Where has Creativity Gone....Kids Stand Up

Many people can agree that school systems, as well as the American culture in general, teaches kids from the very beginning that to be trulysuccessful you must get good grades through high school, go to a good college (now get a masters), and finally complete your journey by getting a good job. Now, I am not saying that anything is particularly wrong with this, for some people; to be honest I followed this path by graduating high school with honors, graduating from a good college, and then getting my first good job at a respected financial services firm. I will also say that my dream ever since I was a youngster was to own my own business (it didn’t matter what it was), however it seemed that everything I was taught or told growing up was to navigate me away from fulfilling my dream, mostly for my own protection.

AND WHY IS THAT?

This is quite an easy question to answer; the reason everything was encouraging me to not think creatively or to dream big, is that we,Americans, are scared of failure and the “what if”. It seems that we are being brainwashed since elementary age to not think creatively, and to not take chances because we do not want to be wrong. Our school systems, parents, everyone is thinking that they are protecting us by not challenging us and encouraging us to think differently, but all they are really doing is hindering our growth and our ability/talents. Many kids follow the so-called path to success I discussed above, but end up feeling not fulfilled, working in menial jobs for someone else, just putting in time to hopefully, eventually be the one who gets to tell other people what to do. These kids, also end up not knowing who they really are and never find out what they are truly good at or find their true passion. I mean come on people, how many times do you hear people say: “I hate my job” or “work sucks”.

IS THIS THE WORLD WE ARE REALLY LIVING IN?

By enforcing this curriculum, we are truly creating a generation of people that, sorry to say it are robots, and that are afraid to think differently because they do not want to be wrong or fail. We need to realize that this generation are the ones that are going to keep innovating and enriching life for all people, these are the ones that are going to find the cure for cancer, or save the planet if you will. If we take away their creative capacities at an early age, then what will happen? Your guess is as good as mine? I surely do not want to see that day!

Some quotes to back up my rants, then I’ll say why this relates to COIN.

“Creativity in education is now as important as literacy”

“We are born as creative beings….We don’t grow into creativity; we are educated out of it”

“All kids have tremendous talents, and we squander them”

***All quotes from Sir Ken Robinson***

What The coIN Loft Proposes.

When Wes and I finally gained enough courage and confidence to enter the life of an entrepreneur, we immediately thought about the reasons why and what legacy we wanted to leave behind (yes, even though we are only in our 20’s). The one thing both of us felt the most passion for was to be able to teach, and more importantly encourage kids to discover the importance of entrepreneurship, innovation, and creativity. Now that we are opening The coIN Loft, we see this as not just an ordinary coworking space, but a hub that kids can use as an outlet for creativity and true real life knowledge.

Here is an excerpt from our proposal, to better explain how The coIN Loft will interact with kids:

“A very important aspect of our action plan will be to seek support and partnerships with the local universities, state-run programs, city officials, local freelancers/entrepreneurs, non-profits, etc. Currently, we have relations with the University of Delaware (Venture Development Center), Delaware Tech, but will also be in contact with Delaware State’s market street location, as well as Delaware College of Art & Design. Being young entrepreneurs ourselves, we fully understand the value of working and collaborating with other various types of entrepreneurs at all stages of development. With that being said, we intend to open our doors to the students of the local colleges so they can learn the process of business start-up and innovation. We will also seek to enlist the help of many of these students to serve as volunteers for our events to demonstrate the importance of being an active participant in the growth of the communities in which they may later do business. Allowing students to volunteer & participate will inevitably attract more attention from the universities. Our vision for the future is to use this awareness as leverage to start a COIN internship program for student entrepreneurs. Seeing that many of the entrepreneurship programs being offered by Delaware colleges are fairly new, COIN presents a golden opportunity for schools to expand their support for student business ventures beyond graduation.”

Conclusion.

I’ll end with a quote, again from Sir Ken Robinson, “We need to see our creative capacities for the richness they possess, and see our children for the hope that they are.”

Agile Disruption Method II

This is a more in-depth explanation of our introduction to Agile Disruption Method from a previous post.

Agile Disruption Method is an adaptation of the Design Thinking "process". Design Thinking is an innovation method made popular by Tim Brown of Ideo, that encourages people to question problems from the perspective of what is feasible, viable and commercially desired. Agile Disruption Method encourages people to discover innovation by repetitively "disrupting" their own conclusions at every step of the process, irregardless of where they are in the process. Moreover, Agile Disruption Method is a collaborative way to maximize the value proposition of a product or service through continuous analysis and observation of the effect they have on humans; not through statistical data alone but also with the real life experiences of people.

The principles of Design Thinking, human desirability, feasibility and viability are shared by Agile Disruption Method. However, the goal of Agile Disruption isn't to find conclusions; on the contrary, Agile Disruption Method is the process of antagonistic query and contradictory discovery. To accomplish this goal one must think. Thinking, believe it or not is rarely used when a company decides to embrace innovation (consumer value based problem-solving). Thinking by definition is an internal mental process that uses data or information as input; integrates that information into previously learned material which is used to further ones knowledge, understanding and perception of reality. Thinking, which is inherently perpetual, either confirms or contradicts the known. Understanding this lead us to a theoretical definition of the influence thinking has on Design Thinking and consequently Agile Disruption Method:

"A Design Thinker and consequently by default, an Agile Disrupter, is one who purposefully seeks to challenge and disprove their own perceptions in order to increase the efficiency of the internal mental process, thus increasing by which they expand their knowledge and understanding. This in turn maximizes the value and future profitability of their innovations."

As a company we had issues with meeting the checkpoints of the Design Thinking process and found ourselves continuously "disrupting" conclusions at various points in the process that we were dead set on within hours of making them. We quickly found that by dispersing those checkpoints within a circle of skilled individuals, we were able to locate the bugs in our conclusions much quicker, as well as discover ways to accomplish what we previously considered impossible. Agile Disruption is now being used to find profitable solutions by first considering the remarkably impossible through collaboration.

Agile Disruption may not make much sense at this point. However, stay tuned for our next post which will demonstrate how the process works and why it is an important component to the Design Thinking process. If you think you can offer something to help us refine our method, please comment or send us an email.

The Hypocrisy of Ideas

No one owns an idea. We can own our perception of an idea, but not the idea itself. By our definition an idea is an epaphanic awareness of the alignment of known facts and life experiences that alters ones perspective on reality. The realization of an idea leads one into creative thinking which can then lead to the commercialization of their own point of view. You may think we’re way off base but in doing so you’re actually proving our point. In this case “idea” is the idea and we can both have different perspectives of what that is but it in no way changes that an idea is just an idea until someone does something with it. What is ultimately done will be a reflection of our own understanding and life experiences. For example, a wheel is just a wheel and no matter how you choose to utilize that wheel it will remain a wheel. You may see the wheel as a way to help you harvest crops faster; whereas I may see it as a way to prove I can finish a quarter mile faster. Either way we see it, the wheel is still a wheel. (If you’re seeing a correlation between application and perspective you should.)

The point to all of this is that many people don’t feel comfortable with Coworking because of how closely people work together and how they are encourage to freely trade ideas amongst each other. “They” have fears that people may steal their ideas. We obviously don’t believe that but not just because of the reason I’ve already explained. The true reason is that we believe in open collaboration. No two people will see a problem or opportunity the same so why not work together to optimize the results? Coworking is one of a million ways to find higher quality solutions cheaper and faster.

I’ll leave you with a couple quotes:

“Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives and mimicry, their passions a quotation.”

- Oscar Wilde

“In the long history of humankind (and animal kind, too) those who learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively have prevailed.”

- Charles Darwin

The coIN What?

the coIN Loft is a Coworking space opening in Wilmington, Delaware in February 2010. Coworking is basically a place for entrepreneurs that typically work at home or local cafe’s to collaborate and grow. Not for you? Let’s challenge that….

You ever woke up at 7am like a home office gladiator, ready to absolutely tear through every shred of work you have and found yourself sitting on the couch watching Price is Right by 10:30am? That my friend is not what Coworking or the coIN loft is about! Coworking spaces hold entrepreneurs accountable and increase productivity. They don’t accomplish this because there’s a Nun with a iron ruler walking around whacking people when they aren’t getting work done. They keep people on track because of the camaraderie you have with the people around you. People respectfully push others forward and suggest better or more efficient business practices when they’re needed. In addition to that, there’s a bit of a competitive factor there as well. Let’s assume you’re a graphic designer and you’ve been trying to get a design job with the local Big Time Business for months. Just when you decide that maybe it’s not going to happen you notice an excepted proposal on your neighbors desk from Big Time Business. I wouldn’t recommend you utter your first thought but when you manage to swallow your pride you dig deeper and try harder to land your next potential design job. Furthermore, you now have the opportunity to work with your neighbor to perfect your pitch to increase the chances of accomplishing your goal.

Coworking is a beautiful model for entrepreneurs at any stage but start-ups will be the sweet spot of the coIN loft. My partner and I currently own a company called Verge Business Group, which acts as a tuning fork for early stage start-up companies to make sure consumers actually want to listen to the song they’re singing. We felt our efforts to support and perpetuate entrepreneurship in Delaware could be more substantial if we pursued the Coworking concept. We’re very excited to be apart of this 5 year old movement and truly feel it fits our forward-thinking personalities. Moreover, we hope to see the Coworking community meld together to work on the important stuff in our world together. There are Coworking spaces all over the world so it’s a matter of time before that vision comes true. Entrepreneurs that view the coIN loft as the type of place they’d like to join, won’t simply do it because we offer the space for $300 a month or the various free amenities. They’ll do it because they too want to be intimately involved in the important stuff in our world.

As we write on Twitter every morning….LET’S ALL BE FAMOUS!!