11: How “little bets” spur big creative successes

Simms on the show. Peter Simms is the best selling author, co founder of the Silicon Guild, and founder of b l K SHP Enterprises, Inc. His latest book is Little Bets How breakthrough ideas merge from small discoveries. Thanks for being on the show, Peter, It is a pleasure truly. And am I right in BLK s HP stand for black sheep? It is, Yeah, maybe you could tell me a little bit about what in the world that is black sheep started because it Pixar. They call people black

sheep who challenge the status quo. And it was inspiring to me to think that somebody at Pixar challenging the status quo was a pretty unique kind of an individual, of a unique sort of idea, this notion of a black sheep, because you know, having taken the author's path and the creative path in life, along with people who are friends who are social entrepreneurs or writers or other artists. You know, there's a sense that, hey, you know, taking that path of less travel by is kind of like

being a black sheep. But you can't do it alone. And so we we just created kind of some hats and t shirts that then turned into a formal collective of creative thinkers and doers, and now we have over twenty five hundred of these folks all around the country and around the world. They range from pianists to executives in large organizations who have a really strong creative side that they want to have nourished. And we are just all about nurturing that creative side, that black sheep side

of everyone. And we do that through creating community. And then we also do that through taking social action what we call operations to support social entrepreneurship. That's really exciting. How can someone become a black sheep? Is there an

application process? You know? The way it's worked up until now is we have just let it kind of expand organically, and so, you know, we have a Facebook page, we also have you know in the works right now We're going to be taking a bus tour around America this latest spring, and we're going to be visiting a whole bunch of different places that typically aren't seen in the traditional media, that typically may not be known for people living on the coast or living in cities where they're thriving.

And we're going to be going to Detroit, We're going to be going to Tulsa, We're going to be going to the Mississippi Delta, Alabama, And the whole goal of the trip is to a bridge the the the empathy deficit that exists I think right now in America, and to also try to do some storytelling around where people are reinventing themselves in their organizations and maybe even some of their communities in the case of Detroit or Pittsburgh, and to try to share new find new narratives for

what the American dream is today and what it can be. And then also takes some social actions. So we're going to be we hope funding fellowships, fuse Core Fellowships and some mayors off is around the country and these fellows work with mayors for a year trained in design thinking to help catalyze across sectors social action. So through that we'll be touching a lot of people and finding more ways to bring people into Black Sheep through a new

website and digital platform. So that's really amazing. In what ways are you going to be helping with the empathy deficit? Well, you know, I think a lot of it is going to be through storytelling. So you know, I'll give you an example of what I mean by this in my own personal case. I grew up in a small town in northern California and my my my parents were very

well educated. My my uncle is a logger, my you know, my aunt runs a campground, and you know, I think just to put myself an Uncle Joe's shoes through the years has been a really valuable exercise to understand America a little bit better. And you know, for people who have Uncle Joe and antles we all kind of have those folks, you know, we're much better off for it. And I think for those who don't interact with the

Uncle Joe's and the antles Is as much. You know, we want to go to places like I say, Detroit, where there are people like Alan Conyerts, who's working in the middle of the Russell Industrial Center, which used to be inhabited by industrial printing presses and publishers that had been cleared out after globalization, and where Alan, a craftsman of the highest order, has had to reinvent himself in his business, going from redesigning kitchens in Detroit to creating

beautiful chairs that he has designed and created and now sells online, and has had to kind of figure out how to be an entrepreneur in a whole new way in this new economy and now has a small staff and more than that, he's one of two people who've been at the Russell Industrial Center the longest. And if you go into this building and walk through the hallways and hear the artists and the entrepreneurs stirring, it's a it's it's it's an it's an uplifting feeling of there

being a chance for reinvention and renewal in America. I feel like Detroit can be the womb of reinvention and renewal. So we want to tell those stories to try to have bridges between the worlds. That is so exciting, and you're bridging lots of different worlds, you know, entrepreneurship, art, you're you're you're fundamentally interested in entrepreneurship. Not everyone is right, so you know, you have lots of interest. That seems like I am a core. I feel like I always

feel like I'm a core. I think of myself as an entrepreneur, even though I've accidentally been an author, uh and you know, it's it's an honor to be able to write, uh for for publications that I always feel myself more as an entrepreneur social entrepreneur. Is it because you like innovation, you like at a large scale, like you like like like creative products that make a big impact in a big way. Is that part of it?

That's part of it. I mean, what the Silicon Guild is is a is a company that is looking at the publishing industry and how we can organize the authors uh and the audience a little bit better to be able to service those needs than the current systems. So there's there's certainly a passion that comes for wanting to see change in an industry in that case. And I think also it's just uh the feeling that working with

a group of people in collaboration. I try to be very you know, very collaborative in the way I work it's it's a very rewarding uh, it's fun, you know. And and by the way, you can make a decent living. I've never been motivated by money more than to want

to send my kids to good schools. And so yeah, entrepreneurship has just been a chance to work with people I really enjoy working with every day on interesting problems following that curiosity and uh and and to be able to you know, to actually affect change, I mean to be to be a part of I always love the Alan Kay quote the best way to predict the future is to invent it, and I feel like entrepreneurship is a vehicle for that. Oh I really like that. Oh well, I want I want that quote to sink in my

head for a second. There, You're not really predicting anything if you invent it, You're just like I think, I feel like we can go further with that analogy in some way if I think about it a little bit further. Anyway, Well, maybe we'll return to that in our interview. So I was wondering, you know, just just randomly just woke up in the middle night wondering what do Apple CEO Steve Jobs.

Comedian Chris Rock prize winning architect Frank's Geary and the story developers that picks our films all have them come

and do you have any idea? Well, I mean when it comes to the creative process, I think, having studied the creative process for this book that you mentioned Little Bets, the common element that stands out to me that I didn't know about before was just how experimental like anyone, Steve Jobs used design as the mindset to drive product development at Apple, and and design is inherently experimental and driven by prototypes and driven by the rapid prototyping process

of trying a lot of things in order to identify opportunities, and then once you have narrow in on those, to delve deeper into what will be more of a completed idea. So he may have started with I'm just throwing this out there. I've heard this number roughly for around one hundred ideas to get to three, to get to one, right, So you know, that's sort of the scuttle butt from

the Apple community that I've heard. Now, Chris Rock or all comedians for that matter, must must take their material to small clubs to try it before it's anywhere near ready for the big show. And so he Chris goes to a place right near where he lives in New Jersey, and he will show up unannounced and with scribbled ideas on piece of paper and try one after the other after the other until he starts to hone in on ideas that could be a joke that could lead to,

you know, one piece of a sixty minute act. And he will do that for six months to a year before he's got sixty minutes of materials. So there's an enormous amount of experimentation, most of which doesn't work. We can debate whether that's failure or not, but that's the process of creating comedy. And Frank Gary or an architect like that will often work through dozens and dozens of models in order to refine and determine the problems that he's really trying to solve with a piece of architecture.

So this realization for me, and through the research that Scott you're way more familiar with than i am, is that the reality of a creators or inventors is often that they have to try, you know, ninety five percent ideas that don't work for every five percent to become great. Roughly that you know, Hewlett Packard, they would say ninety five, you know, something like ninety four small bets to come

up with six breaks. You know, you would have you know, at at Apple, we said one hundred to three to one, one hundred ideas to get down to three good possibilities to get down to one final idea. You know, at the Onion they keep track of statistics at the Onion, they have to come up with something like they come up with something like, you know, several hundred I'm forgetting the exact number, several hundred headlines every week to get

to eighteen that finally make the cut. So it's like a three or four percent success rate, right, And so here we are school to be coming up with the answers all through our lives. And then the reality of creativity in all these different fields is that you have to be using a learn by doing mindset, and we just don't have that. So that's that was my goal with Little Bets, is to give people, you know, kind of a story driven, research based book to help them

develop that mindset. Yeah. No, I really like that aspect, and it really it's very much related to this idea of taking risks and you're saying, take. I mean, what is innovative about what you're saying is you're saying lots of small risks add up because they provide good feedback. Yeah, so I think it's really it really isn't risk, right if you're taking a small bet. The definition of a small bet is that it's it's an affordable loss. And

this is a really important point. You've determined up front, which you can what you're willing to lose, whether it's time or money. You know, you've actually done that analytically so that you you have nothing to lose, you're just trying them. So yeah, I love this and I think can apply to lots of areas of life. So what about guys with social anxiety that are terrified of approaching women that you find it that they find adorable? Yeah? Do you think that this applies to them as well?

I mean, a small bet would be literally just smiling at the person. Well, you know, I'm not an expert in a non creepy way in the scientific research on this, as your but but I would I would suggest that dating having got married, but when I was dating, I was I was terrible at it at first. I was a late bloomer. I struggled through trying to figure out who I was or oh absolutely, I mean everybody has to do right, You're pretty smooth. Everybody has to write. I mean, this is life. This is so from a

dating standpoint for me. You know, I've probably gone out on more dates in San Francisco than anybody I know after business school. Did you find them online? Did you do like, okay, keep it or something I tried? I tried that, I did. I went out with a few people through online. I tried. I tried a lot of different things because you know, I really was trying to figure out what would be the right who I would be right for, what the right fit would be. And

the San Francisco it's kind of a tricky market. So that's a longer conversation. But uh, but yeah, it's a little bets. It is little bets, And it wasn't I wasn't thinking about that when I wrote the book, but a lot of people have mentioned it to me as a as a potential application. But the point is is that is that anything we do that's new, that's that's developing it, whether it's a new comedy act or a new skill set, or a new fluency and comfort in

an area that we're not strong. And you know, it's deliberate practice. And so where I hope to see the parallels with the psychology research with Little Bets is where Carol Dweck talks about developing a growth mindset. You know, you can develop a growth mindset by by being willing to try things and by being willing to learn from

small setbacks. And it gets easier, right, It gets easier for Jerry Seinfeld the more he gets into developing a comedy act, just as it gets easier to go about dating, just as it gets easier to do all these things. If you're willing to just get out there and start, you've got to try and you've got to work at it. It's not easy for anyone. And that's the myth I'm hoping that we can start to break apart. I really like this. And so what is what is talent? Then? Well?

How what? What? What would you say that's just a concept that doesn't exist. Well, everybody has their talents, everybody has their various really strong strengths, and everybody has things that their weaknesses are. And I'm not suggesting that there's not an important recognition of the role of talent. Like, for example, Tom Rath, my colleague with the Silicon Guild, has written books called Strengths Finder Books of Strengths Finder two point zero, and I'm a big believer we all

asho played our strengths. I mean, that's pretty empirical, and Tom's really kind of been, you know, leading the way on popularizing that. So we should try to have enough self awareness to understand our strengths. One of the things I've been struck by and doing my research with different leaders or different people though, is how many weaknesses they all have. Steve Jobs filled many many times. He could not have predicted too many times over what Pisar would become.

He had no idea. He just bet on the right people with Ed Capmow and John Lassiter, you know, Howard Schultz. Plenty of weaknesses, the cops, same thing, but they all understand how to surround themselves with people who compliment those weaknesses. So I think all of us have some really superb talents and we just have to identify those and and and recognize we don't have to have it all. We don't. Nobody does. If you be truthful and honest people. You know,

there's a lot of smoke and mirrors. I think No, I definitely agree. I tend to be a bit cheeky Petersim. So thanks you just going with me. I'm wondering one one if you could describe one story that you have in your book that my students, we both we found it just absolutely compelling, the story of how Pixar Films had such amazing success through their storyboarding process. Could you

just briefly talk talk about that. Yeah, So Pixar will take about five years to make a new film, and when they're beginning of film, the first two years of dedicated to understanding the story and the you know, the Pixar stories are done literally by taking you know, small note cards, drawing pictures on them, and putting them on

the board. So the story artists come up with these really rough ideas for characters and for potential scenes, potential storylines, and they put those up and then they literally act those out in front of their colleagues and you know, some of these ideas will make it, but most don't. And so it's this process of constant revision and the story team is working in an environment where they only use this technique that they call plussing, and plussing is

where you know, they take ideas. They see the ideas as the story artists are presenting them, and as the colleagues reflect on the ideas. They don't use harsh or judgmental language. They say they use two techniques from improv using yes and taking the idea and saying yes and what if we did this? Yes? And what if we did And that's plussing, And they just constantly plus ideas

right through to the end of the film. At Pixar, this is the culture of the improvisation is at the core of the culture of Pixar, and the person who makes the decision on the ideas ultimately is the director, and the ideas have to be perfect in the minded director before they get green lighted, and the director as the story is maturing and as there's enough characters and storylines, they will put it into a comic book version of

the movie. These are called reels, and they show those versions with very rough dialogue to larger groups and then they solicit feedback from everyone in the room, including the janitor of people who work in the cafeteria Pixar and they say that the director then reads all those comments and decides what to integrate into the next iteration. So literally thousands, millions, really tens of thousands of storyboards fifty

sixty seventy thousand storyboards per movie. Millions of little bets go into each Pixar film, and the great ideas can come from anyone. And so the culture of Pixar is very strong in the sense that John Laster, who's the chief creative officer, doesn't have all the ideas, nor does Ed Capbell who's the president. And he Ed Campbell, who I've come to know personally, will always say I don't Peter, I don't know all the ideas. If you have ideas on writing a book that I can learn from, I

really want to learn from those. And that's the curiosity and humility of the Pixar culture that is very unique

in the corporate world. That's so great, and in Dolf tells nicely with psychological theories such as the Darwinian model of creativity that Dean Simon tin and has been a big proponent of, in which the creative process of credit process mirrors the evolutionary process in which you have blind variation, you produce lots and lots of variance ideas without knowing which ones are necessarily going to be the ones that are the winners. And then you have selective retention, where

you choose the most promising ones. But that initial stage is very has been shown to be very important to the created process. Are you familiar with Thean Simonton's theory very much? So? Yeah, absolutely, And he's Adie Davis, isn't he yea serious? Yeah? Absolutely, He's done some superb research, so yeah, very consistent. And but but your selective, not your sective, your blind variation aspect includes lots and lots

of small bets or absolute little bets. And I think that's a really unique contribution to the field of this idea you have. Wow, I mean it's I'm just synthesizing. It's not a it's you know, it's not original research. It's just really what I what I hope it can help with is just a translation for people. Well, I really, I mean I appreciate that modesty, but I think synthesis

is you're still creating something new, right. It's like saying, like human consciousness is it's just you know, it's just the combination of the emergence of different brain regions, but what emerges is freaking original. Don't be like you know what you Yeah, I think of things on the spot that what's going to come out of my mouth. So there's just so many things we get. You called me a black sheep at one point? Did you ever retract that statement? Am I still okay? Good? I still count good?

What do you say? Yeah, well, we got to get you the swat. Well, my mom always said, Scott you when I was really young, she said, you you always dance to the tune of a different drummer, And in that context, I think she was trying to make me feel good for the fact that I literally would dance to a tum of a different drummer. Wall, all the kids are supposed to be reading a book, I'd be like running around with my Superman cape or something, and people like that's weird. But but I guess as an

adult it's called creativity. It's been human right, and and it's uh, we need to empower that in young kids. I mean, it all goes back to education and if we can, in some way small way be role models to those coming up and say it's okay to be different and to be unique and not be fit in with the you know, all the the you know, some perfectionist ideal. Then that's pretty empowering it. You know, the secret is I think the real secret is it all those people who you know, we all go to high

school and we're cool kids or not. You know, I like you I was. I was definitely you know, an outsider. But you know, when you get to the point and you know where we are in our lives now, all my friends from high school who are the cool kids are actually they're all black sheep too. You know. They want to be doing you know, unique creative things in the world as well, and they felt enormous pressure for conformity.

So you know, this is a cult. This is a I don't know if it's endemic to all cultures, but there's certainly an enormous amount of conformist pressure and modern industrial life. You know, Well, this is interesting. I want to talk about this because on the one hand, there is a any drive to belong and often we compete with our any drive for uniqueness. But clearly there's individual differences.

Some people are clearly weighted more to the other. You know, they're clear there are people who have very very high you need for uniquaus and actually don't care as much about belonging, whereas those who are obsessed with belonging, and

those people don't tend to be as creative. I don't think if you're if you're too much in that direction, because then you're just you're never going to take risks well, and you know, it's it's it's it's difficult for people who feel the pressure to conform because they never get to access that part of them that is great. So I start with the problem with the belief that everybody has an inherent creative side everybody, you know, for me,

I didn't know. I never was called creative until my thirties. I mean really, I mean I got c in my art class, and you know, I never thought of myself

as creative. And then I got into design thinking and George Kempball taught me all about design at the d School at Stanford, and all of a sudden, well, I feel like I'm a totally creative But now I'm like, you know, that's sort of what I do is creativity, but sort of, and so what you do And so that was all there waiting to be unlocked, and it had to be unlocked through a lot of cultural pressures and you know, should you be a venture capital investor

and should you do the safe things in life? You know, I have a lot of stories to share about that. But it's hard. It's hard because you know, we're we're all you know, in this post, in this industrial post industrial world. We're all taught to be focused on a

particular function from a pretty early age. And you know, there's a there is a very real sense of fear that people can get lost on that you know machine that's chugging along, and so there's there's very real reasons why, you know, conformity from early stages makes sense from a security standpoint. What I'm saying with black Sheep is like, hey, be the outsider, be different. The only way you can do that is in community with other black sheep across disciplines.

Let's empower each other. And then if we can do that, then we can really start, you know, hopefully to ripple into the conformity puzzle. Yeah, it's a really good point. It really is about finding your your clan, so to speak. Everybody needs everybody needs that. We all need that, right If everyone, I mean, if if everyone tomorrow decided they're going to become Peter Sims black sheeps, then they would all conform technically, right, that's right. It would be borant,

it be the black sheeps would be really boring. So we need society needs a certain amount to be black sheep, a certain amount. Two what what what? What are the white the white sheep doing? They're they're just following the societal script in a way, or expectations to me, to me, you know, like I say, I think most humans have

a great black sheep in them. I think that the people I think of as white sheep or people who are cowards who use to manipulate humanity and who are evil, you know, just you can think of people throughout history who fit that mantra, who are who are just uh, you know, we're just evil. I want to make queer. You're not telling about the animal, because I don't want to offend any white sheep who are listening to this podcast.

You're talking about humans as a metaphor. I just want to make that clear because I have a very large portion of my podcast audience. Are sheep the actual sheep the animal? So I want to just make that clear. That's good that you mentioned this to me. Now, yeah, yeah, I thought I should mention that before this goes any further, before we think you're being racist or anything, or animalist or anything. Yeah, yeah, very good. So this is interesting.

So it's almost like you're saying, like, narcissists are white sheep. It's like, it's very interesting, like you or manipulative like dark triad people, you know, you wear the dark triad people who are you know, Macavelian and narcissistic and psychopathic. What are these people you're saying that you're saying in a way they're actually white sheep. God, I'd have to think about that type. I'm not an expert on all

these typologies. It's it's really it's really more an emphasis on the positive, you know, it's a it's an emphasis on you know, if one time, I'll give you an example. My my my friend Andy, who has been a great peer mentor to me, is Richard Tate who was the who's the founder of Cranium, and I had interviewed him for True North, the first book I did. Accidentally did this book and it was just a wonderful opportunity that fell into my lap to go out and learn from

all these interesting people. And I met with Richard and Howard Schultz in Seattle the same day, Howard Starbucks and Richard and Craney and they're they're both close friends, and I just felt like, wow, these are my this is this is my tribe. These are like I'm feeling something I didn't know. You know, this is inside calling to me. What was it? What? What what? What was it? What

was the commonality between you and them? Well? I think, uh, at the at the core of what Richard is all about and which one I was going to tell you about Black Sheep. You know. So Richard loves his Black Sheep and he's been very supportive. He's got a whole t shirt line that he's developing before us, and he says, you know, it makes me feel like I can be me, I can be human. And you know that to me, to be able to hear that from somebody who's been who's given that gift to me, I mean, it's it's

like it brings emotion. I mean it's like there's there's that humanity that is really hard to find. But if you're you know, there's so many people striving every day courageously to get to that and just be themselves and be able to you know, make a living in this world. I mean, that's that's a heroic undertaking. So you know that that, to me is really what we focus on, is the positive with black sheep. I don't spend a lot of time thinking about white sheep, to be honest

with you, No, I understand. It's just so interesting because it's it's so much in line with humanistic psychology, positive psychology, things that I you know, personally interested in research and

this idea of self actualization. Yeah, and I'm I've been a fascinated student, you know, kind of a layman student of the field of positive psychology and as it's gotten into the you know, into neuroscience, and as that's been more validated as a as a line of research and thinking, and how it's influenced business, how it's influenced government planners, how it's influenced people at the very individual level thinking through how to find meaning in their life without you know,

religion necessarily being the centerpiece. So I think it's a it's a movement, huge movement that is changing the world. And yeah, I would say, you know, Richard and and Howard humanists as best I can tell, And so yeah, that would be a common threat of values. And I think the other thing is that there are different types of entrepreneurs. And I know from working a venture capital

there are certain entrepreneurs who are very pragmatic. I just want to they could they could be working in a in a in a mattress business, or they could be working in a poster business, or they could be working They don't really care. They just want to turn into a good business. And I went to business school with a lot of people like that. And then there are entrepreneurs who have to really be passionate about their idea and really create it. And I call these entrepreneurs more

artistic entrepreneurs. And I would say Howard and Richard are both those types. And I feel like that's more the camp that I would fall in personally. So I think that's those are two. Yeah. Yeah, I'm just trying to think about I keep thinking, I'm sorry, I keep thinking about with the white sheep, So what if there's a bunch of white sheep who if self actualization is a fundamental human drive of human nature, and you have lots and lots of white sheep who in their hearts really

want to express their unique self more. But there's an individual differences variable there, maybe shyness or maybe anxiety, fear, things that are holding them back. I mean, shouldn't we empower them too? Absolutely? I mean so they could be kind of converts, right, I mean, you'll accept the white sheep who want to be black sheep. Yeah, you know,

I don't, like I say, I don't. It's hard for me to go around labeling people as white sheep because I just don't think in those terms, really there's sheep inside of them. Basically. Yeah, I feel that way. I feel like there are certain people where you know, it's just like I mean, like I've been I've been working on an assignment with on violent extremism with the White House,

and it's been a pretty pretty interesting assignment. It came to through through other members of soil Can Guild, and I sort of look at these some of these people, I say, it's pure evil. You know, it's just like that's white sheep to me. But you know, for people who are just wanting to take their own path and and and and wanting to you know, start taking the first steps towards it, I think the best thing you can do is hang out with people who are creative.

So when I came out of business school, I wanted to do something more more, more entrepreneurial. And it was very hard to get to that. It took years of you know, some very dark years, but I just I hung out with entrepreneurs and with artists and and then it became very natural for me to take that path.

It was it was like, it was very validating. And so for those for those types of people, I hope that Black Sheep in different cities, we can have outposts, for example, in different cities to help people who are kind of wanting to be more creative, to kind of bridge more into those circles. I wrote like that, I mean, it's that you're starting a movement. Yeah, you know, it's

just it's very organic. So it's it's fun. We have a lot of fun, and you know, who knows where it will lead, but we're just setting it up so that it has a strong mission and culture and let it go from there. It's great. So part of being a Black Sheep is, would you say, play is a central component of that Black Sheep have. So we definitely we play a lot, and there's there's a huge sense of humor, I think, to the whole culture. But you know, we have five values, we sort of said, and Richard

Tate helped to create these values. It was like the five seeds of curiosity. Curiosity and collaboration and having conviction for ideas and be willing to chase after those. You're willing to make a contribution a positive countriation, basic creative values. Right, we can just say five seeds. And then we said, there's only one rule. You have to spend five percent of your time. Five percent rule, five percent of your time towards social good causes time at least five percent.

You can spend more if you want, right, yeah, at least And that's those are the rules. And you know, no assholes. So those basic guidelines and we're not political, we're social entrepreneurs. Were focused on using creativity to solve problems new ways, and we take we do these operations that we channel our energies. Pretty incredible. You also talk about so we talked about play. You also talk about openness to experience, which I mean you may know is

my that's my favorite. Yes, that's my favorite. If I had to pick one, Yeah, because it's true that this creativity is just connecting things. Well, that's that goes us back to our synthesis conversation we had earlier. But you're like, all I'm doing is integrating. Well, you're also connect that you're connecting, Yeah, connecting. Yeah, absolutely, Yeah, that's sort of how.

That's how my mind is wired, right, Uh, you know, intuitively connecting different whether it's people or ideas or problems to people, to whatever. I mean, that's sort of how. Yeah, that's sort of how I'm wired. Yeah, me too, Now I totally understand. Uh, and I think that this all in terms of connecting things, right, so we can connect the idea of some of little bets. The more little bets you make and you see before you all, you know,

the more risk for the mill, so to speak. You have to connect the dots, right, because you have we can just view everything as just christ for the mill. Yeah, you know, I I personally, I don't. I don't necessarily frame it that way personally. I mean, and I you know, I think it is a great way to frame it, But yeah, how do you think about it? I'm just really curious. I mean, I just you know, I'm a

I'm a peer learner. So whenever I'm talking with someone, I'm always thinking about, you know, what can I what can what can I learn? What can I give? You know? Here, It's just it makes life interesting to be able to do that, and then and then things start to and then the insights pop up later in conversations. I mean, you know, today I was at a company. I was by them on something that they're wrestling with. It's a really interesting company. It's a really interesting set of problems.

And if I think on that whiteboard on the ideas that I shared with them from my view on what they can do, it's spanning many, many experiences and chapters in my life. People, concepts, blah blah blah. And the company was really thirsty for this, I mean, just like they needed this, and so yeah, it just kind of all comes together. But I love the way John Donahoe put it when I interviewed him for True to Dorothy said, just learn a little bit from a lot of people.

And you know, don't think of anyone person as a mentor, but everyone can be a mentor, you know. Yeah, and you do. You talk in your book about the importance of networking with people from different backgrounds, all these things to me is to seem like it's all connected to connecting dots. Right, you can connect dots through ideas, through people through To me, it comes down open is to experience and curiosity. Yeah right, I'm curious when I see

open is to experience. By the way, I curiosity is the central aspect exploration and curiosity that that's what holds openess to experience together. So I'm you know, on that note, I think it's really important that I make this one point, and that is sure by virtue of this strange job

that I've had. I've met all these leaders throughout you know, my work in venture capital and as an author, and I'm always struck by how the best leaders, the best entrepreneurs, whether it's Howard Schultz or chef Pipkin who started Balkan, or Wendy Cobb, the best of the best that I think of as the best leaders, they're all or ed Capbell is one of my favorites of Pixar. They're so curious and you know, they don't there's no ego. You know, they well they have egos, but they don't present that

in front of the interaction that we're having. You know, like Howard Howard. If I send Howard an email, as I've had a few times on the topic, he will you know, he's he's called me up and said I want to talk with you about this, and he will go through the details. And you know, Ed Capbell had to learn how to do book publishing from scratch, and he just like literally turned to me, somebody who's you know, nobody compared to Ed Capbell, and he said, you know,

how do I figure all this out? And and I just feel like there's that humility to be able to listen that and ask the right questions and to listen that you know, you can probably get away with like Steve Jobs probably wasn't the best listener. I'm sure he wasn't at all. So you know, there are few people

who can get away with that. But most people are really shooting themselves in the foot if they aren't taking every opportunity to learn, you know, and and and and having their ego getting the way of insight that could help them do their do their job and lead their company much better. So it's a philosophical point, but I also feel like there's a whole prat practical. You know, there's practicality behind it too. I'm sorry, what do you say?

I stopped listening? No, don't, I'm joking. I'm joking, joke. Who's the audience here? What do you mean? This is? Is? This is? Where does this go? Is this whole world? The whole world on on? Through iTunes or through are you iTunes? Scientific American? Oh my gosh. Why. I know you've got a huge following, so I hope that I'm not You're killing this. No, isn't he killing this? No, You're totally killing this. By the way, you got my joke when I said, what do you say? Right? Yeah, okay, okay.

I want to make it clear I was actually listening. I was just waiting for you to stop talking so I could make that joke. I was like, give me the punch light. Yeah yeah. I was like, yeah, no, you you're going to get your I'm going to promote this up to Kazoo. It's it's good, it's really good. Yeah. I want to talk to you a little about like educational implications of all of this, because this is obviously

something I'm deeply interested in. You know, you have lots of black sheep in classroom that we label with all sorts of things a d D blah blah, you know, dyslexia blah blah blah. I imagine a lot of black sheep that are part of your your you know you've identified. I bet a lot of them have, you know, struggled through certain things. Life hasn't been easy, right, So yeah, I'd love to I'd love to talk to you a little bit more about what we can do to support

those those folks. Amen. It all goes back to education, as I said earlier, and I think you're right. I think the people who have taken you know, the creative there are so many challenges to the creative path. When I was in the second grade, you know, my teacher gave us all these worksheets to do long division multiplication, all this worksheet after worksheet after worksheet, and all I wanted to do was clout play here. I just wanted to be a kid too, and so I eventually got

kicked out of that class. You know, that was sort of the It was like this, you know, the first little challenge of my my young life was getting kicked out of this class and you know, out of the It was a you know kind of a called it a gate class an advanced class, and then I was you know, after that, I was like, you know, just a regular kid, which is fine, but I was wondering, like, why why was I no longer with that group of people I've been with for a few years, you know.

So it was like, I think there's just there's a lot of there's a lot of that. I've been really drawn to what I've learned about Montssori and programs like that that encourage young kids to follow their curiosity, uh and too, you know, as as as best as possible within some guidelines, you know, learn how to be self

learners at a very early age. And I find that I wrote an article about this in the Wall Street Journal called the Montessori Mafia, which is probably a thousand emails about because every every mother and you know, every every wife has sent their you know, husband this article and who's interested in this type of creativity and education?

And so I've learned more about Montessori and you know, again I'm not a researcher, obviously, but anecdotally, I have not encountered only one or two cases where people say, yeah, Montessori was detriment to my education because it was a structure. I've heard such good things. Yeah, you know, and so why the mafia? Oh, it was an article about how the Google founders and Jeff Bezos and like jo a child,

they're all they're all monasori draps. Actually I didn't come up with the title for this piece that the editors of the Wall Street Journal did, but it just made this case. There's this whole posse of creative people that happened to be Montessori grats. So it's a well titled article for viral you know, for virality. But yeah, you would know about this better than me, Scott, Like, how can we how can we get some of those mindsets and the growth mindset and you know, the the the

the the nourishment of creative curiosity. Yeah, empowered from a younger age. That's that's a longer term project that I'd love to collaborate with you on with the Black Sheet Foundation. Oh my gosh, yes, yes, I mean I'm deeply interested in the value of play and holding off and postponing the formal instruction, you know, in kindergarten and preschool and even first grade, holding it off as much as long as possible, and having play and curiosity be the main

drivers of youth, and then it leads the foundation. I mean, there's some really fascinating research coming out showing that when you do hold off, you find better learning outcomes on reading comprehension. For instance, there's this great study in New Zealand that found that to be the case when the late the quote label. You know, those who were in these environments where they're given more opportunity for discovery and play at a younger age. This stuff is it's really important,

you know, it's not Yeah, it's life. It's life calling type of important. Yeah, what kind of what do you say? Life? It's a life calling for me. Yes, yes, help address this education, you know. Yeah, yeah, I would love to discuss potential collaborations. That'd be exciting, and it's and not just play, but appreciate, valuing and rewarding creativity is another

big angle aspect of this. If you change the structures of an educational environment, so so instead of like a report card where you there's any such thing as failure, everything is, you know, revisable. So I'm a big fan of making a revisable world, you know, because that's what basic. Yeah, I mean, all the research we've seen from again, Carol Dwacker, deliberate practice would support that, you know, so that the little just screaming at us, all saying parent differently and

teach differently, and the systems are just very slow to change. Yeah, they really are. And and we're not. You know, we're rewarding learning knowledge as a which is okay to a certain degree, but there's hardly any reward for creating new knowledge. And yes, I just I'm returning back now in my head to an original thing you said in the beginning of this whole talk, this whole talk about predicting the future,

invent the future. And you know, when you invent the future, then you have a whole bunch of other people trying to predict the implications of it, but letting them be like maybe a whole bunch of white sheep are predicting the implications, but be the black sheep who invents it. Yeah, yeah, great, create the create a safe place for people to be human from the early stages of their life, and you know, as much as possible, support them to find their you know,

find their self calling yeah, find them. You know, I always thought that when we were doing the research on True North, we got into the histories of all these one hundred and twenty five people we interviewed, and there were some people who came out of high school with a pretty high degree of self awareness. And I thought, that's pretty interesting that person from a young age had a high degree of self awareness and that helped them

in everything they didn't like. And I thought, you know, when I came to of high school, I had no self awareness, very little. And so yeah, I mean, we just we need to create everything from safe spaces to cultures to systems that help, you know, nourish, nourish that human potential. I think everything everything you're doing, Scott is

pulling the ore in that direction. And so from a research standpoint, there's just now a huge movement that I think is inevitably trickling over into educators, policymakers, business leaders, and it's maybe, you know, maybe our job to try to help amplify that. Yeah. I think that's a a worthy job. That's great. Yeah, it takes team effort. Basil, do you want to have any question? Do you have any questions? This is your neque opportunity for you to ask Peter anything is on your mind. Yeah, sure, I

mean by the way. We're bringing in one of my students here on the podcast. First time I've ever done this on my podcast where I've had another voice here. This is Basil Jackson. Yeah, so I guess one of the questions going through your book. You know this this might be kind of out there, but I know you look at different types of I guess creativity. But I'm wondering, you know, is there is there any way that you think that you can compare, you know, a group or

an individual's creativity to that of another person's. You know, is there any way to rank creativity? You know, do you believe that it is possible? If you know, or it is really there's no measure of you know, objective

measure of someone's creativity versus another groups. That's a good question. Well, I think yes, it's possible for sure, because as individuals, we all say that's creative, and that's coming from some definition of creativity, and you know it's my definition is you're putting new ideas together in a way that's fresh.

I mean, for example, I just got an email right before this call from my co founder, so he can guilt Ory Broflin, who's just a he's just a font of ideas and he's got a batting average of about two hundred, we joke, but he comes up with a couple of great ideas everything. And it's like he said, this thing silicon GILB is by the authors for the readers. I thought, you know, god damn it, that is so good.

That is a fresh new idea, and who knows if it'll end up making it onto our website, but it could just be our tagline for a very long time. That's creativity. The psychologists, you know, the researchers, have their ways of measuring creativity, and you know, I think you know it takes into account generativity and you know, number of ideas that you know, kind of consider a number of problems we consider. We know that you have to come up with a lot of possibilities before you even

know what problems to be solved. You have to do the problem finding before you can do the problem solving. And so by definition, you know you have to, you know, try a lot of routes because you're you're in new territory before you you hone in on board. So I'd say I'm pretty in favor of that definition of measuring

creativity as well. Now that you ask, and I guess, leading off of that, just in your opinion, you know, you're entrepreneur, would you say, in any specific industry, is it harder or easier to you know, let that creativity flourish throughout that industry in terms of you know, with starting a new business or even enhancing a business or you know, a product and offering. Now, that's a great question, and I think the answer to that is one hundred percent. Yes.

There are certain creative, creative industries where people who you know, like this, you know, the process of generating ideas and developing ideas go. So it used to be the advertising world.

Now that world is kind of melt melting down. So those types of people tend to gravitate more towards product roles where they can use the product development ideas from design in their job or they go to you know, of course, we think of music and you know, the storytellers of the world, whether they're movie makers or writers

or what have you. There storytellers. And on the other hand, you have industries where people are doing you know, I have a friend from business school who runs a business that does HR management and it's like, you know, there's just it's it's not a creative it's not a place where there's a lot of yeah, you know, it's just he's yeah, he's pretty creative, but there's not a lot

of creative but a lot of opportunities. Yeah. That said, the places where some of the some of the most creativity is needed, where you know, Black Sheep are kind of needed the most, is to go into places like you know, large financial associations and help people rethink their mindset for the way they go about their job because they're terrified at failure and they want that's like the biggest challenge. They want to get out of that mindset

because it's inhibiting them from doing their jobs. Well, so that sounds good. Well, thanks a lot, Peter. We really appreciate this chat and the really incredible work that you're doing for you're really truly changing the world. So thank you. You are right, it's an honor to be with you guys, and thank you for having me. I'm sorry I have a muffled voice, but I really enjoyed it and I can't I can't wait to follow the series. So thanks for all you're doing. Go Black Sheep. Thanks for listening

to the Psychology Podcast with doctor Scott Barry Kaufman. I hope you found this episode just as performing thought product as I did. Read the show for this episode. For your past episodes, if you go to the Psychology Podcast dot com, h