← Digital Disruption with Geoff Nielson
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- [00:01]
A
Hey, everyone. I'm so excited to be talking to Duncan Wardle, who's the former head of creativity and innovation at Disney. He's worked with teams across Pixar, Marvel, Lucasfilms and the Fortune 100 to unlock their boldest ideas. What's cool about Duncan is that he's insanely passionate about creativity and making it not just fun, but actually practical. This is an area where there's a lot of advice that sounds great, but completely falls apart once you try to do it. I really want to know if his practical advice is can pass that test. Let's find out. Duncan, you're an ambassador for creativity and innovation, and I'm curious to get your perspective on the state of organizational creativity in 2025. You've talked before about AI and the changing technology landscape as it pertains to creativity. Is creativity getting more important or less important?
- [00:55]
B
Easy? More. Oh. Oh, shocker. So why. So here comes AI. So in the last four years, we've had. We all did really well at doing what we did until 2020. And then we had a global pandemic. Generation Z entering the workforce, but doesn't want to work for any corporations because they're driven by profit, not purpose. And the boomers think that Generation Z will bend to them because the boomers had to bend to their elders. But, hey, guess what? Generation Z can tell the planet you couldn't. And until this mandatory return to the office. Yeah, good luck with that. You're going to lose all of your talented employees. Then we have climate change. Anybody who doesn't believe in it are welcome to come and look at my back garden. There used to be one in central Florida, is now a lake. And then here comes AI. So I've been working with Google on their DeepMind project, and I asked the chief engineer what she believed would be the most employable skill sets for the next decade. I said, how am I going to compete with what you're doing? She said, oh, that's easy. I said, well, how's that then? She said, well, the most employable skill sets for the next decade will be the things that will be the hardest for her to program into artificial intelligence. What would those be? The ones with which we were born. Imagination, creativity, curiosity, empathy and intuition. We were all. So when you were a small boy and you were given a gift for a holiday, it came with a huge box, and the only thing that. Did you have brothers or sisters?
- [02:07]
A
I have a younger brother, yeah.
- [02:08]
B
So the only thing that mattered was who had the biggest box underneath the tree. You didn't care what was in it as long as it was yours. And it took you ages of time to take the toy out of the box where you spend the rest of the week playing with.
- [02:18]
A
Right, the box.
- [02:19]
B
Right. It was your force, it was your castle, it was anything you wanted it to be. Till you went to the number one killer of creativity and imagination, Western education. And the first thing you were taught to do, and they're telling your first graders to do today's, don't forget to color in between the lines. Children are born very curious. Why? Why, why, why, why? Why? The insight for innovation, the core consumer truth, comes on the 4th or 5th why. But our data only stops at the 1st or 2nd why today? It's getting better and getting better every day, but you can't feel data. And so here comes empathy and intuition. If I were to survey 5,000 people and ask them why they go to Disney on holiday, the number one response would be, we go for new attractions. If I were to only rely on my data, I'd go spend $250 million on a capital investment strategy. But if I were to pause for a moment at childlike, not childish, and say, well, why do you go for the new attractions? Well, no, I like the classic. Why do you like the classics? I like the Small World. Why on earth do you like it so small? I remember the music. Oh, God, no, not why. The music was my mum's favorite ride. And why is that important 25 years later? I'll take my daughter now. Well, there's your insight for innovation. It has nothing to do with the capital investment strategy and everything to do with people's personal nostalgia and memories. That's a communication campaign. But then we go to the number one killer of curiosity, Western education, and the next thing we're taught to do is stop asking why? Because there's only one right answer. I did an experiment because I intuitively believed it to be true, but I needed to prove it to myself. So I was giving a speech at a university with 3,000 university students, all between the ages 19 and 24, and I brought in one first grade class of 30 little 6 year olds with their teacher, and I sat them in the middle and said, hands up, who's creative?
- [03:50]
A
Me, Me, me, me, me, me.
- [03:52]
B
30 hand shot into the air, no hesitation, and the other 3,000 stayed down. Will I replace these skills over time? The answer is, nobody knows today, but not in the short term, I suspect. And so those things that perhaps were not the most employable skill sets of our Career up to now. They are now. And I define, I do not define creativity as the ability to paint or write music. I define creativity as the ability to have ideas. And we, I define innovation as the ability to get those ideas down. That's the hard part.
- [04:26]
A
So, you know, with creativity being as important, more important than ever, how much of creativity and our own individual, you know, need to bring creativity to work? How much of that is our responsibility versus the organizational responsibility? What's the best way to fuel this in the workplace?
- [04:47]
B
Well, so first of all, I would encourage playfulness. And so why? Because if you ask people who are the most creative people you ever met, people say kids, you say, well, what do they do better than us? Play. So let me explain the importance of playfulness. At the right time, can I invite you for just a second to close your eyes? I want you to shout out the answer to the following question, providing it's something you can shout out in public on your podcast when I ask you the following question. Where are you usually and what are you doing when you get your best ideas?
- [05:14]
A
I'm out walking, typically.
- [05:16]
B
Then open your eyes. I've done this with up to 20,000 people in Helsinki. You hear shower, walking, jogging, falling asleep, waking up in the bathroom, at the gym, commuting. And I get people to write it down. And even with 20,000 people, hands up, who wrote down at work? Nobody ever gets their best ideas at work. Well, why not? Well, close your eyes again. Actually, for people listening or watching, close your eyes too. Picture that last verbal argument you were in with somebody. Bit of a shouting match. You're angry at them, they're angry at you.
- [05:45]
A
You.
- [05:45]
B
Now, you turn to walk away from that argument. You're five seconds away from 10 seconds, you're 20 seconds away from the argument. And what just popped into your head totally spontaneously, the second you turn to walk away from that argument? What was it?
- [05:56]
A
Yeah, what you wish you said.
- [05:57]
B
Yeah, the killer one liner. You can open your eyes. That perfect, beautiful line. Oh, yeah. If I'd have said that, I'd have had him. The perfect line. We can write volumes and volumes of volumes of the perfect line we never delivered. Why? Because when you're in argument, your brain is moving at a thousand miles an hour defending yourself. Guess what your brain looks like at work? Emails, presentations, weekly reports, expense reports, weekly meetings. And I hear myself say, I don't have time to think. The number one barrier to innovation and creativity. And when we hear ourselves say, I don't have time to think, you're on the Brain state called beta. I call it busy beta, where the reticular activating system much easier remembered as a door between your conscious and subconscious brain is firmly closed. When that door is closed and you don't have time to think, you are working with your conscious brain. And you can Google this, what percentage of my brain is conscious? 13% of your brain brain is conscious. 87% of your brain is subconscious. Every meeting you've attended, every innovation you've ever seen, every creative problem you've ever sold is back here to serve as unrelated stimulus to help you solve the challenge you're working on right now. But when the door is shut, you don't have access to it. So what do I do? I run energizers. They're in the book the Imagination Emporium. Well, what is an energizer? An Energizer is a 60 second exercise specifically designed to make you laugh. Why? Because the moment I hear laughter, I know that metaphorically I've just opened the door and placed you metaphorically back in the shower where the door between your conscious and subconscious conscious brain is just wide enough open, you can still make an informed decision in the shower or when you're walking, but you can still have a big ideas. I don't expect people to be playful every minute of every day. I do expect people to be playful when they're trying to develop big ideas, particularly as a leadership team.
- [07:29]
A
So as a leadership team, I'm glad you brought that up. Duncan, what do you recommend for leaders in terms of cracking the door open? You talked about energizers, but how do we structure this in the workplace to make sure people can be playful and be creative?
- [07:43]
B
This one's easy. I do an exercise. Let's try it. So Jeff, you and I are responsible for a hundred thousand dollars birthday party tonight. You and I are responsible for designing that party. Are we going to do a Star wars party or a Harry Potter party?
- [07:56]
A
A Star Wars.
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B
So I'm going to come at you some amazing ideas for a Star wars party. I'd like you to start each and every response with the words no, because the verge you always hear at work and tell me why not. So start with no because and then tell me why not. So I was thinking of coming to your house and actually blowing up the structure of the inside of the house and turn it into an intergalactic canteen. And we could have food and wine from Hoth and the Boo and Tatooine or have the Cantina band playing. It'd be great.
- [08:22]
A
No because there's not nearly enough space. It wouldn't. It just wouldn't fit.
- [08:25]
B
Right, okay, right, well, we'll borrow somebody's corporate jet and we'll paint it black and turn it into the Death Star. And we'll go down to Walt Disney World, to Galaxy's Edge.
- [08:34]
A
No, the logistics and the budget would just never work for something like that.
- [08:38]
B
How about a Glow? Oh, no. Cosplay party? All the tall people could come as Lord Vader and all the little people will be Ewoks.
- [08:45]
A
No, people would complain. It's too discriminatory and they'd want more control.
- [08:49]
B
Yeah. How about Glow in the Dark? Lightsaber fight? Probably one of those, right?
- [08:53]
A
No, because it would have to be in the dark and that causes a whole series of problems.
- [08:57]
B
Right. What if we just show the movies back to back? We do a movie marathon, give people free Coca Cola and popcorn.
- [09:03]
A
Well, no, because where are you showing that? It would be far too long for a birthday party.
- [09:07]
B
Okay, so we'll stop there. The biggest barrier to innovation is not time to think. The biggest barrier to innovation is our own river of thinking. Well, what's a river of thinking? It's our own expertise and our own experience built on years of experience in our company and our industry, allowing us to make quick and informed decisions. But the world's changed. We don't get to think the way we always do. So know because has served us very well for the last 30 years. The challenge is for the more the leadership team have the experience and expertise. That's the single biggest barrier. Right. And so let me ask you a question. Do you think our idea was getting bigger or smaller as we were going just then?
- [09:41]
A
Smaller. A lot smaller.
- [09:42]
B
Okay, so let's try it again. Can we do Harry Potter?
- [09:46]
A
Sure.
- [09:46]
B
Excellent. So I'm going to come at you some ideas for a Harry Potter party. Same budget, $100,000. Only this time I'd ask you to respond with the words yes. And there'll be the first two words you use in each response. And then you'll build on what I've given you. So I was thinking, right, Coming to your house, right. Put a sorting hat outside the front door and all the goodies get to go to the Gryffindor party. And all the bad people get the dark mysterious swee. The rib party.
- [10:07]
A
Yes. And we can have four different parties and completely different experiences for different people.
- [10:13]
B
Oh, yes. And we can have a magic potions room where everybody drinks some amazing cocktail that turns us into something totally freaky.
- [10:20]
A
Yes. And we can prepare it all in advance and make sure that they're delicious. Made with fresh fruit.
- [10:25]
B
Ooh. Yes. And we can invite in all the stars from the film. Daniel Radcliffe, Hermione. Hermione Granger, Forgotten Where Emma Was. And holograms of those who have passed. Maggie Smith, Robbie called Train and will actually have. Oh, yeah, because they could be ghosts like Headless Nick.
- [10:41]
A
Yeah, let's. Yes. And let's get those invitations out as soon as possible. They're going to be so excited and it'll help us structure the party and what we can do.
- [10:49]
B
Yes. And we could deliver the invitations by Al.
- [10:54]
A
Yeah. Sand. Yeah.
- [10:56]
B
Yeah, we'll stop there. A lot more laughter, a lot more energy. Most of us became Italian for the first time this morning. This time around, bigger or smaller?
- [11:03]
A
A lot bigger.
- [11:05]
B
Now we work inside big organizations, small organizations with constituents and clients and colleagues and bosses to bring on board with their ideas. By the time we just finished building that idea together, whose idea was it? By the time we finished, it was all of our.
- [11:18]
A
Both of ours.
- [11:19]
B
Ours. Two very simple words from the world of improv that have a remarkable power to turn a small idea into a big one really quickly. You can always take a big idea and value engineer it down. Far more importantly, has that power to transfer the power of my idea, which never goes anywhere inside an organization, to our idea and accelerates its opportunity to get done. The challenge is, with the more experience, the more expertise we have, the more reasons we know where the new idea won't work. So we constantly start with no, because as a leadership team doing this exercise with leaders, they instantly recognize they've become a no, because. And here's the thing, that person may have a genius two seconds from now, two hours from now, two days from now, two weeks from now, if the first two words out of your mouth are as a leader, a no, because that person's never coming back in your office with an idea again. Just remind yourself, I know you have responsibilities, deadlines, quarterly results. It's just an idea. We're not green lighting this idea for execution today. We're merely greenhousing it together using yes. And the other thing we had at Pixar, Marvel and Disney was a space. It was. I called them the expansionist rooms. So you could. I'm sure everybody listening has boring meeting rooms, but you could actually have, within your boring meeting rooms, you could invite a local art school in to paint a greenhouse around the wall. Call it the greenhouse. And everybody knows when they're in the greenhouse. This is the One room where, where you don't get to kill ideas. If you don't have that physical space, you'll never succeed.
- [12:38]
A
Let's talk about that physical space for a second, Duncan, because I love the idea. I think having a really creative space can change the way people think. You mentioned something earlier though, that may or may not be in conflict with that. And that's the return to office mandate and some of the creativity stifling that happens when you tell people you've got to be in this space at this time. How do you marry those two?
- [13:01]
B
The technology's changed. Look, I was doing in Covid. I went to Copenhagen on March 15, 2020. As I landed, the Danish Prime Minister said, no more live events. I spoke to 3,000 empty chairs and the camera and realized I was unemployed. And so I hired a couple of 17 year olds out of London and I turned this room into a full broadcast studio. We were doing over 300 events a year. I could speak four years ago in 37 different languages simultaneously through an artific intelligence robot. It wasn't that good in the Asian languages in those days, but it was very good in the European. Now it's good at all of them. Avatar avatars. Villa V I R B E L A dot com. You can go in, create your own avatar, create your own campus. You can white label it and only your employees can get in. And it's fun. They've got a cocktail lounge, they've got a bar, they've got a soccer pitch, they've got offices break up and you can wanna dress up for Halloween. Here's the Halloween costumes. Now there's no barriers to entry in Verbella because everybody's got a computer spatial. On the other hand, you need a VR headset. And I recognize not every company has that today. And today they're too expensive and they're too bulky. But it'll come. And so I was doing a workshop in 2021 with a woman in Johannesburg. I was in Orlando. I handed her my virtual pen with my virtual hand. She took it out of my virtual hand with her virtual hand, wrote on a virtual post note, virtual ink, which she could have actually dictated to, and handed me back the virtual post it note that technology existed for four years ago. So we just need to catch up. And so, you know, and so look, everything's changed. And I'll give you an example whenever I'm doing some work with the, let's just call it the one of the largest baseball teams in America who also owns one of the largest football Teams in England and they probably can seat 50,000, 60,000 in their stadiums. And I said, well, how many fans you got? They said, oh, 20 million. I said, well, what if they could all come to the game? And they looked at me like I was nuts. I was like, hello, it's called augmented reality. And now today, the Vision Pro. Phenomenal technology. Too expensive, too big. Well, it'll be the pair of glasses that you're wearing within five or seven years from today. And now Johnny in Cairo. So I was actually invited to sit in the dugout of this particular baseball team with the major league baseball players during the game live. No, we were in the Apple store in London, but I was in the stadium. Now fast forward that technology to a day where in the not too far distant future, you pay a dollar in Cairo and you'll sit on the back of the stadium. $5, you'll sit in the middle of the stadium. $10, you'll sit in the dugout next to the players. Hollywood's dead. Hollywood just doesn't realize it yet. What outrageous statement's been around since 1920? Yeah, okay, and I went to the movies in the 60s and I've been to the movies last week and watched changed. Oh, yeah, the cigarette girl's gone. Nothing else has changed. There's an industry that deserves to die. I'm sorry, but it just does. Nothing's changed in 60 years. Nothing has changed. Nothing. There's Jen. We've done multi screens. Oh, great. Trif, you still got a set time. You have to watch the previews, you can't participate, blah, blah, blah. So, so Hollywood went on strike for a year, 18 months. And very proudly announced at the, the, the, the Oscars. Oh, we didn't use AI it's not coming. Oh, yeah, good luck with that. Yeah. The coal miners went on strike in 1973. How did that work out for them? AI is here, people. So embrace it or go under. A certain company just lost hundreds of millions of dollars on a certain film with a certain character called Indiana Jones. Now Wall street would probably suggest they don't do that again. Option A, they could go to another screenwriter and say, give it a go. Option B, they could go to ChatGPT today. And here's the script to the last five movies. Here's what worked, here's what didn't work. Here's the history, here's the character analysis. Please, could you do storyline, script and character development based on the algorithms of the top performing action adventure TV shows or movies of the last six months that's a three minute assignment for ChatGPT. Is it good enough today? No. Will it be in less than three years? Of course it will. Tom Cruise. Sorry, Tom. Love you. Sally Smith. Sally Smith doesn't have wrinkles, doesn't take bathroom breaks, speaks every language on the planet and you don't have to pay her. She doesn't exist. The number four selling K pop in the band today world today. They don't exist either. They never did. So AI is here. We can embrace it or we can just say it's not coming. And for those who think it's not coming, goodbye. I don't care how big you are as an industry today. The future of Hollywood, the future of education, universities. No hello. Why? Because they're teaching the same thing they taught me. Well, I went to university a very, very, very long time ago. The future of Hollywood is gaming. A Pokemon Go started it. I want to be in the movie, I want to interact with the characters. I want some level of social status. I want to participate. I believe what you'll see is one of the Hollywood studios who are will certainly buy epic games in the next 24 months. That's my personal speculation. And the future of the movies will be I. If I want to be Jack Sparrow, I'll be Jack Sparrow. And if I want you to be Captain Barbossa, you'll be Captain Barbossa. Education. Today I sit in the back of an auditorium, virtual or real, and the professor stands at the front of the room and goes, yeah, okay, great. Or with my headset I can walk into the Senate in Rome, debate with the senators and tell Julius Caesar, look behind you. So the glasses that you're wearing now, today, when I walk into my dentist, they know me, my optician knows me, my doctor ain't got a bloody clue. However, give it five years from now when you're wearing those glasses, that will be, you know Meta started piloting them. They're not great today, but it's just a pilot. Of course it is. Now on your right hand lens this will say Duncan Mordor. Age, prescriptions, medical history, family medical history issue he's coming in to talk about today. And on my left lens AI will tell you and here's how to solve it. So it's coming, it's. We can just continue to duck and hide or we can just embrace it and get on with the number. Second barrier to innovation after our own expertise is I don't have time to think. Everybody says that. Well, what's AI about to give us? Let me think it's going to do our weekly reports, expense reports, forecasting, coding, accounting. It's going to give us time to think. So I'm not scared of AI, I am scared of man's stupidity, right?
- [19:06]
A
So lots to digest and unpack there. You talk about the need for more innovation, you talk about the need for more creativity, for fundamentally reimagining a lot of these industries. And there's this kind of underlying, this underlying sense to what you're saying of we have to adapt or die, right? These industries that haven't changed in 100 years, they have nowhere to go but down if they're not going to adapt new practices. You, you used a few tools there, Duncan, around, kind of imagining, right, Figuring out what, what the rules are and imagining what they could be. Can you, you know, maybe walk you walk me through your. How we, we suggest organizations do this.
- [19:48]
B
So when you walk into an office now this will come across as a pitch. It's not meant to. So here's the thing. When you walk into your office, in fact your office today and you have a business book, where's the business book?
- [20:00]
A
On the desk?
- [20:01]
B
Yeah. Have you read it? No. I've got, my boss needs this by two o' clock. I've got a weekly report to go to, I've got a weekly meeting to go to now I don't have time to read a book. So I thought, okay, well how do I take a non fiction book and give it to people who are normal, hard working, busy people and make innovation accessible. So I set about creating a toolkit, not a book, a toolkit that makes innovation accessible to normal, hardworking people.
- [20:24]
A
People.
- [20:24]
B
Creativity tandoor for people uncomfortable with ambiguity. Great. Far more importantly, make the process fun. Give people tools they choose to use when with all their other deadlines that they've got. So now I thought, well, what non fiction book have I ever read where I could read one page today, get what I need and get out and do what I need to do and come back another day. My mum's cookbook. You want shepherd's pie? It's on page 67. Sherry trifle is on page 12. So the contents page is exactly the same way. Have you ever been to a brainstorm where nothing ever happened? Go to page 12. Fed up your boss, shooting your ideas down? Go to page 54. Work in a heavily regulated industry. Go to page 36 now. But it also has to appeal to all three learning styles. So let me explain what that means. Can you close your eyes, Jeff? How many days are there in September, 30. Keep your eyes closed. How did you know? How did you learn? How did you remember? Or what? Can you see with your eyes closed?
- [21:16]
A
I don't know how to answer that question. I just try and remember which the few months that have 30 versus 31 days.
- [21:21]
B
Well, that tell. Okay, you can open your eyes. You've just told me you're a visual learner. How? Because you were probably looking at a calendar that could tell you which was 30 and which was 31. A third of the audience will recite the rhyme. 30 days has September, blah, blah, blah, November. They just taught me they learned by listening. How do I know that? Because they learned the rhyme when they were six. How do they remember it? Because they heard it. The next set of people, 30%, will count them up. They go January, February, March, April, May, June, July, et cetera. Those are kinesthetic learners and people who just go 30, 31. They're visual learners. They're just a recander. So the book designed to appeal to all three learning styles. There's QR codes in each chapter with a Spotify playlist, which will be turned into an auditory book for people who learn by listening. There are animated videos in each chapter. I'm now a cartoon character where I could pop out of the book and show you in a fun way how to use the tools for our visual learners and for our kinesthetic learners. The QR code on the back cover is AI. You can ask the book how to use a specific tool on page 67 to sell more orange pencils in the state of Pennsylvania on Valentine's Day to the market of 21 to 24 yards. And the book will answer you make it fun, make it tangible, make it easy to use. There are tools within there that really cut through the nonsense. So, for example, one tool was created by Walt Disney. I call it what if? This is about lifting the rules of your challenge, picking one rule and asking the most audacious, provocative, outrageous what if statement to get you out of your river of thinking the way you always think. So Walt had Fantasia. He wanted to pump mist and heat into the theater. And the theater owner said, no, Walt, that's not. Not the way we do it here. We tried that last year. That one hit our quarterly results. So Walt listed the rules of going to movie theater. I must go to a physical theater. It is dark. I must go at a set time. I have to pay to get. I can't control the environment which people experience my content. So he took that one, the environment. He said, well, what If I could control the environment. Well, he couldn't. And besides, it was wasn't audacious enough. So he said, all right, if I can't control the environment inside the theater, what if I take my movies out of the theater? If you know how to do it, you're iterating. If it scares you, you're innovating. Well, how you could do that, Walt? They're two dimensional, they're fall over. What if I made them three dimensional? Well, how on earth would you do that? Well, what if I had people dress up in costume as pirates and princesses and cowboys? But yeah, Walt, you can't have Cinderella standing next to Jack Sparrow. People wouldn't be immersed in her story. A fair point. What if I put them in different lands? Oh, wait a minute. What if I called it Disneyland? Ooh, we're done here. Simple, powerful, fun. People used to go to Blockbuster Video. The founder of Netflix used the same tool. He was fed up and paying late fees. Step one, list the rules. Had to drive to a physical store. They had to go at a set time. They never had the one I want. I was only allowed to take out three. I had to return it, I had to rewind it, and if I was late, I paid a late fee. So he took store and in 2005 simply asked the question, what if there was no physical store? And so he said, well, no physical store. And he looked outside of his industry with another tool called Where Else? Which is in the book. A lot of insights for innovation, or most of them actually will come from looking outside of your industry. And he found a company called YouTube. Six months old, only streaming amateur content. So he said, well, wait a minute, what if I just stream professional content? I could do a deal with the movie studios. Well, nobody would have to drive to a store. I'll be open 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Everybody get the one they want. They won't have to return it or rewind it. I'll cut the rental off at 24 hours. Nobody pays a late fee. I'll call it Netflix. I'll take my idea to Blockbuster five times, they'll turn me down five times. I'll take them out of business. Unless you less than five years now, for a lot of your listeners, they're going to sit there and go, oh, but I don't have the resources. So I'll give you a smaller example because I want people to know that tools work for them too. Very tiny company in Great Britain, the late 60s, before the days of Mass Automation used to make glasses that we drink out of, and they found too much breakage and not enough production when the glasses were being packaged and shipped. So they went down the shop floor, observed the process, wrote down the rules. 26 employees, cardboard boxes. 12 glasses to a box, six on top, six on the bottom. Glasses separated by corrugated cardboard. Glasses wrapped individually in newspaper. Employees reading the newspaper. So somebody asked the somewhat outrageous what if question. What if we poke their eyes out? Well, that's against the law and it's not very nice. But because they had the courage to ask the most absurd what if question of all, the lady sitting next to him immediately got out of a river. Think. He said, well, hang on. Why don't we just hire blind people? So they did. Production up 26%, breakage down 42%. And the British government gave them a 50% salary subsidy, firing people with disabilities. Take the rules of the challenge you're working on next week. List them. Do not think about them, or you'll start thinking of all the reasons you can't break it. Pick one and ask the most audacious what if question. You'll be amazed how it helps you jump out of your river of thinking and think differently.
- [25:46]
A
I love that approach. I find it such a valuable exercise and it can. I love the examples of how it can completely upend what organizations are doing one of the. You know, I'm curious with your book and your approach, Duncan. One of the most common pieces of feedback I hear from, you know, people I talk to is, well, I don't work for Walt Disney. You know, my leadership, my leaders would never go for this. How do we. How can we flip that around?
- [26:12]
B
You've got to do the. Do it with them. Do the yes and a no, because get them to do exactly what you just watched me and Jeff do. Come up with the party idea. Have them do the no, because do it again. Have them do the yes, and they'll realize I'm a no because so. And look how big the idea was when I became a yes Ander. Again, it's just a question of how. So another tool. How you just. By reframing the challenge. So this tool was created by Walt Disney On July 17, 1955, when you opened the doors to Disneyland. He said, we will not have any customers in our part, will only have guests. We won't have employees. We'll have cast members. And with that simple re framing of the challenge, he created a level of hospitality that's really been repeated since. So. So, Jeff, where do you live?
- [26:52]
A
I live in Toronto.
- [26:54]
B
So if I was coming to Toronto tomorrow and you and I were going to open a car wash together, tell me if you would. Five essential ingredients we must have in a car wash. Go.
- [27:04]
A
Soap, soap, sponges, water. You know, water or hoses.
- [27:09]
B
Hoses.
- [27:11]
A
One of those automated conveyors, I would say.
- [27:13]
B
That'll do. So we've got water, soap, brushes, vacuum and conveyor. So close your eyes. We've been invited to open an auto spa. Ooh, Ah, spa. New franchise. What have you seen in a spa? Anything you'd like? What would you like to have in your spa?
- [27:27]
A
There's probably a good fragrance there. There's oils, sure, yeah. I don't know. Nicer soaps, probably more of a human aspect to it. People who are talk to you and say nice things to your car, maybe, or you.
- [27:44]
B
What's the spa? What do you want in your spa? What have you seen in the spa, Jeff?
- [27:54]
A
I don't know. I don't go to a lot of spas.
- [27:56]
B
Duncan, close your eyes and imagine.
- [27:58]
A
Well, I don't know. Relaxing music.
- [28:01]
B
Very relaxing music. What else?
- [28:07]
A
I don't know.
- [28:08]
B
A bath above masseuse, Mani, pedi.
- [28:11]
A
Sure, yeah.
- [28:12]
B
So here's the thing. I say car wash, and everybody thought the same things you did. Water, soap, brushes, dry vacuum. I said, auto spa. People start to think about other things like essential oils and music and relaxing atmosphere and blah, blah. Which one would you rather go to? The spa. It's a simple, simple tool. If we'd asked the question, how might we make more money in 2011, we'd have put the gate price up at Walt Disney World by 3% and made our quarterly results. But instead, we reframed the challenge and said, how might we solve the biggest consumer pain point? Everybody knew what it was. It was standing in line. And I said, what if there were no lines? Didn't know the answer at the time. We looked outside of our industry using that where else tool, and we found a very small pharmacy in Tokyo, Japan, using RFID technology to enable people not to stand in line. Welcome to the world as Disney's MagicBand. It's RFID enabled. It is my room key. It's my theme park ticket. It's my reservations for my favorite meet and greets, my favorite rides. I can pay for merchandise with it. I can pay for food with it. The average guest today has two hours free time each and every day they didn't have in 2016. What has that resulted in? Recorded, intend to recommend, records intend to return. And what is it? We lovely people do with our free time in Disney parks, spend money. The single biggest revenue generating idea in Disney theme parks history. By not asking, how might we make more money? Now, again, that's a big example. So I'll give you a small one. Those people that you said, I don't work for Dosling. I was waiting for an appointment. Up in New York sat Chaplins. The young lady behind the reception desk got upstairs, said to the boss, yeah, your, your reception's delightful. So friendly, so, so helpful, so empathetic. He said, wow, that is nice to hear. How long were you chatting to her voice? About 10 minutes, I suppose. He goes up, that's odd. I said, well, why is that odd? He said, well, we don't have a receptionist. I was like, well, hang on, dude, who? I was talking to somebody. She had a summer dress on, had no sleeves. He goes, oh, that was probably Sarah. So I said, oh, Sarah, yeah. He goes, oh, Sarah's our director of first impressions. That good, simple re expression of her form of employment. Empowered to own the space she is. The challenge for most of us is this. We don't get fresh stimulus into our lives. So, Jack, hands up if you, if you go to your favorite restaurant or cafe, you read the menu, you already know what's on it, you listen to the specials and then you order the same thing every single time. Hands up if you get. You sleep on the same side of the bed every night, even when you're staying in a hotel room by yourself. If you ever got home, when you used to commute from wherever you used to work and you get home, just look at your front door and there's just that split second where you just go, oh, shit, how did I get home? So on the way home, because you went past the same stimulus day in, day out, your brain physically shut down, didn't wake up till you got home. No fresh stimulus in, no new ideas out. Different companies do it different ways. Microsoft has Think Week, no meetings, no emails, no presentations. Pixar does not sit by department. They sit by unplanned collaboration specifically designed to bring two people together to have a conversation they weren't supposed to have to spark a new idea. Hasbro gives their employees $3 a quarter to put something on a table. But it can't be a toy to spark a different conversation. Google gives their engineers 20% time. It's not an urban myth. They are given it. And so I'm not suggesting everybody walks up to their boss on Monday and say, dude, from now on, I need Fridays off. I need 20% time. What if you take one hour a month as a team? Real or virtual? Invite your team in. No PowerPoint presentation? No. Why is it good for the business? Call it first Friday of every month, nine till ten, but be consistent. Whatever day or time you choose, just invite people to come in and talk about something they've seen in their business life, or ideally their personal life that they thought was innovative or creative. You'll be amazed at the new energy and ideas you drive into the organization.
- [31:36]
A
I love that approach. And, you know, I'm reflecting on, you know, all the creative ideas that you've shared here and how I can, you know, implement them in my own workflow. I'm curious, do you have like a, like a number one piece of advice for leaders? You know, how you can get more creativity and more innovation in your organization?
- [31:55]
B
Give your employees time to think. Stop the, oh, you've got two hours to do a brainstorm. The other thing is this. Our legal department, we hired them out of college because they studied the bar IT team went to coding school, our sales team got sales training, our operation, et cetera. When it comes to innovation and brainstorming, we just tell people to get in the room and have a big idea with absolutely no training and no tools. And that's why I developed the Imagination Emporium, to give people a toolkit they can use for things like brainstorming and innovation. Because today it's too ethereal. I get lots of people come to conferences and they leave inspired and motivated and they haven't got a clue what to do next. So I said creating a toolkit and a workshop where people do the tools, where by the end of the day they know what to do. I want, yes, people want to be inspired and motivated, but what they really want is two or three tools they can take away and use in their day to day business to help them think differently and grow their business.
- [32:47]
A
I love that. And one of the reasons it resonates with me, Duncan, is it's so practical and it's so oriented around, like, what do I actually do? One of the things I've found, and I'm sure you found it too, is just there's no shortage of hype right now for technology or tools or approaches that are going to change the world. And, oh, you've got to buy this. I'm curious for you if you can, you know, call out one or two, you know, things that you've seen hyped and in your mind you're like, this is not the answer. This is not what's going to make organizations more effective.
- [33:19]
B
Well, I saw an article in Half a Business Review about a year and a half ago that says process beats culture. Good luck with that, mate. Culture eats process for lunch. And most companies are driven by quarterly results, and they're obsessed by quarterly results. But, and here's the thing. They. And it worked up until Generation Z entered the workforce or tried to enter the work they're not working for. How will you remain relevant 10 years from today if a new generation of employees chooses not to work for you?
- [33:47]
A
Yeah. So, I mean, let's talk about that for a minute. What do you see as being different with Gen Z? Is it, you know, radically?
- [33:54]
B
No. We were as passionate as Generation Z about our causes. We could only tell two people down the park. When we kick the football around, they can tell the world. It's called Greta Thunberg. I was asked to give a talk to. Let's just call them the world's largest tool manufacturer. They make more hammers and chisels and saw and everybody else. And they wanted to know about how to innovate with Generation Z. So I went down to Home Depot and Lowe's hung out in the aisle like some creepy dude, just watching their consumers and listening at the point of purchase, that decision making. I'm taking this home. I was watching Generation Z and they didn't talk about this brand. They'd never heard of it. They didn't talk about their products, the hammer, the chisel. They didn't talk about the price button. They talked about was important to them. We had to remodel our dream apartment, our dream kitchen, our dream bathroom. I said, your purpose is you choose to create one is you could be the brand who helps people build their dreams. You can see the finance guys rolling their eyes in laughter thinking this guy's a joke. Let's get him out of here. Okay, fair enough. If you're the brand who can help people build their dreams, could you be in education? Yes. Sports? Yes. Hospitality? Yes. Finance? Yes. Insurance? Yes. Education? Yes. You could be in any line of business. No, no, we make tools. We're really good at it. In fact, we're going to expand in India and Mexico. They have a growing middle class. They will buy our tools. Oh, yeah, good luck with that. India bypassed the laptop computer over a decade ago and went straight to a mobile phone. India will be bypassing your tools and going straight to three deep printing. So, but, oh, no. Well, we make. So. So yeah, this company, they will make their quarterly Results for about seven to eight more years. This company, the world's largest tool manufacturer, will be gone by 20, 32, six years from today. Yes, they'll make their quarterly results, I don't give a damn. Because they've got no purpose. They got nowhere to go.
- [35:24]
A
So that, that, that purpose for you, that's. That's thing one, you've got to figure out where you should really be playing, how you're inspiring people and everything else follows from that. Is that right?
- [35:35]
B
It's my why. And if you can't articulate it in 20 seconds, you don't have one. I believe everybody is creative and I'm on a mission to prove it. It's as simple as that.
- [35:45]
A
Yeah.
- [35:48]
B
We were all born creative. Education just squeezed it out of us.
- [35:52]
A
Right. I want to, you know, before I lose track of it, I do want to talk a little bit about, you know, Disney and your journey from there to what you're doing now. You've talked about this mission and kind of unlocking creativity. How did that come to be for you?
- [36:06]
B
30 years. I got the. So I was, when I finished, I was head of innovation and creativity at Disney bar for Pixar, etc. Didn't start that way. I actually started the cappuccino boy in the London office. But I was the guy who had the mad, audacious, outrageous ideas that used to upset loads of other people. But the difference was I got them done. Why? Because I use tools to help me get them done. Tenacity, patience, but also just ways of thinking differently and giving people. And here's the thing. We tried four models of innovation at Disney. Model number one, I hired an outside consultancy, said, make me look good. They were very expensive. They were never around for execution. They sure as hell weren't going to show me how they did it because then we wouldn't hire them again. Model number two, we're creating an innovation team. Bad idea. Anybody outside of legal do legal? No. Anybody outside of sales do sales? No. Anybody outside of marketing? No. So if you create an innovation team, you've subliminally just told the rest of the organization they're off the hook. Model number three, an accelerator program. We bring in some young tech startups, take a 50, 50 stake in their business. They enabled us to bring products and services to market much quicker than we normally would because they weren't encumbered by our politics. And that's the way we do it here. We will enable them to scale things. But again, we had failed in our overall objective, was how might we embed a culture of innovation, creativity into every body's DNA? So I set out to create a toolkit that, that we could pass along that other people chose to use when we were not around. That's when you know you're changing the culture. We had a three and a half year wait list for a two day voluntary training workshop. And so after 30 years, I was given the bronze Jiminy Cricket thank you for 30 years of magical service statue. And I thought, you know what I do, I got to do something else. And so I love the keynotes, but I love the workshops. You get in a room, you notice you can inspire and motivate people, but you can't help them in 60 minutes. But if you give people a fake challenge at 9 o' clock and let them use the tools to solve the challenge by five o' clock, then they know what to do next. And again, here's another industry that needs to be blown up. The conference industry. It's just speaker, speaker, speaker panel, speaker panel. No, people learn by doing, they do not learn by listening. Yes, they learn both, but we've got to shake it up a bit. We can't just get on a stage and speak at people. You've got to engage them. And so to me, people always ask me when I get off stage, how did you know if you were successful? I said, that's easy. They said, well, how'd you know? I said, if one person is looking down at the telephone, I failed. It's as simple as that.
- [38:24]
A
So from, for you, it all comes back to like that, that muscle memory. Right? Like actually practicing these new skills. Because so, so yeah, and I'm just kind of digesting it. But for you, the answer is not, I'll create a chief innovation Officer and they'll come in and tell everybody what to do. We need to use these tools and put them into practice and get comfortable.
- [38:49]
B
We need to impart them to the rest of the organization. Every organization that has an innovation team of 12 people. Oh yeah, great. Good luck with that. When we really moved the needle was when we imparted our knowledge to other people and let them do it for themselves. That's when you're really changing a culture.
- [39:06]
A
Right. I think that's very well said and I loved your walkthrough of why the different models don't work and why this was the right one. And yeah, certainly that just kind of triggered a few different organizational memories I've had as well. So no thank for that. Thank you for that. I think that's really interesting. Duncan, this has been super interesting. I really appreciate you opening my mind in terms of, you know, not just the why of creativity and innovation, but the how. And you've, you know, shared so many great tools that I'm excited to try out myself.
- [39:38]
B
Well, thank you very much indeed. Anybody else? It's the imagination emporium.com it will change your lives. So I actually I'll finish my I created this character called this is the Importance of Diversity. We were doing a new designing a new retail dining and entertainment complex for Hong Kong Vision Resort. And in the room that day I had the imagineering team. But that day it was 12 white male American artists architects, over 50. So I brought in a naive expert or who or what's a naive expert with somebody who doesn't know what you're working on. Why? Because they'll ask the silly questions that we're too embarrassed to ask. They'll throw out the audacious idea ungoverned by our river of thinking. So I brought in a young female Chinese chef. Why? Because she was the antithesis of everybody else in the room. And I asked everybody to draw a house and everybody drew what you would draw. Jeff. Two windows, one door. The roof was a triangle. Except the chef. She drew din sum architecture. Why wouldn't she? She's a young female Chinese chef, not an architect. On the way out the door, one of the Disney imagineers slapped a post it over her drawing which said distinctly Disney, authentically Chinese. Seven years later, the strategic brand position that guided the entire design of the Shanghai Disney Resort, distinctly Disney, authentically Chinese. Diversity is in addition, if somebody doesn't look like you, they don't think like you. And if they don't think like you, they can help you think differently. And so when I was designing the book, I had this character called Archie who was a direct descent of Archimedes. Because when you ask people where they are when they get their best ideas, they say the shit out. While Archimedes was in the bar and my daughter looks at it, she goes, dad, that's an old white guy. You can't do that shit anymore. You're an old white guy. So I created three new characters. This is Spark. Spark is male. He introduces you to the crazy behavior. Zing. Gender neutral introduces you. The energizers, Nova, she's female, she introduces you. The innovation tools make it fun and people will use it, but make it practical at the same time.
- [41:21]
A
Nice. I love it. Well, thanks so much again for joining. This has been awesome. And I really appreciate your time.
- [41:26]
B
Cool. Thank you very much. Lovely to meet you.