Letting Go

"It stands to reason that if we direct all our efforts towards reaching a goal, we stand in grave danger of losing everything on which we have based our daily activities. For when a goal is superimposed on an activity instead of evolving out of it, we often feel cheated when we reach it . . .If we are trained only for success, then to gain it we must necessarily use everyone and everything for this end; we may cheat, lie, crawl, betray, or give up all social life to achieve success. How much more certain would knowledge be if it came from and out of the excitement of learning itself."

Viola Spolin,
Improvisation for the Theatre

Our friend Steve Shapiro, author of "Goal Free Living" and "Innovation 24/7" published this quote recently on his blog. Steve is a good friend who truly walks his talk. As the Innovise Guys prepare for CPSI, we are mindful of the admonitions of one of our key mentors -- Viola Spolin -- who makes sense of "Innovisation" in a profound way. She inspires us daily.

Doug Stevenson
The Innovise Guys

First Anniversary Celebration!

Hey! Welcome to The Innovise Guys Blog! In honor of our first anniversary, we are making a limited number of CDs of our first year of podcasts available, as quantities permit, on a first-come, first-serve basis. Just post your request here and include your snail mail address. We should have the CDs out before the end of the month. Thanks for your interest ... and Best Regards! The Innovise Guys
podcast: http://dainnoviseguys.libsyn.com/

Honoring Our Guests on Our 1st Anniversary

Just over a year ago, Gregg Fraley and I met with my friend and podcast pioneer Heidi Miller (http://www.heidimillerpresents.com/) in my loft in a former Gothic church built in 1886 in Chicago, which served as the "international headquarters" for All Creation. After an hour of perfunctory, but lucid instruction from the ever-helpful Heidi, Gregg fired up his Mac Book, and in the spirit of improvisation -- in the spur of the moment -- we were recording our inaugural podcast. A week later, we huddled, pale-ale-palliatives in hand, in Gregg's office in his Lincoln Park lair to record podcast # 2 and we were off and running. It's been a great first year and we'd like to thank our loyal, occasional or even accidental listeners for checking us out. So too, would we like to thank our remarkable array of enlightened and entertaining guests, who gamely and enthusiastically joined in the fun. They include:

Paula Rosch (http://www.paularosch.com/)

Jean Bystedt (http://www.tothemax.net/)

Steve Shapiro (http://www.goalfree.com/)

Blair Miller (http://www.blairmiller.com/)

Dan Greenberger (http://www.greenhousecom.net/)

Jill Badonsky (http://www.themuseisin.com/)

Megon McDonough (http://www.megonmcdonough.com/)

Gale Seminara (http://www.transitionsbookplace.com/)

Linda Yaven (http://www.lindayaven.com/)

Jon Pearson (http://www.createlearning.com)

Ralph Kerle (http://www.thecreativeleadershipforum.com/)

Segami (http://www.segami.com/)

Tama Kieves (http://www.awakeningartistry.com/)

Julia Cameron (http://www.theartistsway.com/)

Pamela Meyer (http://www.meyercreativity.com/)

Nike Quirk (http://www.thegreaterpossibility.com/)

Eva Niewiadomski (http://www.catalystranch.com/)

David Horth (http://www.ccl.com/)

Joe Pine (http://www.strategichorizons.com/)

and Doug Hall (http://www.doughall.com/).

Thanks, thanks, thanks again to you all for greatly enriching the content and scope of The Innovise Guys' podcasts -- and here's to "what's next"!

Doug Stevenson for The Innovise Guys

podcast: http://dainnoviseguys.libsyn.com/

The Innovise Guys First Blog Entry: Origins

"Life is too important to be taken seriously." Oscar Wilde

I first met Gregg Fraley in his role as head of the Chicago Chapter of the Creative Education Foundation (CEF). Gregg was leading a public session on a creativity-related topic in observance of "Creativity Week", scheduled annually in April around the birthday of creative juggernaut Leonardo da Vinci. (Shout out to Creativity Week founder Marci Segal.) For several years, we collaborated on local CEF events, volunteered for community outreach projects, interacted at the annual Creative Problem Solving Institute (CPSI) and when our schedules permitted, engaged in creative goofing off.

In late 2005, Gregg called me and suggested that we join forces in creating a public workshop on creativity for which we would enlighten the unenlightened, inspire the uninspired, shock the complacent, mock ourselves and maybe make some cash money while we were at it. As we played with ideas for the seminar, we searched for ways to provide added value that would be relatively unique. As we were both former stand-up comedians and trained improvisational actors, we began to play with pedagogical schemes that would combine what we knew of applied creativity -- mostly CPS (Osborn-Parnes) and improvisation, largely inspired by Viola Spolin, her son Paul Sills, and other adherents as Keith Johnstone, Bernie Solins and Del Close. Our playful collaboration back and forth resulted in the concept of "Innovisation".

As it turned out, the workshop we envisioned did not materialize just then. Instead what followed was a leap into podcasting, actually first as "Da Creativity Guys" (Inspired by Click & Clack of NPR's "The Car Guys"), then as "Da Innovise Guys" and by our third podcast, "The Innovise Guys". It has been over a year now, and our podcast continues to be one of the leading podcasts on innovation and creativity on the Internet. In the process, The Innovise Guys have also become a business consulting partnership and a traveling global road show -- with workshop and/or keynote appearances at CPSI, The Applied Improvisation Network conference, Mind Camp (Not including Gregg Fraley's keynote side trips to Great Britain & South Africa) and others scheduled for ACA, E2E, NSA, CREA in Sestri Levante - Italy and The Innovation & Creativity conference at Dublin City College ... All of this just through May of 2007.

In our first year, we've been privileged to interview a cornucopia of creative professionals and enthusiasts, workshop with countless others and had a lot of fun along the way. While many diverse topics related to creativity or innovation have earned our focus, we have an emphasis on results-driven innovation in business and organizations. In our practice, while very diverse in our offerings, our focus on our emerging and evolving specialty dubbed "Innovisation" has also placed an emphasis on fun and humor, all the while witnessing the breakthrough synergies that result from fusing time-tested CPS tool and techniques with the playful, child-based games in improvisational theater. In our workshops, as in our podcasts, we have fun, but all the while with our higher purpose in mind.

So, welcome to our adventure. We hope to make this blog a place of amusement, insight and meaningful dialogue for everyone interested in creativity and bringing forth the novel and new things that will make a difference. In the spirit of improv, we invite you to join in and promise to support your initiations and, as best we can, make you look good, "Yes, and" your ideas ... and so much more. In so doing, while we are results-driven in our work, we will reassert the primacy of play in all that we do, especially, as Wilde's quote suggests, around the most serious of challenges.

As another pundit, quintessential American humorist Mark Twain once asserted, "If you're not having fun, you're not doing it right."

While we are most often on the same page, Gregg & I have our own voice, so as we express our opinions here, we will identify ourselves, so that you know which one of us to be pissed off at ... or in the unlikely event, know to whom specifically to send the plaque for that literary or humanitarian award.

Doug Stevenson for The Innovise Guys ... March 3, 2007
podcast: http://dainnoviseguys.libsyn.com/