come from the sum of everything you are exposed to—they are the product of your environment. Can you stay home and generate good ideas just by typing on your computer? Forget it! But go for a walk, talk to new people, read books that challenge you, and visit new places, and you won’t be able to save yourself from good ideas.
Fact: change yields progress. The average tenure at ultra-creative companies like Google is just over one year. Why? Because constant change promotes continual evolution. There’s a correlation between change and development. If the local bank down the street has been pursuing the same strategy for thirty years, this is certainly because the same heads have been sitting in meetings for thirty years. If the implementation of new ideas is related to the turnover of employees (and the new thoughts that new employees bring), then Google develops at a rate thirty times faster than the local bank. (In reality, it’s many times more.)
So, back to summer 2008—my first year at a typical U.S. university in Tampa, Florida. My buddy David and I love the new life at school (and the beach) and are realizing our version of the American Dream. We’re tens of thousands of kilometers away from home, from everything we know and understand. We are vulnerable, not always fully in control, and those are important ingredients for modesty and honesty.
Still, we don’t know our way around; we’re often lost or disoriented, and have to ask for directions. But it is specifically the things that we don’t yet know that are going to lay the foundation of our entrepreneurial success.
Change
Yields
Progress!
It’s a typical Saturday evening, but still somewhat special: A student fraternity invites us to a “Blacklight Paint Party,” where all the light bulbs have been changed to blacklight. Everyone will paint colorful quotes, names, and whatnot on each other’s t-shirts. Sounds weird and crazy, so David and I say, “We’re in!” The experience will change our lives forever. As the night progresses, the painting becomes messier and messier, but the vibe is indescribably special: it’s a hit! The music is loud, the air sizzling, and even though there’s little space for the few hundred people to dance, everyone—but really, every single one—feels that something extraordinary is happening. The organized painting has been forgotten, and everyone is smearing each other with paint. There are no taboos, flirting has never been so easy, and interaction has never been so high.
A supercharged version of a party game for young adults had emerged and was unstoppable.
And that’s what matters! An absolute parade of an idea drove past me, with sirens and flashing lights, certainly still very raw and unstructured, but obvious! And it was happening, not because I was so creative, but because I was in the right place at the right time. Whoever doesn’t jump on a chance like that—it’s their own fault.
The lesson is that you don’t come up with ideas like that, they come to you! You have to loosen your cognitive dependencies and be open to what would normally be impossible. Always question conventional logic, paint big pictures, and create your own reality—without boundaries.
Like a camera lens, I try to zoom out far and see everything in the long shot. I try to see things not for what they are, but for what they could be. I look at the party crowd, feel the energy that makes the room tremble, and the mental machine starts running. I don’t imagine a few hundred guests, but instead 5,000—a stage, a show, and a countdown, like on New Year’s Eve, until the first color hits. I sense a theme and tour. My head spins and I realize: This is the next big thing!
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2. Being Creative Means Discovering and Improving—Not Just Inventing!
After the Blacklight Paint Party, the task was clear: I had a basic idea that I had to improve upon or amplify. But how? Creativity does not automatically mean inventing something new; it often simply means discovering something and then making proper use of it. Ideas always build on each other; they’re much more evolutionary than revolutionary. Our first really successful idea, NEONSPLASH–Paint-Party®, already had its parameters defined: color, music, and blacklight. So now it became all about amplifying the concept, finding new elements and adding them to the basic idea, and about challenging the conventional wisdom about entertainment. Do you have to reinvent the wheel? No, but it has to roll, and roll really fast!
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DISCOVERY: COLOR IS THE HIGHLIGHT!
HOW WE IMPROVED IT: We added a dramatic story arc, defining a framework for action—a countdown, just like on New Year’s Eve. At the end of a two-hour countdown, the color would burst off the stage for the first time!
DISCOVERY: T-SHIRTS
HOW WE IMPROVED IT: White t-shirts became obligatory for all guests, for two reasons:
1.Neon color looks very strong on white t-shirts.
2.We dress the guests like a team; they look like they’re wearing team jerseys, so to speak. The sense of community is enhanced.
DISCOVERY: GOOD SHOW BUT NO NAME
HOW WE IMPROVED IT: We frame each show by creating its own title, story, and message, just like in the world of cinema or big concert tours. Why? Because people love stories, and because stories bring life to otherwise generic activities. So, in 2011, we did the Love Thru Paint tour, in 2012/13 the Color Is Creation tour, and in 2014 the Utopia 3D tour (with 3D red-and-blue paper glasses reminiscent of 90s movies, and 3D image effects on screen). All of the events had the same basic elements: color, music, blacklight. But every show had a new story, and a new reason to participate. And as an added draw, we used a big stage, intricate effects, and famous artists.
We identified the characteristics of extremely successful and exceptional events, incorporated them into our basic idea, and thereby created a new hybrid that really has it all. Applied creative thinking is, therefore, not a process of invention, but rather the systematic identification and the atypical combination of past experiences to create entirely new configurations. In the right setting, these can produce results that are not just successful, but also groundbreaking hits.
In his book Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell talks about how trending new developments reach a point of instability, after which the situation rapidly readjusts. Using the example of a completely full glass of water into which additional drops of water are added, Gladwell points out how the extra water will mound up above the rim until the “tipping point” is reached, the moment when the mound of water collapses and overflows.
We can view each drop as a player entering the new market, reacting to the enticing promise of a really good novel idea. The mass of new entrants builds up beyond what the glass can normally hold, until the surface tension breaks and most of the excess water spills over. At that point, the new trend becomes an integral part of a market, though it’s essential not to get washed away in the floods. Only a few survive all the way to the “tipping point,” and even fewer survive the wash-out and go on to dominate the entire segment. The few companies that manage have a very clear vision right from the first drop, and analyze the dynamics so precisely that they start the challenge with increased stability and reason for being.
Let’s take another concrete example: Amazon. Today, it’s a player in the e-commerce segment, and probably only at the beginning of its world domination. Let’s consider for a moment what founder Jeff Bezos noticed and expanded on in 1994 (!). What did the “glass”
