Why A 75 Year Old Man Goes To The Gym!

My father completed 75 years a few months back. He is living in a small town in India called Ratlam.

A new Gym started in his vicinity and he went there to enrol. The Gym instructor was surprised.

My father went there not to make his muscles and look good to others. He wants to be fit and active. He saw an opportunity and he wanted to use it.

He writes motivational articles. And loves life. He also enroled in a correspondence course on cartoon making. He is learning how to make caricatures!

He learns new things, gets engaged in new activities and that's what makes him fit, fine and active even in this age.

Learning is a life long process. Let us ask ourselves what new things have we learned recently? 

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Creative Tool Kit: Practical Creativity Training

Mumbai: 9th June 2012
details: http://www.creacos.com/creative-tool-kit.html

How Ideas Happen?

Cloud Fly Thru from XNcreative on Vimeo.

This video is a superb demonstration of the creative process. It is made using 4 still pictures to create a fly-in through the cloud effect.

Here is how it helps us to understand the creative process:

1: Constraints:
The creative person is not bogged down by constraints. Rather they create such constraints to explore new possibilities. If you have a moving camera, the possibility is you will not work with still pictures.!

2: Exploration:
The creative mind explore the given resources and explore what can be done with what is available.

3: The creative Vision:
A creative person has the vision. They know what kind of effect they want to create. So they work with individual elements in a way where all of these add up to create a final shape which is WOW!

They also 'fill in the gaps' and add their imagination to crate their vision.

4: Skills:
When you have worked on your fundamentals you know possibilities which are available. You can do things which a less skilled person might envision but can't create.

5: Failure:
What we are seeing here is a retro fit of how this effect is created. In the process many other effects must be created which were not useful for this particular work. A creative person never rejects such 'undesirable' results. she will play with those effects, explore new possibilities with these 'discovered' learning.

That's why when we see creative minds they are not one project wonders, from Edison to Steven Spielberg, any creative person has more ideas than they can execute.

Rainbow Revolution!

On the occasion of 'International Creativity and Innovation Day' LOkmat Samachar (A leading hindi newspaper in Maharashtra) created 
a special edition.

I edited this part of the newspaper.

Here is the gist of my lead article:


India has seen the 'Green revolution ' in agriculture and the 'white dairy revolution'.Now the country is gearing up for another kind of revolution.
On the surface it looks like the nation is frozen, major policy decisions are locked...and sometimes it feels like the whole 'New India' thing is hyped.


Specially because the new generation looks more like a 
'conformist'. It seems they just want to make money. But then...

There is an undercurrent in the thoughts and minds of people. There is a hope...that says everything is possible.

If we look deeper we will find young minds in various clusters creating new opportunities. May be these are just dreams. But these young guys are not afraid of failure. They are ready to be laughed at. Entrepreneurial spirit is high.

Need of the hour is to channelize this new mindset.
India is ready for a new revolution, it's happening in the minds of the people.

It will show results in all shades and colours.

It's a Rainbow Revolution!

Future Is A Butterfly: Corporate Creativity Report

Future Is A Butterfly!

View more documents from Puneet Bhatnagar

Innovation Lessons From A baby Elephant!

Till now, innovations were happening in the developed countries and then transferred to developing and poor countries as is.

But now there is a different trend emerging...'Reverse Innovation!'

Here is a great article about Reverse innovation from Fast Company.

Especially inspiring for us here in India.

What’s "reverse innovation"?
Read More

How To Create An Effective problem!

There are already so many problems in the world.

Why create another problem? Why not put our energies in finding solutions you would ask me?

And my answer would be:
An answer can be only as good as your question. If you describe your problem well and keep it focused, it can trigger solutions, quick and fast. Not only so, your solutions will be relevant and fresh.

How do we do that? 
Here are some tips:

Every problem is a fresh problem:
When a situation is presented to us, we spontaneously relate it to some other problem that we solved earlier.

We label it: "I know this problem; its like what we had in the manufacturing department last month."

We can borrow the experience later.. Resist this temptation at the problem-defining stage.


Old questions will only lead to old answers. There could be many new angles in the situation facing us, if we do not recognize those at this stage we will lose opportunities to create fresh solutions.

Ask differently:
Even if you ask for a 'different kind of chair,' what you will get is a chair!

But if you ask for 'something to sit on comfortably,' you will get something new. It may not be a chair. It may be a beanbag!

Assume different points of views:
Avoid pin pointing a problem without looking to it from different perspectives. 

Take a situation where salesmen are not filling reporting forms. The management could see it as a discipline problem, while from the financial controller's point of view; the problem might be insufficient documentation.

On the other hand, for the salesman, it is simply a question of wasting productive time.

If we approach it as an indiscipline problem, solutions will comprise reprimanding the sales staff, punishing them and arresting their incentives.

The same problem defined as in-effective reporting formats will be solved differently.

A hundred brilliant ideas on indiscipline won't help. A few solutions to improve the reporting system might work wonders.

Short Term or Long Term:
Keep the time dimension in the problem statement. Are you looking for a short term, midterm or a long term solution?

What will happen tomorrow, day after, a few years hence? Will the problem be different?

Define boundaries:
Include the expectations of time and budget in the desired solution. That will make the solutions feasible and relevant.

Use the right brain:
Yes, use the right brain to give the problem its final shape. Be imaginative. Make a story, a news item or pictorially represent the problem.

In a nutshell make problem so attractive that people want to solve it.

Following these simple steps will make idea generation process much more exciting and result oriented!


------------------------------------Creative Tool Kit: A Training Programme for the Business People.
Mumbai: 12th May 2012

For more details: http://www.puneetbhatnagar.co.in/p/corporate-creativity.html

Call: 09820003092
Mail: punito@thecreativitymission.com

Impossible: It's The New Norm Buddy!

When it's comes to innovation, we can learn a lot from companies who truly practice it.

That's why Larry Page's update about 2012 to the Google stakeholders is inspiring in more ways than one.

It encapsulates the exciting times for us and makes you feel we are at the right time at the right planet to witness some of the most inspiring inventions to happen.

He talks about the importance of aiming high. Not just high enough but thinking beyond the possible. In his own words:

"Happiness is a healthy disregard for the impossible!

When I was a student at the University of Michigan, I went on a summer leadership course. The slogan was “a healthy disregard for the impossible,” and it’s an idea that has stayed with me ever since. It may sound nuts, but I've found that it’s easier to make progress on mega-ambitious goals than on less risky projects. Few people are crazy enough to try, and the best people always want to work on the biggest challenges."

People often say, everyone is creative. But this disregard for the impossible is what puts one in the inverted commas. As in 'creative'. Or some will say Creative with a capital C!

It's this quality which makes the real difference between the wannabes and the achievers. While other people do have ideas, they play only in the safe zone, where their ego remains intact and they don't fail. To them the self image of 'being successful' is more important than taking a leap.

On the other hand creative achievers have a different perspective on failure. They know it's going to give them huge Returns On Investment. May be not now, but later. May be in some other endeavor.

Larry page narrates a brilliant example here:

"We've also found that “failed” ambitious projects often yield other dividends. Believe it or not, the technological innovation behind AdSense, which, as I mentioned earlier, has paid out over $30 billion to partners, was the result of a “failed” more ambitious project to understand the Web. The team failed at understanding the Web, mostly, I think, because they were distracted by their work making advertisements amazingly relevant."

It's obvious when a company embrace that kind of approach, the teams are motivated. They are ready to take the challenges.Page cites the making of Google+ Hangout and the driver-less car created by Google as examples.

Now, when I first heard about the self driving car I couldn't believe it.but a legally blind guy has already test driven it!

Only disregard for the impossible can make such leap possible.Larry concludes his update with this passionate message:

"Today the opportunities are greater than ever. Things we used to think were magic, we now take for granted: the ability to get a map instantly, to find information quickly and easily, to choose any video from millions on YouTube rather than just a few TV channels. People are buying more devices and using them more because technology is playing an increasingly important role in our lives. I believe that by producing innovative technology products that touch people deeply, we will enable you to do truly amazing things that change the world. It’s a very exciting time to be at Google..."

Now Google is not alone in this. You can sense the excitement everywhere. Those who embrace this disregard for the impossible will remain in the game. It's the new norm!

Creative Learning from Google!

Today I want to share a great post on Google Think  Quarterly:

The Curious Case of Creativity | Think Quarterly by Google

Good ideas sell products. Great ideas change lives. From opening up our brand to opening up museums, we see creativity as a way to solve problems – large and small. 

Lorraine Twohill, Google VP of Global Marketing, explains how.

Creativity: The Hidden Tiger In All Of Us!

Can you see the tiger? Great!

Now find out the 'hidden tiger' in the picture.

Look carefully. Every detail!

This is known as one of the most difficult optical illusion! though once you find out, nothing can be more obvious.

That AHA moment also reminds us, there is a creative tiger in all of us.

We need to look at it differently!