my life when I decided that I wanted to
be a newspaper cartoonist like Garfield
or calvin hobbes and you probably think
that’s a very nice dream for a kid but I
was 20 a bit of a late bloomer the only
problem with my new career path was I
didn’t know how to draw part of a
problem for a newspaper cartoonist so I
had taken art classes in high school as
most of us did amber one class our
teacher had us draw cow she even put a
picture of a cow on the screen in case
we forgot what a cow looked like and she
asked us to like recreated as best as we
could and so I really studied that cow
and if ever looked at a cow closely
before you’ll know what they look kind
of weird they have strange bumps and
ridges and lines and all these things I
was determined I was going to make a
really good cow so I did it I was pretty
proud of myself and I handed it in got
it back a few days later for the note on
it to Kyle the purpose of this exercise
was to draw a cow I I got that part but
she said so why did you draw this
picture of a three humped camel
apparently I had morphed my cow into a
bit of a freak that’s okay i also love
pictionary my whole family loves
pictionary just strange cuz we’re all
terrible artists but we all love to play
and I usually draw stick people that’s
all I think all I can draw and my
family’s on the other side guessing
hieroglyphics which is obviously not it
but I’m just a terrible artist I I would
say that my art would make Stone Age
cave paintings look like the roof of the
sistine chapel it’s terrible and this is
usually the part route stand up and
saying you know what thanks to hard work
and dedication I learned how to draw and
I became an accomplished artist right
new cheer and applaud be inspired and
that didn’t happen I’m still a terrible
artist I can’t even draw a symmetrical
smiley face I was going to bring some
slides of some my artwork and thought I
would die of shame so that didn’t happen
but even though I never learned how to
draw I learned three very important
lessons
from my brief stint as a wannabe
newspaper cartoonist the first one is
that I will never be a newspaper
cartoonist still heartbroken but I’m
working through it day by day the other
thing I learned was that creativity
comes in many different forms so I can’t
draw but I can do a lot of other things
that are equally creative the third
thing I learned those what I want to
talk with you guys vote today and that’s
that your imagination is one of your
most valuable yet most undervalued
assets let me give you an example Elon
Musk is a pretty famous entrepreneur
he’s one of the founders of PayPal
co-founder and CEO of Tesla SpaceX a
bunch of other business ventures and his
success comes primarily from his ability
to tap into the power of his imagination
as he has a kid Elon Musk would devour
science fiction novels he loved them and
today he credits those books with
sparking a lifelong passion for science
and technology but that also sparked a
lifelong imagination that dared dream
wild enough that he could create entire
industries out of thin air see his
success was tied to his ability to be
imaginative and creative because
imagination is fundamental to innovation
we’re gonna repeat that because it’s
important imagination is fundamental to
innovation there are thousands of
imaginative innovators just like Elon
Musk there’s Albert Einstein one of his
biographers so that Einstein’s genius
came from his ability to be imaginative
and creative Steve Jobs is another one
before we co-founded Apple he was an
arts college dropout but he turned
technology into an art form there’s a
common misconception in our world today
that imagination and creativity have no
real-world value this is why you see
united states public funding for arts
programs has dropped by seventy percent
schools today we we label arts and
humanities programs as non essential
subjects another first to go and there’s
a budget cut our society is
deprioritized imagination and creativity
this is a bad thing because like we said
imagination is fundamental to innovation
but also creativity is crucial to our
the difference between creative thinkers
and non creative thinkers is the
difference between visionaries and
realists the realists maintain the
status quo but visionaries are creative
thinkers are the ones who change the
world so why is it that we deprioritize
imagination and creativity there’s a few
reasons but I wanted to focus on to
today first is that we’re scared of
failure so realism redefine success is
the absence of failure it’s why we put
our kids into sports programs that don’t
keep score so they don’t know what it’s
like to fail so why in our schools if a
kid is failing a grade we still push
them forward to the next grade because
we don’t want them to know what it’s
like to fail the creativity embraces
failure see into a creative person
failure is a learning tool Pixar studios
is one of the most creative
organizations on the planet and they
have a policy where all their employees
are encouraged to take risks without
fear of consequences if they fail so if
you’re taking risks at Pixar and it
doesn’t work out and you land on your
butt they don’t care because you tried
and that’s all that really matters
because risk takers are the ones who
changed the world the second reason what
we deprioritize imagination and
creativity is because we fear the
unknown realism loves to know what’s
going on it’s why we was why we love
math right math two plus two equals four
every single time I think I wasn’t a
math student in school but in science we
love science too because if you add
hydrogen and oxygen you will get an
explosion right I learned that in Kent
I think we love these things because we
know what’s going to happen creativity
doesn’t work like that see creativity
thrives off of unpredictability Edwin
cat mo was a CEO of Pixar and he says in
his book creativity Inc that the the
unpredictable is the ground on which
creativity occurs creativity thrives off
of unpredictability and that scares a
very secure society now the effects of
the systemic deep prioritization or
widespread since 1980 the number of new
businesses started in North America has
dropped by 50% there are half the number
of new businesses being started today as
there were 37 years ago now the new
businesses being started today only
sixteen percent of them are being
started by Millennials that’s my
generation I live in a generation of
employees not entrepreneurs I believe
that’s in part because we’ve d
prioritized creativity so as a society
as a collective group in this room we
need to foster imagination and
creativity in our young people so they
can succeed is that our world can
succeed today I’m going to give you guys
five ways to foster imagination and
creativity in young people but really in
anybody the first way is through
mentorship mentorship we need to connect
we first of all need to identify
creative people and creative qualities
in our kids and we need to connect them
with mentors if you are a creative
person it’s being a mentor so you need
to help kids because a mentor will help
them grow we’ll build on their strengths
and strengthen their weaknesses read
mentors
see you may have heard of a guy by the
name of Mark Zuckerberg he is the
founder and CEO of facebook and he
learned early on in his career the value
of mentorship see as phasic was taking
off the mark zuckerberg realized there
were a lot of things he didn’t know
about business about even computers and
so what he does he sought out people who
were smarter wiser and had more
experience and heated and he asked him
to be mentors and you know what they did
they came on board someone came on staff
and they mentored him and they helped
him grow Facebook into the international
phenomenon that it is today through the
power of mentorship second way to foster
imagination and creativity is through
collaboration when you teach our kids to
collaborate I was going to break into a
90s song here but I said her not to we
need to teach our kids how to exchange
ideas how to give and accept feedback
how to work together on a team for a
common goal these are important life
decision life skills but they’re
important for developing creativity as
well I’m going to talk about pixar again
because they’re pretty awesome they
actually are probably the epitome of
what a creative organization should look
like at Pixar they have every single
project they work on whether it’s a
full-length feature film or animated
short goes through what’s called the
brain trust the brain trust is a group
of men and women from all sorts of
backgrounds who are high up at Pixar and
they take every single project and they
scrutinize it they go through it with a
fine-tooth comb and they provide
feedback ideas suggestions encouragement
scree eight of criticisms and then the
directors and producers take that
information they go back and they work
on their projects some more and they
work on it and they bring it back to
Pixar to the brain trust story and they
continue to do this over and over and
over again from first inception to the
final product and finally they say it’s
perfect
an Ed Catmull the CEO he credits the
brain trust with Pixar success because
collaboration is key to bring out
creativity in people so we foster
imagination creativity through
mentorship through collaboration the
third way is encouraging experimentation
we need to encourage our kids to
experiment to try new things to work on
existing things and try to make them
better experimentation is in its very
nature creative because it challenges
the status quo and opens the world to
new ideas in the early 2000s Apple
computers was in trouble they were
having a hard time keeping up with their
rivals and their competitors and so
Steve Jobs who is the president of the
company at the time decided that they
needed to create a product that would
help them out run their competitors and
so he decided that product is going to
be the new version of the mp3 player so
as you still use walkman an mp3 player
is a digital music player or I guess if
you were born you were born in the
22,000 not know what mp3 player is
either this is before ipod so they so
jobs gave this project to a man by the
name of John Rubenstein who is one of
the vice presence of Apple at the time
and and Ruben seen and his team began to
experiment with existing mp3 technology
and with that they they’ve created a new
technology in experiments with the new
technology until they produce the ipod
and then they experimented with the ipod
until they produced the iphone and the
ipad and an entire industry of mobile
because experimentation helps you
discover things in your imagination so
we can foster imagination and creativity
through mentorship collaboration
experimentation the fourth way is
through creative thinking to teach our
kids to think creatively think crazy
creative out-of-the-box ideas so when
our kids are faced with tough decisions
rather than making those decisions for
them or working through it for them let
them think about it let they come up
with their own creative crazy
out-of-the-box solution to a problem
because through that they will learn how
to think outside the box to learn to
think of things that people would never
imagine and that’s an important life
Sarah Blakely is not a household name
but you probably should be Sarah Blakely
is the inventor of Spanx for those who
don’t know what those are like me spanks
is a shape forming against a term
woman’s undergarment the best way that I
can put it I didn’t bring a slide but it
started when she was 29 when she
realized and she had a problem she
couldn’t make her butt look good in
white pants I’ve never had that problem
I don’t own a pair of white pants the
front rows all thinking about the Buy
button white pants down oh so you’re
welcome ah I’m watching you eyes are up
here oh man I can’t believe I said that
okay moving on so Sarah Blakely had a
problem and she decided that you know
what there’s no solution the market so
I’m gonna create my own so she created
with the caves banks began to sell them
in 12 years later the age of 41 Sarah
Blakely became a billionaire vac she’s
the youngest self-made billionaire in
the world and it all started with a
crazy creative out-of-the-box idea so we
need to teach and foster managed nation
and creativity through mentorship
collaboration experiment ation creative
thinking and finally being open to
change change is scary for good reason
we don’t know what you don’t know it’s
coming right the fear of the unknown it
goes against every human instinct to be
excited about change the change is
inevitable it’s happening it doesn’t
have to be scary see a creative person
understands that in order for things to
get better things have to change Bill
Gates is best known for founding
Microsoft and for being one of the
but I think is most important
contribution to society is his work as a
philanthropist through the Bill and
Melinda Gates Foundation see Bill Gates
looked out over the world and you
realize there are people living in
terrible conditions in this world
conditions of living here in Canada or
for him in Seattle would never dream of
he said that he wanted things to improve
and being a creative person he knew that
in order for things to improve things
have to change so Steve of Bill Gates is
a world changer because he embraces
imagination and creativity are vital to
world change and to entrepreneurialism
as a society we’re scared of creativity
and imagination because we’re scared of
the unknown we’re scared of failure but
as a society as a collective group in
this room we need to foster imagination
and creativity in our young people so
that they can succeed so that our world
can succeed you know through five ways
through foster through mentorship
collaboration experimentation creative
thinking and accept them change and so I
want to challenge you whether it’s this
week or this month who is a young person
in your life that you need to mentor
that you need to challenge the think
creatively it’s up to us thank you guys
so much you have been a great audience
and I hope you guys have a great rest of your day