Enabling Creativity & Innovation
All organisations need a special machine designed to: Futureproof survival and growth, solve daily problems, and identify and maximise opportunities.
A creative machine.
Your people are the Creative Machine™
Often the biggest cost in any organisation, people are employed to...
- think
- solve daily problems
- capture opportunities
- implement plans
...with no training whatsoever
The Creative Machine™
is already on the monthly payroll. In a team of 100 employees,
10 people = 50% of the output and 90 people the other 50%* *Price’s law – 50% of creative output is generated by the square root of the number of employees in an organisationUnderstanding the Creative Machine™ isn't new
Forget the stereotypes...
"Creativity is not a talent. It's a way of operating."
Donald MacKinnon, 1959
“Creative thinking is not a mystical talent. It is a skill that can be practised and nurtured."
Edward De Bono, 1975
“We have to debunk the notion, popularised by Hollywood, that the creative artist is cut from a different cloth than normal folk – that creativity is something mysterious, elusive and cannot be taught.”
Tham Khai Meng, Chief Creative Officer, Ogilvy & Mather, 2016
Trying to use the Creative Machine™ without training is dangerous
4 hours per week in bad brainstorming sessions costs £100,000* pa
*Average cost £20 per hour salary, total employment cost £62 per hour x 8 people = £496. £496 x 4 hours = £1,984 x 52 weeks = £103,168.Puting the Creative Machine™ to work
Everybody is creative. Everyone is born with all the creative drivers in place.
The education process crushes these natural drivers with thousands of exams insisting on right and wrong answers, with little support for creative thinking as a life skill.
Developing daily creative practices is like learning to drive and everyone can do it.
There’s a bit of theory and some techniques to learn. Then there’s a little bit of supervision and a lot of practice.
"Telling people how to be creative is easy, it's only being it that's difficult."
on creativity
Creativity can be measured
The me2 General Factor of Creativity report covers the psychology behind the 12 most important creative drivers along with specific areas for development.
The Cube programme describes additional energisers and blockers of daily creative practice, and explains techniques to aid daily practice.
As part of the Cube creativity training, everyone has their own Personal Creativity Development Plan and are coached in the use of a wide variety of tools and techniques.
Creativity can be trained
Cube 121 Training Modules
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Creativity can be trained
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Pre-training briefing
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Training Module 1 – Psychology of Creativity
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Training Module 2 – Creativity can be measured
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Training Module 3 – Creativity can be trained
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Training Module 4 – Creativity can be trained
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Training Module 5 – Creativity can be trained
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Training Module 6 – Creativity can be trained
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Training Module 7 – Creativity can be trained
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Training Module 8 – Creativity can be trained
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Training Module 9 – Creativity can be trained
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Training Module 10 – Creativity can be trained
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Workshop Manual for The Creative Machine™
Participants receive the following materials during the course:
About me2 Creativity Assessment Tool
me2 was developed in partnership with the Psychometrics at Work Research group within Manchester Business School and Creativity Specialists with 30+ years in product development and creative consultancy.
The me2 reports draw on 100 years of research into creativity. The reports work to demystify creativity and help individuals understand and develop their individual creative style.
me2 focuses on 12 factors that can be clearly understood and developed individually. These factors and have been shown to be common to all creative pursuits whether this is writing a screenplay, painting a picture or inventing the iPhone.
With a database of over 12,000 profiles, individuals can objectively understand their own creative thinking style compared to others.
"me2 offers an excellent personal insight for practising managers and executives into their potential for business creativity. Not only that, it provides a clear roadmap for their future development."Stuart Wilson Chief of Marketing, Burton’s Foods Limited
“The team was enthused with confidence in their own creative ability. The personal development plans, '7 Rules of Creativity’, 1-2-1 process and ideas generated in the practical sessions were especially useful.”Graham Clark People Insights Director at Serco Consulting
Meet the Cube Team
Cube is led by Jo Lea and David Walters
Jo Lea
Creative Director
Jo started her career as a Creative Director in 1997 with Blue-Chip Marketing; her first project was to work on the Pilates campaign for Kellogg’s Special K. A simple idea using a little-known exercise programme to support the Kellogg’s Special K, beautiful body, brand positioning. Now it’s estimated one million people go to Pilates classes in the UK.
She went on to work on and create many campaigns before leading the development of Cube with Channel 4. Jo continues to develop and direct creative campaigns for clients in addition to running Cube Programmes.
David Walters
Creative Director
With degrees in Accountancy and Marketing, David trained in New Product Development and Brand Management with Kleenex and Cussons Imperial Leather before setting-up his own creative consultancy, Blue-Chip Marketing.
The consultancy has created 100’s of campaigns on some of the world’s biggest brands including Andrex, Baxters, Kellogg’s, Kleenex, Lego, Imperial Leather, Reebok, Royal Sun Alliance and S&N Breweries.
In 2010 David started work with Jo and partnered with Manchester Business School to develop a modern practical creativity training programme. This work brought together 25 years of practical experience with the latest research on the Psychology of Creativity leading to the development of me2 and Cube Creativity programme.
"David and Jo have a real understanding and passion for creativity. They have delivered many creative campaigns for us with a strong focus on sales and profit without compromising on Kellogg’s need to be first and different."David Walker Director, Kelloggs
Creativity in the News
Value all ideas and jot them down
Freddy Mercury's Notebook
The Guardian 20 April 2016
The notebook to be auctioned in the UK.
The notebook which he carried around between 1988 and 1990 contains lyrics for songs such as Too Much Love Will Kill You and The Show Must Go On – both songs loaded with extra poignancy given he had HIV at the time.
The notepad itself is bog standard and still has a price label from the shop on Goldhawk Road, London.
Inside are lyrics, written in blue and red pen, for 19 songs from two albums – either fragments or the whole thing.
Incubate
Raf Simons
The Telegraph 9 April 2016
Raf Simons, a well-respected designer who’s worked for Dior, on how the relentless pace of fashion is killing creativity and the joy of his fabric design side-line.
Talking about how the fast turnaround of fashion now is stifling to the creative process; “Having the timeline of a year is like heaven for me because at Christian Dior I used to do eight collections a year and each collection could contain up to 150 fabrics.”
When I did fabrics at Dior I had to choose them within a couple of hours – seeing everything, deciding, making colour palettes… then hoopla – launch.”
“I’ve done three fabrics this year for Kvadrat and I really, really pay attention to it. It’s beautiful to be able to give a project substantial incubation time.”
Creative Environments
IBM's "Design Thinking"
Phil Gilbert is leading the company in the "design thinking" way, an approach to business that identifies users’ needs as a starting point and works toward the product.
Mr. Gilbert and his team talk a lot about “iteration cycles,” “lateral thinking,” “user journeys” and “empathy maps.”
The incubator for the company’s experiment in corporate culture renovation with sprawling open-plan spaces, metal tracks fit movable whiteboard walls, creating temporary rooms — “huddle spaces” — for small teams of workers, rarely more than a dozen. The walls are covered with drawings, text and Post-it notes — “idea parking lots,” they’re called. The space constantly changes, as teams form or disband, add people or shed them, according to the nature of the work.
Talk to Aliens
IBM's Bluemix
IBM’s software tool kit for making cloud applications.
In just one year, Bluemix went from an idea to a software platform that has attracted many developers, who are making apps used in industries as varied as consumer banking and wine retailing.
When a free test version of Bluemix was offered in February 2014, they hoped to attract 2,000 developers in the first few months. It reached that number within a week, today, Bluemix is signing up 10,000 new users a week.