Innovation And Creativity w/ Ashley Fico

By InnoQuests LLC?

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Take a moment and list the tools that enable your business success. Can you picture them? Your project management software. Your social networking platforms and professional organizations. Your cell phone. And yet, when I created my list, the following items came to mind: Wednesday night TV, conversations with strangers, and an Oculus VR headset. Surprised? I was as well.?

This unusual list was created by Ashley Fico, CEO and Co-Founder of InnoQuests LLC. InnoQuests LLC creates interactive adventures played in real-world locations. Through the company’s mobile app, players are immersed in detailed stories that guide them through exploration of their physical location. Clues and puzzles presented within each InnoQuest can only be solved by inspecting the buildings, sculptures, and artwork that compose one’s real-world surroundings.?

As with many other organizations, InnoQuests LLC emphasizes the central role of innovation and creativity in delivering their experience. To develop an InnoQuest, Ashley and her co-founder/brother, Kyle Anker, must visit a physical location, identify local landmarks or attractions of interest, and retrospectively create a story and associated puzzles/clues that will guide players through the site. The process results in a number of creative decisions ranging from writing a cohesive narrative, to designing puzzles, forming clues, and offering users an appropriate amount of intellectual challenge that will leave them engaged, yet not frustrated, with their quest. The challenges faced by InnoQuests LLC may be unique, but the need for creativity cuts across industries ranging from engineering to marketing to computer science.?

Despite the widespread demand for creative people in business, many of us enter the workforce following a traditional educational background; a place where creativity was perhaps overlooked, or even, viewed as stigmatizing or threatening to the status quo. So, how can emerging entrepreneurs overcome this limitation and enhance their creativity? This is where Ashley turns to her list of items for business success: Wednesday night TV, an oculus VR headset, and conversations with strangers. Here is how they come into play:?

Stuck on a problem that requires a creative solution? Take an ‘undemanding’ break.

On Wednesdays, Ashley and Kyle have a ritual. He comes to visit for dinner. They chat about a business problem, they watch some TV, they chat about the problem again. Why the break? Studies call it an ‘incubation effect.’ By disrupting one’s attention to the problem with a relatively unstructured break, one’s mind has time to wander. Upon returning to the original task, people who have stepped away are able to generate a larger number of creative solutions to the original problem than those who have continually maintained their focus. It’s happened to Ashley and Kyle more than once. A problem seems insurmountable. A few episodes of 90 Day Fiance later and solutions abound.

No idea what the next product or step in your business should be? Do something unexpected.

People often expect their lives to follow particular patterns or routines. Given the massive amount of stimuli in our day-to-day experience, relying on these cognitive ‘shortcuts’ is an easy way to make sense of the world. But, interrupting these expected experiences has great benefits for creativity. For Ashley and Kyle, this is where they pull the Oculus VR out of their business toolbox. With the headset on, they may travel to unusual lands and interact with the environment in non-traditional ways. Take the headset off, sit down to brainstorm, and new possibilities emerge. Their experiences reflect research on cognitive flexibility that shows how exposure to a novel event is associated with an increased likelihood of approaching a situation from a variety of perspectives.?

Need advice? Ask someone different.

In life, people can easily become ingrained in social groups that have members much like ourselves. Whether a byproduct of our evolution, culture, or geographic location, the limitation of these homogeneous groups is a lack of diversity in thought and perspective. Ashley suggests this is where it is time to widen your net. She first tried this in the context of LinkedIn. After years of using LinkedIn to connect with local professionals, she began writing original content and connecting on a global scale. The results were tremendous. International connections taught her about topics ranging from Spanish culture and tourism practices to the application of Artificial Intelligence concepts to various professional domains. Knowledge gained through these conversations often helped her to challenge her own perspective on a problem, approaching it in an entirely new way.?

Most business leaders will face a challenge that requires a creative solution at some point in time. Whether they need to create a new product to solve a problem, develop a novel campaign message that sparks attention, or find a way to overcome a barrier or challenge in business, the solution required may not be immediately at-hand.

Ashley, Kyle, and InnoQuests LLC argue that you may not find that solution with your standard business tools.

Project management software might tell you when you need to implement a solution, but it won’t tell you how to find that solution in the first place.

For that, you’ll need to expand the tools you have at your disposal. For them, it was Wednesday night TV, an oculus VR, and conversations with strangers. What creativity tools do you have at your disposal??

Resources?

Baird, B., Smallwood, J., Mrazek, M. D., Kam, J. W. Y., Franklin, M. S., & Schooler, J. W. (2012). Inspired by distraction: Mind wandering facilitates creative incubation. Psychological Science, 23(10), 1117-1122.?

Lohiser, A. & Puccio, G. J. (2021). Dare to be disruptive! The social stigma toward creativity in higher education and a proposed antidote. (pp. 23-40). In P. Jain (Ed.). Creativity: A force to innovation.?

Ritter, S. M., Damian, R. I., Simonton, D. K., van Baaren, R. B., Strick, M., Derks, J., & Dijksterhuis, A. (2012). Diversifying experiences enhance cognitive flexibility. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 48(4), 961-964.

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Connect with Ashley on Linkedin: https://www.dhirubhai.net/in/ashley-fico/

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?? Five Minute Friday is brought to you by Ben Albert of?Balbert Marketing LLC

?? Article+ Audio Written and Recorded By Ashley Fico