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# Kick starting creativity
- URL: https://www.pesec.no/kick-starting-creativity/
- Published: 2023-03-30T07:00:09.000Z
- Updated: 2023-03-30T07:00:11.000Z
- Description: What to do when a blank slate leaves you blank?
- Author: Bruno Pešec
- Tags: Innovation, Leadership

Beginning with a blank canvas, page, or whiteboard isn't always the most conductive way to get the creative juices flowing.

Modifying something that already exists—be it products, services, processes, and so on—can be a much easier starting point.

When talking about innovation, good candidates for modification include:

- specific details about the [customer](https://www.pesec.no/visual-tools-for-understanding-customers/) (e.g. their desired outcomes, jobs-to-be-done, problem statements, etc.),
- [value propositions](https://www.pesec.no/making-the-most-out-of-the-value-proposition-canvas/) (e.g. bundles of products and services for customers) and
- [business models](https://www.pesec.no/the-business-model-canvas-explained/) (e.g. processes relevant to creation, delivery, and capture of value).

When a more structured approach to modification is warranted, I like to combine the *ECDRS* framework from industrial engineering with the [four actions framework](https://www.blueoceanstrategy.com/tools/four-actions-framework/?ref=pesec.no) from the Blue Ocean Strategy.

Lovely acronym ECDRS stands for:

- Eliminate: what will happen if something is eliminated?
- Combine: what will happen if something is combined?
- Divide: what will happen if something is divided?
- Rearrange: what will happen if we change the sequence?
- Simplify: what will happen if we simplify something?

The four actions framework poses the following four questions: 

- Eliminate: which factors that the industry takes for granted should be eliminated?
- Reduce: which factors should be reduced well below the industry’s standard?
- Raise: Which factors should be raised well above the industry’s standard?
- Create: Which factors that the industry has never offered should be created?

The former emphasises subtraction, which is often overlooked in innovation, while the latter serves as a memento that value is relative and transient. Both useful reminders and potent creativity drivers in themselves.

And sometimes simply asking *What would happen if...* is more than enough to get the whole room roaring with energy.