Link’spiration™ – Wednesday August 7th – Fueling Your Inner Creative

Link’spiration™ – A chance to be surprised and inspired by unexpected connections

Fueling Your Inner Creative
We know how people talk about “corporate training” with their friends and family, and let’s just say it isn’t always flattering. We’ve even heard the word, “boring.” It hurts our feelings, but we get it. There is a lot of boring training out there, and here’s why: boring training doesn’t require creativity or innovation, which makes it easier, faster, and cheaper to develop.

We want our learners to feel like we do about corporate training: engaged, motivated, inspired—even entertained. To make this happen, we know we need to bring our creativity “A” game to work each day, and we’re intrigued by the different theories that try to explain how this works.

This video by John Cleese is long, but we think it’s worth watching for as many minutes as you can spare. He argues that creativity is less about natural ability, and more about being in the right “mode” to play. At Allen we incorporate time to brainstorm into our instructional design process to allow for creative solutions.
John Cleese – A Lecture on Creativity
Creativity in Corporate Training

We’ve experimented with some of the solutions offered in this infographic, but we haven’t had any luck with the Vulcan mind meld yet. We’ll let you know if that changes. We’re pretty confident that doodling generates great results, especially if it is one our artists at the other end of the pencil.
Infographic – How to Lead A Creative Life

For example, after listening to a story on Radio West, the local NPR program, our art team took to the streets to generate ideas for future projects and to boost their creativity. They also read an article on the importance of observation. Sometimes creativity is seeing what nobody else can see.
Radio West – The Rx for Technology
Communication Arts – Be On the Lookout!

Take a look at some of their sketches below. We’re excited to see traces of these experiments as they find their way into the right custom training solution. (Click on images to enlarge)

What inspires you? Join our conversation below.