All that and a bag of chips: Lecturer explores entrepreneurship creativity
Rebecca Carton
The inventor, creator and brand manager of Baked Lays potato chips spoke about the importance of looking inside the box, rather than outside, during his lecture "It Isn't About the Box! Conquering Creativity in the Entrepreneurship Classroom or Business: Why it Fails and How to Win."
Jeffrey Stamp, assistant professor and chairman of entrepreneurship and innovation at the University of North Dakota, addressed an audience of about 200 people about the importance of creativity in entrepreneurship during his speech in the Sun Room of the Memorial Union.
Instead of thinking outside the box, Stamp said people should spend more time focusing on the ideas they have inside their own box. Stamp said this personal box is "your perception of reality at the time."
"One thing that's always very interesting about creativity is that everyone uses clichés when talking about business, and frankly, I'm tired of them," Stamp said. "It really is at a time in our history now where brainstorming no longer works the way it used to. We're not getting outside the box far enough."
Furthermore, Stamp said that, in the business world, people who think negatively are seen as more realistic.
However, even though negative thinking may seem more realistic to some, he said only 10 percent of things people view in a negative fashion ever come to fruition.
"Why are we fixated on reality when all that negative thinking never comes true?" Stamp asked.
Stamp said the technique of brainstorming information has become "ubiquitous" since it began in the 1960s.
"Knowledge is everywhere," he said. "They [creative people] no longer create the way they did."
To prove his point, Stamp gave the audience a hypothetical situation in which each individual was given a million bricks but could not use them as bricks. Some of the alternative uses that were developed were weights, anchors, foundations, pencil holders and awards.
After analyzing the response of the crowd regarding the brick activity, Stamp then talked about having an instinctual thought process.
"You got to be brave and say what comes to mind, because a lot of people have the same box," he said.
Stamp said that, when asked an open-ended creative question, people "instinctively back up," asking themselves what is the right answer. In brainstorming, people don't say half the things they were thinking about.
Stamp said this old idea will not work for the creative process. In today's competitive society, he said, there are two groups of people: the winners and the losers.
"Everybody gets a ribbon. Everybody gets to participate. Everybody sings 'Kumbaya.' Everybody's a winner," he said jokingly. "That's not how the real world operates."
Stamp said that in this new environment of pervasive knowledge, the new generation of entrepreneurs, "the millennials," have different ideas of creativity than those of older generations.
"We are keepers of knowledge, they are seekers of knowledge," he said. "Creativity does require knowledge."
Stamp said creative ideas and knowledge are all that is necessary to be a successful entrepreneur, however. Time, motivation and taking advantage of opportunity are also crucial in the process.
"We have to understand that there's a process discovery approach to knowledge," he said.
"Let that be and see if it comes up to be anything of value."
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