Walt Disney's Creative Thinking Strategies
"If You can Dream it, You can Do It"
Walter Elias "Walt" Disney (December 5, 1901 –
December 15, 1966) was an American film producer, director, screenwriter, voice
actor, animator, entrepreneur, entertainer, international icon,and
philanthropist, well known for his influence in the field of entertainment
during the 20th century. Along with his brother Roy O. Disney, he was co-founder
of Walt Disney Productions, which later became one of the best-known motion
picture producers in the world. The corporation is now known as The Walt Disney
Company and had an annual revenue of approximately US$36 billion in the 2010
financial year.
Walt Disney was a high school dropout who suffered
several business disasters and bankruptcy.
He overcame his personal and financial challenges by using his
imagination to create an entertainment empire that has touched the hearts,
minds and emotions of all of us.
He summarized his creativity in one word: Imagineering.
The term "Imagineering" combines the words imagination and
engineering. Imagineering enabled him to transform the dreams, fantasies and
wishes of his imagination into concrete reality.
Disney's thinking strategy involved exploring something
using three different perceptual positions.
An insight into these positions comes from the comment
made by one of his animators that: “Disney's thinking technique synthesized
three different strategies: the dreamer, realist, and the critic. A dreamer
without a realist is often not able to translate fantasies into tangible
reality. A dreamer and critic become engaged in constant conflict. A dreamer
and realist can create things but find that a critic helps to evaluate and
refine the final products.”
Following are descriptions of each strategy:
CRITIC. The critic reviews all the ideas and try to punch holes in them by playing the devil's advocate. To be the critic, ask: How do I really feel about it? Is this the best I can do? What can make it better? Does this make sense? How does it look to a customer? A client? An expert? A user? Is it worth my time to work on this idea? Can I improve it?
DREAMER. A dreamer spins innumerable fantasies,
wishes, outrageous hunches and bold and absurd ideas without limit or judgment.
Nothing is censored. Nothing is too absurd or silly. All things are possible
for the dreamer. To be the dreamer, ask: If I could wave a magic wand and do
anything I want - what would I create? How would it look? What could I do with
it? How would it make you feel? What is the most absurd idea I can conceive?
REALIST. The
realist imagineers the dreamer's ideas into something realistic and feasible.
He would try to figure out how to make the ideas work and then sort them out in
some meaningful order. To be the realist, ask: How can I make this happen? What
are the features and aspects of the idea? Can I build ideas from the features
or aspects? What is the essence of the idea? Can I extract the principle of the
idea? Can I make analogical-metaphorical connections with the principle and
something dissimilar to create something tangible? How can I use the essence of
the idea to imagineer a more realistic one?
Suppose a person wants a better way to keep her plants
watered. The dreamer might suggest teaching the plants how to talk, so they can
tell you when they are dry. The realist imagineers this into developing a fake
bird on a probe that you stick into the soil. When the soil gets dry, the bird chirps.
The realist refines the idea by exploring various sensors and lithium-powered
computer chips. Finally the critic evaluates the idea.
Or suppose your challenge is to improve morale at work.
DREAMER.
• Create a "happy" pill that makes people feel
happy and positive. Provide them free to employees.
• Pay people to stay at home to work on their houses and
lawns. .
• Give everyone a company car of their choice.
REALIST.
Study the ideas and try to work them into something practical. Examine the
principle and then try to create metaphorical-analogical connections with
something in your experience.
• Happy Pill. The essence of this
idea is to improve an employee's attitude. How can this be made into a benefit?
How are attitudes adjusted? IDEAS Ideas. Bring in motivational speakers to
speak during catered in-house lunches. Bring in a masseur once a week to give
back massages. Bring in a facilitator to give attitude adjustment exercises and
produce role playing skits. Encourage employees to take evening or weekend
courses in art, sculpture, crafts, woodworking, creative writing and so on. Pay
the tuition and provide a room where employees can display their creative
products. Have each employee bring in an object for their desk that symbolizes
something important about them. E.g., a crystal ball represents forward-looking
vision, jumper cables to represent a person who jump starts others, a can of
WD-40 representing someone who is called upon to do many different things, etc.
• "Pay people to stay at home." The
essence of this idea is "at home." What do people do when they stay
home? They work on their house, household projects, remodeling, painting,
landscaping, and gardening. How can this be made into a benefit?
Ideas: Offer the employees the services
of a handyman as a benefit. Employee pays for materials; employer pays the
handyman to fix sinks, hang wallpaper, and so on. Provide the services of a
real estate consultant who will offer suggestions on how employees can upgrade
their houses and property to increase the value of their assets.
"Company
car."
The essence of this idea is to provide something related to cars or
transportation. What are some aspects of cars that can be engineered into
ideas?
Ideas:
Make a fiscal arrangement with a youth group to come once a week and wash all
the employee cars at the company's expense. The cause should be a tax
deductible one. Create an incentive system where points are awarded for
exceptional performance. When so many points are accrued, award the employee
with a gift certificate for gasoline or routine maintenance from a local
garage. Make a company car available for employees to use while their cars are
being serviced or disabled. Provide a company designated driver for Friday and
Saturday evenings. Employees who've imbibed too much can call the driver. The
driver drives them home and then drives them back to their car the next day.
TEAMWORK
Disney used the same three strategies to keep his staff
coordinated in their thinking on a particular project. He moved the ideas
around three rooms. Each room had a different function. Room 1 was the Dreamer
Room, room 2 was the realist room and room 3 was the critic room. The critic's
room was called "the sweat box," by the employees. It was a small room under the stairs where
the whole team would review the idea with no-holds barred.
Sometimes the idea would return to Room 1 to allow for
further work. The cycle always involved three rooms. The usual outcome was that
either an idea did not survive room 3-the sweat box and was abandoned, or if it
met with silence, it was ready for production.
FLOWERS
AS BOMB DETECTORS
A Researcher at Colorado State University dreamed about
using flowers as bomb-sniffers. Plants are uniquely suited by evolution to
chemical analyze their environment, in detecting pests, for example. When
plants are modified to sense TNT, for example, they react to levels
one-hundredth of anything a bomb-sniffing dog could muster. It’s possible to
modify the plants to drain off chlorophyll, which changes the color from green
to white, when explosives are detected. The task now is to refine the process
to make the color change faster and for ways for the plant to recover the
chlorophyll after the detection process is over, so it can be used again.
Imagine defensive lines of bomb-sniffing tulips at airports
and subways, or at the local shopping mall's floral displays, or lining the
streets of Washington, D.C. If you dream it, you can do it.
………………………………….
Michael Michalko is the author of the highly acclaimed
Thinkertoys: A Handbook of Creative Thinking Techniques; Cracking Creativity:
The Secrets of Creative Genius; ThinkPak: A Brainstorming Card Deck and
Creative Thinkering: Putting Your Imagination to Work.
Source: wikipedia.org
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