Reinvent yourself. Constantly.

There was a great interview on TV the other day with Neil Young, one of my all-time favourite musicians.

With Neil, it's all about the music - nothing else matters. Indeed, time and time again he has cancelled gigs, fallen out with colleagues, and upset fans because the muse has struck - and Neil always, always, follows his muse.

I suspect this is a common trait among highly creative people - as is one of his other habits: reinvention.

Talking about Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, the supergroup he joined in 1969, he said "You can only be 'that band' for so long before you have to do something else. You can't just do it again. It doesn't work. It couldn't, even if we wanted to."

Neil Young's career is a monument to successful reinvention - Buffalo Springfield, CSN&Y, Crazy Horse, countless solo hit albums, even creative collaboration with Devo (yes, I said Devo) which led to one of his finest songs - Hey Hey, My My.

Reinvention - that's the key to Neil Young's creativity. And indeed, it's the key to all creativity.

Highly creative people constantly reinvent themselves. They look for every opportunity to learn new things, experience new stimulus, take new approaches. Reinvention is something that highly creative people apply not only to the brief, the work, the brainstorm. They also apply it constantly to themselves.

So, what are you going to do to reinvent yourself?

What new skill could you learn? What new experience could you take on? What new YOU could you create?

Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!

OK, so in thinking how the hugely successful grocery retailers use speed to kill off the competition, I couldn't help nicking the title from a Russ Meyer film.

But it will do until a better title comes along.

Anyway. I've been working with an organisation on how to improve their products, the service they provide to their customers, and how they engage their people. One of the techniques I've used is to introduce them to my "Innovation Provocations". These are a series of questions, challenges and thought provoking statements introduced randomly into the idea process in order to break normal patterns of thinking.

For example - "How could we make this faster"? "How would we do it if we were starting over again"? "How would change it if we had to give it away for free"?

The point is that you can apply these Innovation Provocations to ANY situation, not just the obviously "creative" situations like coming up with ideas for marketing and branding. One that really worked was "How can we make it faster?" - and that was in a discussion about training and development.

But examples abound in the real world of how this particular Provocation has been used to solve problems. Think about your local supermarket.

How can customers be 'processed' quickly, once they have filled their trolley? Of course, they don't want to rush you through the store - not while there's a good chance you'll make plenty of additional or impulse purchases as you stroll round.

But once you have joined the queue at the checkout, it's in their interest (and frankly, ours too) to get your money and get you out as quickly as possible.

One of the (several) large grocery stores round here has recently changed its check-out procedures. And with the "How can we make it faster?" thought in mind, I noticed that several of the changes seem tailor-made to make the transaction as fast as possible. Having spoken to a "company insider", my suspicions were confirmed.

Firstly, the checkout itself is much longer than before - it now takes almost a full shop from the largest trolley. In addition, the check-out operator no longer waits to say "good morning - can I help you pack?". As soon as the shopping hits their end, away they go!

Secondly, they no longer ask - during the payment stage - "Would you like cashback"? It's still available, but only if you ask. I'm sure this speeds up each transaction by just a few seconds, but multiplied out it must make a difference. (I'm sure it also leaves cash in their bank overnight rather than mine, but that may be an old-fashioned thought that has no reality to the actualite of modern banking?).

And here's the killer - if you do ask for cash, they don't ask you to sign for it any more. Why not? Well, I can only imagine that they did a test and found that the risk of fraud was so low that they could happily drop that stage and speed up the transaction by another few, vital seconds.

So ask yourself - what could you speed up. What ideas might that generate. And once you've done that, ask "What could we slow down?"

Speed is one thing, but you'll get more benefit personally - and for your team and organisation - by slowing down.

A game of two halves from Malcolm Gladwell. Or not.

Malcolm Gladwell hit Edinburgh last night, to speak at the Festival Theatre. Yes, that Malcolm Gladwell, the author of The Tipping Point, Blink, and Outliers. And a new one called "What the dog saw".

Well, what this dog saw was Malcolm Gladwell. For fifty minutes.

To open his talk, he made a decent joke about how he'd understand if anyone had to leave early to form a new government. And then started on his theme, which was serendipity.

He told us about the three types of serendipity, or happy accidental discovery (and admitted that this wasn't his idea, but that of Robert Friedel).

Columbian serendipity is when you go looking for something and discover something else (like Columbus discovering The Americas when he was searching for China and India).

Archimedean serendipity is when you're trying to find an answer, and suddenly find it in an unusual place, as did Archimedes when he realised the solution to his problem (how do you measure the mass of an unusual object) when he spilled water on getting into his bath.

And finally, Galilean serendipity, which is when you build a tool or process for discovery, and find something completely new. Galileo built a completely new telescope, to search the heavens. When he did, he discovered new planets, new moons - and by coming back night after night to the sky, realised that moons travel round planets, and planets round the Sun. In other words, our world was centred on the Sun, not Earth.

Incidentally, this led to him being attacked by the Church, charged with heresy, and placed under house arrest for the rest of his life. But don't worry, the Church finally expressed regret for the way he was treated in, er, 1992.

So back to Malcolm Gladwell.

The main content of his presentation was the role of Serendipity in discovery and research, particularly with regard to the search for cancer cures. His central story was that of a biotechnology research company on the outskirts of Boston, running two major programmes (or programs, I suppose I should say) of cancer drug research.

As everything around them failed, and they were about to collapse completely, they received unexpected news that one of their trials had succeeded, beyond all expectations. Serendipitously, a rare chemical they had sourced in the badlands of Soviet science had proven to be effective.

What an inspiring and exciting story. Until he finished with the punchline that in third level trials - the most important, large-scale ones - it failed.

And that wasn't only the punchline to the story, but the show. He said thank you, left the stage, and went off to sign books in the foyer.

We - and most of the audience - sat for a while as the lights went up. Was it an interval? Was anyone selling ice cream? Time for a quick one in the Pear Tree before the re-start?

No, that was the end of the show. Fifty minutes. For Malcolm, it was over in a ... Blink, I suppose.

I don't think it's the "Fifty Minutes for £17.50" I object to. Honestly - I didn't even pay for my ticket, it was a gift. But we did feel short-changed.

I think it was the "Is that it? Is that really it?" that hurt.

I like Malcolm Gladwell. I really like Malcolm Gladwell's books. But sheesh, Malc. Give a bit more to your audience, will you?

Top tips we learned last night:

1. It's good to leave them wanting more. But not that much.
2. If you are the one with ideas and knowledge, do a Q&A.
   
3. Resolve the conversation. "And then it failed" is not a satisfactory conclusion.
   
4. Suruchi across the road from the Festival Theatre does a fabulous curry.