Perception Reception

Is your Glass Half Empty or Half Full?
Perception in Creativity and Innovation

The ability to perceive the world in new ways is one of the key attributes of successfully creative artists, scientists and entrepreneurs. Skills in perception give us the ability to see what others don't see, find hidden patterns, and make connections between seemingly unrelated ideas, objects, or events, that lead to solutions.

“Changing a manager’s perception of a glass from half full to half empty opens up big innovation opportunities. A change in perception does not alter facts. It changes their meaning, though — and very quickly. It took less than two years for the computer to change from being perceived as a threat and as something only big businesses would use to something one buys for doing income tax. Economics do not necessarily dictate such a change; in fact, they may be irrelevant.

What determines whether people see a glass as half full or half empty is mood rather than fact, and a change in mood often defies quantification. But it is not exotic. It is concrete. It can be defined. It can be tested. And it can be exploited for innovation opportunity.” (From: “The Discipline of Innovation,” Harvard Business Review; Aug 2002)

Skills Enhancement

The objective of this event is to provide fun activities for your corporate offsite, involving art, magic and science, designed to to enhance your skills in perception.

Activities include

• listening to molecular music,
• exploring synaesthesia in art and science,
• Illusion
• magic tricks,
• puzzles
• fractals,
• exploring the effect on colour and taste in beverages, and
• painting music.

Magic tricks are a popular way to challenge perceptions. According to magician Ken Bellemare, magic teaches us to break out of our assumptions, and conceptual paradigms in our approach to problem-solving. This is tricky, because our assumptions are mostly unconscious. Ken says, “In magic, it’s often the least emphasized gesture or movement that is the most important in solving the trick.” Have you noticed that when the solution to a magic trick is revealed to you, it's always elegantly simple?

You will receive a compendium of all the activities, to anchor learning and provide a memento of your event.

As you explore the many ways to sharpen your senses, consider your business challenges from a kaleidoscopic perspective. Is your glass half empty or half full?

For information on holding a Perception Reception at your event, please contact Linda Naiman: Tel: +1 604.327.1565