“Build a duck.”
Those three words sound simple enough, but when I look at the six Lego pieces in front of me—two square, one with an eye, another rectangular and two flat red pieces—I pause. How could I make a duck out of these seemingly irrelevant shapes? And then, I think to myself, “What would Salvador Dalí do?”
The question wasn’t completely out of left field. I was, after all, sitting in The Dalí Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida, joining about a dozen other professionals in “Introduction to Creative Thinking,” one of the courses hosted by Innovation Labs at The Dalí Museum. Led by Kimberly Macuare, director of education and co-director of Innovation Labs, we were on a mutual quest, seeking inspiration from the surrealist that we could take back to our places of work.
Dalí in the business world
Unsurprisingly, the idea of the Innovation Labs came from Dalí himself.
“Hank Hine, the executive director of The Dalí Museum and the founder and co-director of the Innovation Labs at The Dalí, very early on saw the potential in the way that Dalí approached problem-solving, how he approached looking at the world, both in terms of understanding things that other people didn’t seem to understand because he was looking at it through different eyes, and then his ability to just take off the brakes in terms of what might be possible solutions for anything that he was thinking about,” Macuare says. “And that could have been from creating another masterpiece to he once sat down and spent an hour thinking about what were all the ways that he could use a gift that he had been given of a whale vertebra.
“As soon as Hank was thinking in this vein, it was really clear to him right away how this might have applications in a business context,” she adds.
And it’s not only Hine who believes creative thinking can benefit the business world. In its 2023 Future of Jobs Report, the World Economic Forum cited creative thinking as one of the top 10 skills on the rise, increasing in importance between 2023 and 2027.
Inspired by Salvador Dalí’s wild imagination, mastery of illusion and perception, the Innovation Labs are designed to open participants’ eyes and imaginations, pushing the limits of their creativity. During the sessions, the program’s expert facilitators lead attendees through unexpected training exercises that both expand their minds and develop talent in new and exciting directions.
This one-of-a-kind program carefully combines more than 60 years of research on creativity and creative problem-solving with a generous dash of Dalí’s philosophy and methods to help businesses see the world in new ways.
Throughout the five-hour course, Macuare led our group through conversations and activities that challenged our ways of thinking, encouraging us to get as far out of the box as Dalí. She walked us through one way to rethink, well, the way we think—her five secrets of the creative process, which she gleaned from Dalí’s 50 Secrets of Magic Craftsmanship:
- Setting the scene: You must prepare the ground for creativity
- On the Cloud game: Recognize that seeing is a generative act
- Multiple perspectives: Value of connecting the dots
- Cultivate curiosity: Ask questions; look longer and pay more attention
- Be yourself: What’s your mustache?
In essence, think like Dalí when he said, “Everything alters me, but nothing changes me.”
Going on a flânerie
After speaking at length about the artist’s Gala Contemplating the Mediterranean Sea Which at Twenty Meters Becomes the Portrait of Abraham Lincoln (Homage to Rothko) and how viewers’ perceptions of the masterpiece change depending on their physical perspectives, Macuare broke us into small groups and asked us to go on a flânerie (a walk or wander guided by a random principle) through the galleries, just as Dalí and his contemporaries did during their time in Paris.
For our flânerie, we chose to focus on a color to find throughout the art, but found ourselves evolving our sightlines to find sets of three, which we realized were prevalent in Dalí’s works. That realization is one we may not have noticed if we hadn’t taken the time to really look.
“Kim is an expert at weaving personal and professional development skills with art history and art,” says Beth Miller, Ph.D., executive director at the Creative Education Foundation. Miller brought Macuare in to kick off the Florida Creativity Conference. “Innovation Labs present a lively and interactive way to experience The Dalí that provides meaningful self-reflection while cultivating interpersonal skills and development. Forging meaningful connections between the arts and skills development illustrates how art can both inspire and activate understanding and implementation of new skills.”
Gathered back together, and thinking with a Dalí mindset, Macuare walked us through FourSight, a problem-solving system that encourages teams to think creatively and work collaboratively to find innovative solutions to complex challenges. According to research shared by FourSight, solving a complex problem requires four types of thinking: clarifying, ideating, developing and implementing. Essentially, everyone is capable of all four types, we just have preferences as to the type of thinking we enjoy.
About a week before our session, we were asked to complete some homework, a questionnaire about how we work best. Looking at my FourSight results, I wasn’t surprised to learn that I’m an implementer—I’m all about getting things done—with a fairly neutral reading across the other three types. Learning about the other ways of thinking, and the way we can all collaborate, was informative and beneficial, and gave me better insights on how to be a stronger team player, in both my work and personal lives.
Like Miller says, “The Innovation Lab inspires and activates personal and professional development.”
In addition to “Introduction to Creative Thinking,” the Innovation Labs also offers courses like, “Introduction to Creative Problem-Solving,” “Saving the World From Chaos: Advanced Strategies for Creative Thinking & Problem-Solving” and “The Secret Life of Your Organization,” which are customized to meet businesses’ specific needs.
Back to my duck. After a moment’s pause, I shifted into a Dalí state of mind and started to build.
I think I would have made the surrealist proud.
Photo courtesy of The Dalí Museum
