Leveraging the “Pamplemousse Precept” In Creativity Coaching
For greater than a dozen years my innovation company has taught custom-made inventive problem-solving workshops (what we now name “Un-Suppose” applications), to senior managers in medium and enormous organizations. Evaluations from the actually hundreds of executives who’ve taken the workshop common 4.8 out of 5. Why such excessive scores? I feel it’s partly as a result of we’ve questioned lots of the most simple assumptions of studying and improvement workshops.
To encourage larger participant engagement, for example, we don’t use any PowerPoint slides. We additionally solely inform unique tales from our personal innovation consulting work so we will converse authoritatively about how enterprise creativity and innovation successes actually occur. (No cliché Submit It Notes, Apple, or Swiffer tales from us!) And we by no means, ever ask contributors to generate a dozen makes use of for a brick… or a paper clip, or a straw. Until you’re within the development, workplace provide, or delicate drink enterprise that is, to our mind-set, an absurd train. Worker time is just too beneficial to waste on overly theoretical inventive pondering workouts that don’t have “actual world” relevance for the group.
As a substitute, we use an “action-learning” methodology. We require contributors to submit real-world enterprise challenges for which they want new pondering and new concepts. Then we use these challenges to assist contributors apply the inventive pondering methods we wish them to be taught. So, the workshop feels extra like an ideation session than “coaching.”
Among the many dozens of staff ideation methods we train are triggered brainwalking, patent prompts, worst/foolish thought, enterprise mannequin mash-ups, TRIZ triggers, thought hooks, questioning assumptions, target-market wishing, pattern triggers, semantic instinct, twenty questions, nice thinkers, drawback redefinition, journal rip n’ rap, whiteboarding, strategic continuums, billboarding, and most not too long ago, AI Concept Prompts.
So…. how may we “stroll our personal speak,” “query our assumptions,” and “want” for methods to enhance our “Un-Suppose” workshop scores from a 4.8 to a 4.9… or perhaps a 5.0?
I feel we will agree that generative AI applications as they’re now recognized (i.e., Chat GPT, DALL-E, and many others.), have the potential to be enterprise and organizational sport changers. A lot of the current press about these applications, nonetheless, has targeted on their draw back: selling a scarcity of unique thought, “plagiarism,” content material inaccuracies, and many others.
An necessary distinction I make within the Introduction to my new e book Quirks… Provocative Tales, Songs, Essays, Poems Advertisements, and Jokes concerning the Character Quirks and Loopy Concepts of Nice Individuals in Historical past… Created with Synthetic Intelligence is that these AI applications may probably be large educational aids… serving to studying and improvement professionals current info and concepts in a wide range of inventive/totally different codecs to accommodate totally different scholar studying kinds and preferences. Or, to place it extra merely… they’ll make educating and studying extra inventive, efficient, and FUN!
Think about this AI generated limerick to assist clarify – hopefully in an entertaining approach — the Worst Concept inventive method:
“There as soon as was a thinker fairly clever,
Whose concepts would oft’ materialize,
However the “worst thought” technique he’d strive,
To create and let fly,
And odd brilliance would then come up.”
Or the Foolish Concept method:
“A thinker who sought the absurd,
With foolish concepts, they most well-liked,
In jest they’d create,
Unlikely to equate,
But brilliance from nonsense occurred.”
And even Patent Prompts.
“In a workshop the place minds would join,
Patent prompts would encourage and direct.
From innovations of outdated,
New concepts would unfold,
As a wellspring of thought to good.
Would possibly having contributors generate these inventive executions of the workshop content material make for an much more inspirational and memorable expertise? I feel so! However in case you’re not satisfied, see if these two quick tales don’t assist make the case.
What would Sandy Alderson Say?
At a Dartmouth School alumni occasion a number of years in the past, I had the prospect to speak with fellow Dartmouth alum, the then Common Supervisor of the Mets, Sandy Alderson. My son James, then solely 14, was a reasonably good baseball participant, going to the Babe Ruth World Collection as a member of the Stamford, CT All-Star staff. And so, understanding I’d see Sandy Alderson on the occasion, I requested James if there was something he needed me to ask the Met’s Common Supervisor.
“I’d prefer to understand how they’ll inform which minor leaguers they suppose will make it to the majors,” stated James. Attention-grabbing query, proper?
Sandy Alderson’s reply stunned me. “Some of the necessary issues we search for is their capacity to be taught. As a result of we’ve got a lot to show them.” Spectacular.
The story doesn’t finish right here, although. I’ve a superb buddy, Sean Brawley, former touring tennis skilled and the one licensed trainer of Timothy Gallwey’s Inside Recreation of Tennis educating philosophy. After I instructed Sean this story he adopted up with a profound query. “Sure, the power to be taught is necessary,” he stated, “however what concerning the coach’s capacity to show?” Wow!
Once more, we should acknowledge that totally different folks be taught otherwise – and that AI content material creation applications may also help accommodate these studying variations and preferences by presenting the fabric to be discovered in radically totally different codecs. Moreover a limerick, how about an AI generated track, joke, story, and even an advert?
Say Hiya to The Pamplemousse Precept
Story quantity two entails one among my studying experiences from over 50 years in the past. Nonetheless in elementary faculty, I used to be pressured to take French courses after faculty with a dozen equally sad college students. For some purpose, probably out of sheer boredom, however extra possible as a result of cadence of the French phrase for grapefruit, Pamplemousse, at one level the category spontaneously began chanting the phrase “Pamplemousse, Pamplemousse, Pamplemousse.” The trainer couldn’t assist however take part.
After which, all of us received up from our chairs and in a form of inventive pondering conga line, we danced and sang to the rhythm of our Pamplemousse chant. A lot enjoyable, and clearly a memorable studying expertise that I carry with me even all these years later.
Might AI creativity applications make what I’ve now dubbed the Pamplemousse Precept – educating inventive pondering extra creatively to accommodate totally different pondering kinds – a more-easily-achieved actuality by producing enjoyable and humorous, entertaining and provocative, unique songs, tales, poems, advertisements, and jokes to bolster – and make extra memorable – the content material being taught? My 50+ yr experiment with a “French grapefruit” tells me the reply must be, “Oui!”
Bryan Mattimore is the Cofounder and Chief Concept Man at Progress Engine, a 23-year-old innovation company primarily based in Stamford, CT. He’s the creator of 5 books on ideation and innovation processes together with Concept Stormers, 21 Days to a Massive Concept, and the brand new AI-generated e book, Quirks. He will be reached at: [email protected] .
