Like iron is drawn to a magnet we, as humans, are drawn to exploration.  It is damn near impossible for us to leave a rock unturned.  At Creative Ventures we share this passionate curiosity as we build and launch our strategic ideas, always looking for  new ways to express value.

In 1990 NASA launched the Hubble Space Telescope.  Up it went and set up housekeeping about 370 miles above our address of “third rock from the sun.”  From there we have been able to peer into reaches of space that earthbound sky watchers could only dream of.

The Hubble Space Telescope, named after Edwin Hubble, the father of modern cosmology, is basically an optical / ultraviolet ray telescope.  Though it has opened the near universe to us, it is limited in what it can “see”.  The next generation space telescope is coming, not necessarily to replace Hubble, but instead as a worth successor.

Enter the James Webb Space Telescope, named after the early leader of a fledgling space agency that would soon become NASA.  Under development with NASA at the James Hopkins University, this $8.8 billion dollar international project will take its place in our solar system in 2018.  17 different countries are involved under the NASA leadership flag.  In fact, the telescope will be launched on a European Space Agency Ariane 5 rocket from a launch site in New Guiana.

The James Webb Space Telescope

The James Webb is pretty big.  While the Hubble is about the size of a school bus, the James Webb is bigger than a tennis court.  It won’t be orbiting earth, oh no, it will be orbiting the sun about 940,000 miles from earth. That’s why you need a rocket to launch it.  The home orbit for the James Webb is a LONG WAY from here.  Where Hubble was an optical / ultraviolet telescope, the James Webb is an infrared telescope looking at the electromagnetic spectrum with long wavelengths that go well past visual.  Infrared telescopes can penetrate the great cosmic stellar dust shrouds that block our vision of deep galaxies, allowing us to see farther back in time than imaginable.  Since light travels at a fixed speed when you see the light from a sky full of star’s you are actually seeing the distant past.  It takes those twinkles a long time to reach us.  The night sky is our time machine and the James Webb will give us a +/- 12 billion year window into the birth of the universe.  WOW, hard to even get your head around!

So, as the heavens open to our curiosity, so should we all be explorers.  The search for opportunity and solutions is not so different from our search of the dark depths of our universe.  It’s only the field you are playing on that’s different.  So think and may curiosity and risk drive your passion!

Exploration is the engine that drives innovation.  Innovation drives economic growth.  So let’s all go exploring!  Edith Widder.

We recently lost a proposal to deliver an educational platform to a large client.  One of the reasons was sound, we are a small, innovative strategy firm and though our ideas were impactful, we simply weren’t scalable on the level that the company needed.  The second reason was a little more subjective; our style seemed to value entertainment as a core element of our content delivery.  They had trouble getting their heads around that idea, that educational outcomes could be delivered in a fun and engaging manner.  Huh?  That’s the only way education should be delivered, not just at the corporate level but at ALL levels.

IN 1948 Walt Disney coined the phrase, “edutainment” and used it to describe their new True Life Adventures, nature series.  Disney believed people could  learn from something that was also entertaining.

Most people are familiar with the idea, if not the word, when you think; Schoolhouse Rock, Sesame St or Bill Nye, The Science Guy.  It has been proven as one of the most effective ways to shift behaviors and can act as a primary catalyst for change and not just in children.  The World Bank helped sponsor the PlanetRead Program – Literacy for a Billion.  In India they added Hindi subtitles to Bollywood music videos to promote language skills.  Fun and educational.  The impact:

• Adult levels of illiteracy were cut in 1/2.
• The number of children that became good readers doubled.

At Creative Ventures and The Next Level Academy, we have built our educational philosophy around turning information into knowledge.  We achieve this goal through introducing the core ideas and creating interactive, FUN exercises that allow the idea to be learned through practiced behaviors.  These “practiced behaviors” are our original learning games.  We believe if you can take information and apply it, it can become knowledge.  We want our interactive elements to be both learning driven, but also FUN.  Why not?  Fun is a good thing and should not be sucked out of learning through rote techniques.

Fun is not a bad thing and when married with cutting edge skill development creates, what we believe, is the highest and best formula for learning!

We teach two core skills in our Next Level Academy –  THINKING and COMMUNICATION.  In our communication curriculum we focus on two key areas – Interpersonal, 1 on 1 communication and Presentation Skills (also part of our Once Upon a Time Project storytelling platform).

Why are these two skills so important?  Think about it, you are either talking or writing an email to one person, thus it is interpersonal or you are talking or writing to more than one person and it becomes a presentation.  They are very DIFFERENT skill sets.

Let’s talk about your presentation skills.  Interpersonal communication skill sets are very challenging because they involve so many elements, each flexible,  filled with subtle variances and nuances.  But presentation skills are much more simple and thus easier to learn.  We believe that anyone can become a good presenter.  Some can learn to be great, but almost anyone can learn to be good.

You have all been to horrible presentations, classes and lectures where a root canal would be a better choice than sitting through another minute of the drone of a poor presenter.  How important are those skills?  Well, just a couple of days ago you saw what the lack of these skills can do to an organization as Roger Goodell held one of the worst press conferences in recent memory and continued to harm the credibility of one of the most successful organizations on the planet – The NFL.

Again we see a CEO reading a lawyer created statement attempting to sound sincere about the mistakes that had been made.  Shielded behind a podium, in a black suit, Goodell sounded stiff and insincere.  Clearly some mistakes on the part of the NFL were made and what everyone wanted was specific steps and a truly contrite explanation.

How about using your presentation skills, structured around your style to make a statement that will make a difference.  Get rid of the podium and sit on  a stool.  Have a conversation with the audience.  Know your presentation so that you don’t need to read it.  Be honest and informative.  These are at the heart of great presentation skills.  Sure, it is risk filled, but the benefit from creating a connection between your topic, how ever difficult it might be, and the audience can change everything.

Presentation skills can be learned and are worthy of your professional development.  Become someone that can change the flow of ideas through commanding the way you present them to your audience.

As most of you know, I am a scientist by education and that perspective has influenced the way I see things and how my thinking attacks the problems we are blessed to solve.  Which brings me to this idea.  If we look at companies and organizations as “systems” it makes them subject to the various laws that impact systems.  One of these is ENTROPY.  Entropy is from the Second Law of Thermodynamics and basically involves how systems run down or loose their energy.

Companies face this problem all the time.  The market shifts, they loose talent, they become trapped with a small group of products or services, all of which point towards conditions of entropy.  So if a system heads towards entropy, its very potential becomes dissipated.

Companies can do something about this and we have been grateful to be involved in quite a few “anti-entropy” programs.  Here is the principle action that will stop the drain of potential:   LEARNING!  A company with a strong educational program, one specifically designed around creating and developing specific skill sets is less likely to run out of energy.  More and more companies and organizations are allocating both resources and time to learning initiatives than ever before.  At Creative Ventures we are involved in five learning programs either as curriculum designers or as instructors.  But it’s not just our clients:

• At Fathom, a growing digital marketing firm in Ohio, they recognized that “letting their skills flatline” was a key problem impacting their growth.  “If you aren’t a learner, you are the reason the company is not growing towards its potential.”  You need to constantly be supporting a “sharpening your skills” mindset.
• In the upcoming book; How Google Works, you will discover a huge part of their success is their learning programs.  They look for people who are constantly learning and they want to be the source for their curiosity.

If you don’t have the size or resources to create a specific learning division, there are tons of other options ranging from industry sources to online learning.

Stop the forces of entropy by creating a strategy that pushes the leverage found in learning and skill enhancement!

What do car designers, architects and industrial designers all have in common?  They are quick to give their ideas physicality by building PROTOTYPES.

The idea of building models based on your concepts is as old as ancient Greece.  In fact, the word prototype comes from the Greek, prototypon, to create impression or develop a primitive form.  At Creative Ventures we are quick to go to prototype and have discovered it gives us something to work from, something solid and real.  Getting a prototype done quickly moves the idea from the theoretical to the tangible.  The prototype becomes critical with the more people involved.  Try discussing your idea with a group of people and you will rapidly find yourself in the old game of “telephone” where everyone hears the idea differently, but give them a prototype and everyone will be working from the same place.

Most of our prototypes take the form of storyboard sketches where we are able to visualize our ideas.  We post the storyboards all over the walls of our offices and begin to see what the project will look like.  Since most of the readers of this journal entry are probably not designing sport cars or blenders, your prototypes may well be sketches.  The sketches don’t have to be pretty.  Michael Lungren of HKS Architects (and my sketching instructor) talks about the “scratchy start”.  He means just get something on paper to get going.  Starting is an important part of prototypes.

A prototype is best served when the model meets the desired outcome.  Car designers use clay models to prototype their designs.

At Creative Ventures we are getting ready to launch a new media platform with video series based on our strategic platforms. Here our prototyping took the form of BETA testing. We shot half a dozen videos and got them ready for post-production work just to test the idea.

Form follows function so find the right style of prototyping to make your ideas come to life and to help them find the traction that will bring them to reality!