Month: March 2013

Seven Cracking Creativity Tips

/ Paul Spencer / 3 Comments
Having a light bulb moment?

Having a light bulb moment?

This is a guest post by Dr. Nathan Ryder (@drryder), creator of the Viva Survivors website and author of the book Fail Your Viva – Twelve Steps To Failing Your PhD (And Fifty-Eight Tips For Passing). Here are his hints and tips for boosting your creativity.

If ideas seem hard to find or if inspiration is far away, here are seven tips to get your brain cells working again.

1. Have Lots Of Ideas. Instead of settling on the first idea that you think of, have lots of ideas. Don’t just take my word for it: Linus Pauling said that the secret to having good ideas was to have lots of them, and then pick the best ones. Linus Pauling won the Nobel Prize twice, which puts him on my list of People To Be Listened To.

2. Don’t Judge Your Ideas Too Soon. When you have an idea, resist the urge to put it under the microscope immediately. Instead of thinking, “Hmm, would this work?” or “Ah, but this is flawed because…” just record it and move on to thinking about the next idea. Once you have a lot of ideas you will have things that you can compare, and that’s when you can start evaluating their suitability for the situation.

3. Write Your Ideas Down. Seriously. Whether you’re spending time to come up with ideas or just happen to think of something neat when you’re walking down the street, make a note of it. There are some good apps for this on smartphones (Google Keep is relatively new and I like it) but go old school. You know what doesn’t run out of battery? A small notebook and pen.

4. Practice Practice Practice. My maths teacher used to have “The mind is a muscle and must be exercised” written on his classroom wall. And he’s right. OK, maybe not in an anatomical sense, but metaphorically he’s right. If you don’t practice being creative, you lose your ability to see patterns and connections that lead to new ideas. Take time each week to do something creative – something which forces you to do new things.

5. Work Within Constraints. Forget the Blue Sky! If you open your mind totally then often there is way too much to take in, way too many options to draw from. Give yourself constraints. For example, “Ten minutes to come up with ideas” or “I’m going to fill this sheet with ideas.” If you are starting a business and want to think about how to make money or serve people, add a constraint to start your thinking. “I know I want to help everyone, but what if I was just helping ONE person. What would I do?” Take what you would do with that one person, and then expand, see where it takes you.

6. Be Curious. Magpies like shiny things. They can’t help it, they’re just attracted to them. One way to be creative is to take an interest in lots of things. Explore. Find out about stuff that interests you, and find out about stuff that seems weird and strange. This makes more and more potential in your brain, and when you come to tackle problems your mind has more possible connections for making new ideas. Be like a magpie.

7. When You’re Coming Up With Ideas, Ask Questions. What if this was big? What if it was small? What if money was no object? What if we needed to do this today? What could we do with no money? What already exists that would meet this need? What would someone else do? When you ask a question, your mind reaches for an answer. Answers are ideas. Ideas have movement value – maybe they’re not perfect, maybe they’re not right – but they move in a direction, they take you somewhere.

Don’t be afraid to let your ideas take you somewhere!

Preparing a pecha kucha

/ Paul Spencer / 7 Comments
Analogue stopwatch

20 slides advancing every 20 seconds

I spend a lot of time delivering workshops to researchers on a diverse set of topics – most of the time I will be waxing lyrical about the need to communicate research well. By that I mean in an accessible way. So inevitably I spend time trying to convince researchers of why they need to practice their presentation skills – to commit to taking risks in finding different ways to engage folks about the important work researchers do.

I’m obviously not the only one because there are others who want folks to challenge the conception that powerpoint presentations are inherently dull and boring affairs. Probably the best known example of this is a presentation format known as Pecha Kucha.

This is a fast paced format where the speaker is given 20 slides that automatically advance every 20 seconds that creates a maximum presentation length of 6 minutes and 40 seconds. Originally devised by architects Astrid Klein and Mark Dytham as a way of encouraging architects to stick to the point, it has become a global sensation. It has spawned a number of other similar formats, e.g. Ignite, all of which put a focus on telling an interesting story but just quickly.

I have never prepared and delivered a Pecha Kucha before so when asked recently to deliver one at the South West & Wales Vitae Good Practice Event, I thought I had better practice what I preached. I survived and wanted to share my experience of the challenges involved in preparing a pecha kucha.

Challenge #1. Pronunciation

One of the first things I learned is that I have been saying pecha kucha incorrectly! Looking at the spelling, my Western brain interprets the two words as having four syllables of equal length leading to one to pronounce it:

Peh – Cha; Koo- cha
 
However it is a Japanese term for “chit chat” and native speakers pronounce it rather differently; more like three syllables with an emphasis on the middle syllable.
 
Pe – Chak – cha 
 

Have a listen here to see what I mean.

Challenge #2. Storytelling

The best presentations are stories that get folks emotionally involved. This statement doesn’t often sit well with researchers with their caveats and verbose explanations of detailed investigation but really it is. I even spotted an article in a blog of the well respected academic journal Nature talking about this very point. So regardless of the topic, you have to think “what’s the story?” and regale it with some enthusiasm.

If we have a look at an example Ignite talk (20 slides advancing every 15 seconds!) by Scott Berkun, he says everything I want to about storytelling…

Challenge #3. Storyboarding

If you look at a few examples of pecha kucha, you’ll notice that the slides are mostly pictures. But before you go off hunting for gorgeous photos from around the internet…stop…and think. What are my key points I want to make? How am I going to turn that into a story?

Plan it out using a good ol’ pencil and paper – think about the ebb and flow of your story. Only then will you be in the right place to go looking for the pictures that act as an aid to your story. Remember, storytelling is everything.

Challenge #4. Timing

The slides automatically advance. This is scary because you feel a loss of control and that tends to make people speed up. So, remember you will probably lose your first and last slides to a variety of things – so condense down the message to its absolute key points. Why are you passionate, why should I care, how will this change things. There is also a temptation to keep looking at the slides to see when they change to the next one, often resulting in you pausing as it transitions. I think one should try to keep your story flowing and let the slides carry on – it’ll work out just fine!

Challenge #5. Imagery

It takes longer than you think to track down photo images that are the right fit. Things you need to consider are:-

  • don’t rip off someone else’s copyrighted material – sure go to Flickr and browse but use the advanced search to find images that allow for re-use (a creative commons licence)
  • You can buy royalty-free photos from a number of websites (e.g. iStockPhoto – this is where I buy many of mine from) – A little trick here is that these sites often offer a free photo of the week (worth knowing if you are building up a collection)
  • Use your own photos! Get out your camera and snap away – then there is no issue with copyright
  • Draw your own pictures either using software and importing it into your powerpoint or on paper then photographing as above. This can be a brilliant way of creating a story. See this example by Matt Harding (Where the Hell is Matt?)

Challenge #6. Rehearse. No really!

You do have to rehearse to check that you can tell your story in the time available – really you do!

So there are some hints and tips to be going on with. Have you had to give a pecha kucha? Can you share any tips?

Business plans: 200 pages or the back of an envelope?

/ Paul Spencer / 1 Comment
Business plan word cloud
The following is a guest post from Janet Wilkinson (Three Times Three) on the topic of putting together a business plan for the uninitiated.

Inevitably there is no single answer to the question ‘what do I need to include in my business plan and how long should it be?’ and a Google search on the two words business plan suggested that there are about 1,640,000,000 results. 

The key here is not the number it is the word ‘about’.  A business plan is:

  • About the thing you are going to develop – your idea, your organisation, services you will provide, products you will make or sell and the names/brand you are going to give them.  The origin of the idea and ownership of any intellectual property to the idea or product need to be covered in the plan too.
  • About you and the other people who are going to work to be able to deliver the project, idea or enterprise.  This is crucial to demonstrate your experience, expertise and ability to engage others in the plan.
  • About the finances for the business: what money is required for the idea to be developed initially and where is it going to come from?  How will money flow into the organisation and when?  What will you have to spend money on and when will you have to spend it?  Is there a gap between the money flowing in and the money flowing out (and who will cover this)?  How much risk is there in developing the idea (now and in the future) and who is taking this risk?

“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?” said Alice

“That depends a good deal on where you want to get to” said the Cat.

“I don’t much care where….” Said Alice

“Then it doesn’t matter which way you go” said the Cat.

Alice in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll

Ultimately, business plans are about direction.  One of the main purposes of having one is to communicate your intentions to the outside world (where you need to include them).  They are for communication to anyone who is investing in the project or organisation, lending money to it, funding it or is responsible for delivering the goals or results for it.  Overall, though, I’ve always felt that it is the process of business planning that is the output rather than the document itself.  The time taken to plan what you are doing is invaluable and the decisions you make about your intentions and how the logistics, finances and people involved are going to make it happen are all part of the business planning process.

Similarly, understanding how the money is going to flow in and out of the organisation to make sure you have enough to do what you want to do in the coming years and sustain your idea development is a crucial part of the process.   When I came across the following quote a few years ago it helped to set my practical understanding and experience in some context.

In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.

Dwight D. Eisenhower

So, does it need to be 200 pages or will it work on the back of an envelope?  Inevitably the answer is somewhere in between and it depends upon the audience who will receive and read your plan.  Keep the content and size of your plans appropriate to the size of the organisation or idea, think about who is going to receive them and keep them realistic (particularly the numbers) with threads of ambition, drive and future focus throughout – thinking about how the idea and organisation will be sustained beyond the lifetime of the plan.

Also, think about how you are going to communicate the plan to others – will you be sending it to them to read or presenting it in person?  Regardless of the size of your idea it is useful to think about how you’d summarise it in 2-3 pages and/or 20 slides.  Putting this kind of framework on your business plan enables you to concisely to explain your plan, purpose, people, product and finances to others.

Typically you will want to cover:

  • The title or name of your idea
  • What your idea or organisation is about
  • The people who will be making it happen and their areas of expertise in relation to the idea and/or running the organisation
  • The people who will be users, consumers or customers of the idea (and how you are going to reach them)
  • What might exist already in the environment you plan to operate it (and whether these are competitors or potential collaborators)
  • What the longer term plans are for your idea or organisation
  • How much money do you need to get started (and where will it come from)
  • How will the money flow in and out of the organisation in the next 1, 3 or 5 years?
  • How much money you are likely to need in the future for expansion or development of your idea and where will it come from.

As with all writing and plans it is important to start somewhere.  Business plans can be put together initially from your areas of strength working towards the ‘unknowns’ where further research and information gathering can be done.   So, start on the back of an envelope even if it needs to be 200 pages in the end!