Fueling Innovation: Habits to Spark Creativity and Ideas

Amy Brann  00:00

Think you’re too busy to be creative, you’re not alone. In fact, many of us feel that between the back to back meetings, deadlines, responsibilities, innovation is a luxury we just don’t have time for but what if creativity isn’t about having more time? What if it’s about how you use the time that you already have? Today? We’re diving into the neuroscience of creativity. Why your brain thrives on Play, curiosity and even boredom. We’ll explore why top companies prioritize innovation, how the brain forms creative connections, and most importantly, how you can boost your own creative thinking even when your schedule is packed. So whether you want your team to generate better ideas, feel stuck in a creativity rut or wonder why schools don’t seem to value innovation. This episode is for you. Let’s get started.

Dr. Jessie Gulsin  00:46

Amy, I’m going to be taking notes on this one, because I do struggle with this one. I have to say, in terms of feeling creative, the time aspect, definitely the kind of job that I’m in, I’m very guilty of thinking that I’m, you know, there’s no capacity to be creative in my job, and I have been proven wrong by colleagues on this one, I have to say. But tell us, how can we come up with more creative ideas, especially when we think we’re too busy?

Amy Brann  01:16

Well, it’s a tricky one, isn’t it? Be the reason that I’m convinced that we can be more creative is that we’ve got all of the brain regions that are required for creativity and the networks. So when the different brain regions work together that are important for creativity, while they are underutilized, I would argue, in schools, generally, the majority of the time. And that then follows through into organizations. And it can be difficult with certain jobs and roles for those networks to be strengthened and utilized regularly. The brain is plastic, and those networks can be reinvigorated and re strengthened. And I think we have to redesign how we’re doing things in organized in schools and organizations to enable us to do this. So we’re thinking about the default mode network, the salience network, the dopaminergic system, to a degree, and then we also need to be aware of the hippocampus and memory storing and retrieval and the prefrontal cortex when we’re thinking about these things. But the need is really there. You know, we live in a time where we want innovative approaches. We need innovative approaches to several of the world’s challenges. McKinsey say 87% of their executives believe innovation is essential to the organizational success. PwC has just found that the most innovative at the most innovative companies, 79% possess well defined innovation strategies, while 47% of the least innovative ones do that’s interesting. And Deloitte found that 78% of millennials consider innovation to be a key factor when choosing an employer. So there’s desire out there for it. But I guess I’m really curious, from your perspective, why is it that you think time mean and lack of time means that you can’t be as innovative as you’d like to be.

Dr. Jessie Gulsin  03:28

I guess it all depends on what you think innovation actually means. And from my perspective, when I think about innovation, I think, you know, having that, that brain space and having quiet time to just let ideas flow, and, you know, let thoughts come to my head that are buried or in my subconscious that may not be at the forefront of my mind. And when you’re busy and you’ve got multiple tasks, you’ve got multiple colleagues asking you questions you’ve got back to back clinics or meetings. When do you allow your brain that space and time to be innovative? I mean, how would you define innovation? I guess is the first question.

Amy Brann  04:18

I agree with you completely. So innovation, the definitions I’ve seen are around creating something different and of value. So it can’t just be different but useless. It needs to provide some value to be considered innovative. And I also totally agree with you that what you’re describing the mind wandering time when the default mode network is likely to feel most active or not feel but be most active when we’re resting, when we’re bored, when we’re going for a long walk, when we’re showering, when we’re free, writing, all of those things you’re absolutely right are not doing the tasks that most often are valued in your job and in. Many jobs, and that is the problem. So while we, while I would put forward, there’s no point in wishing we had more time, because we don’t have more time. We all have the 24 hours in a day. That is a hard limit. But the question is, what we do with that time? And currently, the focus on rinse and repeat of tasks is not good enough for serving the outcomes that we desire. So having innovation strategies, a good innovation strategy will work out how people are going to stop doing some things to enable them to start doing some of that thinking. So that’s, that’s the preference, for sure. And if we can, if we can achieve that, then that’s ideal. But the the backup, almost option, is that your brain will still be going into these default mode network moments or chunks of time, and if you prime yourself well, it’s possible that you could still have insight in those times. I mean, I know you are very busy, but do you still shower Jesse?

Dr. Jessie Gulsin  06:19

They are very brief these days, because they are constantly interrupted by my and my child. But you know, actually saying that a lot of my, you know, my, my, I would like to say good ideas do come to me in the shower, in those precious few minutes, five minutes of showering. So, I mean, I guess you’re right. I guess you know that is challenging my initial beliefs about this topic, in that it hasn’t then taken me very long to shower, and in that time, I’ve then thought up the solution or the answer to something that’s been playing on my mind, and it’s when I least expect it that it’ll come to me. So I think, you know, there’s, yeah, there are things to be challenged in what I’ve said, and I think you’re right in that that the mind wandering is important, but it can be built into our day. It’s just about thinking about the best time to do that, and it doesn’t have to take very long.

Amy Brann  07:13

It doesn’t have to take very long, because the truth is, your brain’s likely to have been working on a problem, a challenge, without your conscious awareness. So once you’ve sort of primed it, set it, ask your brain to start investigating. It will have been but if you’re if all of your thinking power and noise is rightly occupied with treating patients or looking after a child, then it’s probably not going to have the space it needs to pop up into your conscious awareness. So, but then when you get in that shower, your brain’s on it, and it’s like, right? Jess, we’ve been working offline on all of these ideas that you’ve had and these challenges, and this is what we’ve got for you. And you’re like, ding, ding, ding. Oh, excellent. Thank you brain and out you go. So in your context, at the moment, I would still be championing for, you know, default mode time in the world of work, so that we can capitalize on that. But while you’re not in control of that side of things, you are in control of your showers to a degree, and of the competing priorities in that those moments too, but where you can protect them, and you can keep trusting your brain to come up with some of these insights during that time, and then, I guess, some other things, which may or may not be plausible in in your life Stage and with your roles, but maybe for others, but our physical environment is is the evidence base shows that it’s really quite influential on our creative thinking. Novelty stimulates the brain’s reward system, and these can be small changes. So you could still do your productive work, but could you do it in a different space. Maybe a lot of people can find that that can trigger fresh thinking. Could meetings be held in different spaces? I don’t know whether you’ve ever worked anywhere different, or are you pretty tied to your consulting room? Yeah.

Dr. Jessie Gulsin  09:15

I mean, with my current role, I am pretty much tied. But I, you know, I do recall, you know, this triggers a memory for me of writing one of my dissertations, when I was learning to become an educator, and I was writing my PG cert dissertation, and I would go to various cafes and just jump around various quirky cafes in Brighton and hope. And that was really helpful. It was, it was great for having some pauses and people watching, but those kind of little changes in settings often did trigger different thought processes. So yeah, you’re right. I mean, I guess in my workplace at the moment, I’ve got to think about more kind of creative ways to then incorporate that technique. So I don’t know, maybe I could move some of my thoughts. Venture around or something in my room, I don’t know, but, you know, I think sometimes even starting my day with a particular cup, cup from my hot beverage can set me, set me on my way for a good day or a bad day, which sounds really silly, but yeah, I guess making small changes is a good start.

Amy Brann  10:20

Yeah, and it might be that in the team environment, you could practice some divergent thinking for many humans, as we get to it’s age seven and eight, our ability to generate different uses for common items nosedives off a cliff, but we can still practice our ability to do this form of thinking, which then could strengthen our abilities to do it in other scenarios, the confirmation bias and the expertise bias really can make US cling to old ways of doing things. And you know, I know you will see patients where the old ways of doing things just isn’t going to cut it. There’s there’s lots of complexity, and you do need to be able to think outside the box. And the strong foundation of medical knowledge is vital. But we also then need these incredibly knowledgeable people to be able to apply that knowledge, but also go, is there anything else that I can grasp on to bring to this problem, to try a different way forward? And there’s other things that have been shown to support people looking to boost their creativity, experimenting with the yes and technique that you find in improv to encourage the additive thinking, rather than dismissing ideas too soon, just experimenting with where things can go, and the cross industry learning can has been shown to help creative problem solving. So I think we both experienced it when we had children. Prior to that, we’d both been fairly focused in our respective fields, not necessarily world experts on dinosaurs, which we are still not yet, and space, but it does when you have other people in your lives, they do expose you to different things, don’t they? And that can really help to broaden views, not necessarily that you’re going to use dinosaur facts to help patients, but you never know. You never know.

Dr. Jessie Gulsin  12:27

But it is that collaborative working, isn’t it? And you know, we do this a lot in medicine, and I’m sure in other industries, it’s the same, but having these multidisciplinary team meetings where various professionals from sectors of healthcare, we all get together and we discuss a complex patient case, and you know, there’s a lot to be learned from our colleagues, and often brainstorming these ideas with colleagues is when solutions then come about. So not working in isolation. Yes, we’re autonomous practitioners as GPS, but we place a lot of emphasis and value on having these MDT discussions so that we can all come together with a common goal in mind, but to kind of pick apart these complex cases. And you know, sometimes the simplest answer is the answer. You know, I try to remind my trainees of something called Occam’s razor, which is a philosophical problem solving principle which suggests that the simplest explanation is usually the closest to the truth. So for example, if a patient is presenting with headaches, yes, there’s going to be a very small percentage which may have a brain tumor. But you know, the most common scenario in the summer, for example, is that they’re dehydrated. So I think having these kind of collaborative discussions, having the, you know, even the briefest moments, just the brainstorm, can be very enlightening.

Amy Brann  13:51

Yeah, I totally agree. And I think something we haven’t really touched on, but is a foundational component is that if we’re looking to come up with more creative ideas, when the brain needs to feel safe, if we’ve got high adrenaline or high cortisol, it under certain circumstances, people can come up with great ideas, but on the whole, they tend not to come up with such good ideas. So we want the psychological safety. We want people’s brains to be able to be online. We want them to be well looked after. You know, if the basic needs, the hydration, the sleep, all of the rest of it, sort of, it’s always the case that if you’ve not got the fundamentals in place, you’re less likely to come up with the good ideas. Some alcohol could be useful in some situations. So for example, one or two units have been shown to reduce prefrontal cortex activity or involvement. And so then other ideas that might. Be more left field. Could come up without that filtering in place, but you can. You can do that in other ways too. For example, getting into the mind wandering state first. And one of, I think the and I think we’ve written on this elsewhere, but one of the biggest myths was the idea that if you get a lot of people in a room together and just tell them to brainstorm, that you’ll get high quality, good outputs. I have seen it done well with, you know, the right frameworks in place, but one of the biggest differences can be if you give people time to write down ideas first, because you reduce the brain the group think, and you reduce the criticism as well. If people are fearful that their idea is just going to be torn to shreds, that can be unhelpful. I have seen idea quotas work well, where you are encouraging a really high number of solutions with absolutely no requirement to unpack the how. You know, let’s think freely and often. Then it’s the pivots that come off that. But those pivots wouldn’t have been stimulated had you not had that outlandish idea that was never practically going to work, but was a good starting point. So I think that can be useful for people. I think there can be tendencies for people to identify either as a creative person or not. And I know I’ve been doing keynotes on this for years, because it doesn’t seem to be an idea that’s gone away yet. But do you do you notice that, either with friends or colleagues, that people, yeah, can fall into one camp or the other?

Dr. Jessie Gulsin  16:52

Yeah, yeah. And actually, you see this as we age, I feel like just like with fear, children don’t have fear when they’re very little, and they then develop the fear. And in some respects, it’s the same with creativity. You know, we’re all capable of being creative. At what point does it then switch off? That’s not because we’re not creative individuals. And we’ve lost, you know, we’ve lost it. I think we’ve just put up these barriers and these kind of extrinsic obstacles, which sometimes isn’t, you know, through fault of our own. It’s often, like you say, if an organization, for example, isn’t open to that creative and innovative ethos, but putting up those barriers ourselves can limit our creativity. So I guess it’s about unlocking that again and and kind of not, not putting yourself in that box of I’m not a creative person, but thinking I am creative, that there are things around me and potentially intrinsically, that that’s limiting my ability to be creative. So I need to put a spotlight on what those are, so that I can remove those obstacles Absolutely.

Amy Brann  18:06

And I think one of the things that all of us can benefit from is asking a quality question, and even constructing a good question can involve creativity. I think we’ve limited what we see creativity. As you know, being able to I still hear people say, Oh, no, goodness, I’m not creative. Can’t draw to save my life. And I think, look, your ability to replicate an apple is probably of less value right now. What we really need is you to construct a question that takes people’s thinking in a different direction, and that you can do so and can be developed, you know. So if we practice our questioning skills as a start, if we practice lateral thinking puzzles, games and exercises that just challenge our assumptions. If being being creative could involve just spotting an inaccurate assumption because you’re seeing something that other people aren’t seeing, and then we come back to sort of that fun and curiosity and play, if we can bring that in that often can spark creativity and make it more likely that we can dive into the divergent thinking we can access the intrinsic motivation to do this. Yeah, really interesting.

Dr. Jessie Gulsin  19:37

I completely agree. And I think the other thing is to, I mean, I tried to do this with my son, and it may backfire on me. Yeah, backfire on me in his future life, but I get him to question everything. You know, don’t just take my word for something. Question everything, be curious. And you know, I think that’s a good start for organizations. It’s a good start for your you know, your colleagues around you, and just being. Curious and encouraging people to just question everything you know, don’t see that as a personal criticism or, you know, a negative see that as a real positive trait, and encourage that in your environment, in your workplace. Yeah, 100%

Amy Brann  20:17

and I something we haven’t talked about, is tolerance to ambiguity, so that could be a barrier, both systemically and personally. And if we think to, I’m always thinking, you know, schools, then sort of early career right through to then leaders. What’s everyone’s experience and touch points with this stuff that we’re talking about, and in schools, very quickly, young people are taught there’s a right answer and there’s a wrong answer and there’s praise and reward for getting the right answer. And sitting in a space of not knowing or wrestling with alternatives is what they spend less of their time doing, you know, if any intentionally, but actually, if we can build up our tolerance to ambiguity from a young age, that would serve us again, then in sort of early career, you need to be getting things right, and you need to be delivering and we need to make sure that managers are praising, acknowledging, recognizing the the other ways that people are contributing, rarely is it on someone’s KPI to deliver the question that redirectionalizes The strategy, and yet it is all of our responsibilities in an organization to be feeding that, and then you’ve got the manager’s role to help people feel safe with ambiguity, because actually, if the brain is resisting that, it would be much harder for it to generate alternative options.

Dr. Jessie Gulsin  22:11

And that’s a really interesting point. I mean, the biggest challenge that I find that my trainees have when they’re coming into general practice, I mean, it’s such a such an exponential, steep learning curve, but the biggest thing that they find challenging is accepting the uncertainty and and being comfortable with that. Because, you know, throughout our careers, particularly in medicine, there’s an answer. You know, there’s some science backed evidence. We we practice evidence based medicine, so when we come across uncertainty in a particular case, it’s really unnerving, but actually, by the time they finish their training, they realize they may not have the answers to everything straight away, but that’s okay, and they’re happy to then sit in That uncertain space knowing that they’re a safe practitioner, and you know they’ve safety netted the patient for any thing that could potentially go wrong. But it is a really uncomfortable position to find yourself in when you’re not when you’re not used to it, and when you haven’t accepted that that is the reality of the situation. So ambiguity and uncertainty, they’re really unnerving, but I think you make a really good point, if we can all become a bit more comfortable with sitting in that space, then we’re more likely to come up with solutions.

Amy Brann  23:35

And I guess what links to this as well is is this challenge that people need to accept that they’re not perfect and be okay with that. Because I’m just thinking like, if you’re going to volunteer ideas, you need to be okay that, like 99% of the ideas are not going to be innovative genius, but, but one may trigger something in someone else, or may trigger something in you that does become hugely valuable, but you have to get out. I know a lot of in a great writers would encourage to just start writing. Don’t worry about perfect like, be un unhinged in be in him. That’s one. But yeah, and just go for it and just produce in that regard, and then something comes out of it that’s genius. Okay, so yeah,

Dr. Jessie Gulsin  24:27

the daily kind of tasks and the and the targets and all these other pressures can impact our ability to adopt that kind of position. So I guess that’s where organizations and those in positions where changes can happen need to maybe think about ways that they could encourage their, you know, their people, to feel comfortable with that.

Amy Brann  24:52

Yeah, I agree. So a couple of different categories of strategy. One is. To yes, if possible, ring fence time within work, time or outside of work, where you’ve got space time for your mind to wander, go to a different environment, practice your lateral thinking and your divergent thinking to generate more options. So strategies on that front, but another category of strategies to think about how you’re using that time that is already ring fenced, for example, for a shower, maybe you get to walk a dog or do some washing up. And could that time be ring fenced, not for more stimulation, so not listening to a podcast in those opportunities, but allowing your mind to free wander and see if it can generate any insight. And even if you’re get building those in, just building that one into your day, then you’ve got more chance of coming up with quality questions that could guide attention or more ideas that could help elevate, refine what’s being done on a daily basis. Or it might even be that you just reflect and that consolidates things, meaning that you’ve then got a stronger base of insight or data points to draw on in the future, as we’ve seen, has been beneficial for you? Yeah, so different strategies, but definitely not believing that people can’t be creative, just that we might need to tweak environments and habits in order to better access the inner creativity that is within you.

Dr. Jessie Gulsin  26:37

Sounds good, amazing.

Amy Brann  26:41

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Dr. Jessie Gulsin  26:54

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