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Where does the information needed for creativity come from? How do you get your hands on it? And how do you make it easy to get this information? Today’s Web technologies are providing the next level of idea generation tools and environments in order to excel. We’re going to start looking at something that I’m going to refer to as Creative Infrastructure 2.0, inspired by the work of magician Stewart James. Climb Maslow’s hierarchy!
Image by jderuna
There is no shortage of demand for great ideas
Unless you intend to survive off the stories that reverberate through the echo chambers of the blogosphere, you’re going to need help and inspiration.
If you want to create good creative content you’re going to need to find new material, new ideas, and innovative ways to combine facts and thoughts into meaningful output on a regular basis. New ideas, unknown facts, and the ability to connect these things together are crucial to the content creation process.
Note: talent and skill are crucial, too, but they can be improved over time.
Using magic to create ideas or ideas to create magic
We can look at professional magic as a possible model for the process of generating ideas. One of the most interesting books that I’ve read on creativity and idea creation is Advantage Play by magician David Ben. Ben uses techniques of magic (illusion, slight of hand, etc.) to try and provide inspiration to business leaders in his book. He spends a significant amount of time on idea creation by focusing on the methods used by one of his mentors, Stewart James. Ben gives us an idea of the incredibly productive methods used by James to come up with magic tricks:
Stewart was the most prolific inventor of magic in the twentieth century. Where most magicians invent a handful of magic routines during the course of their lives, Stewart created over one thousand. His prodigious output has been recorded in two massive publications totaling over 2,700 pages.
Put another way, imagine creating over 1,000 astonishing posts, articles, images, podcasts, or video blogs. Or, considering how science and technology have advanced over the years, consider an output of 5,000 pieces of content. Or how about ten thousand?
Creative infrastructure
Stewart James used a concept that called Creative Infrastructure to help himself create magic routines.
David Ben refers to creative infrastructure as:
… an organized repository of personal and professional resources that creates an inventory of experience from which one can generate ideas and evaluate options.
Creative infrastructure includes at least three complimentary sub-systems:
- A mental and physical state that fosters creativity
- A system for storing, retrieving, and sharing information
- A system that encourages mentorship
Stewart James died in 1996, just as the Internet and the World Wide Web were starting to become ubiquitous and affordable. In his day, his creative infrastructure was limited by:
- cruder, weaker methods of communication
- a lack of automation
- a much smaller amount of free, easily accessible information than we enjoy today
Nonetheless, James created a huge amount of work with what he had. He was probably one of the greatest creative geniuses of his time.
We have the potential to tap into a much greater collection of information, storage, and communication capabilities than James may ever have imagined. Creative Infrastructure 2.0, powered by the Web, can help you do amazing things and self-actualize in ways that our ancestors could not conceive.
More on this in the next post (which you can find here).
EDIT: March 3, 2010: this post has been submitted to the What I Learned From… Colorful Characters group writing project at Middle Zone Musings.
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A colorful character indeed! Thanks for highlighting James for us, Mark; I’ll have to take a look at the things he said and did.
A big ol’ tip o’ the hat to ya for the WILF entry!
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