THE SIX HABITS OF HIGHLY CREATIVE PEOPLE

A guide to solving problems using creative techniques

INTRODUCTION

Creativity is a powerful and an often underused force that can help

solve problems, improve products, and adapt business models in an
ever-changing world. But companies often don’t create cultures
where creativity thrives for a myriad of reasons. For companies that
do successfully build cultures that foster creative thinking, they
create space for big ideas to emerge, which spurs innovation, enables
disruption, makes the workplace more fun, and most importantly,
helps develop products and services that customers want.

The good news is that anyone can learn to tap into their creativity
and every company can harness it across the organization, but
the caveat is, only if they are willing to adapt the way they tackle
problems and generate new ideas.
 Ask the right questions at the outset of a project. When using human-centered design,
ask questions from the perspective of providing a benefit to the user group you’re
A starting point for many is to practice and develop confidence with
looking to serve.
creative habits that can help us to see and solve challenges in new
and innovative ways. This e-book introduces six of these creative
Look to extreme users for inspiration — whether they are the novice users, skeptics,
habits, intended as tools to apply anytime a project would benefit
or avid experts, the users who exhibit radical behavior help us generate new insights
from creativity.
around the context of the problem we’re solving.

Together, these six habits provide any team (or individual) with
Brainstorming is a habit to get into when you need to come up with a range of solutions,
a framework to focus their best creative energy on the task at hand.
not all of which will move forward. One of the toughest aspects of this approach is
Once companies start introducing the concepts explored in this
acknowledging that most of your big ideas will never make it to market, but the process
e-book, they are often amazed at the ideas their teams generate,
of thinking of them will help teams delve into the abstract and think laterally.
and the enthusiasm with which they tackle every challenge.

Idea selection follows the completion of ideation. Use the criteria of inspired, connected,
and relevant to ensure you’re choosing ideas that the users will be most passionate about.

Prototyping helps you rapidly advance our understanding of an idea, and recognize
where there are gaps. Building prototypes also allows you to share your ideas with others.

Feedback is the final creative habit. When giving feedback in the context of evolving
prototypes you should be specific and generative, explaining how they would make an
idea better, rather than what’s wrong with it.
HABIT #1: ASK BRILLIANT QUESTIONS
(YOU CAN TACKLE THIS, PROMISE)

Innovation doesn’t just happen. It requires conscious changes

in behavior that enable teams to look at problems differently,
brainstorm in new directions and find solutions that align with
unmet user needs.
In ExperiencePoint’s workshops we refer to these as The Creative
Habits of Design Thinkers.

These habits are at the core of design thinking philosophy and have
been helping companies break through the mental barriers that
prevent them from being disruptive. Each habit is distinctly useful
at different steps in the innovation process, though they do not
need to be followed sequentially or all at once. Adding even one
step to the way a team problem-solves can push its creativity in
new directions and help them tap into solutions they might never
have otherwise considered.

The first habit is the easiest to apply and can have the biggest and
quickest impact.
Asking brilliant questions is a mainstay of design thinking; they help
teams create a framework for what they are trying to do and create an
environment that fosters big ideas. They are also surprisingly easy to ask.
Every brilliant question begins with the same three words:

“How might we…”

They may sound simple enough, but these three words were chosen
for specific design thinking reasons.

“How”
Implies a sense of positivity. It is intentionally non-binary and demon-
strates a commitment to action.

“Might”
Lowers the bar for what is a good idea. Often in idea generation sessions
people are afraid to suggest a crazy idea for fear of sounding foolish
or naïve — but that’s how creative solutions take root. By saying “how
might we” instead of “how can we”, teams create space to think big.
Even if their initial ideas are impossible or impractical, they create
a foundation upon which better ideas can be built.

“We”
Reinforces the importance of teamwork and collaboration as part of the
creative process. Few problems can be solved by a single person working
in isolation. Using the word “we” promotes team ownership.
HOW IT WORKS

“How might we” needs to be followed by two things: a user group and a
benefit to that user group. e.g. “How might we help managers better act
on employee feedback?” When you start with the audience and a benefit
to them, it creates room for big ideas to emerge, while making sure they
stay aligned with your business goal.
Whether a team comes together with a fully formed solution or no idea
what they are going to do, asking “how might we” helps to focus the
conversation. For example, before Uber came up with Uber, they might
have asked, “How might we help consumers who own their own cars earn
extra money?” Or “How might we make taxi services better for customers?”
They generated dozens of ideas in the workshop on how they could lessen
their environmental footprint and promote their environmentalism —
including using the cups to educate customers about the environmental
changes and impacts of every purchase.
Reframing problems as brilliant questions enables brilliant solutions.
Even better — it takes just minutes to do. Of all the six habits, asking
brilliant questions is the easiest, and it has a big impact. When we teach
this to people and organizations, they report that the language quickly
gets rooted in the corporate culture, and quickly becomes addictive.
Try it once, and you’ll find yourself using it again and again.

Even if you already have a great idea, asking “how might we…” can help
you decide whether it is the best way to go — or if there are better ideas
to pursue. For example, ExperiencePoint recently worked with a group
of executives from a movie theater chain who had the idea to replace
plastic straws with paper straws to reduce the environmental impact
of their concessions.

It was a great idea, and we still helped them vet it by asking “How might
we help customers reduce the environmental impact of their movie-
going experience?” Starting with the question, rather than the solution,
helped the team look far beyond plastic straws.
HABIT #2: GO TO EXTREMES

When companies begin to design new products they often look for
inspiration from their target audience. This makes sense. Building
products that will be used by the bulk of your consumer base is the
obvious way to sell the most stuff. But average users rarely inspire
groundbreaking innovations.
Imagine, for example, the people who designed the first sidewalks.
These marvels of urban infrastructure pulled us up out of the mud,
and gave pedestrians a safe and separate path to traverse through
the community. But by failing to take into account extreme users —
like those in wheelchairs or pushing strollers — the designers of
sidewalks failed a huge segment of their user group.

To this day, many urban environments, including New York City,

still lack consistent curb ramps, which turns common city streets
into a frustrating obstacle course for people with disabilities. Had
those original street designers been trained in the art of design
thinking, they would have known to look beyond the average walker
to improve on their design. It’s a simple example, but it underscores
why we need to look further afield to spur creativity.
FINDING THE EXTREMES

In the last chapter we talked about the first habit of highly creative
people, which is to ask brilliant questions. Habit #2 is to look for
inspiration in extreme users.

The idea behind this approach is not to build products that only appeal
to these small segments of your customer base. Rather it is a way to
become inspired and develop empathy so that you can stretch your
project team’s thinking, and look for solutions through a different lens.

When you consider the bell curve of a typical user group, extreme users
sit at either end. To the left are the novice users. This group may know
little to nothing about your product, are indifferent to it, or they go out
of their way not engage with it.

To the right are heavy users. These are the fanatical, loyal, passionate
customers who use your product or service extensively, tout it to their
friends, and find new ways to make it even more useful. Each group
can offer unique insights about your products, and inspire a different
way of thinking about current and future customers. And there are several
continua upon which we might choose to plot our extreme users. For
example: age, level of experience, level of ability, socioeconomic status.
Let’s use Starbucks® as an example. A novice user could be someone
who intentionally never goes into a Starbucks shop, even if there
is one on their corner. Maybe they think it is too expensive, or they
want to support local coffee houses; maybe they don’t like the taste,
or maybe they just prefer other types of beverages. It would be easy
to dismiss this group since they aren’t technically customers, but
understanding why they don’t come to Starbucks helps the team
feel empathy for their perspective, which can be the inspiration for
new products, like Starbucks VIA® Instant coffee, which lets cus-
tomers make quality coffee at home in their microwave.

On the other side could be a Starbucks fanatic. They come to the

shop every day with hyper-complex orders, and are never seen
without one of those familiar cups in their hand; or they may even
be baristas who know every coffee drink recipe by heart and are
ardent ambassadors of the brand. These are the users who can
inspire new ideas– like the Frappuccino®, which was invented by
a team of baristas in L.A. looking for a way to cool off and who saw
an opportunity to make iced blended drinks.

This is a hypothetical example, but it demonstrates the value of

looking beyond the average customer to find problems that have
not yet been solved.
HOW TO WORK AT THE EXTREMES
Here is how to get the most out of these encounters. Meeting with extreme users doesn’t
require a lot of time, and it can help you find new inspiration. They are a source of valuable
insights, and should not be ignored.
Use data to identify extreme customers. Marketing and sales data can provide
companies with the insights they need to identify extreme users. Loyalty programs
and repeat buyers can provide lists of your fanatics — and those who never respond to
generous offers, post bad reviews, or visit your site once but don’t purchase anything
can help you identify your novices.
Limit the group. You don’t need to talk to a lot of extreme users to generate new
insights. Research suggests that five users who represent an extreme category is enough
to get a baseline sense of their views. (Note: you may want to talk to multiple types of
extreme users, e.g. those who skip Starbucks for cost, versus those who don’t like the taste).
You can also avoid the far extremes — for example, if you are studying TV viewer behavior,
you don’t need to speak with Amish people.
Meet them where they live. Meet users in their home or other familiar space and have
semi-structured conversations that spur discussion. Putting people at ease will lead to
more robust conversations and bigger insights.
Ask specific questions. Customers don’t know what you want from them and they
won’t lead you down a path of discovery without a little guidance. Asking specific
questions will inspire new ideas while keeping them focused on the topic at hand.
Observe their behavior. Watching consumers use your products can uncover un-
conscious behaviors and attitudes that can generate new ideas. For example, we often
use the example of an ice cream scoop, in which we ask consumers how they scoop ice
cream. They all offer variations on “open the lid, scoop the ice cream, then put the
scooper in the sink.” When prompted as to whether they might be leaving something
out, they say “no,” and when specifically asked if they lick the scooper they usually
embarrassingly admit that they do.
Whether they don’t realize they do this or they don’t want to admit it, they would never
say they licked the scooper, but it was clearly an important part of the experience, and it
generated new product ideas for our partners at IDEO when they were working with the
Swiss company Zyliss.
HABIT #3: FAST AND FURIOUS
BRAINSTORMING

It is easy to assume that creativity just emerges, as if by divine

inspiration. But in reality being creative is a process. Just like every
other tested business practice, creative people have strategies and
techniques that they follow to uncover inspiration, and transform
that inspiration into real-world solutions.
BEST PRACTICE BRAINSTORMING

In this book we’ve been talking about the six habits of highly creative
people. The first two habits explore how to ask brilliant questions and
look for inspiration in extremes.

Habit number three is all about brainstorming.

In our workshops, we often share a famous quote from two-time Nobel

Prize winner, Linus Pauling, that says:

The best way to have good ideas is to have lots of ideas. This notion is
at the heart of brainstorming.

People use the term “brainstorming” in various contexts, but they don’t
always apply it correctly. As Pauling points out, the goal of brainstorming
is lots of ideas — not a few fully formed and thoroughly dissected ideas.
Yet too often in corporate environments people get stuck on a single
idea that they want to pick apart and discuss at length before moving
on. This is counterproductive to the goal.
BRAINSTORMING FRAMEWORK
To help break our clients of this habit, ExperiencePoint created a framework for
brainstorming that helps teams rapidly generate many wild ideas while keeping them
focused on solving the right problem for the right customers. It is based on a few
simple rules that keep the process positive, focused, and moving in the right direction.
Build a diverse team. The best ideas emerge in cross-functional groups of people
from different departments, backgrounds and titles. We often get pushback from
clients who worry that lower level employees will be wary of generating crazy ideas
in the presence of their boss, but in many cases it’s the C-Suite who are in awe of the
creativity coming from their new hires.
Be swift and be fruitful. The primary goal of any brainstorming session is to capture
lots of ideas quickly. So we set a brainstorming timebox of 10 minutes and encourage each
person to generate at least 11 ideas before the timer buzzes. This forces people to think
quickly, and to not get distracted.
You may use “yes, and...” but not “yes, but..” Brainstorming only works in a judge-
ment free zone, where crazy ideas are admired and no one focuses on why an idea
won’t work. “Yes, and...” allows teams to build on ideas to make them bigger and better,
whereas “yes, but...” just makes people feel bad.
Get on your feet. For the first minute of every session we ask participants to write all
of their ideas down on their own, then we spend the rest of the time on our feet, sharing
ideas out loud as we post them on a whiteboard. Standing up and speaking to the group
gives everyone a new perspective and makes the process fun and engaging. The more
people talk, laugh, and build on each other’s ideas, the better.
Brainstorm Defibrillators. When the team starts to run out of creative steam, asking
absurd questions like, “how would a five year old solve this problem?” or, “how can we
incorporate food into the solution?” can lighten the mood and get people thinking in
new directions.
Building makes everything better. Some of the best solutions to come out of brain-
storming occur when people build on each other’s ideas. So once an idea has been
shared, everyone is encouraged to build on it to make it better. This is where the real
magic happens.
For example, a famous story about the power of wild ideas comes
from a Pacific Northwest power company who were trying to figure
out how they could clear ice of off power lines in remote areas.
In a brainstorming session, one participant suggested they train
bears to climb the poles and shake the ice off. Another teammate
suggested they put honey on the poles to lure the bears, and a third
suggested they use helicopters to put the honey on the poles. That’s
when they realized that the downward draft from the helicopters
would shake the ice loose, solving their problem. It is a simple,
practical solution that would never have emerged without building
on the idea of trained bears.

When teams are at the start of a product development process,

brainstorming can be a great tool to find new ways to solve old
problems. Creating a positive, fast paced, judgement-free zone will
set the stage to generate amazing ideas that can lead to the best
product you’ve ever designed.
HABIT #4: IDEA SELECTION

In our last chapter we talked about the importance of brain-

storming in the creative process, and why coming up with many
ideas quickly is the best approach. Often, people push back on
this notion, arguing that rambling off a lot of crazy ideas without
thinking them through is a waste of time. “Wouldn’t it be better,”
they insist, “to come up with a few fully developed, doable ideas?”

The answer is a resounding “no.”

DON’T PLAY IT SAFE

Coming up with lots of crazy ideas, and building off of that creativity
is a critical step in the creative process — which is why brainstorming
is on the list of the six habits of highly creative people. The key is what
you do with that list of ideas once the brainstorming session ends.
We refer to this as “idea selection.” This fourth habit closes the loop on
brainstorming and provides those naysayers with the opportunity they
seek, to review every idea in detail, so that they can determine which
ones have the most potential and which ones can be set free.
Remember, in their “brainstorming” state, most ideas aren’t necessarily
practical or cost-effective, and that’s okay. Idea selection is still very
early in the product development cycle, and the choices you make today
will likely not look anything like the final product. The goal is to pick
ideas that excite you today, so you can hone them into solutions that
are feasible down the line. It’s much easier to tame a wild idea into
something feasible than to build a boring idea into something exciting.

Even though the people selecting the ideas are the ones who originally
generated them, we often find they can be a little overwhelmed by the
embarrassment of riches. That’s the whole point. As we mentioned in
the last chapter, the best way to find good ideas is to generate many
of them — and that’s what brainstorming gives us.

So how do you separate the wheat from the chaff?

First, you have to let go of the deeply ingrained impulse to choose the
ideas that are safest, cheapest and/or easiest to implement. That is not
the point of this process, and it will undo all the creative effort you’ve
invested to this point. Instead, you have to remind yourself that the
intent of the innovation process is to do things differently, even if they
seem risky, more costly, and/or more complicated to deliver.
To ensure you make the best choices, follow these the three criteria for
brilliant ideas:

Inspired: Pick ideas that are so exciting or extreme that you can’t stop
talking about them.

Connected: Every idea has to link back to the specific problem you are
trying to solve for a specific audience. This is vital because even the most
amazing solution will fail if it doesn’t address your customer’s needs.

Relevant: Sometimes brainstorming can go off track, resulting in

interesting ideas that aren’t relevant to the problem at hand. In idea
selection, it is important to be sure the ideas you choose are relevant
to your audience and answer the brilliant question you established
at the start of this process.

Once the criteria are clear, give everyone three stickers to attach to the
ideas that they think are the most inspired, relevant and connected.
They can choose three different ideas, or clump them all together on
one idea — but they should do it quickly and without discussion.

Once the votes are cast, the team should discuss why they chose the
ideas they chose, where there are synergies between ideas, and how
they can group ideas together to make them more exciting. That does
not mean grouping ideas together that are similar. Rather, it means
building ideas on top of each other to make them better.
For example, ExperiencePoint once worked with a medical devices
company that wanted to make their highly complex and costly
machine easier to fix. Ideas that got grouped together included
adding Amazon Alexa to the machine so users could ask it what’s
going wrong; incorporating video content to show how to fix common
problems; and creating an automated diagnostic tool to alert users
when a problem might soon occur. These were all different ideas that
added exponential value when grouped together.

Eventually, your team should settle on two to four ideas, or combi-

nations of ideas, to explore further in prototypes (which we’ll discuss
further in the next chapter).

When companies first start using brainstorming and idea selection

to foster creative thinking, it can be useful to have a guide or coach
to walk them through the process. But once a team gets adept at
these techniques, and learns how to avoid the pitfalls that lead to
mediocre solutions, they can implement them any time they need
a little inspiration.
HABIT #5: YOU’VE GOT TO BUILD
IN ORDER TO THINK

Once you complete the brainstorming and idea selection steps

in the creative process, it’s time to move on to prototyping.
Prototyping is the fifth of the six habits of highly creative people
(you are almost at the end!) and it is the point at which your best
ideas get transformed into actual physical or visual depictions of
your idea.
When building prototypes, the goal is to “build to think.” As with the
other phases of design thinking, prototypes are not meant to be a final,
fully-formed solution. Rather, they are another tool to iterate on ideas
and garner different kinds of feedback from end users by allowing them
to interact with a concept. Here are three common types of prototypes:
A physical prototype is something the users can hold in their hands
and interact with. It can be made of paper, clay or any other material
you happen to have on hand. The goal is to create a three dimensional
product that provides users with a tactile experience of your idea.
A digital prototype is appropriate if you are building an app, a website
or other digital user experience. It’s usually drawn in a series of squares on
a single sheet of paper, or post-it notes to represent the user interface.
The goal is to provide a sense of the visual elements of the interface and
how the different pages/screens will connect and flow. In one project,
ExperiencePoint had a participant draw her user interface on sticky
notes. Then, she photographed them with her phone so users could
swipe through the drawings on her screen.
A simple prototype can be a powerful tool in helping customers
experience your idea in new ways. And the good news is that none
of them should take more than 10 minutes to build. In fact, when
ExperiencePoint holds workshops we set a 10-minute timebox for
prototyping to prevent participants from getting overly involved in
creating exactly the right features or detailed drawings. In these
sessions, we encourage teams to spend no more than one minute
coming up with a plan, and to not worry about creating a perfectly
polished product.
Timeboxing is an important part of the “build to think” philosophy,
because it keeps teams focused on generating quick and dirty
iterations that help move the creative process along.

A system/service prototype maps out a customer’s experience of

a service offering through storyboard drawings. These early designs
should be limited to 4-6 frames while still providing enough context
for the user to understand the critical touchpoints in the experience. If
you can’t represent your idea in 4-6 frames, it’s probably too complicated.
“AHA” MOMENTS

You would be amazed by the profound insights that can be collected

from even the most rudimentary prototypes. One famous example
is from work IDEO, a leading global design firm, did with a group
of surgeons trying to design a medical device for nasal surgery. The
surgeons tended to speak in complex medical jargon, and the de-
signers were struggling to grasp the idea. Then a junior member
of the design team took the broad description of the tool and as-
sembled a prototype using tape, a dry erase marker, a film canister,
and a clothes pin. That rough model created an immediate bridge
between the two groups. The surgeons were able to see their idea
in 3D, which allowed them talk about what was right, and where
it needed modifications.

In another example, a digital team created a prototype for a new

hospitality app. It was only after they drew the screens and watched
users interact with it that they realized every screen was missing
a back button. If they had waited until the app was designed, they
would have had to rework the entire layout to find space for that
button on the limited geography of the screen. Instead, they just
drew it into the next iteration.
DON’T BE SHY

It’s easy for adults to feel silly drawing pictures on sticky notes, or
building models out of tape and pipe cleaners, but it is a vital part of
the creative process. Some people just need a physical experience
with an idea to understand what it is, or what it could be. Building
this step into your innovation process will help you think in new
ways about what your product can be, and help you avoid mistakes
that might otherwise get lost in translation.
HABIT #6: GOOD FEEDBACK
LEADS TO GREAT PRODUCTS

When people talk about innovation transformations, one phrase

consistently comes up: user feedback. Feedback from end users is at
the heart of every innovation effort because it ensures the solution
that a company generates meets an actual need of the customers
they serve. In design thinking, the user is at the center of everything
we do, which is why gathering feedback is the sixth habit of highly
creative people — and some would say the most important.
As with every habit we’ve discussed in this series, gathering useful
feedback doesn’t always just happen. Good feedback is served by a
structure that elicits specific responses in a useful format.

To achieve this, ExperiencePoint relies on a simple framework for

generating actionable feedback called “I like, I like, I wonder...”
HOW IT WORKS

The feedback process should begin with the design team presenting
their prototype to a diverse group of customers and offering a simple
explanation. The goal is not to sell them on the idea, or to point out all
the exciting features. Rather the designer should explain what it is in
basic terms and provide any necessary context, then let them discover
the benefits for themselves. It is important to remain neutral so as
not to bias the users’ experiences with the prototype.
Once the users see or experience the prototype, we ask them to provide
feedback using the framework of “I like, I like, I wonder…”. We encourage
them to be as specific as possible, and to focus on what delights or
excites them about the product and how they would improve it. These
phrases are useful because they take the negative connotation out
of the feedback process, and provide users with a framework to talk
about the product.
Starting with “I like” is helpful because it lets designers know what works.
Even if the users decide that they don’t like the prototype, asking them
to use these phrases encourages them to be thoughtful about what
features should live on in future iterations.
why it is so heavy.” We also encourage them to focus on the features they
actually see or wish they could see, not what they imagine might be
a challenge (“I wonder if will be too expensive to make” is not useful
feedback at this stage).
This part of the feedback process can be harder for designers who often
get attached to their original design. So it is important to remember that
early prototypes are still big ideas with broadly designed features that
don’t all make the final design. Getting “I wonder” feedback helps identify
what features can be improved upon in later iterations.
When designers go through this process with enough users, patterns
start to emerge around the things they love, and the features they
wonder about. Sometimes this feedback will reinforce what they already
knew to be true, but in other cases it will generate “aha!” moments about
how a design should be altered.

“I wonder” gives users permission to make the prototype better. We use

positive phrasing as a way to focus feedback on improving the idea,
rather than criticizing where it falls short. For example, “I wonder if
it would be easier to use if it was lighter,” is more useful than “I wonder
BACK TO THE BEGINNING

Even though getting feedback is the last of the six habits, it’s not
the end of the process. Every product idea requires multiple rounds
of feedback, brainstorming, and prototyping to become the best
version of itself.

And remember, any feedback you get from users is a gift. The goal
of feedback is not to sell your vision, but to understand theirs. So say
“thank you” and consider what they’ve said, because their feedback
will help you make your idea even better.

We believe that experience is the best teacher. ExperiencePoint

provides award-winning design thinking and innovation training
that transforms the way people learn, innovate, manage change
and solve complex problems.

Our clients include Johnson and Johnson, Coca-Cola, Deloitte, Liberty

Mutual, The Wharton School, and Harvard.

Learn more: experiencepoint.com