How To Unlock Your Creativity With Fun-Based Neuroscience Techniques

Creativity is a skill that so many corporations and businesses aspire to foster and harness. However, businesses often struggle to create a conducive environment for this, especially in workplaces riddled with dull meetings and never-ending PowerPoint presentations. Many businesses place great importance on intelligence but forget the fun, and that is what our guests today are trying to change in the corporate world. In this episode of the podcast, we are joined by Kenny White, Chief Creativity Architect and Co-Founder of Funworks, a creative agency using neuroscience research to bring fun into the corporate setting, allowing businesses and their employees to achieve their creative potential. Alongside White, we are also joined by Erica Fortescue, neuroscience expert, and the former Creativity Architect at Funworks. In the episode, White explains how a road trip from Alaska to Costa Rica led him to become a co-founder of the company and how the company created "(fun)workshops" in business environments, based on the founder's experience of writing in sketch comedy groups. He highlights how the company uses sketch comedians alongside graphic illustrators to record ideas in image form to create an environment of fun and laughter to produce content. Fortescue also explains how her work, alongside some of the most pre-eminent neuroscientists and psychologists in the world, allowed her to optimize Funwork's creative process. You will learn what the phrase "Neurons that fire together, wire together" means, how we get stuck in thinking loops that stifle our creativity, and how to get out of these loops. Hint, it involves driving through a house (metaphorically). She also shares with our listeners what fMRI and EEG studies tell us about how our unconscious produces creative ideas, and how we bring them to the surface. The pair also give examples of unique work environments they produced to help come up with ideas -- like how they rented out the Swedish American Hall and sat in Viking chairs to come up with a new promotional video for the game "Assassin's Creed Valhalla," which became the best selling game in the franchise's history, with 1.7 million copies sold at launch. And finally, Fortescue explains how open-ended questions can lead to better ideas. And even though this sounds straightforward, Fortescue provides an example that highlights how Funworks takes an unconventional, yet effective approach to this.