Four C Model Of Creativity

This model wasn't exactly hard for me to grasp.  I use models like this in work all the time.  For example, we have a model like this for defects found in the factory during manufacturing.  Our Quality group, comes up with the process and my workers on the floor have to follow the path to completion.  I know that I am not very creative, so I related this to someone I know and their path in life playing soccer.

Geoff started out playing recreational soccer when he was a child (mini-C).  From there he went on and played at the college level (little C).  Throughout college, he traveled and worked out with different clubs overseas (Informal Apprenticeships).  After college, he was drafted into the MLS (Pro C).  He played in the MLS for about 4 years; 2 of these years he was on the All-Star team (Greatness).  Over the summer, he was offered a contract to play in the English Premiere League, which is the best league in the world ( Big C).

For me it is a little tough to see myself traveling the path of creativity, but I do understand how it works and find a way of adapting it to me.  It gives me a path to work towards to become more creative throughout my path in life.

Creative Whack Pack

Ask A Fool - I thought this card related to me and my project because I have noticed on a few different occasions that I may over-thinking a problem.  I will spend a ton of time during the day and let it carry over to the next day and then to the next week.  When I go talk to talk to one of my guys on floor, they just look at me like I am crazy and throw out an answer that is so simple, I don't know how I didn't see it.

Check Your Timing - This card also relates to me because I have found from experience that timing is everything.  I have brought up ideas or some ideas that my guys thought of to some of the upper management, and at the time, they are dismissed.  Whether it is because we are right in the middle of a project or something was just officially released, it gets overlooked.  Then a year or two later, we find out that something isn't working and it was the same solution that we brought up before, while everyone was too busy to deal with it.  Maybe if I had set up a meeting or was in one one of the design reviews when this subject was being talked about, I could have saved a year or two of heart ache.

Be Dissatisfied - When I first started at my job, I didn't always agree with the way that we did things.  I was new and inexperienced, so I didn't think it was my place to say anything or make a stink about it.  Now that I have been working here for three years, I have learned that I am not just going to deal with things that I don't agree with.  I am slowly vocalizing my issues with things and learned that the first resolution isn't always the best.  I keep playing with models or processes until they work the way that I need them to.  I go through the correct channels to make sure that everything is OK, but I don't stop until it works for me and my people.

Creativity Photo

Photo by: William Eggleston

I chose this photo because something about it says, "Creative" to me.  It is a picture of underneath a bed.  I thought it was creative because this is not something that you see very often.  It is from a shoe's perspective.  What does a shoe see from the ground?  It sees other shoes and junk that you dropped and haven't picked up yet. It sees that bottom of the bed, not the top that you spend so much time everyday making and put so much effort in to looking nice.  It sees the structure and the framework, not the aesthetically pleasing part of the bed.

In an interview by Joerg Colberg in 2004, Eggleston says, “‘A picture is what it is,’ he says when I ask him why he no longer wishes to talk about individual photographs, ‘and I’ve never noticed that it helps to talk about them, or answer specific questions about them, much less volunteer information in words. It wouldn’t make any sense to explain them. Kind of diminishes them. People always want to know when something was taken, where it was taken, and, God knows, why it was taken. It gets really ridiculous. I mean, they’re right there, whatever they are.’”

I believe this quote goes along well with this photo because you really can't explain this photo.  Who really knows what made Eggleston take this picture?  It is what it is.  It is a picture of shoes under a bed.  They are not particularly good looking shoes, organized in anyway.  Just the shot from ground level.