CHAPTER 14
Bring In the Cirque de l’Imagination
Innovation comes when the wrong things are used in the wrong way at the wrong time but by the right people.
—NIELS BOHR, NOBEL PRIZE–WINNING PHYSICIST
Disney theme parks leave me happy and joyful; Cirque du Soleil performances leave me stunned and in complete awe. Disney is an enchanting experience; Cirque du Soleil is like-nothing-else amazing. Disney is warmly clever; Cirque is ingenuity on steroids.
Cirque du Soleil performances make you want to eat the icing and skip the cake. Every one of their twenty-plus different performances in almost three hundred cities, from The Beatles LOVE in Las Vegas to Varekai in Vienna, is laced with color, acrobatics, dance, and over-the-top music. It is a sensory menagerie. There is little predictable about any performance. Instead, you get head-turning surprise every few minutes. Consider the next encounter you have with your customer aimed at tapping imagination for an innovative solution. What if you approached it as a performance, not as a meeting? What if it were a circus of imagination?
Imagination is accessed in two ways—it is invited and it is attracted. Invited is like a printed request to attend a party; attracted is more like the bakery that pumps the aroma of cookies in the oven into the street nearby. Much of this book has focused on inviting your customer to unleash their imagination through crafting a relationship of respect, trust, and acceptance. The “Cirque de l’Imagination” is designed to attract imagination from wherever it can be found. And it is the Animal House of innovation.
There are many features that make a circus a fitting analogy. From the moment the circus ringmaster says, “Ladies and gentlemen, children of all ages …,” you know you are in a welcoming, classless environment. From the tease of the ticket taker to the simplicity of the sawdust floor, it is a scene of pure joy. When animals from faraway places parade before your eyes, you experience the world of imagination in a backdrop of magic. When trapeze aerialists put your heart in your throat, the otherworldness of their bravery leaves you inspired. And we often leave with a souvenir to remind us of our astonishing experience.
Bring On the Cotton Candy
Cotton candy is a metaphor for unique food for imagination. Cotton candy is simply a spun-sugar confection—liquified sugar, sometimes with food coloring added, is spun through tiny holes. In Australia it is called “fairy floss.” Its magic is in its simplicity since it contains few ingredients and is served on a simple paper cone. Here are a few simple cotton candy– like techniques to add to the circus of the imagination.
RANDOMIZE STIMULATION
An ideation meeting with the leadership of a company that owned several hundred malls took an unexpected turn. The meeting was with a group of tenants to brainstorm ways to create a new mall experience that would drive traffic into the stores. Ideas spun out of control when the marketing director had their cafeteria deliver a live crab to the meeting room. Throwing it in the middle of the table, he asked, “What does this crab say about our customer experience and how we need to respond?” (See the sidebar at the end of this chapter.)
ELEVATE INNOCENCE
A West Coast bank was working with a group of customers on a Saturday to reinvent their branches to become more like a fun watering hole for customers. The leader of the meeting arranged with an elementary school to bring a group of first and second graders to the meeting to help with their discussion. Each child was paired with a customer to start the ideation that then expanded to the total group. Years later, employees still talk about that experience.
START AT THE END
Remember the Aesop’s fable where the crow wanted to drink from the water jug but the water was too low to reach? The crow brought the water up to him by dropping rocks in the jug until the water level was high enough to drink. Reversing the starting point can provide a fresh perspective that can lead to a novel solution.
GET USED TO ABSURDITY
A consultant was working with a manufacturing company that had a challenge with turnover and absenteeism among employees who performed mind-numbing, repetitive work not yet robotized. The consultant suggested first brainstorming famous historical characters and then selecting one through whose eyes to consider the turnover challenge. When Jack the Ripper was the chosen character, someone immediately suggested Jack would cut off the legs of the factory workers so they could not leave. The absurd idea led to the decision to recruit more employees with physical challenges since their turnover records were much better than employees without physical challenges.
Send In the Clowns
“I remember in the circus learning that the clown was the prince, the high prince,” wrote Roberto Benigni. “I always thought that the high prince was the lion or the magician, but the clown is the most important.” The sentiment works for innovation. When children have a backyard birthday party, they don’t invite aerialists or acrobats, they include a clown. It is a catalyst for innocent ideation and unfiltered joy. The concept can include creating what entrepreneur and master disruptor Miki Agrawal calls “containers of playfulness.” These are deliberate steps to ramp up liberty of viewpoints and welcoming mats for wackiness.
Clowns are the ambassadors of silly. They make us think anything is possible and everything is okay. For the circus, they are sent in after a dramatic trapeze act or a daring knife-throwing act to signal to the audience that the circus is fundamentally about ingenious fun. Clowns are used in rodeos to distract the bull so the bull rider can escape after being thrown. They signal to the audience, “Hey, this might seem serious and scary but it is all about entertaining fun!”
It starts with taking a feature from table 1 and brainstorming ways it might directly apply to the customer’s issue or challenge.1
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1. Healthier 2. Instructional 3. Faster 4. Slower 5. Smarter 6. Safer 7. Romantic 8. Funnier 9. Five star 10. More responsive 11. More inclusive 12. A new application |
13. Quieter 14. Greener 15. Smaller 16. Bolder 17. Entertaining 18. Mysterious 19. Elegant 20. More invisible 21. More magical 22. More efficient 23. More cultured 24. Eliminated |
25. Divided into parts 26. Done alone 27. Completely tailored 28. Done in reverse 29. Done remotely 30. Done while you wait 31. Done with a guide 32. More patriotic 33. More feminine/ masculine 34. More neighborly 35. Done completely alone |
TABLE 1. What if it were …
McDonald’s made their quick-service restaurant smaller, which enabled it to fit in airports and shopping centers. Arm & Hammer found a new application of their baking soda product and came out with a toothpaste. Home Depot made their customers smarter by adding do-it-yourself workshops. Quick-service restaurants have made service faster through apps that let customers place orders remotely. Hotels have enabled guest check-in to be done completely alone by providing phone apps for remote check-in and keyless room entry with the smartphone.
Add a Wild Sideshow
Traveling carnivals were not complete without sideshows. When I was a kid, we called them freak shows because of their propensity to include very odd people and animals. There were fire eaters, sword swallowers, and daredevil shows featuring motorcycles and sky-high dives into tiny pools. They were a unique, creative opportunity to witness the wild side. Every Cirque du Soleil show has some component that borders on the weird, even grotesque. Innovation needs that same type of freedom to explore rarely visited corners of our imaginations. Table 2 is a more advanced version of the previous exercise from my book Take Their Breath Away.2 It involves choosing a character from the list and applying it to the customer’s challenge.
A large law firm asked me to help them think out of the box about ways their client experience could be more positively memorable. They decided to use their lobby and reception area as their initial target of focus. And they elected to involve their clients in idea generation. They chose ten items from table 2 and put each on a separate index card that read, “We want to make your reception area a better experience and we need your ideas. Using the phrase on the card, write on the back one idea we should consider.” Each client was given one card as they arrived for an appointment. The result? A “bird’s eye view” (number 35) became a bird cage with love birds in the lobby, a “type of food” (number 25) became a giant gum-ball machine with a bowl of shiny pennies beside it, a “part of a circus” (number 38) became a popcorn machine in the waiting area, and a “piece of furniture” (number 20) became a cowhide-covered armchair that quickly turned into a topic of conversation.
Join the Circus and Run Away with Ideas
The Big Apple Circus in Lincoln Center in New York City is a place of nostalgia overload. It is a rendition of the old-fashioned Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey type of circus that used to come through small towns by rail. The highlight of the circus was the performers who rode on the backs of fancy horses and invited small kids from the audience to help with their act. While there were obvious safety precautions at play, it was clear from the faces of the children they were “in the circus,” not “at the circus.” The packed audience were attracted, as they were vicariously in the middle of the ring with the children.
Comedian Johnny Carson was fond of saying, “Never follow an act with animals or children.” It speaks to the charm and creativity of little kids. The director of the local ASPCA humane society also taught a Sunday school class for elementary-aged students. She asked for their help on Sunday in identifying creative ways to encourage families to adopt a dog. One student suggested that if a family adopted a dog plus donated to the humane society, they would get a free dog house. The director went to the local hardware store, and they agreed to build free dog houses of all sizes as a community service project.
But the next week the student (a.k.a. customer), after hearing about her teacher’s arrangement with the hardware store, had another suggestion. Get the store to offer to put the new dog’s name on the front of the dog house (or let a kid spray-paint it on with stencils). It proved to be a way for the hardware store to get customers into their store, so they placed all their dog supplies right beside the paint station at the back of the store for impulse buys. The humane society found homes for dogs, the customer got a free personalized dog house, and the store got more traffic—a win, win, win. How can you involve children with your customer ideation opportunity?
Bring In the Cirque de l’Imagination: The Partnering Crib Notes
The process of innovation is to get the noisy, logical left brain to hush up so the shy and quiet, creative right side can be heard. There are techniques like deferring judgment and freewheeling, and there are tricks like teasing the right brain out with a toy, child, or story. Forcing the brain to look at a feature (larger, smaller, etc.) helps focus the right brain to unleash ideas. Changing the venue can help us see challenges with a new perspective. Remember, the left brain will get a turn at judging the pragmatism and practicality of an idea. But if it speaks first, you will never get the gifts of the imagination on the right.
The greatest circus professional in history was P. T. Barnum. He said, “Clowns are the pegs on which the circus is hung.” His quote was intended to anchor the circus to the innocence of a child, the same venue where innovation lives. Cirque de l’Imagination admits only children or people willing to play like children. Ticket, please!
Damn everything but the circus! Damn everything that is grim, dull, motionless, unrisking, inward turning, damn everything that won’t get into the circle, that won’t enjoy. That won’t throw its heart into the tension, surprise, fear and delight of the circus, the round world, the full existence.
—E. E. CUMMINGS
FEATURES OF A CRAB AND THEIR IMPLICATIONS
Rejuvenates a lost claw. We must develop backup service lines in case our primary line falters.
Can see 360 degrees. We must improve our market intelligence.
Can move slowly. We cannot afford this. We must downsize so we can react more quickly to the market.
Has distinct features. We need to develop a distinctive package that differentiates our service more clearly.
Is a scavenger. We need to allocate resources to see what other uses and markets we can find for our services.