Be brief to be creative

After a few months away I am delighted to be back.

So let us start with a short story about creativity.

In some people’s eyes Ernest Hemingway is America’s finest writer. He certainly liked to be at the centre of the action. This is what makes his writing a great read.

When America entered World War 1 he enlisted immediately and was sent to Italy. On his first day he was dragging shredded bodies away after an explosion.

Later he was seriously hurt by mortar fire suffering serious shrapnel wounds to both legs. He feared that he might never walk again.

His experiences of war, life and death inspired his novel, ‘A Farewell to Arms’.

He was sent as a journalist to cover the Spanish Civil War which he did from the front lines. If there was a battle or a war you could bet Hemingway would be there.

His time in Spain inspired ‘Death in the Afternoon’ and ‘For Whom the Bell Tolls’.

In World War 2 he was present at the Normandy landings, fought his way through France, was there at the liberation of Paris, and covered the Battle of the Bulge.

He won a Bronze Star.

His Big Game hunting experiences in Africa, when he nearly died, inspired ‘The Snows of Kilimanjaro’.

And in 1954 he won the Nobel Prize for Literature.

He was an author. A journalist. A soldier. A real life Action Man.

And yet the piece of literature he considered his finest consists of 6 words.

In the 1920s he was challenged by some literary friends to compose a short story with no more than six words.

The result.

‘For sale: baby shoes. Never worn.’

Which only goes to show that creativity and innovation does not require much.

Indeed it might be said that less is more when it comes to creativity and imagination and innovation.

Creative thinking is far more likely when there are restraints and constraints in place.

Restraints and constraints forces people to step back. To look at the big picture. And make connections between ideas, concepts, stuff they might not otherwise make.

This is the hallmark of creativity. And the way I believe creativity and innovation should be uncovered.

The tighter the brief the better the output.

The less time, the less money, the less resources we have at our disposal, the better the solution we can come up with, provided we think things through properly.

Too often in an effort to cover every base, to ensure we include everything, to quite literally throw the kitchen sink at a problem, we can fail to focus our thinking.

Great strategic thinking, brilliant marketing, is about deciding what not to do, who not to target, what not to say, as much as it is about deciding what to do, who to target, what to say.

And it is about looking hard for connections and opportunities that might not be as apparent if resources are in abundance.

If you have no constraints, impose some, and see where your thinking takes you.

You never know, you might just come up with a Nobel Prize winning solution.