Translator: Elisabeth Buffard
Reviewer: Mariela Rodio Thank you! Hello. Ideas, ideas, ideas, ideas, ideas, Where do ideas come from? How do they appear in our heads? Why all of a sudden
we don't understand anything and then suddenly
we understand everything? How do they appear here, in our conciousness? And we say, "Oh, I understand!" Why are they like that? How come they show up
when we don't expect them? Why is, that if I need an idea for work it doesn't come to me; but if I'm at a barbecue, the idea comes to me then? When it is no longer useful, I'm no longer at work. We will call these new ideas, these good ideas these creative ideas that we all get (some of us get creative ideas for our lives, some for business, others to change the world). We will call them: the "flash"; we all get "flashes", we all get inspired. All of us. And we can all get more of those, right? It's a strange thing that we should lose lots of good ideas because we don't expect them, they appear and then we lose them. And we don't write them down. How can we capture them? What can we do to make those ideas that we have in our heads come true? Sometimes, ideas appear as a total puzzle: "I understood everything, that's it. That's what it's about, I'll do it this way". And sometimes
they appear little by little: over the course of a week,
a month, or a year and we start to understand
what we want to do. That is, we are turned off,
we are in silence we are in silence, we don't understand anything and suddenly everything becomes clear, everything is right there. How does that happen? What can we do to make it happen
more often? Let's look at the goal
Messi scored against Mexico and how he lifts the ball
above the goalkeeper. Is it a good idea? It certainly is a very good idea, a creative idea. And now I'm giving you another challenge: these creative ideas, are they thought out or is it intuition? Are they intuitive? Is it a feeling Messi gets in his foot and it plays it that way? Or did he think in microseconds, saw the goalkeeper in front of him,
thought of the goal, he knows about it. Did he do one thing or the other? Did he think or did he use intuition? A few years ago, neuroscience explained this as two distinct processes.
That is: you either think analytically,
or you use intuition. Like two independet activities in the brain. The left side of the brain,
which is more analytic, deductive, logical thinking; and the right side which is more about creativity, imagination, intuition. So according to that theory, Messi, as he was being creative,
had used intuition, he wasn't thinking. And why was that? Why did science explain that? Because of the activities
that soldiers did returning from World War II with bullets in different hemispheres of the brain. For example, a soldier with a bullet in the left hemisphere was a very creative person. Because his right hemisphere
was very developped. A soldier with a bullet
in the right hemisphere was a person who was very good at mathematical analysis. The right hemisphere wasn't working and the left one was very developed. So how could innovation or creativity explain that creativity in people
like that man there who has a very small,
poorly developed right brain, like most of us? Because, where do academies,
schools and univiersities place the emphasis?
On the left one. Logic, Mathematics, language. So we end up atrophying our right brain, but don't worry, there's still hope. But how can we explain
such a person's creativity? I work in a team. If your right brain isn't very developed you have to join someone
whose right brain is. If we analyse the more innovative,
more modern, more creative companies of today, we get this: there are pairs. Very developed left brains with commercial capacities; very developed right brains, with creative capacities. Together they bring success and innovation to these companies. But it has changed.
Ten years have passed and today neuroscience explains this with a new theory I'm going to tell you about, that we can all be creative and that the brain doesn't work neither right nor left but left and right at the same time. Everything at the same time. And whatever the subject is, creativity being art is a lie; creativity is everywhere. In every kind of subject in how to solve conflicts, in negociating with your spouse,
in engineering. We all can be creative at everything and that great theory
I'm going to tell you about today is connected to that. In 1990 we came to use nuclear magnetic resonance to see how a brain works from the inside or what is turned on or off in the brain. When somebody is moving, I can place electrodes. Walking, doing things and I can see what is on in the brain, which part of the brain is involved. And when it happened in 1990, we realized that the brain is not just left or right. The brain is also deep and shallow, grey and white, as it says here, there are a lot of things. That is, the brain actually works like a mosaic. And whatever what we do, whatever we feel, many parts of the brain are going
to get activated, it's not a matter of right or left. This is called the theory of the "mosaic brain" and of the "intelligent memory" that I want to tell you about today to explain, to motivate and stimulate you and feel that we can all be creative and that we all have the same potential. In our brain we all have the same number of neurons and we can have better and more creative ideas. And the theory begins like this. From the moment when we are born we start building our memory. We open our eyes there at the hospital and all the things we come across from that very moment when we are born, enter our memory and are kept there. Everything: what we experience, what we feel, what we hear, what we learn, so obviously nobody - no two people have had fully identical experiences - so we could say that there are no two identical brains in the world.
No. Because nobody has lived two things
exactly the same way; that's very interesting. We, scientists are a little like that too, when we say: What is innate and what is the result of memory? If memory is built from the moment we are born, are we sure that something is innate? That way it builts on the things that happened to you in your memory. So today, we can't tell what is innate and what isn't,
and it doesn't matter and I'm going to try and explain a very complex neurological,
neuroscientific theory in four simple sentences; let's imagine now inside our brain that everything we have experienced
in our lives, everything we learned, everything we have read, everything we've heard, today, for you, now is an orange dot in the brain. Imagine an orange dot in your brain. Each thing that happened in your life is an orange dot in the brain. These dots inside the brain can begin to connect forming a pattern, with lines. Things we have experienced start to connect within the brain forming connections and these new connections... Let's imagine for example:
the orange dot is something we learned in primary school; the red dot is something
that our grand-father told us; the burgundy dot is something we read in a science fiction book; these things that are separate in our life can start to connect because they are all kept in our memory. These new connections form bigger fragments within the brain. And now we are going to imagine that the brain is a chest of drawers and these large fragments of combined things that happened to us in our lives are kept in those drawers. Forget the orange dots, think about drawers. There are lots of drawers. In each of these drawers there are things that happened combined in various forms. Because that's what being creative is. It's not thinking about something new. It is combining things in a different way. Combining things that already exist
in different ways. And in those drawers you have
those combinations. And those combinations,
which I call fragments, are the "flashes" that sometimes
appear in our conciousness as we are going to see. Suddenly, bam! the flash appeared!
I got it there, I heard it. Now I know how to solve it.
Now I know what I'm going to say. The drawers open, you combine various things. Things you knew already,
or that were already there, but you combine them in a new form. That is, the old flash from the subuncouscious
to the consciousness and it's when it is in the counsciousness where you can see it, you can hear it,
you can read it in your head. And we all get those flashes,
like I said before, and some of those flashes have been extremely important for humanity. Thanks to the flashes that Picasso,
Bill Gates Napoleon had, as we'll see later on, a lot of things changed in the world. And anyone of us sitting here could have one of thoses flashes,
at this very moment. And say, Hey, I'm going to change
the company, I'm going to change the university,
I'm going to change the country, I'm going to change the world. We can all do it. We all have the same potential. So what does it require to get those flashes? What do I have to do to improve it? What do I have to look for deep inside me? Four things: examples from history; having a clear mind -- I will explain that later; the flash appears thanks to mental clarity, or the moment of inspiration; and above all, something that sadly we have very little of here, that is determination. That's what makes the difference. We all get good ideas, we are all creative here, but how many people do it? How many people have the determination
to go and do something? To do something in your life or
do something in the world, no matter if it's small or big, but determination is something we lack, and it's something that I want you to take home with you today. So, examples from history as I said, mine or other people's, everything I live, how many more I have in my drawers, I will have more possibilities to combine them in new forms, in different forms. This is the idea: the more I put in things,
the more I learn, you have with you today heaps of drawers full of new things, this afternoon,
more possibilities to combine in new forms. Mental clarity. Mental clarity is the moment before the flash. We all know that if we look inside ourselves a little, we have a place in the world, a moment, an hour, a form of being more relaxed
and more free to think or to have a creative idea. Some are bathing, some are driving, some are chatting with a friend, some are drinking wine, some are... We all have distinct places that allow us to have mental clarity. Some are meditating, we'll talk about that in a minute too. So you have to look for which is the moment of mental clarity to get the flash. Why, if I have to do a task for school, for University, or present a project to my boss, and I am at work, or I am at school, and nothing happens to me? Yet, I arrive home at 10 p.m., I'm under a shower, and there it comes to me. And what comes next? I won't do it.
I'm going to forget! I won't wrtite it down, more,
it's going to bug me. Why am I relaxed in my home now and thinking about work? I don't want to think about it. Yet it happens, and you passed by it and you lost the opportunity
to turn this creative idea you had under the shower into reality. Companies and organizations try to see how to capture all these ideas. The brain works all the time, it doesn't work during the two-hour meeting, it doesn't work when you are sitting
at the desk or at the computer, it works all the time, and when you don't expect it, bam!
You get the idea! How can we capture this quadrillon possible connections we all have here inside our brain? 15 zeros, a quadrillon, is a huge number. We can all do it. How to do it, what do I have to do,
how to keep it. Well, some people say,
"I feel mental clarity when I am distracted.
I need to be doing something else and ideas come to me." Others say,
"No, I need to be in silence, I turn the light on, I turn down the music, I start meditating
and that's when ideas appear". Whatever the form,
science today fails to explain if one is better than the other;
what matters is that each of you get your own. Your own moment of mental clarity. The very well-known folks at Google, say, "well, I give my employees free time, I get them to work in a very pleasant atmosphere, very relaxed, and thus they are more creative". When someone says that,
we must pay attention to scientists. We, scientists, went to Google, we observed this and we said,
"It's not true". The pleasant atmosphere,
of the nice working atmosphere, don't make people more creative, they make people more productive. That's not bad.
Being more productive at work is important enough. Work doesn't mean hard work, it can be work at university, work at home, etc. So being well, bearing it well, having a good atmosphere, a nice place,
being taken care of it makes you more productive, which is important enough
to be taken into account. Let me come back to Messi. Messi is no less creative in the National Team. Messi is less productive in the National Team. If we analyse Messi's games in Barcelona and in the National Team,
both are extremeley creative and spectacular. But clearly, the atmosphere
in the National Team isn't what suits him --
I wish it would change in two days -- and in Barcelona he's better! So he's more productive,
does much more games when he is in the National Team.
It's going to change. Another big trend,
and that luckily it's ending is the combination of East and West. Today, engineers, experts of the brain, western scientists allow, or talk with Tibetan monks who meditate,
they observe them, the Tibetan monks let themselves be observed, and today we can see the Tibetan monks' brains with an MRI while they're meditating. And what we see is incredible. Today, the Western world, fortunately,
asserts or sasy: yes, meditation is a good thing to find solutions to problems, it's a good thing to have mental clarity and get moments of inspiration,
it's a good thing to solve somes negative feelings; So crossing the hemispheres
is becoming fashionable, in the present case not in your brain
but in the world, the West and the East to combine different strategies. And it's good that it's working. That's one of the best things in globalization. With examples from history and each of you understanding what is your moment
of mental clarity, noisily or in silence, however you prefer, we stimulate that "flash",
that creative thing that will come up in the consciousness,
and above all, determination. Now to go and do it is not easy. I'm going to try to tell you 4 or 5 stories that may explain this theory so that you see it clearly. You know that we are hardwired to listen to stories. The brain is hardwired to listen to stories. I tell you a soty and you will understand it. If somehow I tell you a theory
with complicated words few will understand it. So stories are good for that. Buddha. The first Buddha, Gautama,
was a prince in the North of India, which is Nepal today, and he lived in a palace,
a palace full of riches. At 29, he got out of the palace for the first time and he saw someone who was suffering,
and he began feeling for that person who was suffering
and he didn't understand. "What is this? I thought life was different. Suffering exists". And he leaves the palace, for 6 years,
looking for what in India was called "enlightment". To understand human suffering, why, why does it happen? And during those 6 years he goes to visit lots of teachers, of gurus, who give him lots of teaching, he learns many things: yoga positions, various types of foods, various ethical behaviors, etc. But none of that suites him.
He doesn't get enlightened. So one day he decides to go looking
for that enlightment by himself. He had spent 6 years learning many things. One day, the legend goes, under a fig tree, he begins to meditate as they say, and during that meditation, he gets that moment of mental clarity and the flash. The moment of inspiration.
He gets enlightened. He understands human suffering, there he is meditating under a tree and he writes the 4 noble truth of Buddha: man suffers, desire is the cause of his suffering, he can stop suffering --
which is the state of nirvana -- and in order to stop suffering,
he must follow what is called "the octuple path", which are the 4 forms of life, which he must follow exactly
in order to stop suffering. Well, I don't have time to tell you the whole story,
but it doesn't matter. What I mean is that experts in hinduism, when they study India and its past, the 4 nobel truth that Buddha had written,
that made him so famous, had been written before. Buddha didn't invent them.
He was the one who combined them
in this particular manner and then you'll see that it was Buddah
who made it possible, with determination,
for people to start to work or live in this way. They were written in various places, on various scrolls or papers
and it was Buddha again who could combine them,
and I must say, those 6 years it took him to learn things from his of gurus and teachers probably influenced him. He got this mental clarity under that fig tree, he got that moment of inspiration
to get enlightened, to write the 4 noble truths and above all, the big difference, he spent 45 years teaching Buddhism, what today Buddhism is, with that octuple path. Determination. Another totally different example: Picasso. 1906 in Paris. Picasso wasn't well known yet while Henri Matisse was. Picasso admired Matisse's work, he knew several of his works. One of them, which he said he liked the most, was called Joy of Life,
and I'm going to show it to you now, and one night, a very rich Parisian family, invited Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso to dine at their house. Matisse's daughter came along. Her name was Marguerite.
And she came with an African scupture,
she had just come back from Africa, picture this, 1900,
it wasn't common to go to Africa, and Picasso, as we say today,
flashed on that scupture, not on Marguerite,
or at least in that part of the story we know,
and he got inspired by that sculpture. That same night, Max Jacob said, who was a friend of Picasso's, Picasso goes back to his study
-- the Bateau-Lavoir, in Pairs -- and he begins to paint, to draw, all night long. And when Max wakes up
in the morning he sees Picasso lying on the floor,
I think it's a very funny picture, with lots of drawings on top of Pablo Picasso, with disfigured mouths,
4 eyes, noses, etc. Picasso had found his style from being influenced by the African sculpture, from Matisse's work --
in arts, it is called influence. That same night, he came home
with mental clarity, he began painting and drawing
one of his greatest works which is Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, and, with determination,
because he was painting there at night, and later throughout his life he reached what we know today as Picasso. This is Les Demoiselles d'Avignon,
and that is it's influence: Matisse on one side and the African scupture on the other. It is not the sculpture Marguerite had brought, I found that one through Google. I couldn't find the one Marguerite had in 1906. But I don't know much about art,
or I know nothing about art, so I asked some experts and they said, if you look closely, and you compare Picasso to Matisse, you have the same distorted forms, the unrealistic colours, no shadows,
no perspectives but also Picasso has a rough,
angular touch, that is the influence of the African sculpture.
Can you see it? So Picasso is not a imitator. Picasso is unique. He just combined things that existed before, he got the influence,
the example from history to make something unique, you see? He combines things that he had inside him. Let's have one more example.
Bill Gates. Bill Gates, as you all know, founded Microsoft. He had a partnership with Paul Allen, they worked in Boston, Massachussetts, and they didn't have the idea
to create or build a company to make desktop computers, PCs, or microcomputers.
They were working on what was called minicomputers. We are talking about the 60's in the USA, minicomputers were anything but mini. Minicomputers were huge things, and very few people had one. Actually people didn't have them, organizations, universities and schools had some. And we also have 4 combinations that existed before,
which Bill Gates and Paul Allen used to create Microsoft. Bill Gates and Paul knew
a few minicomputers such as the PDP-8,
they would work with that computer in high school, that wasn't usual. Not all the students would talk about that, they knew Basic, they knew the 8080 chip, where they could write some software and one day the first microcomputer, called Altair, appeared, and it gives them the mental clarity to say: Wow! That's the way the world is going,
towards microcomputers, towards PCs, not to minicomputers. How does it happen? What is the moment of mental clarity? Pall Allen was walking one day in Harvard Square and he passed the newsagent's and something caught his eye, it was Popular Electronics, and he saw the first microcomputer on the cover, the Altair. So he calls, he doenst' call because cell phones
didn't exist then, he goes to Bill Gates and he tells him: "Listen, you've got to see this". So they look at the magazine and they say: "Wow! This is happening without us!",
Bill Gates said. That's what we've got to go for,
this is the market, microcomputers, user-friendly software for common people. In 10 years time,
everybody will get a microcomputer, and people laughed at them, of course. That was their moment of inspiration, you can see Bill Gates
who was still a kid at that time, and with determination they built Microsoft. Two more examples. Google. Most famous for the younger ones
among you. Page and Brin, who did not work in a creative and relaxed atmosphere. They were Ph. D. students at Stanford. They were friends, they were working
in different subjects, but they knew each other. What was these two kids' creativity? Being able to make money from Internet search. Quickly. What were they doing
and how was Google born? Page was working on what is called digital libraries. It's 1995 and the only search engines are Altavista and Netscape, so Page was trying to convert all the scientific magazines to digital, which is a regular thing for us today, but at that time someone had to do it and he wanted to do it in the most efficient way. Page says that one day,
he was surfing the Internet, with Altavista, and he found something
that read "links". Links, you all know about that today.
He clicks on links, out of curiosity, and he says,
"Wow! there are pages allowing me to link to my website. That's great for my thesis!" For scientists. Us scientists like to know who cites our works, how I can link what is said about me,
who is talking about me. A scientist, sadly, is considered good or bad according to who talks about them.
That's what people think. So what does he do? He downloads
the whole site from Altavista to the computer.
Did you hear what I said? He downloaded the "whole" Altavista site to the Stanford computer and began to see how it worked. On the other hand, Brin,
in the office next door, was working on totally different things. Brin was an expert in mathematics, he was working on mathematic algorithms. He was trying to make his thesis,
trying to help companies to understand their consumers' behavior. When the law of the Internet appears,
Brin says, "You know what?
I will adapt my thesis to e-commerce". Because that's something that's coming fast. Brin goes to listen to what Page is doing
and he will tell him, "Listen, I give you my algorithms
and we can combine those 3 things:
links, what you know about Altavista, and my algorithms",
to create what Google is today. So it's the same thing:
stuff that existed before combined in an original way. Links, understanding Altavista,
and Brin's algorithms. Mental clarity. Page is the one who said, literally, "I was just surfing Altavista when suddenly I realized something strange, different". There, pop! Mental clarity,
and he downloaded Altavista website. And Brin came and told him take my algorithms, and that's how we make Google with determination. One last example: Napoleon. A great French Army General, Napoleon was a great reader, he knew all the wars in all of history. There he's coming to the south of France, to take charge of the French artillery. He's waiting for the army General. He wasn't a general yet. He is reading war stories, he knows a lot, right? Examples from history
in order to get influenced. He enters a bar, in the South of France,
and he meets -- well, there's this maid he's going to fall in love with,
but that's not the important part -- he meets the head of the French Army who asks him, "Young man, why do you come here? He will now show you the papers coming from Paris and he'll tell him,
I come to take charge of the artillery to take Toulon". Toulon was a French town that had been taken by the English. So what is going to happen? He laughs and says, "Artillery? What's the use of artillery? If we are to win Toulon,
that's with swords and bayonnettes. We don't want any artillery." And the head says,
That's the way it is." However Napoleon will get the mental clarity to think that the battle had to happen differently, in an original and more creative way. But he won't argue, that's the head,
that's the Army, he's the general, he will tell him, "Well, if you say it's swords and bayonnettes,
I quit". But the army general
will give him an opportunity and he will tell him, "Well, well, well, if you think
you know so much, come here, I'll you show the map of France
and you tell me: what would you do
if you were at the head of the army?" And that's going to be
the moment of inspiration, Napoleon, as you can see,
observes the map, he sees where the French army is, he sees where the English are, he sees what is all around and he says: "We don't even need the artillery". Now that I see, now that it inspires me, that I can have the mental clarity,
and you are goin to see through Napoleon's eyes, those eyes,
he lays here, those eyes that are going to have
the "coup d'oeil" in French; that's what eyes do
when you get the moment of inspiration when you are somewhere else you are here but you are somewhere else. And he says, "It's not the way. We have to put our army in another town, and if we block the English's way we don't have to shoot a single shot. The English will go away by themselves", He sees the strategy from another place, that's his inspiration.
And he says to the people of Aiette, we put the army here and the English go away. Obviously, the general is going to laugh at him, the general will not take him into account, the general will do what he had already in mind. He will lose,because the French Army will lose, and he'll come from Paris and say "Napoleon, you are now in charge", Napoleon will take charge, he will follow his strategy and he'll win and from then on he'll be at the head
of the French Army. You get it? So, pure intuition
or analysis doesn't exist it's not about thiking or feeling. Both things happen at the same time, the brain works in a logical and creative way all the time, at the same time we can all do it and clearly the more you learn, listen, the more things you put in your drawers, those drawers I told you about, for example, coming here is a great example of it, you will add possibilities to combine these things that you have inside you in a creative way. Let me go back and leave you with Messi, Tell me if those two goals aren't nearly the same. Tell me if the theory is not applied there and those aren't examples from history. Messi had seen Maradona's goal thousands and thousands of times,
that's an example from history. Messi, with mental clarity, eluding the players, with inspiration and determination to reach the goalkeeper and score. So for you, we need examples from history, that you surely have many of, and you can combine them in innovative ways; look for your place, your moment, your day of mental clarity, take advatage of that to be inspired. Don't forget ideas, write them down, the most innovative companies write down all the time, so that we do'nt forget ideas and above all: determination; a lot of determination to do. You don't know if that idea can change your life, that idea can change Rosario, that idea can change the country. Perhaps an idea you will get can change the world too. Thank you very much.
(Applause)
