Farliga Idéer

For the book assignment I read the book Farliga Idéer - När det opassande tänkande är din värdefullaste resurs (aprox. Dangerous Ideas - When the improper thinking is your most valuable resource) by Alf Rehn.

The book is about creativity, but really it's not. By that I mean it's not one of those classical creativity books that tells you to just step out of your box and do creativity excersises. It's more about to start thinking about the things were not supposed to think about, the improper things. The most interesting points Alf writes about are that there is levels of creativity, that we should think more childishly and about the things adults wouldn't even dream about, and that creativity shouldn't be just nice, but even a little bit disgusting. Usually we think about the nice level creativity where Alf argues that we actually are not creative, but we think we are. The other level is the real creativity, when we have had the courage to step out of our comfort zone and be creative about things that others think is improper or not suitable. At this stage we push our brain to really think and skip the norms. Also he says we need to be more childish, not think that an idea is not possible and imagine things like everything is possible. We need to be even a bit disgusting and think beyond the comfort of nice things. As an example in the book he told about a successful restaurant named The Fat Duck who's owner doesn't see any limits on food. The owner created a dish called "snailporridge" and it's just what it seems like; snails mixed with porridge and it became a success.

It's about thinking that every idea is a possibility, because many success stories don't actually contain a product we thought we would ever need. Here's the iPad a good example. Before the iPad we didn't even think we would ever need one, but when Steve Jobs launched their new Apple product line many bought it and many more think they should get one. It's about creating need. There's many stories like this and it shows that any idea is possible, because we shouldn't limit ourselves to the neccessary or what actually generates sales for sure, but go with it and see what happens.

Towards the end of the book he tells about an excercise he uses on students; they have to make a list of 20 business ideas in about 40 minutes otherwise they fail the course (okay, not really, but this makes them more motivated). His conclusions from the exercise is that the first ideas are good, but safe and common, the middle ones are not that bad, but still the brain hasn't worked hard enough to find the really creative ideas, and the last five are usually totally irrational, but very creative since the brain have had to really empty itself on everything it knows and go beyond the norms. The best ideas comes when you're working under preassure and have a deadline to meet, so I think this is something we're really going to experience at Kunstenniemi.

To finish this post my conclusions are that I think the books message was that we should take more risks, believe in ourselves and allow us to think about the unthinkable. Also we should have the courage to be different and try out things that no one else has and sometimes the most simple ideas are the best ones compared to a really thought-out idea. I think the book was really good, easy to read and follow, so I'm definitely recommending it to others to read!

/ Jasmine