Stimulating Creativity

Some management studies surprise me no end. Take this study on How To Stimulate Creativity? for instance. "Go live abroad", it says. Immersing yourself in local experiences for a prolonged period helps stimulate creativity. People who are bi-lingual or tri-lingual are found to be more creative in the study.

I have no doubt it does. Different inputs fire different neurons in your brain. variety of experiences help trigger creative juices. You do not have to live abroad for that. Just do things differently.

Do you drive to your office everyday? Do you take the same route? Try a different one. Or go to office in a bus for a month. Or better still pedal to office.

Do you love thrillers? Go to your local bookshop or the library and pick up a genre that you would never think of reading.

You can't stand classical music? Listen to Carnatic / Hindustani / Wsetern classical for a month. Oh! You are already into classical music? Listen to Jazz then.

Learn a new language on your own.

You do not have to go live abroad to become creative. You can create your own different environment at home. And I promise you, each of my suggestions given above will increase your creativity. It is the new experience and the ability to weave the new experiences into your daily life that makes one creative.

And if creativity was linked to number of languages, then all Indians would be overflowing with creativity. Any educated Indian would know at least 3 languages, if not more.

Wait a minute! Perhaps, we Indians are really very creative.

Do Your Children A Favour

This new year please do not take a resolution. You know very well that it will not last more than a week. Instead take your children to the nearest library and make them a member. We have been members of the British Library in Bangalore for the last 4-5 years. And I have seen my children fall in love with books.

A library does things to your kid that you might not even suspect.

Consider these ...

• Books: That's what libraries are for, aren't they? The greatest gift you can give your child is the love of books. It's like you are teaching them how to fish. And the earlier it starts the better.

• Constraint of numbers: One is spoilt for choice in a library. Heaps of books. But the number you can borrow is only, let's say, 5. I can actually see my children taking decisions ... which ones to take this time? They look at the book, read the back cover, turn a few pages to sample and decide. It is an amazing feeling to see them decide. Blink comes into play.

• Constraint of time: This comes to play if the library is located some distance away from your house. We can go to the British Library only once a month (it is about 20 km away). The children need to chose correctly. What if it turns out to be a boring book? And what if I finish reading the books quickly and then have to wait for a couple of weeks before we can go back to the library. At first I saw them picking up thin books - easy read ones. Then real fat books. Over a period of time I can now see them picking up combination that is just right.

• Trade-off: There are times when I pick up a book. By the time I choose, they already would have picked up 5 books of their choice. My book would then bring in a new dimension of decision making. Which book can they now 'sacrifice'? Believe me, it is not an easy decision for them. In a small way, this nudges them out of their comfort zone for a brief period of time.

• Zone of silence: This is the pay back. From my point of view this is the greatest advantage. The two boys need to talk less for a period of time. They also cannot monkey around when they are in a library. What else does a parent of two hyper-active kids want?

So, do your children (and yourself) a huge favour. Read this blog and head straight to the library. And see your children blossom.

The Biggest Book Deal In US Publishing History Is A Threat To Amazon

The greatest threat of the online library deal that Google has struck with leading publishers (see here) is to Amazon. Amazon's Kindle is already a big hit - not because of its design or utility (in fact detractors claim that it is a piece of lousy design and are awaiting Apple to come up with something similar) but because of the content. Amazon's huge "book-self" is not easily beaten. But if "readers [are] able to search and read snippets from millions of out-of-print and copyrighted books on the internet with the option to buy online access to them" then Kindle then becomes a commodity. And if Sony makes a deal with Google or if Google come with their own version of e-reader or if one can download these books in any e-reader, then Kindle will face tough times ahead. In fact, I see a threat to paid online encyclopaedia, such as Encyclopaedia Britannica, also. Wikipedia will perhaps survive.