Creative Energy Officer

As a species, it is in our nature to adapt. That, along with the whole opposable thumb thing, has lead to incredible creation and innovation.

However, there are people like me stuck in today’s world of rapid innovations that constantly find themselves saying, “I don’t get it.” If my brain has any “elasticity,” then I am feeling it stretched to the brink.

This pain point is an awesome opportunity for entrepreneurs to design ways to interpret this constant innovation.

I ran across an article in Seed magazine that discusses the importance of elasticity and design as it relates to creativity in today’s culture (I know it’s a bit long, but, dammit, it’s worth it):

Adaptability is an ancestral distinction of human intelligence, but today’s instant variations in rhythm call for something stronger: elasticity. The by-product of adaptability and acceleration, elasticity means being able to negotiate change and innovation without letting them interfere excessively with one’s own rhythms and goals. It means being able to embrace progress, understanding how to make it our own. One of design’s most fundamental tasks is to help people deal with change. Designers have the ability to grasp momentous changes in technology, science, and social mores and to convert them into objects and ideas that people can understand and use. Without designers, instead of a virtual city of home pages with windows, doors, buttons, and links, the internet would still be a series of obscure strings of code, and appliances would be reduced to standardized skeletons of functions.”

What does this mean for leaders of businesses and organizations?

To thrive in today’s marketplace of ideas – entrepreneurs, leaders and professionals need to understand the importance that design language plays in relation to innovation and creativity. The sheer amount of innovation is too much. If you can offer people a framework through which they can view, categorize and better understand it, then you will thrive.

I don’t think that this means that we need to run out tomorrow and become “designers.” What this means is that the framework is actually equally important to the content of innovation. Teach someone how to interpret all this data in a different way that helps them solve problems or achieve greater success, and you are bound to succeed far better yourself.

Great companies that I talk with have an interesting view of change. They understand its importance in sustainability, however, even more importantly, they had a purpose – a clear design – that allowed for change to be interpreted. The struggle is in making the design clear and understandable – making it sticky enough so it can be applied.

HOMEWORK

If you want to see someone who is really shaking things up with visual thinking, then check out XPLANE CEO David Gray’s blog. Through visual thinking, people are given a framework to interpret change. My friend, Matt Homann works there are well and doesn’t do such a bad job at blogging either.

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Jeremy Nulik, Creative Energy Officer (CEO), St. Louis Small Business Monthly