Matthew Guan
Professor Rueda
Humanities 1
22 July 2021
Chapter 4 Reading Notes Creative Confidence
Chapter 4
Key Points:
● Case study: Creating a better news experience
○ Engage with users face to face and understand their needs
○ It’s not enough to just observe, need to interact with others
○ Takeaway: creativity requires constant action and iteration - come up with many
ideas as soon as possible and try them out
○ Many innovation cycles needed - discard ideas that don’t work
○ Don’t get stuck in the planning stage!
● Go beyond passive observer and turn thoughts into actions
● Obstacles to action
○ Uncertainty of what it takes to get things done
○ Fear of the unknown
○ Leads to a “knowing doing” gap - knowing what should be done versus actually
doing the action
○ This reminds me of the saying “it’s often easier said than done.” It’s quite easy to
state what should be done, but taking action requires much more effort and a
willingness to accept failure in the process of doing so.
● Example of knowing doing gap
○ Kodak invented digital camera, but could not keep up its advantage in digital
photography
○ Due to its rather glorious past, Kodak employees hesitated to take new risks and
venturing further into the digital photography world
○ Result: Kodak could not “keep up with the times” despite the fact that they
KNEW about the increasing importance of digital photography in the modern
world
○ This reminded me of stores like Blockbuster that closed a few years ago due to
companies such as Netflix that decreased the need for rental TV. Maybe the
reason Blockbuster couldn’t keep up was that they knew the fact that such
companies would make rental TV close to obsolete, but it didn’t take sufficient
action to expand their market, leading to bankruptcy.
● Bernie Roth asks students to “try” to take the water bottle away from him
○ Lasting message: Trying is an attempt to defer the course of action to your future
self, you need to get it done now!
● Overcome perfection
○ With a daunting task, work on it step-by-step and subject yourself to trial and
error
○ Perfection leads us to wait rather than act
○ Example: ceramics instructor’s experiment on quantity vs quality: producing
more pieces of art gave them more opportunities to take action and practice,
leading to better results
○ Reminds me of writing essays in English class - first drafts are not supposed to be
perfect and can have lots of errors in them. It takes longer for me to write an essay
that I try to perfect the first time than if I first get my thoughts down and then edit
each piece one at a time.
● Power of constraints
○ Imposing time restrictions on creativity leads to more ideas, as it reduces the
temptation to procrastinate
○ Allows for reframing of the problem
○ Some assignments in my high school drama class - create a short scene that
includes the following three unrelated words. While I initially thought it would be
hard to do so, I found that this constraint pushes me to think “outside the box” and
ultimately makes the scene I create more creative and original.
● Prototyping
○ Prototypes force you to experiment with your ideas and bring them into action, so
mistakes can be detected earlier
○ Have users relate to your prototype
○ Example: Walgreens prototyping a new store layout that would allow pharmacists
to interact more with their clients - and had team members act out the new roles
● Critique
○ Don’t judge ideas too early - sometimes radical ideas may be the most successful
ones
○ Example: customer experience on long flights - many were skeptical of the idea
of bunk beds
○ Skycouch: while most lie down seats take up more room, Skycouch worked
around this
● Creating Infectious Action
○ One need not be in a position of authority to create change - one just has to start a
movement
Questions/Reflection for Chapter 4: Many of the examples stated in this chapter had strong
connections to my everyday life, as well as assignments I faced in school. I used to have issues
with perfecting an essay the first time I wrote it. My English teacher suggested the idea of having
thoughts first put down on paper (that may be disorganized at first). Those thoughts can be edited
and rephrased in the later stages of writing. I found this idea improved my writing because it
forced me to take action - actually move my pen and write. The need to overcome perfection
related very well with the example involving the ceramics teacher and her experiment.
Introducing constraints in the process of innovating also proved beneficial. As mentioned in my
notes, being forced to include certain topics/words in my drama class assignment back in high
school gave me more incentive to push my thinking outside of the box, ultimately helping me
create a more lively scene. It’s important for one to be pushed outside of his/her comfort zone
during this creative process.