Here is the English translation:

Attached is a short presentation (~15 min) that I was able to deliver at the Summer Universities of one of my clients. It’s about discussing digital transformation, but especially our capacities for adaptation and creativity. This is a text heavily inspired by a speech by John Cleese that I’ve been wanting to translate for ages and which you’ll find at the bottom of the page.

Digital Transformation?

“Digital transformation”, what a big deal!

“Digital transformation”, immediately the grandiose words!

What is a digital transformation? A capacity to grasp all these social networks? Yes, me too, I installed “snapchat” to make the logo appear on my phone and make my daughter believe I was “in”. But I have absolutely no idea how to use it. And yet I’m not an android troglodyte, I’ve already sent over 13,000 tweets. Am I a non-digital person? Not transformable? Has been?

A capacity to grasp all these new technologies? These new uses? Blockchain? Cloud? Bigdata? Microservices? AirBnB ? Uber?

Ah… all these preconceived ideas and false intuitions about “digital transformation”.

Project ourselves to 2026? In 10 years? It’s as if we went back 10 years to 2006… the iPhone and smartphone don’t exist yet, Parisian taxis reign unchallenged, when I travel I go to hotels, and I’m not afraid of having a car accident because another driver saw a virtual pokemon in my lane. So talking about digital in 10 years, what a joke. 70% of jobs will have changed in 10 years. No, in “digital transformation” it’s “transformation” that’s important.

Expertise is knowing how to do something well, a digital expertise in 10 years makes no sense. It’s primarily a transformation. A capacity to evolve, as since the dawn of time. It’s not a know-how that we’re looking for in this perspective, but a know-how-to-be.

Be ready first to transform yourself. To adapt, to think differently. In “digital” people project an idea linked to technology. To an expertise. These famous “digital natives” are especially a generation born in a world where change is palpable before being a digital world. It’s a generation that knows, that lives, the fact that in ten years Yahoo or Nokia are created, dominate the world for a time, and disappear. Its key is not digital, but change, adaptation, and innovation.

Placing yourself in a digital transformation perspective isn’t being an expert, it’s knowing how to understand and accept change, and ideally being an actor in it. Being creative yourself.

Creativity

Do you know John Cleese? You know John Cleese, the Monty Python guy, the one who represents the ministry of silly walks, or the professor in love with a fish named Wanda, well, that John Cleese.

Being creative, John Cleese tells us, is placing yourself in a particular state of mind, …a way of operating…that allows our natural creativity to function. MacKinnon (a researcher at Harvard Business School on creativity) describes this capacity as a facility for play. And so he observes that the most creative are like children. They are capable of playing with an idea, of exploring it, not for an immediate practical objective but just to have fun.

Cleese and he worked together and became fascinated by the fact that we can describe people in their daily work according to two modes: “open” or “closed”. What Cleese tells us is that creativity is not possible in “closed” mode. This “closed” mode is the one in which people find themselves most of the time at work. That moment when deep down we feel the idea that there’s a lot to do, that it must be done, and that we’re going to do it. It’s an active posture, probably a bit anxiety-inducing, but just enough to excite us and give us pleasure in this achievement. In this state we are a bit impatient, and not only with ourselves. This state is a tension, we tend toward something, and not a release like laughter, or humor. It’s a state that can be very beneficial, but it’s a state where we can quickly become very stressed, perhaps a bit manic, but surely not creative.

Conversely the state, the “open” mode is relaxed, detached, without a clear objective, more contemplative, more inclined to humor, more inclined to play. It’s a mood where curiosity makes sense because we’re not seeking to reach a goal quickly. We can play, and that’s what allows our natural creativity to emerge.

Cleese tells that when Alexander Fleming discovered what would become penicillin, he must have been in an “open” state. The day before he leaves a series of culture dishes to let mushrooms or other bacteria grow on them, mold. On the day in question he observes these cultures and discovers that on one of them no mold appeared. If he had been in a “closed” mode, state, he would have stayed focused on the idea: I’m growing mushrooms and bacteria, parasites in dishes, and seeing that one of the dishes doesn’t have any he would have simply thrown it away. Fortunately he was in an “open” state, and thus his curiosity was piqued by the phenomenon. This curiosity led him to penicillin.

In a “closed” state, the dish without parasites makes no sense, in an “open” state, it’s a key.

In which mode are you at work? In which mode should we be to better understand, integrate, adapt, anticipate, bring change and innovation?

Cleese and Mackinnon believe we need five things to reach the “open” mode.

Space.

Time.

More time.

Confidence.

And humor.

Space, a certain isolation, to allow yourself this contemplative, detached posture, that can wander and not get caught up by the pace of the world around us, that of the “closed” mode. This reminds me of IBM, when it creates the PC (the personal computer in the 80s), they isolate a team on the East Coast, when all of IBM is on the West Coast. In a delimited, protected space.

Time. To use this space, you also need to delimit a very specific period of time allocated to this moment of creativity. A Dutch historian named Johan Huizinga explains “that play is distinguished from ordinary life, both have a duration and a location, but play requires isolation, and a limited period of time. Play starts and at a certain moment ends, otherwise it’s not playing”. So this state of play must have a very specific duration, start and stop. John Cleese indicates that his experience with the Monty Python leads him to think that an hour and a half is a good duration, after that a break is needed.

More time, we observe that in this world of emerging ideas we shouldn’t rush to the solutions that appear. We must know how to tolerate discomfort and anxiety a bit longer, allow ourselves to play a bit longer, the solutions are more creative. Decide as late as possible, at the last responsible moment. When you think you’ve found it, try to question yourself again: is it necessary to make this decision already? We are typically in an emergent system, no expertise. Once again if we were in expertise we would have needed to find the right experts and we would have had our answer. Like making a Ferrari, let’s find the right experts and it works. Emergence is more like mayonnaise, it will work, probably, at what moment, hmmm, now I think… And often in emergence you shouldn’t rush to the first answer provided, you need to give time to this emergence.

Confidence. This framework, this oasis as Cleese describes it, of space and time, protects you from external sarcasm, it’s like a sandbox in which you can have fun, in complete confidence. You can be vulnerable, you are protected. It’s ideal for being outrageous in your ideas, and you shouldn’t hold back! By staying positive we escalate in our freedom to fantasize: “it would be even better if…”, “what if?”, “Ok let’s imagine that…”. It’s the very essence of play, no worries, no harm, in going in a bad direction. The framework of play is a protected space, of confidence, where we can try. You cannot be spontaneous with reason says Alan Watts. You must dare the ridiculous. No fear of error, the space is protected.

Finally humor, it’s the best way to move from “closed” mode to “open” mode. Humor quickly places us in a relaxed state, of play, of spontaneity. Creativity comes when you make two strange concepts collide, as often with humor or comedy, two references come together and give way to something new that is released in laughter. Laughter, some thinkers believe, is this sudden and unexpected energy that we don’t know what to do with and that is released this way. Two concepts that mix and surprise us, outrageous projections, etc.

An example.

A large Canadian consortium is responsible for the power lines that run through the country’s forests. Problem: the weight of snow threatens to cause these said lines to collapse. And it’s long and complicated to deal with. Especially since it’s dangerous, Canadian forests are home to a bunch of bears. How to solve this problem? They “brainstorm”, not hesitating to rave, we don’t know what will come out of it, but well. Let’s see. Suddenly an incongruous idea emerges:

What if we relied precisely on the bears? The bears? Yes they could come scratch the poles? Will scratching be enough to make the snow fall? Or shake them? With honey? Yes by making them shake the poles we can imagine that the snow falls. (really this meeting is nonsense). Ok but the honey would need to be at the top of the poles to push them to shake or at least to climb on the poles, right? By placing pots of honey at the top of the poles, on the lines? Attracted they will come shake the poles. Ok, and how do we place the pots of honey on the poles? We can’t place thousands of pots of honey? Plus at the top… Hmmm, what if we poured honey on the lines by passing with a helicopter? Easy for a helicopter to pass over the lines to deposit the honey without risk!

Bingo: the organization solved its problem… by having a helicopter pass over the lines, its blades make the snow fall.

Be disruptive, think outrageously, in a protected space, without rushing. All this innovation is a question of serendipity. Think of the surrealists, of Carelman’s impossible objects (see the banner photo of this article for example). Think of “closed” mode, and especially of “open” mode.

Let’s try.

15-minute Workshop: Meme Space

For what follows, with the audience I display 3 sets of words and we have fun making new concepts emerge. In this I’m reprising the meme space workshop.

Example of word sets:

Thirty Brands/Uses geeky words

iTunes, Spotify, Netflix, Amazon, Tesla, NASA, Playstation, Minecraft, AirBnB, Uber, Angry Birds, Pokemon, Instagram, Youtube, Whatsapp, Tinder, Happn, Mobile, Tablet, Connected object, Drone, Occulus rift, 3D, Lego, Playmobil, Snapchat, GoogleMaps, Waze, Twitter, Driverless car, IOT, Augmented reality, 3D Print, Blockchain, Robot, Wearables, Machine Learning

Thirty adjectives, words, objects (we can add more!)

Green, Blue, Insane, Germ, Medicine, Mold, Prompt, Rounded, Instant, Inflexible, Colorful, Inverted, Turned over, Invisible, Apparent, Superficial, Virtuoso, Swollen, Connected, Organized, Clean, Grainy, Adherent, Viscous, Plump, Beautiful, Long, Short, Underground, Flying, Telepathy, Telekinesis, Oatmeal, spoon, Fork,

Add to that thirty words related to my client’s business. Mix, stir, let rest.

John Cleese

John Cleese’s superb presentation on creativity (which I’ve never had time to translate for this blog): http://genius.com/John-cleese-lecture-on-creativity-annotated