Send a brain pic? Is this the question my kids will ask? #Neurodesign
Sarah Pirie-Nally
Keynote Speaker | CEO & Co-Founder at Evolve X | Author of The Wonder Mindset | MAD Fund Ambassador | Championing Family Development, Neuro-Inclusion + Mindfulness
Jan Auernhammer is an Executive Director NeuroDesign Research, Executive Director People-centered Business Design Research, Research Engineer & Lecturer at Stanford (about to start at UTS) and the picture above is a picture of his brain.
As he shared an insightful and inspiring talk with my design practice this morning, I giggled to myself as I saw one of our designers say "very personal showing his own brain activity" and I immediately replied "Send a brain pic? Is this the question my kids will ask?". What is more intimate than your neural oscillations? So I asked Jan, "do I have consent to share a picture of your brain on my Linkedin" and he gave me permission.
I have written in the past about neurological privacy but today I want to talk about the future of neurodesign as I see it in terms of the practical applications of this sort of work for business and for life.
Understanding self is one of those broad stroke topics that we know is helpful, but some of this research really takes it all to a new level. If we are able to pin point when we are generating ideas and then take time to understand the activities, environment and interactions that led to these ideas we can find ways to literally architect better ideas.
Good ideas, innovative ideas have been valued by businesses and society for centuries. We know the cost of legacy thinking and of incremental ideas, we also know the value of innovative and game changing thinking and ideas. So how might businesses generate better quality ideas? The answer lies somewhere between the pixels and the synapses.
Creative thinking is valuable right? I have run workshops for thousands of people over the years and in my own lived experience, the number 1 block to innovation is the belief that only certain people are creative. These sorts of blocks have been written about by the fathers of design thinking James L. Adams or Bob McKim from Stanford, The perceptual, emotional, intellectual and expressive blocks or the "fear of messing up" on all fronts as we discovered through our recent proprietary research understanding our 18-24 year old customers. Fear gets in the way of our best endeavours, including our desire to create better products, services, experiences in our businesses and also in our lives.
Jan and his fellow colleagues at Stanford have run some pretty amazing research projects, from understanding what is happening in our brains during design processes. One example was a study in which students who participated for 8 weeks in a creative thinking class and another group 8 weeks in a new foreign language class. The hypothesis was of course that you would learn a new language from the foreign language class and that the brain activity would show an increase in brain activity in this capability. The findings showed differences in brain activation in the tasks, you could see students who had spent 8 weeks learning creative tasks in a creative gym in D-school performed better on creative tasks, equally the language students performed better in language tests. This was a lovely piece of evidence that showed that creativity can be learned. We can get better at it. You can rewire your brain and it sounds like it may take as little as 8 weeks of playful creativity!
So what are some practical tips for improving your own creativity and creative thinking? (so that in the future if someone asks for a brain pic you can proudly show you've been doing the work ;) )
领英推荐
Some fun talks to get you thinking:
The Neuroscience of Creativity, Perception, and Confirmation Bias | Dr Beau Lotto | Big Think
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vR2P5vW-nVc
Dr Fiona Kerr - Changing Our Minds: How great leaders rewire brains
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6GvsIEOofs
Founding CEO @ Transhuman. TIME Next Gen Leader. LinkedIn Top Voice in AI. International Keynote Speaker
1 年Creativity can be learned! ??
Head of Health and Safety
2 年Wow! Sounds interesting Sarah Nally where do we sign up??
Mentor /Podcaster @SafeTea, Promoting Creative Leadership/ Lead Auditor ISO45001, 9001 & 14001, Integrated Risk specialist /Leading Safety, Critical Risk and Governance @ASB Bank
2 年Awesome can’t wait to hear more about it