'Creativity Matters' Podcast: Chris Griffiths, Founder and CEO of Open Genius

The Creative Moment Podcast

This week I'm excited to be talking to Chris Griffiths as part of our 'Creativity Matters' series of podcasts.

Chris Griffiths is founder and CEO of Open Genius, a technology business that, in Chris’s words, “aims to put a process behind creativity.”

Chis has written a book called The Creative Thinking Handbook: Your Step-by-Step Guide to Problem Solving in Business and has an interesting perspective on whether we’re born creative, how we lose our creative instincts and how we can get it back.

Here is a flavour of what we discussed:

[00:00:51] How can employers encourage people to be more creative?

[00:01:29] Why the right mindset is important for successful creative thinking.

[00:02:02] Why people who say they are ‘not creative’ are absolutely wrong.

[00:02:15] How he says we unlearn how to be creative as we get older - Chris refers to George Lamb’s study back in 1969.

[00:03:31] Why innocence and confidence are key components of being creative.

[00:04:22] Chris tells us how to make creativity thrive in a business.

[00:05:37] How relevant is the nature/nurture debate in determining how creative a person is?

[00:07:50] Why creativity is not about knowing how to be creative but more about knowing what not to do that stops you being creative.

[00:08:42] The link between creative entrepreneurs and dyslexia.

[00:10:01] Do standardized creativity tests work?

[00:10:52] Chris talks us through the different types of creativity.

[00:11:34] Why between the ages of 40 and 50 our creativity often starts to increase again.

[00:14:19] How technology negatively impacts creativity

[00:15:59] Why Chris believes real power in business today is all about new knowledge - and why you must be creative to disruptive enough to find that new knowledge.

[00:16:22] The distinction between creativity and innovation

[00:16:31]Why most people don't really know what creativity means.

[00:16:55] The link between the creative mind and the analytical mind

[00:18:27] How increased creativity always leads to increased productivity.

[00:20:04] Why productivity is about doing the right thing at the right time.

[00:21:08] Chirs talks us through Open Genius’s new software Ayoa which is designed to be the centre for organisations creative thinking, collaboration and task management.

[00:23:30] Which creative processes does Chris thinks work

[00:25:00] Why you must come to brainstorm with an idea

[00:27:17] How we can all become more childlike in our thinking