it. And I mean I have been to the Toyota plant in Japan for example, and they won’t let you take pictures there, but it is amazingly creative their manufacturing process no question about it so I just wanted to kind of distinguish that I guess many people at least I perceived at this way that many people view creativity is the sort of a amorphous kind of fluffy thing and it’s incredibly important to every part of life even on the assembly line no question about it so I guess maybe that’s my distinction about it, but you give an example in your talks since we were for, just a simple math equation from elementary school you know five plus five tell us about that.

Tina: Yeah this is actually when I realize that I had a book. This question five plus five, I realize that we get taught math this way. What is the sum of five plus five, and you are listening you are going to say well daa, of course that’s how we learn math. But there is one right answer to that question. If we ask the math problem in a different way if we say what two numbers add up to 10, all of a sudden you see that they are an infinite number of solution. If you look negative numbers, if you look at fraction, and if we ask problems that are open-ended that don’t have one right answer. All of a sudden you are giving the person who is solving the problem an opportunity to come up with a wealth of different test of solution, and I realize that this is the problem not just in school but in industry as well because if we give people assignment again where there is a recipe to follow to come up with a solution they first of all — they miss out on that thrill of discovery. And I am a huge believer that everybody is hungry for an opportunity to stretch their creativity in my place, and that when we give people assignments to always have one right answer its extraordinarily demoralizing and eventually people just feel as well you know their life turns to grey if they don’t get to really experience what it’s like to come up with credit solutions on a daily basis.

Jason Hartman: I remember reading about Albert Einstein and how really the way he was able to create such new areas of thought and discovery it is by just asking himself different questions and one when you talk about the five plus five issue. Five plus five it is ten right but how many different ways are there to get to ten by deconstruction and asking a different question. Give us some other examples of that how we could use that in our daily life. Ask yourself different questions or going about it a different way.

Tina: Yeah I love that question because I think its core. It is a core aspect of creative people is the fact that they ask and read for in the problem. In fact Einstein is quoted as saying if I had a daunting problem to solve I had one hour to solve it and my life depends upon it, I would spend the first 55 minutes reframing the problem and figuring out what’s the right question to ask because once I knew the right question to ask the answer would be obvious, and I do this with my students all the time. One of the — I do the things I do at the first day at class is I will come in, and I will present a problem to them like name tags. I have name tags or just recently I changed I said I hate my carry on bag. I just come back from traveling, and I said could you go out and redesign a carry-on bag something redesign a name tag. And they will come back and it’s great to light and go walk and redesign them you know solving the specific problems that I listed. The carry-on bag is too heavy. I can’t put it in the overhead compartment. What is up there, I can’t get there my things down etcetera, etcetera. After I do this, I come back and say okay those are all great, but why did you use the carry-on bag in the first place? We use it to have the things we needed our destination. How might I solve them that problem? All become their eyes and they just thought and they will be like, oh my gosh. You know what e didn’t really even consider the fact that we can look at this problem through a very different set of lenses, and once you open up that frame you end up coming with a really interesting solution that has nothing to do with the carry-on bag?

Jason Hartman: Okay so give some examples. Yeah this is great.

Tina: Yeah I will give you an example. The point that I make is the question you ask is the frame into which the answer will fall, okay so it will give you an example. Well may be there is some way for my dad just traveled separately from me. I mean maybe their hotel has a service well where I just tell my — where I am going to be next in the bag goes there let’s say I am in London, and I go you know my next desk station is going to be Tokyo, and so my bag makes it way to Tokyo or may be there is something like where may be there is a close sharing service, or may be the hotel has well, I just go basically online and I fill out my size and my — how to get filled with clothes.

Jason Hartman: Right I remember Ritz-Carlton was doing that. I don’t know if they are still dong that, but they proposed a service right after 9/11 when TSA got so ridiculously strict where it would issue people stuff to their destination ahead of them and that they would have all sorts of different things where they would hold your stuff if you came to Ritz-Carlton regularly you know the same hotel they would just have it for you every time you came back so yeah some interesting conclusions I will give you another one it’s kind of reframe, and that sort of blew my mind. I am a big traveler. I have been to 64 countries so far and love to travel and I hate to check bags because they lose them and you have to wait for them at the other end and things like that, so and when I travel around I like to just carry everything if I can and there’s a company I see advertised a lot of magazines called like Scotty Vest or something like that and they make these this travel vest you may have seen this and you know they have a zillion pockets in them, but they’re all on the inside so they don’t show and look touristy and they make jackets and so forth to do the same thing and they said it’s like having another carry-on and you know that’s really sort of true. You know you put your iPad in it, a lot of your stuff and just wear it, and then take it off and put it through the x-ray machine and jump on the plane. You know you have a whole another mother carry-on. It’s kind of true.

Tina: Exactly in fact I am completely thinking, I think you can do at anything. I mean even something simple as I said the first day at class I usually do it with nametags and I say I don’t like nametags. They are written too small. I can’t read them. They are usually flipped around. They are often hanging on your belt. It’s kind of awkward so the students then design nametags and again I say why do we use them and we thinking nametag is really an introduction device. They are actually sort of a pretty complicated social function and there how might you create an introduction device that’s more effective than nametags, and there are some fabulous ideas. I mean some of them are actually really interesting. They are wearing bracelets that communicate different things you know different color codes, and they could also communicate your mood, so might not just be a bunch of facts about you. It might be you know I am feeling lonesome today, or I am feeling really proud today. And it starts the conversation with the idea that it’s actually more important for me to know how you are feeling that is to say some specific facts.

Jason Hartman: Sure that’s very interesting. Any other ideas about reframes, I mean just reframing the issue, you know that’s a common thing taught in the world of sales isn’t it? Reframe the debate the customer might be focused on price well reframe their focus to focus on quality or economy over time if the higher-quality product last longer etcetera, lot of reframing discussions there any other ways to reframe or ideas to get ourselves to do that?

Tina: Sure. Its also really important to realize how profound this is, and I mean the whole catonical revolution came about by reframing the way we think of the universe than as opposed to thinking of the earth as the center of the solar system you know by putting the sun in the solar center, all of a sudden it opened up the entire field of astronomy. I mean this is something very profound. Its not just something for small little things like adding a couple of numbers or a name tag and its really quite profound and as you point out you can use it in every situation I mean sales is a great one, or negotiation looking to something from the different point of view it also you can do it by using sort of empathy getting in another person shoes. So instead of looking situation from my perspective turning it around and looking at from someone else’s point of view, also you really didn’t fit especially from the business perspective of your customer’s point of view.

Jason Hartman: Yeah no question about that. Its really interesting you say that because I just happen to write before we started talking today Tina posted on my Facebook page a quote I very much like over the years and its an Ian Percy quote. And it says ‘we judge others by their actions but we judge ourselves by our intentions’.

Tina: It’s really good.

Jason Hartman: Yeah so certainly yeah walking in the other Indians moccasins for a mile is, is a very important thing no question about that.

Tina: Yeah let me tell you an interesting little story about this when my son was getting a car. We this is a few years ago, he was getting his first car, and he went out to go test like cars and try to well we should buy and you make the assumption that the person who is selling you the car wants to get the highest price right? And doesn’t that make sense?

Jason Hartman: Yeah we just make that assumption naturally.

Tina: You make the assumption, but I really try to get the bottom of the salesperson of what was their motivation and why did they want to sell the car, and how they were compensated. I learned during the test-drive when I was interviewing this young salesman that he gets compensated not by any way related to the price of the car. It’s based on the evaluation afterwards if he gets all excellent he gets about so he is got a flat rate for selling a car, but he gets a lot more money if the customer says they got great customer service. But at the first time I have got a deal for you, I guarantee you I will give you all excellent if you give us the best price so and so the thing is if I hadn’t spent the time actually really understanding his point of view I would have made a lot of assumptions that were incorrect.

Jason Hartman: Yeah very good. Tell us about some more exercises like this that are highly effective even if they are sort of radical exercises that you’ve asked her students to participate in. I love the reframe that’s very important. I love looking at that then and going backwards in deconstructing and how many different ways can I get to then. It seems so simple but it’s so important. Are there exercises we can use to help us be more particular?

Tina: Yes they absolutely are. In fact my entire course is focused here every single week we are looking at many different thoughts you have. Some of my favorites have to do with connecting combining ideas and challenging assumption so let me give you one of the most provocative ones I have given for challenging assumptions, and I haven’t seen brainstorm, and I am a big fan of brainstorming. Its actually quite complicated and you have to just like chess really practice to get master it. And one of the things I do when the students are brainstorming is I ask them to come up with the worst idea they can for a problem like the worst family vacation or the worst restaurant, the worst they can. I mean the most, the worst they could think of, so they have a great time brainstorming about the worst restaurant or the worst vacation, and then I take those ideas, and I give them to another team so they swapped in, so another team that has an idea that one team thought was horrible. And they have to turn it into a brilliant idea, and you know how long it takes from to turn it into a brilliant idea about a second because once they look at this idea through the lengths of possibility often they see some really some potential, and this is a really important point because when you are trying to come up with good ideas or great ideas, you usually end up coming up with really incremental ideas because there is a lot of pressure that come up with something good. You come up with something that’s pretty obvious so if I say you come up with a fabulous restaurant you are going to put at the top of the hill looking over the mountains and the ocean and you know champagne and caviar, but if I ask you to come up with a horrible idea you might say we are going to put it in a garbage dump that’s not obvious right if that’s a good idea, but another — so I am looking at it, and saying okay how might we make a restaurant in a garbage dump into something fabulous and they end up — either they might change their the customer may be it ends up not being people, may be it ends up being animal and may be there is a really different reframing, but it might be that you know what this is the restaurant completely focused on sustainability and it’s not a garbage dump as per se that maybe its everything is recycled and so you got to see how every single thing is used and nothing goes to waste, right? And so you come up with a completely different idea I mean another one is you know for a business, selling bikinis in the Antarctic. Well, maybe that sounds like a crazy idea for a business but the students come up with something like okay this is an adventure travel and it’s going to be a fitness focused trip and when you get it to the end, you are going to sit into your bikini, okay now are going to sell bikinis in the Antarctic because the time you get there you are going to fit into your bikini.

Jason Hartman: This is the whole thing. It really Tina seems to come down to you know a matter of context and content we just sort of live in this world and we have all these assumptions about everything in life guess and they limit our thinking don’t they? When we think that I am looking at my desk right now what I’ve got a bottle of smart water sitting on my desk right? And so water should be in a bottle or a glass maybe there’s another way to get hydration right if that’s a totally different concept may be its through the air and humidifier you know I don’t know or an IV or whatever, but all of these things sort of limit are thinking and make it make it sort of incremental and linear don’t they?

Tina: Absolutely and questioning everything makes a lot of sense. You know we go through life assuming the way we do things that are right. One of the best ways to start rethinking is to traveling. You mentioned you’ve been traveling many, many different countries what you would typically eat for breakfast here would be quite different than if you were in China and so when you get there and you go wow who would have thought. I mean there are wonderful stories about the fact that in Japan and this really blew my mind right in the U.S. we number the streets are names, and the houses and the buildings and the streets are numbered. In Japan that’s not the case. Its the blocks are numbered and named. The streets are just the spaces between the blocks so the way you navigate is completely different. Who would have thought we look at the way we do things, and assume it’s the right way than you go to different places of the world and you see that they are actually really arbitrary.

Jason Hartman: Yeah no question about it I mean I think — I think that’s why travel is so important and makes you think out-of-the-box doesn’t it?

Tina: Yes exactly and one of the things that I focused on as you mentioned I have this book which is called inGENIUS the crash course on creativity, and in this book I printed out this model that I’ve created called the Innovation Engine and I look at the variables. We all have at our disposal to unlock our creativity and there is three things that you need as an individual, and there is three things that are really critical in the outside world and it’s really impossible to look at them in isolation. You really need to look at them as a system. Do you want me to explain it quickly?

Jason Hartman: Sure of course, most definitely.

Tina: Okay so on the inside as an individual you need to start with a basic knowledge. Your knowledge is the tool box for your imagination and some of the reasons why its important to go to school, its important to read books, its important to travel because the more you know the more information you have to work with its like the more tools you have. Your imagination is a catalyst for the transformation of that knowledge into new ideas, and you can as we are talking about really learn the tools that you have at your disposal where you find the problems connecting, combining ideas challenging assumptions. And the third thing you need as an individual is that the drive, the motivation, and the passion to solve a problem. If you are not really passionate about it, you are not going to push beyond the norm and then just on the outside and I am not going into all the details but there are lots of things in the environment that have a huge impact. The resources we have available, the habitat for in the culture and all of these actually have a huge impact on the way you think, the way you feel, the way you act, and its why they are people who are incredibly creative, but they are in environments that don’t foster it and therefore this creativity gets flushed.

Jason Hartman: Does creativity come from the emotional or rational sides of our mindset?

Tina: I would say absolutely both, and that there is a huge emotional component as then like the passion, the drive, the confidence that you can solve the problem but they’re intellectually a lot of tools that you can put into bear just like the reframing problem right. I mean look at this from a different perspective and these are intellectual ways in which you really attack this problem.

Jason Hartman: Well, you know on page 106 of your book you have A an interesting diagram that has four quadrants and shows the high and low creativity and the high and low pressure and then you have expedition mission autopilot and being on the treadmill explain that to us.

Tina: Yeah this is — I actually extracted this from Teresa Motley from Harvard. I took what she had talked about it and so then ran with it. I am fascinated by the question of how our creativity is affected by pressure and in this article that she wrote called Creativity under the Gun, she described these four different types of effective pressure on creativity. There are situations where you have unrelenting pressure and its just totally horrible effect on our creativity. You feel as though you are no a treadmill, and you basically feel as though your creativity just gets stopped, or you could have some sort of pressure and you really feel like you are on a mission. Think about Apollo 13 you know there, basically you do amazing things that are on that you never even imagined from the creative perspective because you had pressure during a short period of time. You can also have a lot of pressure and you can be in situations where they aren’t, isn’t any pressure all where you feel like you are an edition you know on vacation, you are very creative where there is no pressure at all, and you can have situations where you basically have no pressure at all and you basically are just bored and nothing gets happened, so you need to really look at pressure. The very interesting level that you have as an individual and also as a manager of the company, as a manager I always I am very aware that I never said anything about that really is because that one is a really people pull out all stops and are incredibly creative and productive. But if you basically do that in on unrelenting way eventually people just don’t even start anymore.

Jason Hartman: Right its sort of the skies falling type syndrome, right?

Tina: Exactly.

Jason Hartman: You know so short burst of pressure then of being under the gun, are you saying those enhance creativity —

Tina: Yeah they do.

Jason Hartman: But long-term pressure diminishes creativity.

Tina: Exactly and the thing is that short-term pressure also you need to care about it right. I mean let’s say we are going to get a product up into well, we are going to put on a play. I mean there is something you know we got to save somebody’s lives. You know you become incredibly creative not just when you feel the external pressure but the internal pressure as well its that you feel like oh my gosh we really need to get this done.

Jason Hartman: So Tina would you say then that for a lot of people listening, a lot of people nowadays they are in the world of solopreneurship. They work either in the world of solo print or ship they work for themselves and they don’t have like a corporate environment where upper management might put them under pressure or create deadlines. Would you say that people should actually practice intentionally putting themselves under the gun at times to you know induce more creativity or burst of creative thinking.

Tina: Really good question. There are lots of ways to create pressure and sometimes it’s just by putting constraints on yourself. I mean you think about Twitter you only have a 140 characters. You have to be pretty creative to get your story across in a very small number of words then there also is a six words memoir. You could try to do that and this came about when Hemingway was asked could you tell your life story in six words. And he said yes I can. And his memoir was for sale baby shoes never worn.

Jason Hartman: What is that?

Tina: An amazing story isn’t it?

Jason Hartman: Okay.

Tina: And it’s in fact it’s turned into a whole series of books and websites where people tell their story in six words. I am a huge fan of seeing how you might be able to do something with less because often that constraint and that type of pressure really squeezes out your creative juices. A great story from this that your listeners probably would remember it from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. In that movie there is a scene where there is some guys coming over the hill on a supposedly on horses. And as they come to the top of the hill you realize that they don’t have horses, they are all they are banging a couple of coconuts together, and very, very funny. Now, had they enough money in their budget they would have rented horses, but they didn’t. So they said how could we have the effect of horses without the budget, and they decided to bang coconuts together which actually made it better and that’s a really important point is that often times you really need to move the constraint needle up and down to see what you might be able to do if you have less.

Jason Hartman: Yeah you know I find that having or wanting more many times in life its such an excuse for lack of productivity so that’s a good constraint is you don’t create artificial constraints and do more with less or enter and you will find other ways to get to the desired goal. I definitely have found this over the years in training sales people. They all want all the greatest tools and I call the getting ready to get ready syndrome where people are waiting for tools and extraneous things that will be the answer rather than just going out and figuring it out another way right?

Tina: Exactly and in fact one of the best things you can do when you are brainstorming is give yourselves different types of constraints like how would I solve this problem for a five year old? How would I solve this for a 95 year old? How would I solve it on the moon? How would I solve this problem if I had only a dollar? How would I solve it if I had a billion dollars and so that’s one of the ways that brainstorming can work is by giving, by giving yourself self imposed constraint to try to solve the problem, and you end up then often really unlocking some interesting ideas you wouldn’t have unlocked if you really just thought about the standard situation.

Jason Hartman: Yeah sure well Tina tell people where they can get the book and where they can learn more about this very important part of obviously and a fascinating discussion on it as well.

Tina: Well, thank you so much for inviting me on to the program and the book is called inGENIUS, little inGENIUS then it’s like the Genius inside of you inGENIUS. The sub title is a crash course on creativity. It should be available wherever books are still sold you know Amazon or Barnes & noble or at your local bookstore. I also encourage your listeners could check out our online collection of podcasts. It’s at ecorner.stanford.edu. We got thousands of entrepreneurs and innovators who share their stories.

Jason Hartman: Fantastic. You talk about failure as an inevitable part of the creative process. What do you mean by that that people should just be okay with failure and accept it, or is there more to it than that?

Tina: Yes. Failure is a very interesting thing. I actually don’t like the word failure because when you try things that you haven’t done before you are going to get some surprises. I mean let me ask you a question. When you were a kid and learning how to walk did you walk the first time you tried?

Jason Hartman: I don’t think so. But I don’t remember.

Tina: What about riding a bicycle? If you get up on your bicycle the first time you tried?

Jason Hartman: No I didn’t.

Tina: Right. I don’t know anyone who did. I mean all of these things are complicated require a lot of trial and error. Why do we expect adults who are doing things that are very complicated that haven’t been done before to get it right the first time. You learn by doing things, trying lots of things and keeping what works. And I like to think like a scientist since I am a scientist and look at the unexpected results as data as opposed to failure and I think that’s one of reasons it has such a desk entrepreneurial ecosystem is because people hear view unexpected results as data as opposed to failure. I don’t like it. I don’t like when people say they celebrate failure because celebrating failure is ridiculous. Nobody wants to fail. No one wants to invest in failure, but we know that we try things that are really hard that there going to be some surprises, and by looking that as data you know what I do, I have my students write failure resume. They have to write resumes of all their biggest screw ups personal, professional and academic. And it is you need to acknowledge the things that didn’t turn out as expected, and you need to figure out what you are going to learn from every one of us.

Jason Hartman: That is fantastic way to look at it in sort of the paradigm before this interview Tina if you will, I would say that if you want to succeed more often increase your failure rate, I am sure you heard that one, but really if want to succeed more increase your data collection you know.

Tina: Exactly.

Jason Hartman: You know you got to have more data so it’s like the good old thing. Its just like cliché you know Thomas Edison and everybody disagrees on how many ways he had to do the light bulb before he succeeded but he was collecting data whether it was a thousand ways it didn’t work or 25,000 or you know whatever, nobody knows but —

Tina: Exactly these are all experiments, and every single day use the opportunity to do a zillion experiment in every interaction you have and every problem you solved and to really get master fault and doing those experiment, extracting the value from them and especially pushing the limit on your creativity.

Jason Hartman: Yeah great stuff. Well, Tina this is been very enlightening and I hope all our listeners have a very creative day after this and get a hold of the book. Its great inGENIUS, a crash course on creativity, thank you so much for sharing this with us today.

Tina: It was my pleasure. Thank you so much.

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The Speaking of Wealth Team


Transcribed by: Renee’